Argentina’s Dirty War: 50 Years of Seeking Justice

Military officers led by General Jorge Rafael Videla arrested President Isabel Peron on March 24, 1976, declaring that the armed forces had taken control of Argentina, initiating a period of brutal state terrorism known as the “Dirty War.”

Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’ – 50 Years On

Peron’s leadership from 1974 to 1976 had been marked by runaway inflation, strikes, political violence and party infighting. Against a backdrop of terrorist bombings and workers’ strikes, Videla’s regime systematically persecuted political opponents, students, intellectuals, journalists and lawyers, with the powerful labor movement as a primary target in its radically right-wing, anti-communist agenda.

From 1976 to 1983, approximately 30,000 people vanished from Argentina without a trace. Most were taken to clandestine camps where they were held without trial, tortured and murdered.

The “disappeared,” or “desaparecidos” as they are known in Spanish, were buried in secret locations in unmarked mass graves, or thrown from airplanes into the La Plata river or the Atlantic Ocean on so-called “death flights.” At least 500 newborn babies were stolen from prisoners and given to military families to raise, with some unaware to this day of their true identity.

Fifty years after the coup, Argentinians are still reckoning with the crimes of the military dictatorship, and many victims and their relatives continue to fight for justice.

In 1985, high-ranking regime members were tried at the Trial of the Juntas, where Videla was sentenced to life imprisonment. However, extensive amnesty regulations introduced after the regime crumbled, and a general pardon decreed in 1989, have impeded legal proceedings against the junta’s henchmen.

Corporate Complicity in Human Rights Violations

Researcher Gabriel Pereira, from Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council, describes the process of justice and accountability as happening in “stop motion,” with cases inching forward over decades without resolution. He has been campaigning for greater accountability of corporate complicity in human rights violations during the dictatorship, often referred to as a “civic-military dictatorship” due to the key role played by business elites and transnational corporations.

“The accused are elite people who share social spaces with the judicial elites,” Pereira told DW, adding that some judges are “very reluctant” to bring priests, civilians, or economic actors to account, fearing they “don’t want to open the box and see who else was part of the state machine.”

Pereira is one of the attorneys on the La Fronterita sugar mill case, alleging corporate complicity in crimes against humanity. The military built a clandestine detention center at the mill in Tucuman province in 1975, and there is evidence suggesting the company’s management provided information to military officers about workers who were allegedly tortured and murdered.

Berlin-based lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck, general secretary of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), has represented victims of the regime for the past 27 years. One high-profile case involves German multinational automotive manufacturer Mercedes-Benz and the relatives of trade unionists who disappeared from its plant in Buenos Aires in 1976 and 1977.

Kaleck represented Hector Ratto in a case against the former manager of the Buenos Aires car plant, Juan Tasselkraut, and upper-level staff at Mercedes-Benz at the group’s German headquarters. Ratto says he was betrayed by Tasselkraut, who summoned him to his office where regime officers were waiting. He was taken away and tortured with a picana, a device used to give electric shocks, and released after a few days, only to be abducted and held for 16 months in clandestine detention centers.

It is believed that the plant’s managers handed over the names and addresses of at least 14 trade union activists to the military, all of whom disappeared. The events are the subject of the 2003 documentary film “There Are No Miracles” by German journalist Gaby Weber, who investigated events at the plant from 1976 to 1977. The title is the response Tasselkraut gave when asked whether there was a connection between the murder of labor leaders and increased productivity at the plant.

“We have yet to get justice, but we have managed to keep the story from being forgotten. It is reported on, talked about, films are made, books have been written. The story hasn’t and isn’t going away,” Kaleck told DW.

In response to a DW inquiry, Mercedes-Benz said that international law expert Christian Tomuschat was commissioned to investigate the allegations over 20 years ago. “The independent commission of inquiry found no evidence whatsoever to support the claim that the employees of the then-Mercedes-Benz Argentina who disappeared during the military dictatorship in 1976-77 had been abducted and murdered by state security forces at the instigation of the company,” the statement said. The company also stated that the claim the disappeared employees “were critical union activists is inaccurate” and considers the allegations against the former Mercedes-Benz Argentina AG to be unfounded.

A Lost Generation of Activists

Argentina’s last military dictatorship ended in 1983 after a failed attempt to seize the Falkland Islands from the British in 1982. On October 30, 1983, the first free elections in more than seven years took place.

March 24 is now officially designated as the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice in Argentina, and millions have taken to the streets across the country to declare “Nunca mas,” or “never again.” Current president Javier Milei caused an uproar when he said “there were no 30,000” during a presidential debate before his election win in 2023.

Opponents accuse Milei of justifying state terror by equating it with the violence committed by leftist guerillas. In 2024, Milei demanded justice — not for the victims of the military dictatorship, but for the victims of the guerrillas before the coup. He has also cut state spending on civil society groups and memorial sites, as well as impeding people’s ability to protest.

Eugx Grotz is a feminist activist, researcher and a spokesperson for the “Asamblea en Solidaridad con Argentina en Berlín” (“Assembly in Solidarity with Argentina in Berlin”), founded in December 2023 when Milei took office. “He is trying to reinstate the idea of the two demons, that state violence and repression was a necessary answer to an ongoing terrorist threat to our country,” they told DW.

Grotz was born after the military regime crumbled but feels the weight of its legacy. “On the one hand it meant a complete wiping out of a generation of activists,” says Grotz. “On the other hand, I think we have learnt a lot from human rights organizations who have shown us that you do not have to remain silent.”

For researcher Gabriel Pereira, the anniversary not only commemorates the victims of the dictatorship but is also “a way to resist what is going on with the current government.”

Edited by: Brenda Haas and Stuart Braun