Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Dictatorship, society, and genocide in Argentina: repression in Rosario, 1976–1983 1

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 8; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14623520600703040

1469-9494

Gabriela Águila,

Brazilian cultural history and politics

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Original title in Spanish: Dictadura, sociedad y genocidio en la Argentina: La represión en Rosario, 1976/83. 2. Although in Brazil the coup d'état had taken place in 1964, the new type of military dictatorships became consolidated in the area in the decade of 1970; these dictatorships included Chile (1973), Uruguay (1973) and Argentina (1976). 3. In Latin America, the Cuban Revolution (1959) was undoubtedly the fundamental, though not exclusive, activator of processes of social and political radicalization. This experience opened the possibility of a social revolution in the subcontinent, and at the same time it generated a profound crisis within the traditional left wing. Its correlate was the emergence of the “new left” which placed in the center of the political imagery the need to take over power and which, among its expressions, included the generation of guerrilla organizations which vindicated the armed methods and the “theory of the focus”, supported by theoretical formulations of a fundamentally Guevarist origin. 4. The well-known and repeatedly quoted statements of General Saint Jean, formulated in 1977 as regards the Argentine dictatorship, harshly illustrate the magnitude of the repressive project: “First we will kill all the subversive criminals, then we will kill their collaborators, then their supporters, then those who remain indifferent, and then we will kill those who are undecided.” 5. Rosario is one of the three most important cities in the country due to its demographic and economic significance, which turned it into a center of regional development with a leading importance at a national level (particularly due to the industrial strip of Gran Rosario, one of the areas with the highest level of concentration of factories in the country). It is interesting to point out that, just as it happens with other historical issues and problems, the studies on the Argentine dictatorship have not yet incorporated the regional dimension, confining themselves to transferring the experience of Buenos Aires to the entirety of the territory. 6. Which included the contacts and the coordination of repressive actions with neighboring dictatorships, just as it happened with the Plan Cóndor, a counterinsurgency operation organized by the governments of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, with the objective of exchanging information, watching, kidnapping and murdering opponents from any of the countries and handing them over to their corresponding governments. 7. With this objective, a group of laws which facilitated the repressive activities was set in motion; among others, Law No 21264, which punished with up to ten years of prison those who “publicly, and by any means, promote collective violence and/or cause a breach of peace”, Law No 21460 which established that the Armed Forces would investigate subversive crimes, Law No 21461 which constituted special court-martials for subversive activities, etc. 8. Without excluding the disputes among the forces (army, provincial police, etc.) or the possible alteration of this “order”, in general each task force used a certain clandestine detention center and, probably, certain practices to dispose of the bodies (for example, warehouse locations). See Darío OLMO, “Reconstruir desde restos y fragmentos. El uso de los archivos policiales en la antropología forense en Argentina”, in Ludmila Da Silva Catela and Elizabeth Jelin, eds, Los archivos de la represión: Documentos, memoria y verdad (Buenos aires: Siglo XXI, 2002 Da Silva Catela, Ludmila and Jelin, Elizabeth. 2002. Los archivos de la represión: Documentos, memoria y verdad, Edited by: Da Silva Catela, Ludmila and Jelin, Elizabeth. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. [Google Scholar]). 9. Provincial Law No 7753, published on the Boletín Oficial, 1/7/76. 10. In 1981, Lieutenant General Galtieri was appointed as Commander in Chief of the Army and he assumed the leadership of the National Executive Power, replacing Lieutenant General Eduardo Viola who had also acted as Head of the 2nd Corp of the Army before 1976; a significant coincidence in the career of two of the main leaders of the dictatorship, but also, probably, a sign of the military importance of such assignment. 11. Agustín Feced had been Chief of Police of Rosario at the beginning of the decade of 1970 and within the framework of the previous dictatorship, and he opened the “antisubversive fight” in the city with the creation of the Antisubversive Service of Rosario (Servicio Antisubversivo de Rosario, SAR). This role was extended and intensified with his return to the head of the Police in 1976, resulting in the centrality which was shown, in the repressive design, by the Information Service of the Police, which was commanded by Feced, and which was the location of the most important clandestine detention center and the most active task force in the area. In the early months of 1978, Feced left the police command, according to some testimonies, because of the questionings that his brutal and criminal methods generated within military circles. 12. In 1970, a group of armed organizations appeared in Argentina; these organizations came from the Peronist and Marxist spheres, and they placed themselves in the center of the political scene. They all developed mass organizations and work, legal and labor union divisions, and youth and student groups. If the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (Workers' Revolutionary Party) and is armed division, the People's Revolutionary Army (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo PRT-ERP), of a Marxist background, had shown since the beginning of the decade a significant activity within the scope of the city of Rosario, carrying out activities with a significant impact, after 1973/74, the Montoneros-the political military organization of the Peronist left-wing-became the most influencing organization in the area related to the transfer of militants who came from other spheres of Peronism, to a significant capacity of attraction of youth sectors, and to a significant insertion in some groups of workers, neighborhoods, schools, and universities. 13. The most important of which was the Information Service of the provincial Police located in the basement of the Police Headquarters. The other detention centers which were recognized were La Calamita (in Granadero Baigorria), the Quinta de Funes, the “Domingo Matheu” Weapon Factory, the Command of the 2nd Corp of the Army, the Magnasco Technical School, La Intermedia (in Timbúes) and Battalion 121, of Fray Luis Beltrán. Recently, at least three more buildings have been identified which acted as detention centers in the area. 14. In the particular case of the 2nd Corp and, in general in the Argentine case, there was no construction of concentration or extermination camps aimed towards such purposes, as in the Nazi Germany; they used or recycled buildings which already existed and which had been used for other purposes, or were the space was shared with other divisions, such as the case of police stations or military facilities. 15. The detection of the victims carried out by the military and police intelligence services was supported, to a large extent, by the information or data obtained by means of torture or, as it happened at various clandestine detention centers, through the simple collaboration of some detainees. 16. In this regard, see the significant text by Pilar Calveiro, Poder y desaparición. Los Campos de concentración en la Argentina, Colihue, Buenos Aires, 1998, who focuses her analysis on the experiences of detainees in three detention centres located in Buenos Aires and Córdoba. 17. An example of this is what took place in December 1976, when seven supposedly montonero militants who had been kidnapped in different procedures were executed in the town of Ibarlucea. The report of the 2nd Corp stated that a “confrontation” had taken place after an attempted takeover of the police station of that town. Subsequent testimonies determined that such confrontation had been forged by the police and military forces which had taken part in it. Another similar and documented case was the so-called “Los Surgentes massacre” in October 1976, when four men and three women were transferred from the Police Headquarters and executed in the town of that name in Cordoba, and their bodies were subsequently found by inhabitants of the area. The city of Rosario and some neighboring towns were also the scene of similar procedures between 1976 and 1978. 18. See, for example, the press conference called by the Military Junta before national and foreign media, Newspaper La Capital, 20/4/77. 19. The fact of being married to a “subversive criminal” or having a relative with such label used to be a reason for detention, or even disappearance. The footsteps of the repression, on many occasions, followed the course of a social fabric formed by family networks (boyfriends/girlfriends, husbands/wives, brothers/sisters, parents, brothers/sisters-in-law), or by relationships of friendship, schoolmates or workmates. For the case of Chile, see Antonio GARCIA CASTRO, “¿Quiénes son? Los desparecidos en la trama política chilena (1973–2000),” in Bruno GROPPO and Patricia FLIER (comps.), La imposibilidad del olvido. Recorridos de la memoria en Argentina, Chile y Uruguay, ed. (La Plata, Argentina: Al Margen, 2001 Groppo, Bruno and Flier, Patricia. 2001. La imposibilidad del olvido. Recorridos de la memoria en Argentina, Chile y Uruguay, Edited by: Groppo, Bruno and Flier, Patricia. La Plata, , Argentina: Editorial al Margen. [Google Scholar]). 20. A few months after the coup d'état, the General Minister of Labor Horacio Liendo analyzed the labor situation before 1976, translating the thinking of the Armed Forces before workers and their organizations: “The relationships between businessmen and workers were distorted by the preeminence of one sector over the other and by the absence of responsibility and representation of the leaderships of the union and corporate entities (…) The outbursts were so manifest, and the union functions were exercised in such a coarse manner, that it became necessary to review the applicable guidelines and legislation as regards both sectors (…) This situation favored the subversive aggression that the country was already suffering (…) Factory ‘soviets’ appeared, who destroyed the foundations of the labor union structure, due to the incompetence, incapacity and immorality of its leaders …” Newspaper La Capital, 9/16/76. 21. Among them, the suspension of the right to go on strike (Law No 21261), the prohibition of the political activity of union groups, the control of the funds of labor union funds and union social care funds, the prohibition of measures of direct action (Law No 21400), the elimination of the union jurisdiction (Law No 21263), a new labor contract system and, in November 1979, the Law of Professional Associations (Law No 22105). The suspension of the right to go on strike (Law No 21261), the prohibition of the political activity of union groups, the control of the funds of labor union funds and union social care funds, the prohibition of measures of direct action (Law No 21400), the elimination of the union jurisdiction (Law No 21263), a new labor contract system and, in November 1979, the Law of Professional Associations (Law No 22105). 22. General Acdel Vilas, commander of the 5th Corp of the Army with headquarters in Bahía Blanca, explained within this context the thinking of the Armed Forces as regards the University: “The fight against subversion (…) has so far been carried out against the visible head, which is the subversive criminal, but not against the ideologist, who generates, trains and shapes this new type of criminals. (…) These ideologists, who are inserted into every field, are poisoning young people from university classrooms to secondary schools, and if we do not unmask and break down this criminal-generating machine, the infiltration will be complete (…) we cannot be content with eradicating, annihilating, or eliminating the result of this process of infiltration; we must knock down and destroy the resources which nourish, train, and indoctrinate the subversive criminals, and their source is at the university and secondary schools. Until we manage to clean up the educational system (…) and until the teacher is a man with Christian thinking and ideology, we cannot achieve victory in this fight to which we are all committed …” Newspaper La Capital, 5/8/76. 23. Shortly after the coup d'état, Rosario began a moralizing campaign in nightclubs carried out by the police forces commanded by Agustín Feced which, in the opinion of the main newspaper of the city, “receives the highest praise and support from our population” and “is thus addressing an old concern of all the representative groups and institutions of citizens.” Newspaper La Capital, 5/29/76. This “task of cleaning-up of habits” promoted by the provincial and municipal government, the declared objective of which was the “defense of our children” and which included night raids every weekend and a wide range of actions of the police section of “Public Morality” became the necessary complement of the “fight against subversion.” 24. A little over a month after the coup, the military intervention in the community government transferred its position to the person who became, for five years, the visible face of the dictatorship: Captain Augusto Félix Cristiani, mayor of the city between 1976 and 1981. 25. While the “legal forces” were beginning to execute their sinister plan of social and political terror, the Catholic Church, the editorials of the main newspaper of the city, national celebrations, and military acts became passionate forums of the most intense justification of the repression and the legitimization of the new social order that the dictatorship imposed on the country and the city. In this regard, see Gabriela Aguila, “El terrorismo de Estado sobre Rosario, 1976/1983,” in Alberto PLA (coord.), Rosario en la historia. De 1930 a nuestros días, Vol 2 (Rosario, Argentina: UNR, 2000 Aguila, Gabriela. 2000. “El terrorismo de Estado sobre Rosario, 1976/1983,”. Rosario: UNR. in Alberto PLA (coord.), Rosario en la historia. De 1930 a nuestros días, tomo 2 [Google Scholar]). 26. Although until 1981, the spheres of resistance were almost insignificant and many of them chose external and internal exile, the social discontent was expressed in the few gaps left open by the dictatorship: the fight for human rights, certain cultural circles, or the spheres of private life. This situation was modified between 1982 and 1983, when the growing discredit of the dictatorship provided the social and political opposition with broader resonance and new contents and players. 27. Within this framework, the military government strove to fight a battle of an internal nature and in the international forums against what they had called the “anti-Argentine campaign,” hoping to restore, with that slogan, the support which significant sectors of the society had given to the régime up to that moment, and which was beginning to crack. The campaign deployed through the news media produced the desired effect: a majority portion of the society preferred to continue to believe that the Argentine people were “derechos y humanos” (“human and right”) and, except for the case of the mothers and relatives of the disappeared persons, who demanded answers, the visits made by representatives of the international human rights organizations were received, in general, with hostility or indifference. 28. The “theory of the two demons,” formulated during the first stages of the constitutional government of Raúl Alfonsín (1983/89), stated that the dictatorship was the result of the confrontation between two bands with equal responsibilities, where both the “excesses” and the punishments should be distributed in an equitable manner, and it is associated to the notion of a society which is “victim” and innocent as regards the excesses of the conflicting bands. On the other hand, it is also associated to the idea that the subordinates were only obeying orders. While in the early years of democracy it was accompanied by the work of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas, CONADEP) and the Trial of the Military Juntas, its most resounding expression was the design of a specific legal machinery (the laws of Punto Final and Obediencia debida) which, together with the pardons, have ensured the impunity of the majority of the repressors to this date. 29. These aspects have been covered in Gabriela Aguila, “Dictadura, memoria(s) e historia: el conflictivo contrapunto entre Las memorias de la dictadura en Rosario”, at the IX Conferences Between Schools/Departments of History of National Universities, Córdoba, September 2003.