Argentina's 'Dirty War' and military dictatorship
- Date
- 1976–1983
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Latin America (Argentina)
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
On 24 March 1976 a military junta led by General Jorge Rafael Videla overthrew President Isabel Perón and launched the self-styled 'National Reorganization Process' (El Proceso).
To eliminate 'subversion,' the regime conducted a systematic campaign of state terror later known as the Dirty War, marked above all by forced disappearance: opponents—guerrillas, trade unionists, students, journalists, intellectuals, and their relatives—were abducted, held in clandestine detention centres, tortured, and killed, many thrown alive from aircraft into the sea in 'death flights.' An estimated 9,000 to 30,000 people were disappeared or killed. The junta also abducted infants born to detained mothers and gave them to regime-aligned families, prompting the enduring human-rights movements of the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Argentina participated in Operation Condor's transnational repression. Discredited by economic crisis and defeat in the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War, the regime collapsed, and democracy was restored in December 1983. The subsequent CONADEP inquiry and the 1985 'Trial of the Juntas' set influential precedents for transitional justice and accountability worldwide.
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Empires active in 1976–1983
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Yugoslavia1918 CE – 1992 CE
Related politics & governance events
- Iranian RevolutionJanuary–February 1979
- Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika1985–1991 (from 11 March 1985)
- Fall of the Berlin Wall9 November 1989
- Revolutions of 1989 across Eastern Europe1989 (Autumn of Nations)
- German reunification3 October 1990
- Construction of the Berlin Wall13 August 1961
Further reading
The wider story
The Americas: A Hemispheric History
Brisk single-volume history of the whole hemisphere since European contact.
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