BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Former military officers who served in Argentina’s brutal dictatorship and their families held a rare rally Saturday to support the release of fellow officers jailed for human rights abuses committed during the 1976-1983 junta rule.
Saturday’s demonstration was seen as a challenge in the country of Nunca Más, the slogan that represents Argentina’s pledge to “never” return to authoritarianism.
Further raising tensions, officers gathered in the Plaza de Mayo, the historic site of protests by women searching for children who had been abducted, detained and “disappeared” by the junta. Surrounding the square in silent protest every Thursday for decades, the women became known as the Plaza de Mayo Grandmothers.
For critics of the army officers, including dozens of counter-protesters who gathered in the Plaza de Mayo in central Buenos Aires on Saturday, the open rally marked a worrying sign that cracks were beginning to appear in Argentina’s national consensus over the dictatorship’s bloody legacy.
President Milea promises to end the “demonization” of the military
In a dramatic shift from past administrations, right-wing President Javier Milei has frequently justified the dictatorship’s state terrorism as a disorderly war against leftist guerrillas.
His vice president, Victoria Villarruel, is the daughter of an Argentine lieutenant colonel and an ultraconservative lawyer who has spent years advocating for the armed forces and Argentines killed by left-wing guerrillas — what she calls the “other victims” of terrorism.
The government’s push for a review of crimes committed by the dictatorship has angered human rights groups, who see it as an effort to legitimize the military’s systematic extrajudicial killings of civilians. The junta is estimated to have killed or disappeared up to 30,000 Argentines.
Milei made another controversial move last week when he named army chief of staff, Major General Carlos Alberto Presti, as Argentina’s new defense minister.
His office said this made Presti the first military official since Argentina’s return to democracy in 1983 to hold a ministerial title, “inaugurating a tradition that we hope the political leadership will continue” and “ending the demonization of our officers”.
Supporters of the military are sending a message
That Argentine society is robbing the military of the respect it deserves was a common complaint among protesters who gathered on Saturday to sing the national anthem and hold up banners demanding the freedom of fellow prisoners.
“We are asking for the moral vindication of all veterans,” said Maria Asuncion Benedit, the rally organizer whose late husband, an army captain, helped lead a brutal 1975 campaign against guerrillas in the northern province of Tucuman.
“The Argentine people are following the official narrative. Whose narrative is it? Of the enemy, of the terrorists, of those who fought against our soldiers,” she said, referring to how the leftist Peronist governments of the early 2000s made recovering memories of the dictatorship and seeking justice for the perpetrators hallmarks of their administrations.
“It’s a militant, activist justice,” Benedit said.
She and others held black bandannas—a stark response to the white handkerchiefs embroidered with the names of missing children traditionally worn by grandmothers in the Plaza de Mayo.
Unlike other Latin American countries that offered amnesty to those who committed military crimes after the restoration of democracy, Argentina tried and sentenced more than a thousand officials and army officers for their participation in state terror, many to life in prison. Hundreds are still awaiting trial.
Pedro Nieto, a veteran of the dictatorship era who traveled 36 hours from the northern province of Salta to attend Saturday’s rally, said he felt he was sending a powerful message by calling for the release of his colleagues imprisoned in the symbolic Plaza de Mayo.
“We are proud to have fought and eliminated the terrorists,” he said.
A counter-protest signals wider outrage
Alejandro Perez, whose uncle was kidnapped and disappeared by the dictatorship, said it horrifies him to see veterans like Nieto who participated in state repression “here in front of the government house, protected by the police, protected by fences, being able to hold an event to demand the release of the few imprisoned genocidal criminals.”
Police cordoned off the former military officers’ demonstration, keeping them at a safe distance from angry counter-protesters who shouted insults and held signs with slogans such as “Never again” and “the 30,000 are present”.
“You feel it in your bones,” said Perez, drenched in rain, as he marched among human rights advocates and left-wing organizations.
The dueling demonstrations come a day after the United Nations Committee Against Torture delivered a report in Geneva that raised alarm over the Milla government’s dismantling of programs that had investigated the military’s actions during the dictatorship, as well as “budget cuts to several institutions working on issues of memory, truth and justice.”
He also criticized the government’s lack of transparency regarding the payment of compensation to victims of the dictatorship.
A radical libertarian elected in late 2023, Milei has made it his mission to achieve a fiscal surplus by cutting government spending in a country notorious for its huge deficits. But even as he cuts spending on health and education, he has pledged to increase the military budget.
Addressing the annual meeting of the UN Torture Committee earlier this month, Alberto Baños, Amnesty’s top human rights official, disputed the report’s findings and insisted his government was committed to “a full, impartial and unobtrusive historical memory”.
“Whether you like it or not, defending human rights has become a business, and we will not tolerate that,” he said.