Argentina commemorates 40 years of the civil trial during the military dictatorship

Buenos AiresIn 1985, Argentina experienced one of the most significant political processes in its history: after seven years of military dictatorship (1973-1986), a civilian court tried nine senior members of the Armed Forces, considered the most responsible for carrying out a systematic plan of violence and repression and massive human rights violations. Some of them were sentenced to life imprisonment and died behind bars. This year, Argentina commemorates the 40th anniversary of the military juntas' trial, which laid the foundations for its democracy and changed the country's political life forever.

The 1970s in Latin America were marked by coups d'état and dictatorships. Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil, and Paraguay lived under military governments, and Argentina was no different. Throughout the 20th century, democratic and authoritarian governments had alternated, and now, in addition, armed leftist civilian groups, such as the Montoneros or the People's Revolutionary Army, and a far-right paramilitary group, the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance or Triple A, operated. Upon General Perón's return to office, he and his wife, Isabel, became vice president. Perón died, and Isabel remained in office until March 24, 1976, when a group of military officers, led by Commander Jorge Rafael Videla, seized power and established the cruelest dictatorship Argentina had ever known, which the coup plotters called the National Reorganization Process.

The military preys on dissidents and develops a repressive plan without flaws: kidnappings take place in the middle of the street, in homes, at night, at workplaces, in universities; they arrest mostly young leftist activists; they torture them in clandestine detention centers; they rape the women. They murder them, either by shooting them or with methods such as "death flights", in which the victims were sedated, stuffed inside a plane and thrown alive into the sea. Pregnant women, who appear to be in captivity, have their babies stolen and taken over by military families. But in 1982, the already weakened regime had collapsed after its defeat against the United Kingdom in the Falkland Islands War. The president de facto, seeing the military's conditions difficult to enforce, signed a self-amnesty law that left them without charges, and called for free elections in 1983.

In the first democratic elections, Peronist Ítalo Luder ran, guaranteeing to maintain the amnesty, and Radical Raúl Alfonsín, on the other hand, promising to investigate and prosecute high-ranking officials of the dictatorship. Alfonsín won the election with 52 percent of the vote. "It was strange that in 1983, in Argentina, people voted to investigate the past," Luis Moreno Ocampo, deputy prosecutor in the trial of the military juntas, recalled in a conversation with ARA, "because until then the global model was negotiated amnesties, as had been the case in Spain." Days after being inaugurated, Alfonsín created the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP), an organization composed of intellectuals and human rights defenders like Graciela Fernández Meijide, the mother of a disappeared person, whom he charged with gathering all possible information about the repression within six months. "None of us were researchers; in fact, there weren't even that many of us," Meijide tells ARA, "but it was the only way, and we followed it."

Conadep sent delegations to the countries where they were exiled so they could give their testimony. Miriam Lewin, a former Peronist leftist activist and torture survivor, did so from exile in New York: "I never doubted that I should testify," she told ARA, "even though doing so was a risk" in a newly established democracy with much power still in the hands of the military. Nevertheless, the trial began on April 22, 1985, in Buenos Aires. "We knew we were about to do something incredibly complicated," says Moreno Ocampo, "we had barely any evidence, we couldn't count on the police, and therefore we had to use the victims as a source of information." These were months of intense work, as one of the tribunal's judges, Ricardo Gil Lavedra, recalls: "Up until August alone, more than 800 witnesses testified," he says to ARA, "and sometimes the sessions stretched into the night."

The sentence was handed down on December 9. Jorge Videla and Emilio Massera were sentenced to life imprisonment; Roberto Viola to 17 years in prison; Armando Lambruschini to eight; and Orlando Agosti to four and a half. The other four were acquitted. Although this was an unprecedented event and sentence, some sectors of society were dissatisfied, such as a branch of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who had organized to search for their missing children. "It was expected that they would all be tried, not just the high-ranking officials," Carmen Arias, a representative of the organization, explained to ARA, "and many of them didn't receive life sentences, which was what they deserved. And then Alfonsín approved the Due Obedience and Full Stop laws." Fearing a new military uprising, Alfonsín acquitted mid-level and lower-ranking officials and limited the time for prosecutors to continue filing charges. "The decision to try high-ranking officials was revolutionary," Gil Lavedra claims, "but, of course, it opened the door for society to demand more."

What's important, according to this judge, is that the trial allowed Argentina's democratic transition "to be carried out on the basis of respect for the law: not on impunity, but on justice." Graciela Fernández Meijide recalls how, at the end of the trial, the mother of a disappeared person addressed the judges: "I know my son planted bombs; but he deserved a trial like this." For Miriam Lewin, the trial in the juntas was a "collective catharsis" that helped Argentine society "build self-esteem" and that is now "part of Argentina's DNA" because it is "a milestone in our history, whether you like it or not."