Argentina: Massive marches demand 1976 militarists be punished

WW photo: John Catalinotto

With drums and firecrackers sounding off, tens of thousands of Argentines of all ages marched noisily through the broad boulevards in the downtown center of the capital to the Plaza de Mayo on March 24. Thousands more marched or met in dozens of provincial cities. They marked the 31st anniversary of the 1976 U.S.-backed military coup, demanding legal punishment for those involved in the military government from 1976 to 1983 and the “appearance, alive” of Julio López, who was kidnapped six months ago after testifying against one of that era’s murdering police chiefs.

Twelve million of Argentina’s 37 million people live in the greater Buenos Aires region, giving the capital enormous political weight in this large country about one-third the size of Brazil. But an equally important demonstration on the same issue was held in Córdoba, some 450 miles away. There the president, Nestor Kirchner, spoke at a rally at La Perla, a military prison the junta government used as a concentration camp during the time it “disappeared”—that is, arrested and secretly murdered—30,000 Argentine political activists and union organizers from left and Peronist groups (political parties that have their historical roots in the 1940s and 1950s when Juan Perón was president of Argentina. Perón was a bourgeois nationalist and populist whose neutrality in World War II was condemned by the Allied imperialists).

Much of the Argentine left is critical of Kirchner, especially his economic policies and his decision to send Argentine troops to participate in the occupation of Haiti. Nevertheless, both pro-government and left-opposition parties joined to raise the main demands along with dozens of neighborhood and human rights organizations, the most prominent being the Mothers (and now Grandmothers) of the Plaza de Mayo. This group, led by Hebe de Bonafini, has been demonstrating every Thursday for decades to keep the memory of their children alive and to find out exactly what happened to them.

Kirchner himself criticized Argentina’s judicial system for moving too slowly to bring court cases against the 259 military and police figures charged with crimes stemming from that period—only a handful have actually been tried.

Some of the more revolutionary organizations—for example the Party of Liberation (PL)—have pointed out that it was not just the accused 259 military and police who were guilty of the crimes of the military government or who profited from them. Many of the major business and banking institutions, especially those connected with imperialist enterprises, are equally responsible for the success of the military in staying in power.

The next day more people demonstrated at the Campo de Mayo in the Buenos Area region. This center was used to deliver the babies of the disappeared prisoners. Many of these children were adopted and raised by families of the pro-fascist officers and police who murdered their birth mothers.

In the middle of a period of many social struggles in the mid-1970s—near the time of the U.S.-backed, pro-fascist military coup in neighboring Chile in September 1973—elements in the Argentine government, and especially in the military and police, set up extra-legal organizations that today would be labeled “death squads.” These groups carried out the kidnappings and murders of leftists. Some of the left groups fought back.

With the complete support of the U.S. government and its Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a group of generals and police seized power in Argentina. This group then carried out a wholesale roundup not only of the urban guerrilla leftists in Argentina but also of political activists and union organizers from across the leftist and Peronist political spectrum. Prisoners were held secretly, tortured, and some 30,000 were murdered.

Because of the role of U.S. imperialism in backing the generals, the March 24 protests had an anti-imperialist content, and there were even some slogans attacking President George Bush for the Iraq war and his policy toward South America.

In the 1970s U.S. imperialism justified its intervention in support of the generals in Chile and Argentina, as well as its support of obvious dictators in Haiti, Philippines, Indonesia and Zaire (now Congo) as part of its anti-communist crusade. Today the U.S. government tries to use human-rights rhetoric to justify intervention. In neither case is imperialist intervention in a country a solution for the people there.

The disappearance of the 30,000 mostly young Argentineans has been a major issue in Argentine life. Even in the past year, at least three Argentine films have dealt with this theme. One, “Sisters,” shows the relations between two sisters, one of whose compañeros was disappeared. Another shows a child raised by an officer’s family who is then returned to her birth parents’ family. A third, a documentary called “M,” was made by the two children of a disappeared mother, who reconstruct her life and events through interviews with people who knew her.

Even small revolutionary groups will have a list of comrades who were kidnapped and killed during that period. For politically active Argentines, the 30,000 disappeared are definitely “presente.”

This year the issue is even more dramatic because of the disappearance of López, who had also been kidnapped in the 1970s. He had testified last November at the trial of former Police Chief Miguel Etchecolatz, who was charged and convicted of genocide. The assumption is that López was kidnapped and perhaps killed. The demonstrators also want the other military criminals to be punished.

This April 2 is the 25th anniversary of the war between Argentina—under the military government—and British imperialism over the Malvinas Islands, which are islands that were home to settlers from the British Isles and constituted an outpost of the British Empire in South America. A further article will discuss this anniversary.