Rut Diamint: Secret archives reveal a ‘dirty war’: How the US backed a foreign military’s conflict that killed 30,000
History
books may never tell the full story of the dictatorship that terrorized
Argentina from 1976 to 1984. But
newly declassified
United States military and intelligence documents recently delivered
to Argentina offer new details about the country’s brutal military junta. The
archival documents were the fourth
and final batch of 43,000 declassified U.S. telegrams, military
records, intelligence and confidential memos given to Argentina following an
extraordinary 2016
agreement between Argentine President Mauricio Macri and former U.S.
President Barack Obama.
see also
Uki Goñi - A grandmother's 36-year hunt for the child stolen by the Argentinian junta
“Argentines
now have more information about a dark period of our history that will allow us
to continue strengthening justice, seeking and finding the truth,” Macri said
on Twitterafter receiving the 7,500-document report on April 12. The
archives narrate the human
rights abuses committed by Argentina’s military government, often with the
assistance of the United States. They include the forced disappearances of
30,000 people, international assassination squads that stalked their victims
abroad and the kidnapping of hundreds of babies born in detention. The U.S. declassification effort began under persistent
pressure from Argentine human rights groups founded to uncover the atrocities
of the dictatorship – a period I have spent my academic career studying. Argentine democracy was interrupted by military coups six
times in the 20th century.
The declassified documents outline what happened after the
last coup, staged in 1976 by Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla. It gave way to the
cruelest, most repressive and violent eight years of Argentina’s history. In August 2000 representatives from Argentina’s Center
for Legal and Social Studiesand the original Grandmothers and
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo – a human rights group that locates the
lost children of the dictatorship, which has since splintered into several
factions – met
with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. That encounter led to the declassification of 4,700
State Department documents in 2002. Those documents included U.S.
diplomatic cables, memoranda, reports and meeting notes related to the
Argentine dictatorship, and revealed clear U.S. involvement in the junta’s
“dirty war.” Now, Argentina has the military and intelligence archives
behind these operations, too. The declassified documents show that U.S.
intervention in Latin America went well … read more:
https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/secret-archives-reveal-a-dirty-war-how-the-us-backed-a-foreign-militarys-conflict-that-kill-30000/see also
Uki Goñi - A grandmother's 36-year hunt for the child stolen by the Argentinian junta
