50 years after its last coup, Argentina remembers painful legacy of dictatorship as Milei challenges narrative
In Argentina, March 24 is a day of mourning, marches and political disputes.
Fifty years after the coup d’état that brought the last military junta to power, tens of thousands of people once again took to the streets this Tuesday to remember the victims of a dictatorship that far-right President Javier Milei is seeking to reinterpret.
Under the slogan Nunca más (“Never again”), which marked generations, human rights organisations, trade unions and social advocacy groups gathered for their annual march, carrying photos of the disappeared in a large demonstration in Buenos Aires that converged on the famous Plaza de Mayo.
Human rights organisations estimate that 30,000 people were disappeared during the dictatorship, mostly between 1976 and 1978. The Argentine government acknowledged 8,961 in a 1984 report - triggering a debate that rages to this day.
Milei's Human Rights Secretary, Alberto Baños, dismissed the 30,000 figure as “false” last November - a sentiment publicly shared by Milei, Vice President Victoria Villarruel, and Justice Minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona.
Declassified files show that dictatorship officials themselves acknowledged “22,000 dead” in a July 1978 cable to their Chilean counterparts.
An estimated 500 infants and children were likewise abducted at the time - many for adoption by pro-regime families. Some 140 have thus far had their true identities restored - mainly thanks to the efforts of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which 95 year-old Estela Barnes de Carlotto still leads.
Since the 1987 amnesty laws that benefitted members of the armed forces were struck down in 2003, 1,231 defendants have been convicted of crimes against humanity.
At: https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/amp/argentina/argentina-remembers-dictatorship-victims-as-milei-challenges-narrative.phtml
Argentines in Buenos Aires commemorate the 50th anniversary of the country's last military coup.
Though the fascist, 1976-83 dictatorship is repudiated by 7 out of 10 Argentines, its still-sizable number of apologists include many in President Javier Milei's far-right administration.
But besides its infamous Dirty War against dissidents, historians also point to the ruinous economic legacy of the last dictatorship, under which the country's foreign debt ballooned five-fold to $45 billion - which foreign speculators and the country's own elites largely used to dollarize and offshore local assets, leaving Argentina “the richest poor country in the world.”
The resulting hard-currency shortage has led to sputtering GDP growth averaging just 1.6% over the past 50 years (compared to 2.7% for the U.S.), and soaring poverty as real wages faltered and housing leapt out of reach for millions after the country's landmark National Mortgage Bank program was defunded in 1977.
