Jorge Videla
When you attend Spanish school in Buenos Aires, at some point undoubtedly the political history of the area will be discussed. This might take place in your conversations with locals or classmates. Plus, when you visit the city’s numerous cultural attractions, you will certainly want to make sure that you have some background knowledge about the region’s history. One historical event that you will definitely want to know about in advance is the Dirty War.
So what is The Dirty War? From 1976-1983, state-sponsored violence took place in Argentina. The victims of this violence included thousands of left-wing activists. Estimates say that somewhere between 9,000 to 30,000 people either were killed or disappeared. These individuals included students, journalists, Marxists, guerillas of the People’s Revolutionary Army as well as Montoneros. According to Amnesty International in 1979, 15,000 people had been not only abducted, but also tortured and murdered. There is still some uncertainly as to the exact amount of people who “disappeared.”
During this time period, terrorism was carried out under Operation Condor, which was led by Jorge Rafael Videla’s military dictatorship. When this military junta seized power, they began to focus on systematically killing left-wing terrorism. However, they ended up killing many innocent civilians in the process.
The term “Dirty War” originated because of the dirty methods of conducting a war, which included methods like torture and rape. At the time, the junta claimed these types of methods were necessary in order to maintain proper social order. The junta named itself the “national Reorganization Process.” Their stated mission was to present “international communism.”