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116-848: The Permanent Assembly for Human Rights was founded on December 18, 1975, three months before the military coup that marked the beginning of the dictatorship known as the National Reorganization Process (1976–1983), in the House of Spiritual Exercises within the Church of Santa Cruz, as a result of an initiative of Rosa Pantaleón. Other founders included the Bishop of Neuquén, Jaime de Nevares; Rabbi Marshall Meyer; Bishop Carlos Gatinoni; Alicia Moreau de Justo; Raúl Alfonsín ; Oscar Alende; Susana Pérez Gallart; Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Alfredo Bravo. The APDH played an important role in

232-655: A pronunciamiento , in which the military deposes the existing government and hands over power to a new, ostensibly civilian government. A "barracks revolt" or cuartelazo is another type of military revolt, from the Spanish term cuartel ('quarter' or 'barracks'), in which the mutiny of specific military garrisons sparks a larger military revolt against the government. Other types of actual or attempted seizures of power are sometimes called "coups with adjectives". The appropriate term can be subjective and carries normative, analytical, and political implications. While

348-685: A cable sent by Robert Scherrer , an FBI agent in Buenos Aires on 22 September 1976, where he mentions in passing that Michael Townley , later convicted of the assassination on 21 September 1976 of former Chilean minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., had also taken part to the interrogation of the two Cubans. The former head of the DINA confirmed to Argentine federal judge María Servini de Cubría on 22 December 1999, in Santiago de Chile ,

464-593: A coup ( Revolución Libertadora ) three months after the Bombing of Plaza de Mayo , a failed coup attempt considered by some as state terrorism. Since then Peronism was proscribed and hostility against it and against populist politics dominated Argentine politics. Pedro Eugenio Aramburu 's Decree Law 4161/56 prohibited the use of Perón's name and when General Lanusse , who was part of the Argentine Revolution , called for elections in 1973, he authorized

580-502: A coup in 1951 before succeeding in 1955 with the Revolución Libertadora . After taking control, the armed forces proscribed Peronism , a decision that triggered the organization of Peronist resistance in workplaces and trade unions , as the working classes sought to protect the economic and social improvements obtained under Perón's rule. Over time, as democratic rule was partially restored, but promises of legalizing

696-428: A coup is underway, coup success is driven by coup-makers' ability to get others to believe that the coup attempt will be successful. The number of successful coups has decreased over time. Failed coups in authoritarian systems are likely to strengthen the power of the authoritarian ruler. The cumulative number of coups is a strong predictor of future coups, a phenomenon referred to as the "coup trap". In what

812-617: A coup is usually a conspiracy of a small group, a revolution or rebellion is usually started spontaneously by larger groups of uncoordinated people. The distinction between a revolution and a coup is not always clear. Sometimes, a coup is labelled as a revolution by its plotters to feign democratic legitimacy. According to Clayton Thyne and Jonathan Powell's coup data set, there were 457 coup attempts from 1950 to 2010, of which 227 (49.7%) were successful and 230 (50.3%) were unsuccessful. They find that coups have "been most common in Africa and

928-418: A coup. A 2019 study found that states that had recently signed civil war peace agreements were much more likely to experience coups, in particular when those agreements contained provisions that jeopardized the interests of the military. Research suggests that protests spur coups, as they help elites within the state apparatus to coordinate coups. A 2019 study found that regional rebellions made coups by

1044-569: A coup. The authors of the study provide the following logic for why this is: Autocratic incumbents invested in spatial rivalries need to strengthen the military in order to compete with a foreign adversary. The imperative of developing a strong army puts dictators in a paradoxical situation: to compete with a rival state, they must empower the very agency—the military—that is most likely to threaten their own survival in office. However, two 2016 studies found that leaders who were involved in militarized confrontations and conflicts were less likely to face

1160-545: A detention and interrogation center, staffed and operated by the Federal Police, was already in existence in 1975 during the Peronist government of Maria Estela Martinez de Peron. Judge Alicia Vence was in charge of the investigation of acts of State terrorism committed in facilities and with the participation of authorities of the companies Ford and Mercedes-Benz. According to witnesses, the center at Mercedes Benz

1276-580: A document which said "Sign, or it will cost you your daughter's life and your own". In September 1978, a group of businessmen, among whom were Ernestina Herrera de Noble and Hector Magnetto from Grupo Clarín and Bartolomé Luis Mitre from La Nación, along with members of the military junta inaugurated the Papel Prensa plant in San Justo . In 2016, Magnetto, Mitre and Noble were declared innocent. Federal Judge Julián Ercolini ruled that there

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1392-844: A fixed succession rule being much less plagued by instability than less institutionalized autocracies. A 2014 study of 18 Latin American countries in the 20th-century study found the legislative powers of the presidency does not influence coup frequency. A 2019 study found that when a country's politics is polarized and electoral competition is low, civilian-recruited coups become more likely. A 2023 study found that civilian elites are more likely to be associated with instigating military coups while civilians embedded in social networks are more likely to be associated with consolidating military coups. A 2017 study found that autocratic leaders whose states were involved in international rivalries over disputed territory were more likely to be overthrown in

1508-512: A greater consultation of regional and local-specific sources. Successful coups are one method of regime change that thwarts the peaceful transition of power . A 2016 study categorizes four possible outcomes to coups in dictatorships : The study found that about half of all coups in dictatorships—both during and after the Cold War—install new autocratic regimes. New dictatorships launched by coups engage in higher levels of repression in

1624-685: A kidnapping attempt. A Peugeot representative was kidnapped and later released for a reported US$ 200,000, and FAP guerrillas killed John Swint, the American general manager of the Ford Motor Company. On December, the director of Peugeot in Argentina was kidnapped. In 1974, FAP guerrillas killed the labour relations manager of the IKA-Renault Motor Company in Córdoba. In 1975 a manager of an auto parts factory and

1740-816: A major threat to dictators. The Harem conspiracy of the 12th century BC was one of the earliest. Palace coups were common in Imperial China . They have also occurred among the Habsburg dynasty in Austria, the Al-Thani dynasty in Qatar , and in Haiti in the 19th to early 20th centuries. The majority of Russian tsars between 1725 and 1801 were either overthrown or usurped power in palace coups. The term putsch ( [pʊtʃ] , from Swiss German for 'knock'), denotes

1856-614: A man who came from Miami to interrogate them. The two Cuban diplomats, charged with the protection of the Cuban ambassador to Argentina Emilio Aragonés, had been kidnapped on 9 August 1976 by 40 armed SIDE agents who blocked off all sides of the street with their Ford Falcons , the cars used by the security forces during the dictatorship. According to John Dinges , the FBI as well as the CIA were informed of their abduction. In his book, Dinges published

1972-479: A military junta, headed by General Jorge Rafael Videla , Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera and General Orlando Agosti and was installed. The junta, which dubbed itself National Reorganization Process , systematized the repression, in particular through the way of "forced disappearances" ( desaparecidos ), which made it very difficult as was the case in Augusto Pinochet 's Chile to file legal suits as

2088-525: A number of attacks during this period such as bombings at the Goodyear and Firestone distributors, Riker and Eli pharmaceutical laboratories, Xerox Corporation, and Pepsi-Cola bottling companies. Director-general of the Fiat Concord company in Argentina was kidnapped by ERP guerrillas in Buenos Aires on 21 March 1972 and found murdered on 10 April. In 1973, a Ford Motor Company executive was killed in

2204-414: A party of the enemy". ProQuest   821676937 Other junta targets were people who uncovered evidence of government corruption and those thought to hold left-wing views (including French nuns Léonie Duquet and Alice Domon , kidnapped by Alfredo Astiz ). Ramón Camps told Clarín in 1984 that he had used torture as an interrogation method and orchestrated 5,000 forced disappearances. He had justified

2320-681: A production manager of Mercedes-Benz were kidnapped by Montoneros, and an executive of the US Chrysler Corporation and a manager of the Renault plant in Córdoba were killed. In 1976, Enrique Aroza Garay of German-owned Borgward automobile factory and a Chrysler executive were killed. In all, 83 servicemen and policemen were killed in left-wing guerrilla incidents. In 1975, the Guevarist People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), inspired by Che Guevara 's foco theory , began

2436-405: A putsch. Pronunciamiento ( ' pronouncement ' ) is a term of Spanish origin for a type of coup d'état . Specifically the pronunciamiento is the formal declaration deposing the previous government and justifying the installation of the new government by the golpe de estado . One author distinguishes a coup, in which a military or political faction takes power for itself, from

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2552-839: A republican system of government and individual rights (Seguridad Nacional, sistema republicano de Gobierno y derechos individuales) • The forced disappearance of Persons (La Desaparición forzada de Personas) • The Disappearance as a crime against humanity (La desaparición como crimen de lesa humanidad) • “Racism and violence” (about ethnic groups in history within scholarly texts) (Racismo y violencia (sobre la historia y las etnias en los textos escolares)) • The working woman and her rights (La mujer trabajadora y sus derechos) • Domestic violence – Battered women (Violencia familiar-Mujer golpeada) • Drug addicts, Victims or Culprits? (Drogadictos, ¿víctimas o culpables?) • Life Workshops “Human Rights Education” (Talleres de Vida" Educación por los derechos humanos) • Women’s human rights 50 years after

2668-573: A small rural insurgency in the province of Tucumán with no more than 100 men and women, but were soon defeated by the Argentine Army. In February 1975, Isabel Perón signed the secret presidential decree 261, which ordered the army to illegally neutralize and/or "annihilate" the insurgency in Tucumán , the smallest province in Argentina. Operativo Independencia granted power to the armed forces to "execute all military operations necessary for

2784-572: A somewhat higher chance of success in Africa and Asia. Numbers of successful coups have decreased over time. A number of political science datasets document coup attempts around the world and over time, generally starting in the post-World War II period. Major examples include the Global Instances of Coups dataset, the Coups & Political Instability dataset by the Center of Systemic Peace,

2900-515: A superior officer or the state. Estela de Carlotto , president of the Argentine human rights non-governmental organization Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo states: [That term] is a way to minimize state terrorism and is a term born outside the country. It is a totally wrong concept; there was no war, dirty nor clean. In 1955, former army officer Juan Perón was ousted from the presidency by

3016-612: A third country. Chilean General Carlos Prats had already been assassinated by the Chilean DINA in Buenos Aires in 1974, with the help of former DINA agents Michael Townley and Enrique Arancibia . Cuban diplomats were also assassinated in Buenos Aires in the infamous Automotores Orletti torture center, one of the 300 clandestine prisons of the dictatorship, managed by the Grupo de Tareas 18 , headed by Aníbal Gordon , previously convicted for armed robbery and who answered directly to

3132-425: A two-sided impact on coup attempts, depending on the state of the economy. During periods of economic expansion, elections reduced the likelihood of coup attempts, whereas elections during economic crises increased the likelihood of coup attempts. A 2021 study found that oil wealthy nations see a pronounced risk of coup attempts but these coups are unlikely to succeed. A 2014 study of 18 Latin American countries in

3248-533: Is more likely in former French colonies. A 2018 study in the Journal of Peace Research found that leaders who survive coup attempts and respond by purging known and potential rivals are likely to have longer tenures as leaders. A 2019 study in Conflict Management and Peace Science found that personalist dictatorships are more likely to take coup-proofing measures than other authoritarian regimes;

3364-421: Is referred to as "coup-proofing", regimes create structures that make it hard for any small group to seize power. These coup-proofing strategies may include the strategic placing of family, ethnic, and religious groups in the military and the fragmenting of military and security agencies. However, coup-proofing reduces military effectiveness as loyalty is prioritized over experience when filling key positions within

3480-527: The Argentine Supreme Court ruled they were unconstitutional. Under the presidency of Nestor Kirchner , the Argentine government re-opened its investigations on crimes against humanity and genocide in 2006 and began the prosecution of military and security officers. The term "Dirty War" was used by the military junta, which claimed that a war, albeit with "different" methods (including the large-scale application of torture and rape ),

3596-566: The Cultural Revolution . Dirty War [REDACTED]   Argentina Supported by: The Dirty War ( Spanish : Guerra sucia ) is the name used by the military junta or civic-military dictatorship of Argentina (Spanish: dictadura cívico-militar de Argentina ) for its period of state terrorism in Argentina from 1974 to 1983. During this campaign, military and security forces and death squads in

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3712-697: The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons ( Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas , CONADEP) to investigate crimes committed during the Dirty War, and heard testimony from hundreds of witnesses and began to build cases against offenders. The commission organized a tribunal to conduct a transparent prosecution of offenders, holding the Trial of the Juntas in 1985. Among

3828-411: The National Reorganization Process , organized and carried out strong repression of political dissidents (or perceived as such) through the government's military and security forces. They were responsible for the arrest, torture, killings and/or forced disappearances of an estimated 22,000 to 30,000 people. With the help of Washington, the junta was aided with $ 50 million in military aid. Prior to

3944-462: The National Reorganization Process . Fearing military uprisings, Argentina's first two presidents sentenced only the two top Dirty War former commanders. The Punto Final Law stated that military personnel involved in torture were doing their "jobs". In 1994, President Carlos Menem praised the military in their "fight against subversion". In 2003, Congress repealed the Pardon Laws, and in 2005

4060-471: The U.S. Department of State , fifty-five disappearances were occurring per month, or approximately two per day. Additionally, people who sought to stay "peaceful" during the attacks were targeted by the government, based on the belief that if left alone, they would pose an even greater danger. This was despite the fact that 80 percent of Argentine torture victims had no knowledge of subversive activities. In December 1976, 22 captured Montoneros responsible for

4176-456: The head of government assume dictatorial powers. A soft coup , sometimes referred to as a silent coup or a bloodless coup , is an illegal overthrow of a government, but unlike a regular coup d'état it is achieved without the use of force or violence. A palace coup or palace revolution is a coup in which one faction within the ruling group displaces another faction within a ruling group. Along with popular protests, palace coups are

4292-420: The paramilitary faction led by Ernst Röhm , but Nazi propaganda justified it as preventing a supposed putsch planned or attempted by Röhm. The Nazi term Röhm-Putsch is still used by Germans to describe the event, often with quotation marks as the 'so-called Röhm Putsch'. The 1961 Algiers putsch and the 1991 August Putsch also use the term. The 2023 Wagner Group rebellion has also been described as

4408-444: The rents that an incumbent can extract . One reason why authoritarian governments tend to have incompetent militaries is that authoritarian regimes fear that their military will stage a coup or allow a domestic uprising to proceed uninterrupted – as a consequence, authoritarian rulers have incentives to place incompetent loyalists in key positions in the military. A 2016 study shows that the implementation of succession rules reduce

4524-521: The 1976 coup, the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina, otherwise known as Triple A, was another far right group which provoked many deaths and installed methods that continued to be used by the dictatorship. Both the juntas and Triple A targeted young professionals, high school and college students and trade union members. These groups of people became main targets because of their involvement in political organizations that resisted

4640-534: The 19th century except when used in the translation of a French source, there being no simple phrase in English to convey the contextualized idea of a 'knockout blow to the existing administration within a state'. One early use within text translated from French was in 1785 in a printed translation of a letter from a French merchant, commenting on an arbitrary decree, or arrêt , issued by the French king restricting

4756-429: The 20th century study found that coup frequency does not vary with development levels, economic inequality , or the rate of economic growth. In what is referred to as "coup-proofing", regimes create structures that make it hard for any small group to seize power. These coup-proofing strategies may include the strategic placing of family, ethnic, and religious groups in the military; creation of an armed force parallel to

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4872-468: The 30,000 who were targeted by the Argentine military junta. It is a disproportionate number, as Jews comprised between 5–12% of those targeted but only 1% of the population. All were killed in an attempt by the junta to silence social and political opposition. By the 1980s, economic collapse, public discontent, and the disastrous handling of the Falklands War resulted in the end of the junta and

4988-650: The APDH Military coup A coup d'état ( / ˌ k uː d eɪ ˈ t ɑː / ; French: [ku deta] ; lit.   ' stroke of state ' ), or simply a coup , is typically an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent leadership. A self-coup is when a leader, having come to power through legal means, tries to stay in power through illegal means. By one estimate, there were 457 coup attempts from 1950 to 2010, half of which were successful. Most coup attempts occurred in

5104-1258: The APDH participates in the following organizations: At the regional and continental scale, the APDH interacts in collective organizations in international networks such as the Global Council of Churches, the Continental Social Alliance, the Lawyers' American Association, The Global Social Forum and the Global Peace Council among other entities. The APDH follows current events in Argentina and analyzes them with regard to human rights. These tasks include: • Denouncing human rights violations • Negotiating before public authorities, institutions and entities specifically relevant to these rights • Developing educational initiatives aimed at educating individuals about these rights • Spreading National Constitution rulings : pacts, declarations, conventions, etc. • Advising victims of human rights violations • Working with brother organizations to ensure that human rights are respected • Promoting

5220-604: The Americas (36.5% and 31.9%, respectively). Asia and the Middle East have experienced 13.1% and 15.8% of total global coups, respectively. Europe has experienced by far the fewest coup attempts: 2.6%." Most coup attempts occurred in the mid-1960s, but there were also large numbers of coup attempts in the mid-1970s and the early 1990s. From 1950 to 2010, a majority of coups failed in the Middle East and Latin America. They had

5336-633: The Atlantic Ocean". A vast majority of those who were killed disappeared without a trace and no record of their fate. The junta referred to their policy of suppressing opponents as the National Reorganization Process ( Proceso de Reorganización Nacional ). Argentine military and security forces also created paramilitary death squads , operating behind "fronts" as supposedly independent units. Argentina coordinated actions with other South American dictatorships during Operation Condor . Faced with increasing public opposition and severe economic problems,

5452-625: The Coup d'etat Project by the Cline Center, the Colpus coup dataset, and the Coups and Agency Mechanism dataset. A 2023 study argued that major coup datasets tend to over-rely on international news sources to gather their information, potentially biasing the types of events included. Its findings show that while such a strategy is sufficient for gathering information on successful and failed coups, attempts to gather data on coup plots and rumors require

5568-877: The General Commandant of the SIDE , Otto Paladino. Automotores Orletti was the main base of foreign intelligence services involved in Operation Condor. One of its survivors, José Luis Bertazzo, who was detained for two months there, identified Chileans, Uruguayans, Paraguayans and Bolivians among the prisoners. These captives were interrogated by agents from their own countries. According to John Dinges 's Los años del Cóndor , Chilean MIR prisoners in Orletti center told José Luis Bertazzo that they had seen two Cuban diplomats, Jesús Cejas Arias and Crescencio Galañega, tortured by Gordon's group and interrogated by

5684-730: The Operation Condor's beginning in March 1976 is still debated, but some sectors claim the long political conflict started in 1969 as individual cases of state-sponsored terrorism against Peronism and the left can be traced back to the bombing of Plaza de Mayo and Revolución Libertadora in 1955. The Trelew massacre of 1972, the actions of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance since 1973 and Isabel Martínez de Perón's "annihilation decrees" against left-wing guerrillas during Operativo Independencia (Operation Independence) in 1975 have also been suggested as dates for

5800-542: The Pencils , an operation directed by Ramón Camps , General and head of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police from April 1976 to December 1977. The rationale behind attacks against non-combatants was the belief that anyone not sharing government ideology or supporting its actions was a threat; it was believed that "any party that has supported or continues to support the enemy shall be considered

5916-478: The Senate Ítalo Luder from the Peronist party, replacing Isabel (who was ill for a short period), issued three decrees, 2770, 2771 and 2772. These created a Defense Council headed by the president and including his ministers and chiefs of the armed forces. It was given the command of the national and provincial police and correctional facilities and its mission was to "annihilate [...] subversive elements throughout

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6032-867: The Universal Declaration (Los derechos humanos de la mujer a los 50 años de la Declaración Universal) • Found guilty by society, unpunished by the law (Culpables para la sociedad, impunes por la ley) • Women’s rights, are they human rights? (Los derechos de la mujer, son derechos humanos?) • Estimates of the Dirty War (Las cifras de la guerra sucia) • Reproductive rights are human rights (Los derechos reproductivos son derechos humanos) • Economic issues and human rights (Orden económico y derechos humanos) • Fundamentals of human rights (Fundamentos de los derechos humanos) The following publications (in Spanish) can be viewed on-line: • Official site of

6148-412: The above factors are connected to military culture and power dynamics. These factors can be divided into multiple categories, with two of these categories being a threat to military interests and support for military interests. If interests go in either direction, the military will find itself either capitalizing off that power or attempting to gain it back. Oftentimes, military spending is an indicator of

6264-594: The adopted children of military servicemembers, as in the case of Silvia Quintela , a member of the Montoneros guerrillas movement. For three decades, the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo , a group founded in 1977, has demanded the return of these kidnapped children, estimated to number as many as 500. In 1979, security forces violently arrested and threatened the members of this group, made up predominantly of mothers who held weekly silent demonstrations in

6380-425: The appropriation of newborns from their imprisoned mothers "because subversive parents will raise subversive children". The individuals who suddenly vanished are called los desaparecidos , meaning "the missing ones" or "disappeared". The people that disappeared throughout the 1970s came from a variety of backgrounds: not just suspected terrorists, but also non-combatants. According to a declassified 1979 document from

6496-424: The authors argue that this is because "personalists are characterized by weak institutions and narrow support bases, a lack of unifying ideologies and informal links to the ruler". In their 2022 book Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism , political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way found that political-military fusion, where the ruling party is highly interlinked with

6612-474: The beginning of the Dirty War. The discontent with Perón in 1973 started due to his drift to the right after having been a popular leftist leader for the first half of the 20th century. Many of the groups that supported him throughout the 1940s and 1950s argued that "Peron was betraying the movement by aligning himself with industrialists foreign interests." CIA research paper, "Insurgent Success and Failure: Selected Case Studies." Secret, May 1983 The attacks by

6728-541: The bodies were never found. This generalization of state terror tactics has been explained in part by the information received by the Argentine military in the infamous School of Americas and also by French instructors from the secret services , who taught them " counter-insurgency " tactics first experimented during the Algerian War (1954–1962). By 1976, Operation Condor was at its height. Chilean exiles in Argentina were threatened again and had to seek refuge in

6844-410: The complicity between large companies and armed forces. She found six companies in which dozens of union representatives were kidnapped and tortured, often detained inside the companies and transferred to clandestine detention centers (CDC) in vehicles provided by the companies. In the case of Dálmine Siderca, a CDC had been installed next to the factory, connected through a door. In the case of Acindar,

6960-569: The country was becoming engulfed in financial, social and political disorder. The months preceding his return were marked by important social movements as in the rest of South America and in particular of the Southern Cone before the military intervention of the 1970s, thus during Héctor Cámpora 's first months of government (May–July 1973) approximately 600 social conflicts, strikes and factory occupations had taken place. Upon Perón's arrival at Buenos Aires Airport, snipers opened fire on

7076-808: The country". Isabel Perón's government ordered a raid on 20 March 1975, which involved 4,000 military and police officers, in Villa Constitución , Santa Fe in response to various trade-unionist conflicts. Many citizens and 150 activists and trade unionists leaders were arrested while the Unión Obrera Metalúrgica's subsidiary in Villa Constitución was closed down with the agreement of the trade unions' national direction, headed by Lorenzo Miguel . Repression affected trade unionists of large firms such as Ford , Fiat , Renault , Mercedes-Benz , Peugeot and Chrysler and

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7192-609: The coup trap and reduces cycles of political instability. Hybrid regimes are more vulnerable to coups than very authoritarian states or democratic states. A 2021 study found that democratic regimes were not substantially more likely to experience coups. A 2015 study finds that terrorism is strongly associated with re-shuffling coups. A 2016 study finds that there is an ethnic component to coups: "When leaders attempt to build ethnic armies, or dismantle those created by their predecessors, they provoke violent resistance from military officers." Another 2016 study shows that protests increase

7308-469: The crowds of left-wing Peronist sympathizers. Known as the 1973 Ezeiza massacre , this event marked the split between left-wing and right-wing factions of Peronism. Perón was re-elected in 1973, backed by a broad coalition that ranged from trade unionists in the center to fascists on the right (including members of the neo-fascist Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara ) and socialists like the Montoneros on

7424-725: The death of General Cáceres Monié and the attack on the Argentine Army 29th Mountain Infantry Regiment were tortured and executed during the massacre of Margarita Belén in the military Chaco Province , for which Videla would be found guilty of homicide during the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, in addition to the guilty verdicts against Cristino Nicolaides, junta leader Leopoldo Galtieri and Santa Fe Provincial Police chief Wenceslao Ceniquel. The same year, 50 unknown persons were illegally executed by firing squad in Córdoba. Victims' relatives uncovered evidence that some children taken from their mothers soon after birth were being raised as

7540-490: The defense of human rights during the military dictatorship. Later it supported the work of CONADEP fights against the impunity of the crimes against humanity committed during the National Reorganization Process. Currently, the APDH works to consolidate democracy , defending the protection of life, human dignity, and social coexistence. In order to ensure the legal protection of human rights,

7656-458: The effects of neutralizing or annihilating the action of subversive elements acting in the Province of Tucumán ". Extreme right-wing death squads used their hunt for far-left guerrillas as a pretext to exterminate any and all ideological opponents on the left and as a cover for common crimes. In July, there was a general strike . The government, presided temporarily by provisional president of

7772-809: The existing government." In the British press , the phrase came to be used to describe the various murders by Napoleon's alleged secret police , the Gens d'Armes d'Elite , who executed the Duke of Enghien : "the actors in torture, the distributors of the poisoning draughts, and the secret executioners of those unfortunate individuals or families, whom Bonaparte's measures of safety require to remove. In what revolutionary tyrants call grand[s] coups d'état , as butchering, or poisoning, or drowning, en masse, they are exclusively employed." A self-coup , also called an autocoup (from Spanish autogolpe ) or coup from

7888-404: The expression and political liberties for Peronism were not respected, guerrilla groups began to operate in the 1960s, namely Uturuncos and the EGP (People's Guerrilla Army). As Perón returned from exile in 1973, the Ezeiza massacre marked the end of the alliance between left- and right-wing factions of Peronism. In 1974, Perón withdrew his support for Montoneros shortly before his death. By

8004-443: The form of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA, or Triple A) hunted down any political dissidents and anyone believed to be associated with socialism , left-wing Peronism , or the Montoneros movement. It is estimated that between 22,000 and 30,000 people were killed or disappeared , many of whom were impossible to formally document due to the nature of state terrorism; however, Argentine military intelligence at

8120-713: The funding can originate in governmental or intergovernmental agencies. Nowadays, the financial resources of the organization is composed of: Until december 2015, the three co-presidents of the APDH are Norma Ríos, Gisela Cardozo y Ernesto Moreau. Some of the individuals that compose the APDH are: journalist Luisa Valmaggia , writer Ernesto Sábato and Noé Jitrik , religious leaders Monsignor Justo Laguna and Rabbi Daniel Goldman, painter Luis Felipe Noé , singer León Gieco , scientist Federico Westerkamp , lawyer Raúl Zaffaroni , and labor unionist Marta Maffei . The APDH has produced numerous publications (in Spanish) related to human rights. Amongst these are: • National Security,

8236-413: The import of British wool. What may be its first published use within a text composed in English is an editor's note in the London Morning Chronicle ,1804, reporting the arrest by Napoleon in France, of Moreau , Berthier , Masséna , and Bernadotte : "There was a report in circulation yesterday of a sort of coup d'état having taken place in France, in consequence of some formidable conspiracy against

8352-647: The intervention of security forces to resolve internal conflicts of Peronism". On 19 January 1974, the Trotskyist People's Revolutionary Army attacked the military garrison in the Buenos Aires city of Azul , prompting a harsh response from the then constitutional president Juan Perón and contributing to his shift towards the rightist faction of the justicialist movement during the last months of his life. Extreme right wing vigilante organizations - linked to Triple A or its kind of "subsidiary" Córdoba "Comando Libertadores de América" - assassinated

8468-477: The junta said its objective was to eradicate guerrilla activity because of its threat to the state, it conducted wide-scale repression of the general population. It worked against all political opposition and those it considered on the left: trade unionists (half of the victims), students, intellectuals including journalists and writers, rights activists and other civilians and their families. Many others went into exile to survive and many remain in exile today despite

8584-544: The left were met by ruthless action by the government and the Argentina Anticommunist Alliance (AAA), a group known since the 1930s for its violent and brutal stance towards leftist groups. Targets of the junta were anyone believed to be associated with activist groups, including trade union members and students. These included underage students, like the ones tortured and murdered in the Night of

8700-651: The left. Following the Ezeiza massacre and Perón's denouncing of "bearded immature idealists", Perón sided with the Peronist right, the trade unionist bureaucracy and Radical Civic Union of Ricardo Balbín , Cámpora's unsuccessful rival at the May 1973 elections. Some leftist Peronist governors were deposed, among them Ricardo Obregón Cano , governor of Córdoba , who was ousted by a police coup in February 1974. According to historian Servetto, "the Peronist right... thus stimulated

8816-419: The likelihood of a coup taking place. Nordvik found that about 75% of coups that took place in many different countries rooted from military spending and oil windfalls. The accumulation of previous coups is a strong predictor of future coups, a phenomenon called the coup trap . A 2014 study of 18 Latin American countries found that the establishment of open political competition helps bring countries out of

8932-435: The likelihood of coups. A fifth 2016 study finds no evidence that coups are contagious; one coup in a region does not make other coups in the region likely to follow. One study found that coups are more likely to occur in states with small populations, as there are smaller coordination problems for coup-plotters. In autocracies, the frequency of coups seems to be affected by the succession rules in place, with monarchies with

9048-399: The mid-1960s, but there were also large numbers of coup attempts in the mid-1970s and the early 1990s. Coups occurring in the post- Cold War period have been more likely to result in democratic systems than Cold War coups, though coups still mostly perpetuate authoritarianism . Many factors may lead to the occurrence of a coup, as well as determine the success or failure of a coup. Once

9164-674: The military and created the administrative structures of the military from its inception, is extremely effective at preventing military coups. For example, the People's Liberation Army was created by the Chinese Communist Party during the Chinese Civil War , and never instigated a military coup even after large-scale policy failures (i.e. the Great Leap Forward ) or the extreme political instability of

9280-400: The military more likely. A 2018 study found that "oil price shocks are seen to promote coups in onshore-intensive oil countries, while preventing them in offshore-intensive oil countries". The study argues that states which have onshore oil wealth tend to build up their military to protect the oil, whereas states do not do that for offshore oil wealth. A 2020 study found that elections had

9396-403: The military tried to regain popularity by occupying the disputed Falkland Islands . During the resulting Falklands War , the military government lost any remaining popularity after Argentina's defeat by Britain, forcing it to step aside in disgrace and allow for free elections to be held in late 1983. The democratic government of Raúl Alfonsín was elected to office in 1983. Alfonsín organized

9512-424: The military. The term comes from French coup d'État , literally meaning a 'stroke of state' or 'blow of state'. In French, the word État ( French: [eta] ) is capitalized when it denotes a sovereign political entity. Although the concept of a coup d'état has featured in politics since antiquity, the phrase is of relatively recent coinage. It did not appear within an English text before

9628-606: The most combative trade unions were closed and their leaders arrested. In August 1974, Isabel Perón's government took away the rights of trade unionist representation of the Federación Gráfica Bonaerense , whose Secretary General Raimundo Ongaro was arrested in October 1974. During the same month of August 1974, the SMATA Córdoba trade-union, in conflict with the company Ika Renault, was closed by

9744-591: The national direction of trade unions and the majority of its leaders and activists arrested. Most of them were assassinated during the 1976–1983 dictatorship. Atilio López, General Secretary of the CGT of Córdoba and former Vice Governor of the Province, was assassinated in Buenos Aires on 16 September 1974. Peronist guerrillas, estimated at 300 to 400 active members (Montoneros) in 1977 (and 2000 at its peak in 1975, though almost half of them related to militia ), committed

9860-492: The nearly 300 people prosecuted, many of the leading officers were charged, convicted and sentenced for their crimes. The Argentine armed forces opposed subjecting more of its personnel to the trials, threatening the civilian leadership with another coup. In 1986, the military forced the passage of the Ley de Punto Final (Full Stop Law) in 1986, which "put a line" under previous actions and ended prosecutions for crimes committed by

9976-509: The occurrence of coup attempts. Succession rules are believed to hamper coordination efforts among coup plotters by assuaging elites who have more to gain by patience than by plotting. According to political scientists Curtis Bell and Jonathan Powell, coup attempts in neighbouring countries lead to greater coup-proofing and coup-related repression in a region. A 2017 study finds that countries' coup-proofing strategies are heavily influenced by other countries with similar histories. Coup-proofing

10092-533: The other private partners negotiated the sale of their shares on November 2, 1976. She, along with Graiver's brother and father, were illegally detained by the Buenos Aires Province Police on March 14, 1977, on suspected financial connections her late husband had with the guerrilla organization Montoneros , and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, though an appeals court later cleared the defendants of all charges. According to Papaleo,

10208-712: The political-military actions of an unsuccessful minority reactionary coup. The term was initially coined for the Züriputsch of 6 September 1839 in Switzerland. It was also used for attempted coups in Weimar Germany , such as the 1920 Kapp Putsch , Küstrin Putsch , and Adolf Hitler 's 1923 Beer Hall Putsch . The 1934 Night of the Long Knives was Hitler's purge to eliminate opponents, particularly

10324-505: The population's support. The program of extermination of dissidents was referred to as genocide by a court of law for the first time during the trial of Miguel Etchecolatz , a former senior official of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police . Crimes committed during this time ( genocide of civilian population and other crimes against humanity ) are not covered under the laws of war ( jus in bello ), which shields enlisted personnel from prosecution for acts committed under orders given by

10440-742: The presence of Townley and Cuban Guillermo Novo Sampoll in the Orletti center. The two men traveled from Chile to Argentina on 11 August 1976 and "cooperated in the torture and assassination of the two Cuban diplomats". According to the " terror archives " discovered in Paraguay in 1992, 50,000 persons were murdered in the frame of Condor, 22,000–30,000 disappeared (desaparecidos) and 400,000 incarcerated. There were also some companies complicit in crimes against humanity. There has been participation of senior executives of Ford , Mercedes-Benz , Acindar, Dálmine Siderca, Ingenio Ledesma, and Astarsa Victoria Basualdo, from Columbia University, investigated

10556-440: The regular military; and development of multiple internal security agencies with overlapping jurisdiction that constantly monitor one another. It may also involve frequent salary hikes and promotions for members of the military, and the deliberate use of diverse bureaucrats. Research shows that some coup-proofing strategies reduce the risk of coups occurring. However, coup-proofing reduces military effectiveness, and limits

10672-467: The repression in 1973 as Carlos Bache was assassinated on 21 August 1973; Enrique Damiano, of the Taxis Trade Union of Córdoba, on 3 October; Juan Avila, also of Córdoba, the following day; Pablo Fredes, on 30 October in Buenos Aires; and Adrián Sánchez, on 8 November 1973 in the Province of Jujuy . Assassinations of trade unions, lawyers and so on continued and increased in 1974 and 1975 while

10788-565: The repression of the social movements had already started before the attempt on Yrigoyen's life: on 17 July 1973, the CGT section in Salta was closed while the CGT, SMATA and Luz y Fuerza in Córdoba were victims of armed attacks. Agustín Tosco, Secretary General of Luz y Fuerza, successfully avoided arrest and went into hiding until his death on 5 November 1975. Trade unionists were also targeted by

10904-431: The restoration of democracy in Argentina, effectively ending the Dirty War. Many members of the junta are currently in prison for crimes against humanity and genocide . The Dirty War left a profound impact on Argentine culture, which is still felt to this day. In the decades before the 1976 coup , the Argentine military, supported by the Argentine establishment, opposed Juan Perón 's populist government and attempted

11020-502: The return of democracy in 1983. During the Trial of the Juntas, the prosecution established that the guerrillas were never strong enough to pose a real threat to the state and could not be considered a belligerent as in a war: The guerrilla had not taken control of any part of the national territory; they had not obtained recognition of interior or anterior belligerency, they were not massively supported by any foreign power, and they lacked

11136-673: The return of political parties. However, Perón, who had been invited back from exile, was barred from seeking office. In May 1973, Peronist Héctor José Cámpora was elected as president, but everyone understood that Perón was the real power behind him, as Cámpora's campaign stated. Peronism has been difficult to define according to traditional political classifications and different periods must be distinguished. A populist and nationalist movement, it has sometimes been accused of fascist tendencies. Following nearly two decades of weak civilian governments, economic decline and military interventionism, Perón returned from exile on 20 June in 1973, as

11252-401: The risk of coups, presumably because they ease coordination obstacles among coup plotters and make international actors less likely to punish coup leaders. A third 2016 study finds that coups become more likely in the wake of elections in autocracies when the results reveal electoral weakness for the incumbent autocrat. A fourth 2016 study finds that inequality between social classes increases

11368-519: The sale was made under duress. She had been receiving death threats and had been told by Papel Prensa's president, Pedro Martínez Segovia, who said was representing then Minister of Economy José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz , that she should sell her stake in the company. She, along with her family, attended a night meeting at the La Nación offices on November 2. There, she testified, that the representative of Clarín , Hector Magnetto , presented her with

11484-515: The sanction of those laws necessary to ensure the protection of human rights The APDH is primarily made up of volunteers. Its headquarters are located in Buenos Aires and the organization has subsidiaries in other cities throughout Argentina. Its principle tasks include: The APDH is a non-profit organization which funding is entirely based on donations and individual contributions. Nevertheless, for special projects and framework maintenance,

11600-458: The supposed threat was used for the coup. In 1975, President Isabel Perón , under pressure from the military establishment, appointed Jorge Rafael Videla commander-in-chief of the Argentine Army. "As many people as necessary must die in Argentina so that the country will again be secure", declared Videla in 1975 in support of the death squads. He was one of the military heads of the coup that overthrew Isabel Perón on 24 March 1976. In her place,

11716-487: The time estimated that 22,000 people had been murdered or disappeared by 1978. The primary targets were communist guerrillas and sympathisers but also included students, militants, trade unionists , writers, journalists, artists and any citizens suspected of being left-wing activists . The disappeared included those thought to be a political or ideological threat to the junta. According to human rights organisations in Argentina, between 1,900 and 3,000 Jews were among

11832-493: The time his widow Isabel was president, the Minister of Social Welfare José López Rega had already organized the far-right death squad known as Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA, or Triple A). In 1975, during Operativo Independencia , Isabel Perón and later her replacement Ítalo Lúder signed four decrees empowering the military and the police to "annihilate" left-wing "subversive elements". The junta, calling itself

11948-457: The top, is a form of coup d'état in which a political leader, having come to power through legal means, stays in power through illegal means through the actions of themselves and/or their supporters. The leader may dissolve or render powerless the national legislature and unlawfully assume extraordinary powers not granted under normal circumstances. Other measures may include annulling the nation's constitution , suspending civil courts, and having

12064-480: The union leader and ex-Peronist governor of Córdoba, Atilio López , as well as leftist lawyers Rodolfo Ortega Peña and Silvio Frondizi - brother of the ousted former Argentine president Arturo Frondizi , who had served as first president between May 1, 1958, and March 29, 1962. Also in 1974, the Third World priest Carlos Mugica and dozens of political activists from left. Juan Perón died on 1 July 1974 and

12180-410: The war's duration. A 2003 review of the academic literature found that the following factors influenced coups: The literature review in a 2016 study includes mentions of ethnic factionalism, supportive foreign governments, leader inexperience, slow growth, commodity price shocks, and poverty. Coups have been found to appear in environments that are heavily influenced by military powers. Multiple of

12296-547: The work of the right-wing group. Assassinations were carried out via mass shootings and " death flights ", the throwing of people from airplanes into the South Atlantic. Additionally, 12,000 prisoners, many of whom had not been convicted through legal processes, were detained in a network of 340 secret concentration camps located throughout Argentina. Military personnel, such as Navy captain Adolfo Scilingo , who

12412-575: The year after the coup than existed in the year before the coup. One-third of coups in dictatorships during the Cold War and 10% of later ones reshuffled the regime leadership. Democracies were installed in the wake of 12% of Cold War coups in dictatorships and 40% of post-Cold War ones. Coups occurring in the post- Cold War period have been more likely to result in democratic systems than Cold War coups, though coups still mostly perpetuate authoritarianism . Coups that occur during civil wars shorten

12528-418: Was also suspected participation from national media outlets such as Clarin , La Nación and La Razón , the three most important Argentine newspapers at the time. Together they negotiated the buyout of Papel Prensa , the largest national manufacturer of newsprint , then owned by the widow of David Graiver , Lidia Papaleo and his family estate, after his death in a plane crash on August 7, 1976. Papaleo and

12644-399: Was led by the racing driver Juan Manuel Fangio . In 2015, an investigation was conducted to investigate these claims. José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz , president of the metallurgical company Acindar, who was Minister of Economy between 1976 and 1980, was criminally prosecuted in the case of the kidnapping of the businessmen Federico and Miguel Gutheim, owners of SADECO cotton company. There

12760-460: Was necessary to maintain social order and eradicate political subversives. This explanation has been questioned in court by human rights NGOs, as it suggests that a "civil war" was going on and implies justification for the killings. During the 1985 Trial of the Juntas , public prosecutor Julio Strassera suggested that the term "Dirty War" was a "euphemism to try to conceal gang activities" as though they were legitimate military activities. Although

12876-539: Was not enough evidence of any wrongdoing to accuse them. During a 1981 interview whose contents were revealed by declassified CIA documents in 2000, former DINA agent Michael Townley explained that Ignacio Novo Sampol, member of the CORU anti-Castro organization, had agreed to involve the Cuban Nationalist Movement in the kidnapping in Buenos Aires of the president of a Dutch bank. The abduction

12992-511: Was organized by civilian SIDE agents to obtain a ransom. Townley said that Novo Sampol had provided $ 6,000 from the Cuban Nationalist Movement , forwarded to the civilian SIDE agents to pay for the preparation expenses of the kidnapping. After returning to the United States, Novo Sampol sent Townley a stock of paper, used to print pamphlets in the name of Grupo Rojo (Red Group), an imaginary Argentine Marxist terrorist organization, which

13108-609: Was replaced by his vice president and third wife, Isabel Perón , who ruled Argentina until she was overthrown in March 1976 by the military. The 1985 CONADEP human rights commission counted 458 assassinations from 1973 to 1975 in its report Nunca Más ( Never Again ): 19 in 1973, 50 in 1974 and 359 in 1975, carried out by paramilitary groups, who acted mostly under the José López Rega 's parapolice and paramilitary Triple A death squad (according to Argenpress , at least 25 trade-unionists were assassinated in 1974). However,

13224-485: Was sometimes carried on with support from the firms' executives and from the trade unionist bureaucracies. The sentence at the Trials of the Juntas stated the following: "The subversives had not taken control of any part of the national territory; they had not obtained recognition of interior or anterior belligerency, they were not massively supported by any foreign power, and they lacked the population's support". However,

13340-574: Was to claim credit for the abduction of the Dutch banker. Townley declared that the pamphlets were distributed in Mendoza and Córdoba together with false flag bombings perpetrated by SIDE agents. The aim was to establish the existence of the fake Grupo Rojo. However, the SIDE agents procrastinated too much and the kidnapping was never carried out. The exact chronology of the repression occurring before

13456-686: Was tried for genocide, 30 counts of murder, 93 of causing injury, 255 of terrorism and 286 of torture. These actions against victims called desaparecidos because they simply "disappeared" without explanation were confirmed via Scilingo, who has publicly confessed his participation in the Dirty War, stating that the Argentine military "did worse things than the Nazis". In 1983, the National commission on Disappeared People forced Scilingo to testify where he described how "prisoners were drugged, loaded onto military planes, and thrown, naked and semi-conscious, into

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