Last week marked the forty-ninth anniversary of the military coup in Argentina that would mark seven years of my career in journalism. I’ve been thinking about those times a lot lately. I’m unable to get the memories out of my mind. And, truth be told, I don’t want to. Because forgetting is how we repeat the same mistakes over again.
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Argentine military junta 1976 |
Furthermore, by forgetting, we can never
warn others of the same pitfalls when they crop up elsewhere. But then again,
sometimes providing those warnings, admonishing the uninitiated, can be a
thankless task. Because like children, those who have never experienced what
you have, are often loath to accept that the same thing can happen to them.
You can tell a child again and again,
“Hot! Don’t touch!” And I’m guessing that, nine times out of ten, they’ll have
to personally put their little mitt in the flame or lay their tender palm to
the hot iron before they’ll know what you were talking about, and why you
weren’t just being a nosy, bossy jerk. In their tiny, barely reasoning minds,
they just think they have a different opinion than yours and that you’re trying
to impose your will on them. You’re not, of course. You’re just trying to spare
them the pain you’ve already suffered.
But maybe it’s impossible to experience
another’s awareness vicariously. Perhaps you just have to climb into the meat
grinder head first yourself. Problem is, it’s usually hard to come out on the
other end of that move alive or unscathed.
My revived interest in that part of my
life—which, until recently, almost seemed like another life—is twofold,
although both stances are connected. On the one hand, I have finally decided to
finish writing and, hopefully, publish a memoir of those years. The working
title is A Voice in the Storm. Its meaning will be clear to anyone who
eventually reads the book, the completion of which has been eluding me for the
past two decades. That’s mainly because there are a lot of things that are
personally very painful for me about that era, even while I have to admit that
I have never felt more alive or more self-fulfilled than in those times.
Secondly, however, my renewed interest
is also due to the fact that I’m seeing everything I experienced back then,
everything I know to be the wrong road to take, coming full circle and
happening all over again. But this time in my own native land, where most of us
were brought up thinking anything like authoritarian rule was an impossibility
for us. Where we were taught that US democracy was the strongest and most
infallible on earth. And where we took that belief all the way to the bank,
even as those who knew world history well warned us that democracy was only as
strong as our willingness to fight for it. It was an experiment that was still
being tested, and it was only as strong as the strength of conviction of those
responsible for its care and practice.
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Ideological repression, Argentina 1976 |
Argentina’s March 24, 1976, coup had
been rumored for a long time. While nowadays you have to search high and low to
find anyone who admits to having supported it—except in circles close to the
current administration of President Javier Milei, who, despite the general
unpopularity of his stance, has tried
hard to vindicate the junta leaders of that era as misunderstood heroes—but back
then, just about everybody except the staunchest supporters of the Peronist government
in office at the time, was of the opinion that “something had to be done.”
Even the paper I worked for, the Buenos
Aires Herald, which in the months and years to come would be, by far, the
staunchest and boldest media critic of the regime, at first cautiously welcomed
the coup. We ran an editorial in which we talked about the elected
administration—which had fallen into chaos, violence and authoritarian designs
following the death of its charismatic leader, President Juan Domingo Perón—as
being moribund. The only thing left to do, we posited, was to drag the virtual corpse
out of Government House.
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Ideological repression, Argentina 1976 |
One important lesson I learned is that tyrants
almost always march into office as “saviors”. They are nearly always “the only
ones that can fix the mess” that whatever came before has bred. They present
themselves as serious and organized, not as dictators, but as caretakers.
They pretty much always promise to return the nation to its past glory, to make
the country great again.
In Argentina, they proposed, rather convincingly
at first, that they were only stepping in to save the nation from itself, to
make it safe for democracy again. They claimed that they were partially
suspending the US-style Constitution as a means of saving it. It had been
sorely abused, they indicated, and now had to be put on ice for a while, until
such time as it could once again be dusted off and brought back on line, fully
recovered and ready to guide the rule of law in the future. In the meantime,
the regime would be the law, the be all and end all of national life, for as
long as it took to get the country “thinking right” again, and to get it back
on track.
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Ideological repression, Argentina 1976 |
Almost immediately, people started
disappearing. Not just a few here and there, as had been happening in the
horrific final days of the former government, which was locked in what amounted
to an inter-party civil war, but in droves. There were assassinations in broad
daylight as well, summary executions carried out by paramilitary hit squads.
And there were semi-formal arrests, performed by details of heavily armed,
clean-cut men in suits who moved around in plate-less, unmarked cars, and
didn’t bother to identify themselves or to read anyone their rights.
A long list of books and music, as well
as their authors and composers, were suddenly deemed toxic and subversive. Just
the possession of any such literature or music was enough to warrant arrest or
disappearance.
The people who actually became registered
names on an official police blotter weren’t necessarily charged with anything.
With the rule of law suspended, it wasn’t necessary. The Executive Branch,
under a modified form of martial law known as the State of Siege, could hold
people indefinitely and move them to any jurisdiction it wished, because there
was only one power in the entire country: the Executive Branch, in the person
of the military Junta.
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Book-burning Argentina 1976 |
None of this was random. No. It was
systematic, and was invoked under the Executive Decrees outlined in the master
plan known as the National Reorganization Process, or Proceso for short.
It didn’t take long for us to figure out
that the “caretaker” government was no such thing, not some benevolent elite of
patriots bent on a quick clean-up of armed terrorism and the immediate
restoration of the rule of law under new and favorable conditions in which it
could thrive in peace. The military started making it clear that “the ballot
boxes were well stored away” and that they would remain that way until the
regime decided to get them out again. Suddenly, anyone who disagreed even
slightly with the regime was marked as “a terrorist”. Dissent was often a death
sentence, and organized protest a crime.
Party politics, union activity,
university rallies, gatherings of more than a handful of people, public debate,
all of these things were prohibited and considered subversive. The subjects of
the most immediate kidnappings and murders were people with direct ties to
armed anti-regime militancy. But it didn’t take any time at all for the net the
regime cast to be expanded to include some of the country’s best
minds—teachers, writers, artists, scientists, human rights activists,
pacifists, democratic socialists, anyone who sought to nurture thought,
analysis and debate. Anyone who raised their voice to defend human and civil
rights. Just among journalists, nearly a hundred of our colleagues went missing
or were murdered. Many more, including three from our own newspaper, chose
self-exile over the course of the Proceso in the face of credible death
threats.
With no rule of law to hinder them, the
enforcers of the regime could take their time. In gloomy safehouses all over
the city and country, people snatched on the sole suspicion of the regime were
strapped to metal bedsprings naked and wetted down before being subjected to simultaneous
electric shock torture and beatings, often combined with sexual abuse, and
punctuated by demands for the names of others. On the say-so of torture victims
out of their heads with pain and terror, hundreds of others were arrested,
often people innocent of anything but having known someone who disappeared.
The president and head of the Junta,
General Jorge Rafael Videla, at first posed as a “moderate”. He claimed, in a
meeting with the editor of our paper, that none of the horrific things that
were happening were part of the Proceso’s plan. Yes, certain rights had
been suspended to make it possible to wage war on armed terrorists. But the
abuses that were taking place parallel to that “dirty war” were the result of
proper orders being given at the top of the chain of command, but then being
carried out in improper ways by the rank and file.
Eventually, when the cat was already out
of the bag, he no longer bothered to deny anything. It had become clear that
the pact among the military was that everybody had to have blood on his
hands. Videla went from pretending the Junta was looking into abuses, to tiring
of making excuses about the “missing”, and finally, cynically, three years into
the regime, responding to a question about the missing by renowned local
journalist José Ignacio “Nacho” López telling the public, in a televised
broadcast, “I can tell you this in
regard to the missing. As long as they remain as such, they are an unknown
quantity. As long as they are missing they can have no special treatment,
because they have no entity. They are neither alive nor dead. They are
missing.”
So-called “third world clerics” were
particularly targeted, as were social workers. Anyone who sought to help the
poor, whom the regime considered their enemies. Despite its almost carnal
relationship with Catholicism and the Church hierarchy, the regime had no
problem violating the sanctuary status of churches harboring those considered
“subversive”, including priests and nuns who served the material and social
needs of the poor and unprotected.
Twelve people, including two French
nuns, disappeared from the Iglesia de Santa Cruz, a church that provided
a meeting space for human rights activists. Some of their bodies later washed
up on remote shores of the South Atlantic and were buried as unidentified NN’s
in a local small-town cemetery. Decades after the end of the regime, some of
those bodies, including those of the two nuns, would be identified. All had
been de victims of brutal torture and summary execution.
Already in the second year of the Proceso,
seven Roman Catholic priests and seminarians equated with terrorism by the
regime because of the social work they were doing with the poor, were shot to
death inside of the church to which they were assigned while they were in the
midst of their daily prayers.
One of the “lucky” ones was nineteen-year-old
Patricia Erb, the daughter of American Mennonite missionaries, who, while
studying at a Buenos Aires university, was carrying out social work in an
underprivileged neighborhood. Paramilitary thugs under orders from the regime
kidnapped her. She later turned up imprisoned, at the disposal of the
Executive. No charges were ever filed against her, and the combined pressure of
the US Embassy under Jimmy Carter’s administration and the Inter-American Human
Rights Committee eventually secured her release and return to the US. But not before she was held for a month at the
Campo de Mayo Army base, where she was subjected to multiple torture sessions
and repeated sexual attacks.
Her congressional testimony about her treatment
helped draw international attention to the brutality of the Proceso. She
wasn’t an exception in terms of that treatment. It was standard operating
procedure under the regime. What was exceptional in her case was that, for
others, this continued indefinitely, and, more often than not, ended in
eventual execution and secret disposal of their bodies.
The Proceso’s most powerful
supporters were the corporate wealthy, those who benefited most from the
prohibition and persecution of anything and anyone who stood in the way of
“business as usual”.
I recall once at a luncheon hearing an
executive from British and American Tobacco who was talking in glowing terms about
how great it was to do business under the “Proceso”. Then, he added praise as
well for the cruel dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in neighboring
Chile. Specifically, he said, “You know, I’ve just come back from Chile. What a
breath of fresh air!” I was unable to eat when lunch was served.
To this end, the courting of
international business, the regime countered its barbarous political actions
with what was considered a “serious” economic team, headed up by a Cambridge-educated
lawyer, businessman and economist from one of the country’s wealthiest cattle-ranching
families. His plan to “insert Argentina into the global economy” and his sound
contacts in the IMF, World Bank and international business community were an
attempt by the Proceso to
legitimize the regime on the world stage. And for quite a long time, it worked.
At the other end of the de facto
government’s policies, however, was an unprecedented level of repression and
violence, best summed up by one of its top generals who once said during a
military camaraderie dinner: “First we’ll kill all of the subversives, then
we’ll kill their collaborators, then we’ll kill their fans, right after that
those who remain indifferent, and, finally, the faint of heart.”
It was a pretty accurate description of
what actually happened. Once one person’s rights could be suspended, no one
else had rights anymore either. Everybody became fair game. And some thirty
thousand people were to perish.
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Ideological repression USA 2025 |
I’m seeing rule by executive decree in
my native US. I’m seeing people being snatched off US streets, paramilitary
style, by unidentified government agents. I’m seeing those imprisoned with no
due process being spirited off to other jurisdictions, or even other countries
ruled by cruel dictatorships. I’m witnessing an Executive power that is daily violating the
Constitution and legal precedents. I’m observing official disregard for human
and civil rights, including, besides the right to due process, the right to
freedom of speech. I’m watching in shock as the Executive Branch grossly
invades the jurisdictions of the other two branches of government and makes a
mockery of the checks and balances that guarantee a healthy democracy.
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Ideological repression USA 2025 |
This is already looking like a reign of
terror, in which universities, cultural institutions, think tanks and other
forums—the very venues where debates, belief-questioning and dissent should be
cultivated and encouraged—are being extorted into submission and compromised by
the official story. Political opponents and journalists are being pressured and
pursued and vengeance is being sought against anyone who has ever opposed the
head of state.
The most frightening thing, for someone
like myself, who has lived through it all before and knows the progressively
worsening consequences all too well, is that this is only the beginning, in which
far too many remain convinced that “maybe extra-constitutional action is the
only way.” What they don’t know that I do is that, breaking the rule of law is easy.
But picking up the pieces and gluing them back together again is a painstaking
and all too often impossible task.
More chilling still is the fact that
there are already plans to extend this cult of personality beyond its legal
term, in violation of two constitutional provisions. This fear of mine is
underscored by the fact that this is the same regime that toyed with the idea
of imposing martial law to avoid an election loss in 2020.
Knowing what I know, being able to
compare with a previous life experience that few other Americans share, I’m
worried. I’m very worried. And any American, regardless of race, creed
or party, who values his or her freedom should be worried as well.