Argentina oc

Argentina oc
Country name: Repúblic Argentina or Argentine Republic
Full Name: Martín Félix Caso Hernández
Gender: Male
Birthday: July 9th, 1816
Age: 20
Height: 5’8
Eyes: Silverish blue
Hair: Dark Blonde
Skin: Pale
Motto: “En union y libertad “(Spanish) “In Unity and Freedom “(English)
Anthem: Himno Nacional Argentino (Spanish) “Argentine National Anthem “
Capital: Buenos Aires
Demonym
•	Argentine
•	Argentinian
•	Argentinean (uncommon)
Languages:  Spanish is the official language and is spoken by the great majority of Argentinians. English, French and Italian are, in lesser or greater degree, widespread languages within the country.
Personality: Proud, Lover of the good life, A bit full of himself at times due being the eight biggest Country in the world. Sometimes he can be Narcissistic wanting to be first in everything. Besides having a personality like that he is very sweet to his friends that are in Latin America. Due to his love of dance he is very athletic from his traditional dancing and all the football he plays. His personality changes harsher when he is around Spain and England since he was once owned by Spain and got his independence from the Spaniard in 1816, while he is mean to England because of his Falkland Islands that was taken from him .So he hates England more than Spain due to what happened 1982. Besides his hate for most Countries in the world he is a very fun person to be around and very affectionate to most people. He also has the tendency to correct other countries that call the United States, America due to its kind of offending to him since he’s part of Latin America and that The American from up north is not the whole Americas Continent. Besides that fact he gets along with United States of America pretty well actually.
 Origin of name: The name "Argentina" is derived from Latin argentum, a noun associated with the silver mountains legend, widespread among the first European explorers of the La Plata Basin. First written use of name can be traced to La Argentina, a 1602 poem by Martin Del Barco Centenera describing the region and foundation of Buenos Aires. Although "Argentina" was already in common usage by the 18th century, the country was formally named "Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata" by the Spanish Empire, and "United Provinces of the Río de la Plata" after independence. The constitution in 1826 included the first use of the name "Argentine Republic" in legal documents, the name "Argentine Confederation" was also commonly used and was formalized in the Argentine Constitution of 1853. In 1860 a presidential decree settled the country's name as "Argentine Republic", and that year's constitutional amendment ruled all the names since 1810 as legally valid. In the English language, the country was traditionally called "the Argentine", mimicking the typical Spanish usage la Argentina. This fell out of fashion during the mid to late 20th century, and now the country is simply referred to as "Argentina".
History
Pre-Columbian era
The earliest traces of human life in the area now known as Argentina are dated from the Paleolithic period, with further traces in the Mesolithic and Neolithic. Until the period of European colonization Argentina was relatively sparsely populated by a wide number of diverse cultures with different social organizations, which can be divided into three main groups: Basic hunters and food gatherers without development of pottery, like the Selknam and Yaghan in the extreme south. Advanced hunters and food gatherers like the Puelche, Querandí and Serranos in the center-east; and the Tehuelche in the south—all of them conquered by the Mapuche spreading from Chile—and the Kom and Wichi in the north. Farmers with pottery, like the Charrúa, Minuane and Guaraní in the northeast, with slash and burn semisedentary existence; the advanced Diaguita sedentary trading culture in the northwest, which was conquered by the Inca Empire around 1480; the Toconoté and Hênîa and Kâmîare in the country's center, and the Huarpe in the center-west, a culture that raised llama cattle and was strongly influenced by the Incas. By t the year 1500, many different indigenous communities lived in the now modern Argentina. They were not a unified group but many independent ones, with distinct languages, societies, and relations with each other. As a result, they did not face the arrival of the Spanish colonization as a single block and had varied reactions toward the Europeans. The Spanish people looked greatly down to the indigenous population, to the point that they held in doubt whether they had souls, following the general thought in Europe. For this reason, they kept very little historical information about them. In the 19th century major population movements altered the original Patagonian demography. Between 1820 and 1850 the original Tehuelche people were conquered and expelled from their territories by invading Mapuche armies. By 1870 most of northern Patagonia and the south east Pampas were araucanized. During the Generation, European immigration was strongly encouraged as a way of occupying an empty territory, configuring the national population and, through their colonizing effort, gradually incorporating the nation into the world market. These changes were perhaps best summarized by the anthropological metaphor which states that “Argentines descend from ships.”] The strength of the immigration and its contribution to the Argentine ethnography is evident by observing that Argentina became the second country in the world that received the most immigrants, with 6.6 millions, second only to the USA with 27 millions, and ahead of countries such as Canada, Brazil, Australia. The expansion of European immigrant communities and the railways westward into the Pampas and south into Patagonia was met with Malón raids by displaced tribes. This led to the Conquest of the Desert in the 1870s, which resulted in over 1,300 indigenous dead. Indigenous cultures in Argentina were consequently affected by a process of invisibilization, promoted by the government during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th. The extensive explorations, research and writing by Juan Bautista Ambrosetti and other ethnographers during the 20th century encouraged wider interest in indigenous people in Argentina, and their contributions to the nation's culture were further underscored during the administration of President Juan Perón in the 1940s and 1950s as part of the rustic criollo culture and values exalted by Perón during that era. Discriminatory policies toward these people and other minorities officially ended, moreover, with the August 3, 1988, enactment of the Antidiscrimination Law (Law 23.592) by President Raúl Alfonsín, and were countered further with the establishment of a government bureau, the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Racism (INADI), in 1995.]Corrientes Province, in 2004, became the first in the nation to award an indigenous language (Guaraní) with co-official status, and all 35 native peoples were recognized by both the 2004 Indigenous Peoples Census and by their inclusion as self-descriptive categories in the 2010 census; indigenous communities and Afro-Argentines thus became the only groups accorded any recognition as ethnic categories by the 2010 census.
Spanish colonial Era
 The Next era Argentina had was Spanish Colonial Era. The colonial Argentina is the period of the History of Argentina when it was an overseas colony of the Spanish Empire. It follows the pre-Columbian age of the indigenous peoples of Argentina, with the arrival of the first Spanish conquerors in the 16th century, and ends in the 19th century with the begin of the Argentine War of Independence. e first navigators, aware that the Americas was an unknown continent, navigated into the wide Río de la Plata expecting to find a passage to the west and reach Asia, new navigations were fostered by the rumors of silver sources (such rumors are one of the early reasons of the name of Argentina). There were land expeditions coming from the north as well, from Lima. However, the lack of precious metals in the area, and the absence of local empires like the Aztecs in Mexico or the Incas in Peru, did not allow a notable growth of the Spanish populations in the area. The area was a Southern section of the Viceroyalty of Peru, until the king Charles III rearranged it as the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. The new ideas of the Age of Enlightenment and the events of the Peninsular War started the Argentine Wars of Independence, a theater of the greater Spanish American wars of independence. Europeans first arrived in the region with the 1502 voyage of Amerigo Vespucci. The Spanish navigators Juan Díaz de Solís and Sebastian Cabot visited the territory that is now Argentina in 1516 and 1526, respectively. In 1536 Pedro de Mendoza founded the small settlement of Buenos Aires, which was abandoned in 1541. Further colonization efforts came from Paraguay—establishing the Governorate of the Río de la Plata—Peru and Chile. Francisco de Aguirre founded Santiago del Estero in 1553. Londres was founded in 1558; Mendoza, in 1561; San Juan, in 1562; San Miguel de Tucumán, in 1565. Juan de Garay founded Santa Fe in 1573 and the same year Jerónimo Luis de Cabrera set up Córdoba. Garay went further south to re-fund Buenos Aires in 1580. San Luis was established in 1596. The Spanish Empire subordinated the economic potential of the Argentine territory to the immediate wealth of the silver and gold mines in Bolivia and Peru, and as such it became part of the Viceroyalty of Peru until the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1776 with Buenos Aires as its capital. Buenos Aires repelled two ill-fated British invasions in 1806 and 1807. The ideas of the Age of Enlightenment and the example of the first Atlantic Revolutions generated criticism to the absolutist monarchy that ruled the country. Like in the rest of Spanish America, the overthrow of Ferdinand VII during the Peninsular War created great concern.
Independence and civil wars
Short background of this section
Beginning a process from which Argentina was to emerge as successor state to the Viceroyalty, the 1810 May Revolution replaced the viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros with the First Junta, a new government in Buenos Aires composed by locals. In the first clashes of the Independence War the Junta crushed a royalist counter-revolution in Córdoba, but failed to overcome those of the Banda Oriental, Upper Peru and Paraguay, which later became independent states. Revolutionaries split into two antagonist groups: the Centralists and the Federalists—a move that would define Argentina's first decades of independence. The Assembly of the Year XIII appointed Gervasio Antonio de Posadas as Argentina's first Supreme Director. In 1816 the Congress of Tucumán formalized the Declaration of Independence. One year later General Martín Miguel de Güemes stopped royalists on the North, and General José de San Martín took an army across the Andes and secured the independence of Chile; then he led the fight to the Spanish stronghold of Lima and proclaimed the independence of Peru. In 1819 Buenos Aires enacted a centralist constitution that was soon abrogated by federalists. The 1820 Battle of Cepeda, fought between the Centralists and the Federalists, resulted in the end of the Supreme Director rule. In 1826 Buenos Aires enacted another centralist constitution, with Bernardino Rivadavia being appointed as the first president of the country. However, the interior provinces soon rose against him, forced his resignation and discarded the constitution. Centralists and Federalists resumed the civil war; the latter prevailed and formed the Argentine Confederation in 1831, led by Juan Manuel de Rosas. During his regime he faced a French blockade (1838–1840), the War of the Confederation (1836–1839), and a combined Anglo-French blockade (1845–1850), but remained undefeated and prevented further loss of national territory. His trade restriction policies, however, angered the interior provinces and in 1852 Justo José de Urquiza, another powerful caudillo, beat him out of power. As new president of the Confederation, Urquiza enacted the liberal and federal 1853 Constitution. Buenos Aires seceded but was forced back into the Confederation after being defeated in the 1859 Battle of Cepeda.
•	May Revolution
The May Revolution (Spanish: Revolución de Mayo) was a week-long series of events that took place from May 18 to 25, 1810, in Buenos Aires, capital of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. This Spanish colony included roughly the territories of present-day Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. The result was the removal of Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros and the establishment of a local government, the Primera Junta (First Junta), on May 25. The May Revolution was a direct reaction to Spain's Peninsular War. In 1808, King Ferdinand VII of Spain abdicated in favor of Napoleon, who granted the throne to his brother, Joseph. A Supreme Central Junta led resistance to Joseph's government and the French occupation of Spain, but eventually suffered a series of reversals that resulted in the Spanish loss of the northern half of the country. On February 1, 1810, French troops took Seville and gained control of most of Andalusia. The Supreme Junta retreated to Cadiz and dissolved itself, and the Council of Regency of Spain and the Indies replaced it. News of these events arrived in Buenos Aires on May 18, brought by British ships. Viceroy Cisneros tried to maintain the political status quo, but a group of criollo lawyers and military officials organized an open cabildo (a special meeting of notables of the city) on May 22 to decide the future of the Viceroyalty. Delegates denied recognition to the Council of Regency in Spain and established a junta to govern in place of Cisneros, since the government that had appointed him Viceroy no longer existed. To maintain a sense of continuity, Cisneros was initially appointed president of the Junta. However, this caused much popular unrest, so he resigned under pressure on May 25. The newly formed government, the Primera Junta, included only representatives from Buenos Aires and invited other cities of the Viceroyalty to send delegates to join them. This resulted in the outbreak of war between the regions that accepted the outcome of the events at Buenos Aires and those that did not. The May Revolution began the Argentine War of Independence, although no formal declaration of independence was issued at the time and the Primera Junta continued to govern in the name of the deposed king, Ferdinand VII. As similar events occurred in many other cities of the continent, the May Revolution is also considered one of the early events of the Spanish American wars of independence. Historians today debate whether the revolutionaries were truly loyal to the Spanish crown or whether the declaration of fidelity to the king was a necessary ruse to conceal the true objective—to achieve independence—from a population that was not yet ready to accept such a radical change. A formal declaration of independence was finally issued at the Congress of Tucumán on July 9, 1816.
•	International causes
The United States' declaration of independence from Great Britain in 1776 led criollos (Spanish peoples born in the Americas) to believe that revolution and independence from Spain were feasible. Between 1775 and 1783, the American patriots of the Thirteen Colonies waged the American Revolutionary War against both the local loyalists and the Kingdom of Great Britain, eventually establishing a popular government in the place of the British monarchy. The fact that Spain aided the colonies in their struggle against Britain weakened the idea that it would be a crime to end one's allegiance to the parent state. The ideals of the French Revolution of 1789 spread across Europe and the Americas as well. The overthrow and execution of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette ended centuries of monarchy and removed the privileges of the nobility. Liberal ideals in the political and economic fields developed and spread through the Atlantic Revolutions across most of the Western world. The concept of the divine right of kings was questioned by the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, by the oft-quoted statement that "all men are created equal" in the United States Declaration of Independence and even by the Spanish church. However, the spread of such ideas was forbidden in the Spanish territories, as was the sale of related books or their unauthorized possession. Spain instituted those bans when it declared war on France After the execution of Louis XVI and retained them after the peace treaty of 1796.News of the events of 1789 and copies of the publications of the French Revolution spread around Spain despite efforts to keep them at bay. Many enlightened criollos came into contact with liberal authors and their works during their university studies, either in Europe or at the University of Chuquisaca (modern Sucre). Books from the United States found their way into the Spanish colonies through Caracas, owing to the proximity of Venezuela to the United States and the West Indies. He Industrial Revolution started in Britain, with the use of plateways, canals and steam power. This led to dramatic increases in the productive capabilities of Britain, and created a need for new markets to sell its products. The Napoleonic Wars with France made this a difficult task, after Napoleon imposed the Continental, which forbade his allies and conquests to trade with Britain. Thus Britain needed to be able to trade with the Spanish colonies, but could not do so because the colonies were restricted to trade only with their parent state. To achieve their economic objectives, Britain initially tried to invade Rio de la Plata and conquer key cities in Spanish America. When that failed they chose to promote the Spanish-American aspirations of emancipation from Spain. The mutiny of Aranjuez in 1808 led King Charles IV of Spain to abdicate in favor of his son, Ferdinand VII.Charles IV requested that Napoleon restore him to the throne; instead, Napoleon crowned his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as the new Spanish King. These events are known as the Abdications of Bayonne. Joseph's coronation was met with severe resistance in Spain, which started the Peninsular War, and the Supreme Central Junta took power in the name of the absent king. This also led to Spain switching allegiances from France to Britain. France eventually invaded Sevilla, and a Council of Regency based in Cadiz replaced the disbanded Supreme Central Junta.
•	National causes
Spain forbade its American colonies to trade with other nations or foreign colonies, and imposed itself as the only buyer and vendor for their International trade this situation damaged the viceroyalty, as Spain's economy was not powerful enough to produce the huge supply of goods that the numerous colonies would need. This caused economic shortages and recession. The Spanish trade routes favored the ports of Mexico and Lima, to the detriment of Buenos Aires. In result, Buenos Aires smuggled those products that could not be obtained legitimately. Most local authorities allowed this smuggling as a lesser evil, even though it was illegal, and it occasionally equaled in volume the legal commerce with Spain. Two antagonistic factions emerged: the landowners wanted free trade so they could sell their products abroad, while the merchants, who benefited from the high prices of smuggled imports, opposed free trade because prices would come down. The Spanish monarchy appointed their own candidates to most of the political offices in the viceroyalty, usually favoring Spaniards from Europe. In most cases, the appointees had little knowledge of or interest in local issues. Consequently, there was a growing rivalry between criollos and peninsulars (those born in Spain). Most criollos thought that peninsulars had undeserved advantages and received preferential treatment in politics and society. The lower clergy had a similar sentiment about the higher echelons of the religious hierarchy. Events developed at a slower pace than in the United States independence movement. This was in part because the clergy controlled the entire educational system in Spanish America, which led the population to hold the same conservative ideas and follow the same customs as in Spain. Buenos Aires and Montevideo successfully resisted two British invasions. In 1806, a small British army led by William Carr Beresford seized Buenos Aires for a brief time; a Montevidean army led by Santiago deLiniers liberated the city.The following year, a larger army seized Montevideo, but was overwhelmed by the forces of Buenos Aires; the invaders capitulated and returned Montevideo to the viceroyalty. There was no aid from Spain during either invasion. Liniers organized criollo militias during the preparations for the second invasion, in spite of the prohibition against them. The Patricios Regiment, led by Cornelio Saavedra, was the biggest criollo army. These events gave criollos military power and political influence that they did not have before and, since the victory was achieved without any help from Spain, it boosted criollo confidence in their independent capabilities. The Portuguese royal family left Europe and settled in colonial Brazil in 1808, after their escape from the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal. Carlota Joaquina, sister of Ferdinand VII, was the wife of the Portuguese prince regent, but had her own political projects. As she avoided the later capture of the Spanish royal family, she attempted to take charge of the viceroyalty as regent.This political project, known as Carlotism, sought to prevent a French invasion of the Americas. A small secret society of criollos, composed of politicians such as Manuel Belgrano and Juan José Castelli, and military leaders such as Antonio Beruti and Hipólito Vieytes, supported this project. They considered it an opportunity to get a local government instead of a European one, or a step towards a potential declaration of independence. The project was resisted by Viceroy Liniers, most peninsulars, and some criollos, including Cornelio Saavedra and the lawyers Mariano Moreno and Juan José Paso. They suspected that it concealed Portuguese expansionist ambitions over the region. The supporters of Carlota Joaquina intended her to head a constitutional monarchy, whereas she wanted to govern an absolute monarchy; these conflicting goals undermined the project and led to its failure. Britain, which had a strong influence in the politics of the Portuguese Empire, opposed the project as well: they did not want Spain split into several kingdoms, and considered Carlota Joaquina unable to prevent this.
•	Prelude
Liniers government
After the British invasion of 1806, Santiago de Liniers successfully reconquered Buenos Aires. The population did not allow Rafael de Sobremonte to continue as Viceroy. He had escaped to Cordoba with the public treasury while the battle was still in progress. A law enacted in 1778 required the treasury to be moved to a safe location in the case of a foreign attack, but Sobremonte was still seen as a coward by the population. The Royal Audiencia of Buenos Aires did not allow his return to Buenos Aires and elected Liniers, acclaimed as a popular hero, as an interim Viceroy. This was an unprecedented action, the first time that a Spanish viceroy was deposed by local government institutions, and not by the King of Spain himself; King Charles IV ratified the appointment at a later time .Liniers armed the entire population of Buenos Aires, including criollos and slaves, and defeated a second British invasion attempt in 1807. The Liniers administration was popular among criollos, but not among peninsulars such as the merchant Martín de Álzaga and the Governor of Montevideo, Francisco Javier de Elío. They requested the Spanish authorities appoint a new viceroy. In the wake of the outbreak of the Peninsular War de Elío created the Junta of Montevideo, which would scrutinize all the orders from Buenos Aires and reserve the right to ignore them, but did not openly deny the authority of the Viceroy or declare Montevideo independent. Martín de Álzaga began a mutiny to remove Liniers. On January 1, 1809, an open cabildo (an extraordinary meeting of vecinos, prominent people of the city) chaired by Álzaga demanded the resignation of Liniers and the appointment of a local junta. The Spanish militia and a group of people summoned by the meeting gathered to support the rebellion. A small number of criollos, notably Marino Moreno, supported the mutiny, but most of them did not. They felt that Álzaga wanted to remove the Viceroy to avoid his political authority while keeping the social differences between criollos and peninsulars unchanged. The riot was quickly routed when criollo militias led by Cornelio Saavedra surrounded the plaza and dispersed the insurgents. As a result of the failed mutiny, the rebel militias were disarmed. This included all peninsular militias, and the power of the criollos increased as a result. The leaders of the plot, with the exception of Moreno, were exiled to Carmen de Patagones. Javier de Elío freed them and gave them political asylum at Montevideo.
Cisneros government

The Supreme Central Junta replaced Liniers with the naval officer Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros, a veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar, to end the political turmoil in the Río de la Plata. He arrived in Montevideo in June 1809 for the handover. Manuel Belgrano proposed that Liniers should resist on the grounds that he had been confirmed as Viceroy by a King of Spain, whereas Cisneros lacked such legitimacy. The criollo militias shared Belgrano's proposal, but Liniers handed over the government to Cisneros without resistance. Javier de Elío accepted the authority of the new Viceroy, and dissolved the Junta of Montevideo. Cisneros rearmed the disbanded peninsular militias, and pardoned those responsible for the mutiny. Álzaga was not freed, but his sentence was commuted to house arrest. There was concern about events in Spain and about the legitimacy of local governors in Upper Peru as well. On May 25, 1809, the Chuquisaca Revolution deposed Ramón García de León y Pizarro as Governor of Chuquisaca and replaced him with Juan Antonio Alvarez de Arenales. On July 16, the La Paz revolution, led by Colonel Pedro Domingo Murillo, deposed the Governor of La Paz and elected a new junta. A swift reaction from the Spanish authorities defeated those rebellions. An army of 1,000 men sent from Buenos Aires found no resistance at Chuquisaca, took control of the city and overthrew the Junta.Murillo tried to defend La Paz, but his 800 militiamen were completely outnumbered by the more than 5,000 soldiers sent from Lima. He and the other leaders were later beheaded, and their heads were exhibited as a deterrent. These measures contrasted sharply with the pardon that Martín de Álzaga and others had received after a short time in prison, and the resentment of criollos against the peninsulars deepened. Juan José Castelli was present at the deliberations of the University of Chuquisaca, where Bernardo Monteagudo developed the Syllogism of Chuquisaca, a legal explanation to justify self-governance. This influenced his ideas during the "May Week".
On November 25, 1809, Cisneros created the Political Surveillance Court to persecute afrancesados (supporters of Joseph Bonaparte) and independentists. However, he rejected economist José María Romero's proposal to banish a number of people considered dangerous to the Spanish regime, such as Saavedra, Paso, Vieytes, Castelli and Moreno, among others. Romero warned Cisneros against spreading news that might be considered subversive. Criollos felt that soon any pretext would be enough to lead to the outbreak of revolution. In April 1810, Cornelio Saavedra advised to his friends: "it's not time yet, let the figs ripen and then we'll eat them”. He meant that he would not support rushed actions against the Viceroy, but would do so at a strategically favorable moment, such as when Napoleon's forces gained a decisive advantage in their war against Spain.
•	May Week
The May Week was the period of time in Buenos Aires which began with the confirmation of the fall of the Supreme Central Junta and ended with the dismissal of Cisneros and the establishment of the Primera Junta. On May 14, 1810, the British war schooner HMS Mistletoe arrived at Buenos Aires with European newspapers that reported the dissolution of the Supreme Central Junta the previous January. The city of Seville had been invaded by French armies, which were already dominating most of the Peninsula. The newspapers reported that some of the former members of the Junta had taken refuge on the Isla de León in Cadiz. This was confirmed in Buenos Aires on May 17, when the British frigate HMS John Paris arrived in Montevideo; the most recent newspapers reported that members of the Supreme Central Junta had been dismissed .The Council of Regency of Cadiz was not seen as a successor of the Spanish resistance but as an attempt to restore absolutism in Spain. The Supreme Central Junta was seen as sympathetic to the new ideas. South American patriots feared both a complete French victory in the peninsula and an absolutist restoration. Cisneros monitored the British warships and seized their newspapers, to conceal the news, but a newspaper came into the hands of Belgrano and Castelli. They spread the news among other patriots and challenged the legitimacy of the Viceroy, who had been appointed by the fallen junta. When Cornelio Saavedra, head of the regiment of Patricians, was informed of this news, he decided that it was finally the ideal time to take action against Cisneros. Martín proposed to overthrow the Viceroy by force, but Castelli and Saavedra rejected this idea and proposed the convening of an open cabildo.
Friday, May 18 and Saturday, May 19
Although Viceroy Cisneros attempted to conceal the news of the Spanish defeat, the rumor had already spread throughout Buenos Aires. Most of the population was uneasy; there was high activity at the barracks and in the Plaza, and most shops were closed. The "Café de Catalanes" and the "Fonda de las Naciones", frequent criollo meeting places, became venues for political discussions and radical proclamations; Francisco José Planes shouted that Cisneros should be hanged in the Plaza as retribution for the execution of the leaders of the ill-fated La Paz revolution. People who sympathized with the absolutist government were harassed, but the fights were of little consequence because nobody was allowed to take muskets or swords out of the barracks. The Viceroy, trying to calm the criollos, gave his own version of events in a proclamation. He asked for allegiance to King Ferdinand VII, but popular unrest continued to intensify. He was aware of the news, but only said that the situation on the Iberian Peninsula was delicate; he did not confirm the fall of the Junta. His proposal was to make a government body that would rule on behalf of Ferdinand VII, together with Viceroy of Peru José Fernando de Abascal y Sousa, Governor of Potosí Francisco de Paula Sanz and President of the Royal Audiencia of Charcas Vicente Nieto. Not fooled by the Viceroy's communiqué, some criollos met at the houses of Nicolás Rodríguez Peña and Martín Rodríguez. During these secret meetings, they appointed a representative commission composed of Juan José Castelli and Martín Rodríguez to request that Cisneros convene an open cabildo to decide the future of the Viceroyalty. During the night of May 19 there were further discussions at Rodríguez Peña's house. Saavedra, called by Viamonte, joined the meeting, which involved military and civilian leaders. They arranged that Belgrano and Saavedra would meet with Juan José de Lezica, the senior alcalde (municipal magistrate), while Castelli would meet with the procurator Julián de Leiva, to ask for their support. They asked the Viceroy to allow an open cabildo, and said that if it was not freely granted the people and the criollo troops would march to the Plaza, force the Viceroy to resign by any means necessary, and replace him with a patriot government. Saavedra commented to Lezica that he was suspected of betrayal because of his constant requests for cautious and measured steps. This comment was designed to pressure Lezica into speeding up the legal system to allow the people to express themselves, or otherwise risk a major rebellion. Lezica asked for patience and time to persuade the Viceroy, and leave a massive demonstration as a last resort. He argued that if the Viceroy was deposed in that way, it would constitute a rebellion, which would turn the revolutionaries into outlaws. Manuel Belgrano gave the following Monday as the deadline to confirm the open cabildo before taking direct action. Leiva would later act as a mediator, being both a confidante of Cisneros and a trusted negotiator for the more moderate revolutionaries.

Sunday, May 20
Lezica informed Cisneros of the request for an open cabildo and the Viceroy consulted Leiva, who spoke in favor of it.The Viceroy summoned military commanders to come to the fort at 7 pm, to demand military support. There were rumors that it could be a trap to capture them and take control of the barracks. To prevent this, they took command of the grenadiers that guarded the Fort and seized the keys of all entrances while meeting with the Viceroy. Colonel Cornelio Saavedra, head of the Regiment of Patricios, responded on behalf of all the criollo regiments. He compared the current international situation with that prevailing at the time of the mutiny of Álzaga over a year earlier, pointed out that Spain was now almost entirely under Napoleonic control and that the undefeated Spanish provinces were very small in comparison with the Americas. He rejected the claim of sovereignty of Cadiz over the Americas, and concluded that the local armies wanted to look after themselves, rather than following the fate of Spain. Finally, he pointed out that the Supreme Central Junta that appointed Cisneros as Viceroy no longer existed, so he rejected Cisneros' legitimacy as Viceroy and denied him the protection of the troops under his command.
Castelli and Martín Rodríguez moved to the Fort for an interview with Cisneros. Juan Florencio Terrada, commander of the Infantry Grenadiers, joined them, because their barracks were located under Cisneros' window, and his presence would not allow the Viceroy to request military aid to take Castelli and Martín Rodríguez prisoners. The guards let them pass unannounced, and they found Cisneros playing cards with Brigadier Quintana, prosecutor Caspe and aide Coicolea. Castelli and Rodríguez demanded once again the convening of an open cabildo, and Cisneros reacted angrily, considering their request an outrage. Rodríguez interrupted him and forced him to give a definitive answer. After a short private discussion with Caspe, Cisneros reluctantly gave his consent. That night, many of the revolutionaries attended a theatre production on the theme of tyranny, called Rome Saved. The lead actor was Morante, playing Cicero. The police chief requested Morante to feign illness and not appear, so that the play could be replaced with Misanthropy and Repentance by the German novelist and playwright Kotzebue. Rumors of police censorship spread quickly; Morante ignored the request and performed the play as planned. In the fourth act, Morante made a patriotic speech, about the Gaul threat to Rome (the Gauls are ancestors of the French people) and the need for strong leadership to resist the danger. This scene lifted the revolutionaries' spirits and led to frenzied applause. Juan José Paso stood up and cried out for the freedom of Buenos Aires, and a small fight ensued. After the play, the revolutionaries returned to Peña's house. They learned the result of the meeting with Cisneros, but were unsure as to whether Cisneros intended to keep his word. They organized a demonstration for the following day to ensure that the open cabildo would be held as decided.
Monday, May 21
At 3 pm, the Cabildo began its routine work, but was interrupted by 600 armed men named the Infernal Legion, who occupied the Plaza de la Victoria and loudly demanded the convening of an open cabildo and the resignation of Viceroy Cisneros. They carried a portrait of Ferdinand VII and the lapels of their jackets bore a white ribbon that symbolized criollo–Spanish unity. Domingo French, the mail carrier of the city, and Antonio Beruti, an employee of the treasury, led the rioters. It was rumored that Cisneros had been killed, and that Saavedra would take control of the government. Saavedra was at the barracks at that moment, concerned about the demonstration. He thought the violence should be stopped and that radical measures such as the assassination of Cisneros should be prevented, but he also thought that the troops would mutiny if the demonstrations were suppressed. The people in the Plaza did not believe that Cisneros would allow the open cabildo the next day. Leiva left the Cabildo, and Belgrano, who was representing the crowd, requested a definitive commitment. Leiva explained that everything would go ahead as planned, but the Cabildo needed time to prepare. He asked Belgrano to help the Cabildo with the work, as his intervention would be seen by the crowd as a guarantee that their demands would not be ignored. The crowd left the main hall but stayed in the Plaza. Belgrano protested about the guest list, which consisted of the wealthiest citizens, and thought that if the poor people were left outside there would be further unrest. The members of the Cabildo tried to convince him to give his support, but he left.
Belgrano's departure enraged the crowd, as he did not explain what had happened, and the people feared a betrayal. Demands for Cisneros' immediate resignation replaced those for an open cabildo. The people finally settled down and dispersed when Saavedra intervened to say that the claims of the Infernal Legion were supported by the military. The invitations were distributed among 450 leading citizens and officials in the capital. The Cabildo compiled the guest list, and tried to guarantee the result, inviting people that would be likely to support the Viceroy. The revolutionaries countered this move with a similar one, so that most people would be against Cisneros instead. The printer Agustín Donado, supporting the revolutionaries, printed nearly 600 invitations instead of the 450 requested, and distributed the surplus among the criollos. During the night, Castelli, Rodríguez, French and Beruti visited all the barracks to harangue the troops and prepare them for the following day.

Tuesday, May 22
According to the minutes, only about 251 out of the 450 officially invited guests attended the open cabildo. French and Beruti, in command of 600 men armed with knives, shotguns and rifles, controlled access to the square to ensure that the open cabildo had a majority of criollos. All noteworthy religious and civilian people were present, as well as militia commanders and many prominent residents. The only notable absence was that of Martín de Álzaga, who was still under house arrest. A merchant, José Ignacio Rezábal, attended the open cabildo but, in a letter to the priest Julián S. de Agüero, said that he had some doubts which were shared by other people close to him. He feared that, no matter which party prevailed in the open cabildo, it would take revenge against the other, the Mutiny of Álzaga being a recent precedent. He felt that the open cabildo would lack legitimacy if too many criollos were allowed to take part in it as a result of the aforementioned manipulation of the guest list. The meeting lasted from morning to midnight, including the reading of the proclamation, the debate and the vote. There was no secret ballot; votes were heard one at a time and recorded in the minutes. The main themes of the debate were the legitimacy of the government and the authority of the Viceroy. The principle of retroversion of the sovereignty to the people stated that, in the absence of the legitimate monarch, power returned to the people; they were entitled to form a new government. This principle was commonplace in Spanish scholasticism and rationalist philosophy, but had never been applied in case law its validity divided the assembly into two main groups: one group rejected it and argued that the situation should remain unchanged; this group supported Cisneros as Viceroy. The other group supported change, and considered that they should establish a junta, like the ones established in Spain to replace the Viceroy. There was also a third position, taking the middle ground. The promoters of change did not recognize the authority of the Council of Regency, and argued that the colonies in America were not consulted in its formation. The debate tangentially discussed the rivalry between criollos and peninsulars; the Viceroy supporters felt that the will of peninsulars should prevail over that of criollos.
One of the speakers for the first position was the bishop of Buenos Aires, Benito Lue y Riega, leader of the local church, who said: Not only is there no reason to get rid of the Viceroy, but even if no part of Spain remained unsubdued, the Spaniards in America ought to take it back and resume command over it. America should only be ruled by the natives when there is no longer a Spaniard there. If even a single member of the Central Junta of Seville were to land on our shores, we should receive him as the Sovereign. Juan José Castelli was the main speaker for the revolutionaries. He based his speech on two key ideas: the government's lapsed legitimacy—he stated that the Supreme Central Junta was dissolved and had no rights to designate a Regency—and the principle of retroversion of sovereignty. He spoke after Riega, and replied that the American people should assume control of their government until Ferdinand VII could return to the throne. Nobody could call the whole nation a criminal, nor the individuals that have aired their political views. If the right of conquest belongs by right to the conquering country, it would be fair for Spain to quit resisting the French and submit to them, by the same principles for which it is expected that the Americans submit themselves to the peoples of Pontevedra. The reason and the rule must be equal for everybody. Here there are no conquerors or conquered; here there are only Spaniards. The Spaniards of Spain have lost their land. The Spaniards of America are trying to save theirs. Let the ones from Spain deal with themselves as they can; do not worry, we American Spaniards know what we want and where we go. So I suggest we vote: that we replace the Viceroy with a new authority that will be subject to the parent state if it is saved from the French, and independent if Spain is finally subjugated. Pascual Ruiz Huidobro stated that, since the authority that appointed Cisneros had expired, Cisneros should no longer have a place in the government. Huidobro felt that the Cabildo should be in government, as it was the representative of the people. Melchor Fernández, Juan León Ferragut and Joaquín Grigera supported his vote, among others. Attorney Manuel Genaro Villota, representative of the conservative Spanish, said that the city of Buenos Aires had no right to make unilateral decisions about the legitimacy of the Viceroy or the Council of Regency without the participation of other cities of the Viceroyalty. He argued that such an action would break the unity of the country and establish as many sovereignties as there were cities. His intention was to keep Cisneros in power by delaying any possible action. Juan José Paso accepted his first point, but argued that the situation in Europe and the possibility that Napoleon's forces could conquer the American colonies demanded an urgent resolution. He then expounded the "argument of the elder sister", reasoning that Buenos Aires should take the initiative and make the changes deemed necessary and appropriate, on the express condition that the other cities would be invited to comment as soon as possible. The rhetorical device of the "elder sister", comparable to gestio, makes an analogy between the relationship of Buenos Aires and other cities of the viceroyalty with a sibling relationship. The priest Juan Nepomuceno Solá then proposed that the Cabildo should receive the provisional command, until the formation of a governing junta made up of representatives from all populations of the Viceroyalty. Manuel Alberti, Miguel de Azcuénaga (who would be members of the Primera Junta some days later), Escalada and Argerich (or Aguirre) supported his vote, among others.
Cornelio Saavedra suggested that the Cabildo should receive the provisional command until the formation of a governing junta in the manner and form that the Cabildo would deem as appropriate. He said "...there shall be no doubt that it is the people that create authority or command." At the time of the vote, Castelli's position coincided with that of Saavedra. Manuel Belgrano stood near a window and, in the event of a problematic development, he would give a signal by waiving a white cloth, upon which the people gathered in the Plaza would force their way into the Cabildo. However, there were no problems and this emergency plan was not implemented. The historian Vicente Fidel López revealed that his father, Vicente López y Planes, who was present at the event, saw that Mariano Moreno was worried near the end in spite of the majority achieved.Moreno told Planes that the Cabildo was about to betray them.

Wednesday, May 23
The debate took all day, and the votes were counted very late that night. After the presentations, people voted for the continuation of the Viceroy, alone or at the head of a junta, or his dismissal. The ideas explained were divided into a small number of proposals, designated with the names of their main supporters, and the people then voted for one of those proposals. The voting lasted for a long time, and the result was to dismiss the Viceroy by a large majority: 155 votes to 69. Manuel José Reyes stated that he found no reason to depose the Viceroy, and that it would be enough to appoint a junta headed by Cisneros. His proposal had nearly 30 votes. Another 30 votes supported Cisneros, with no change to the political system. A small group supported the proposal of Martín José de Choteco, who also supported Cisneros. There were also many different proposals involving the removal of Cisneros. Many of them required the new authorities to be elected by the Cabildo. Pascual Ruiz Huidobro proposed that the Cabildo should rule in the interim and appoint a new government, but this proposal made no reference to popular sovereignty or the creation of a junta. This proposal received 35 votes, and sought simply to replace Cisneros with Huidobro: Huidobro was the most senior military officer, and thus the natural candidate under current laws to replace the viceroy in the lack of a new appointment from Spain. Juan Nepomuceno Solá proposed a junta composed of delegates from all the provinces of the viceroyalty, while the Cabildo should govern in the interim; this proposal received nearly 20 votes. Cornelio Saavedra, whose aforementioned proposal was that the Cabildo should appoint a Junta and rule in the interim, got the largest number of votes. A number of other proposals received only a few votes each. At dawn on May 23, the Cabildo informed the population that the Viceroy would end his mandate. The highest authority would be transferred temporarily to the Cabildo until the appointment of a governing junta. Notices were placed at various points throughout the city, which announced the imminent creation of a junta and the summoning of representatives from the provinces. The notices also called for the public to refrain from actions contrary to public policy.
Thursday, May 24
The Cabildo interpreted the decision of the open cabildo in its own way. When it formed the new Junta to govern until the arrival of representatives from other cities, Leiva arranged for former viceroy Cisneros to be appointed president of the Junta and commander of the armed forces. There are many interpretations of his motives for departing from the decision of the open cabildo in this way. Four other members were appointed to the Junta: criollos Cornelio Saavedra and Juan José Castelli, and peninsulars Juan Nepomuceno Solá and José Santos Inchaurregui. Leiva wrote a constitutional code to regulate the actions of the Junta. It stipulated that the Junta could not exercise judicial power, which was reserved for the Royal Audiencia of Buenos Aires; that Cisneros could not act without the support of the other members of the Junta; that the Cabildo could dismiss anyone who neglected his duty; that the Cabildo's consent would be required to create new taxes; that the Junta would sanction a general amnesty for those who had aired opinions at the open cabildo; and that the Junta would invite the other cities to send delegates. The commanders of the armed forces, including Saavedra and Pedro Andrés García, agreed to this code. The Junta swore the oath of office that afternoon. These developments shocked the revolutionaries. Unsure of what to do next, they feared that they would be punished, like the revolutionaries of Chuquisaca and La Paz. Moreno abjured relations with the others and shut himself in his home. There was a meeting at Rodríguez Peña's house. They felt that the Cabildo would not pursue such a plot without the blessing of Saavedra and that Castelli should resign from the Junta.Tagle took a different view: he thought that Saavedra may have accepted out of weakness or naivety and that Castelli should stay in the Junta to counter the others' influence on him. Meanwhile, a mob led by Domingo French and Antonio Beruti filled the Plaza. The stability of Cisneros in power, albeit in an office other than Viceroy, was seen as an insult to the will of the open cabildo. Colonel Martín Rodriguez warned that, if the army were to commit support to a government that kept Cisneros, they would soon have to fire on the people, and that they would revolt. He said that "everyone without exception" demanded the removal of Cisneros.
That night, Castelli and Saavedra informed Cisneros of their resignation from the newly formed Junta. They explained that the population was on the verge of violent revolution and would remove Cisneros by force if he did not resign as well. They warned that they did not have the power to stop that: neither Castelli to stop his friends, nor Saavedra to prevent the Regiment of Patricians from mutiny. Cisneros wanted to wait for the following day, but they said that there was no time for further delays, so he finally agreed to resign. He sent a resignation letter to the Cabildo for consideration on the following day.Chiclana felt encouraged when Saavedra resigned, and started to request signatures for a manifesto about the will of the people. Moreno refused any further involvement, but Castelli and Peña trusted that he would eventually join them if events unfolded as they expected.
Friday, May 25
On the morning of May 25, in spite of bad weather, a crowd gathered in the Plaza de la Victoria, as did the militia led by Domingo French and Antonio Beruti. They demanded the recall of the Junta elected the previous day, the final resignation of Cisneros, and the appointment of a new junta that did not include him. Historian Bartolomé Mitre stated that French and Beruti distributed blue and white ribbons, similar to the modern cockade of Argentina, among those present. Later historians doubt it, but consider it possible that the revolutionaries used distinctive marks of some kind for identification. It was rumored that the Cabildo might reject Cisneros' resignation. Because of delays in issuing an official resolution, the crowd became agitated, clamoring that "the people want to know what is going on!" The Cabildo met at 9 am and rejected Cisneros' resignation. They considered that the crowd had no legitimate right to influence something that the Cabildo had already decided and implemented. They considered that, as the Junta was in command, the demonstration should be suppressed by force, and made the members responsible for any changes to the resolution of the previous day. To enforce those orders, they summoned the chief commanders, but these did not obey. Many of them, including Saavedra, did not appear. Those that did stated that they could not support the government order, and that the commanders would be disobeyed if they ordered the troops to repress the demonstrators. The crowd's agitation increased, and they overran the chapter house. Leiva and Lezica requested that someone who could act as spokesman for the people should join them inside the hall and explain the people's desires. Beruti, Chiclana, French and Grela were allowed to pass. Leiva attempted to discourage the rioter Pancho Planes, but he entered the hall as well. The Cabildo argued that Buenos Aires had no right to break the political system of the viceroyalty without discussing it with the other provinces; French and Chiclana replied that the call for a Congress had already been considered. The Cabildo called the commanders to deliberate with them. As had happened several times in the last few days, Romero explained that the soldiers would mutiny if forced to fight against the rioters on behalf of Cisneros. The Cabildo still refused to give up, until the noise of the demonstration was heard in the hall. They feared that the demonstrators could overrun the building and reach them. Martín Rodríguez pointed out that the only way to calm the demonstrators was to accept Cisneros' resignation. Leiva agreed, convinced the other members, and the people returned to the Plaza. Rodríguez headed to Azcuenaga's house to meet the other revolutionaries to plan the final stages of the revolution. The demonstration overran the Cabildo again, and reached the hall of deliberations. Beruti spoke on behalf of the people, and said that the new Junta should be elected by the people and not by the Cabildo. He said that, besides the nearly 400 people already gathered, the barracks were full of people who supported them, and he threatened that they would take control, by force if necessary.The Cabildo replied by requesting their demands in writing.
After a long interval, a document containing 411 signatures was delivered to the Cabildo This paper proposed a new composition for the governing Junta, and a 500-man expedition to assist the provinces. The document—still preserved—listed most army commanders and many well-known residents, and contained many illegible signatures. French and Beruti signed the document, stating "for me and for six hundred more". However, there is no unanimous view among historians about the authorship of the document. Meanwhile, the weather improved and the sun broke through the clouds. The people in the plaza saw it as a favorable omen for the revolution. The Sun of May was created a few years later with reference to this event.
The Cabildo accepted the document and moved to the balcony to submit it directly to the people for ratification. But, because of the late hour and the weather, the number of people in the plaza had declined. Leiva ridiculed the claim of the remaining representatives to speak on behalf of the people. This wore the patience of the few who were still in the plaza in the rain. Beruti did not accept any further delays, and threatened to call people to arms. Facing the prospect of further violence, the popular request was read aloud and immediately ratified by those present.
The Primera Junta was finally established. It was composed by president Cornelio Saavedra, members Manuel Alberti, Miguel de Azcuénaga, Manuel Belgrano, Juan José Castelli, Domingo Matheu and Juan Larrea, and secretaries Juan José Paso and Mariano Moreno. The rules governing it were roughly the same as those issued the day before, with the additional provisions that the Cabildo would watch over the members of the Junta and that the Junta itself would appoint replacements in case of vacancies. Saavedra spoke to the crowd, and then moved on to the Fort, among salvos of artillery and the ringing of bells. Meanwhile, Cisneros dispatched a post rider to Córdoba, Argentina, to warn Santiago de Liniers about what had happened in Buenos Aires and to request military action against the Junta.[161]
Aftermath

Buenos Aires endured the whole Spanish American Wars of independence without being reconquered by royalist armies or successful royalist counter-revolutions. However, it faced several internal conflicts. The May Revolution lacked a clear leader as other regions of Latin America; the secretary Mariano Moreno led the initial phase of the government, but he was removed shortly afterwards.
The Council of Regency, the Royal Audiencia of Buenos Aires and the peninsulars opposed the new situation. The Royal Audiencia secretly swore allegiance to the Council of Regency a month later and sent communiqués to the other cities of the Viceroyalty, to request them to deny recognition to the new government. To put an end to these activities, the Junta assembled Cisneros and all the members of the Royal Audiencia on the pretext that their lives were in danger, and sent them into exile aboard the British ship Dart. Captain Mark Brigut Larrea was instructed to avoid American ports and deliver all of them directly to the Canary Islands. The Junta then appointed a new Audiencia composed entirely of criollos loyal to the revolution.
Every city in the territory of modern Argentina other than Córdoba endorsed the Primera Junta. The cities of the Upper Peru, however, did not take a position, owing to the recent outcomes of the Chuquisaca and La Paz Revolutions. Asunción Del Paraguay rejected the Junta and swore loyalty to the Council of Regency. The Banda Oriental, under Francisco Javier De Elío, remained a royalist stronghold.
Former Viceroy Santiago de Liniers organized a counter-revolution in Córdoba, and this became the first military campaign of the independent government. Despite the importance of Liniers himself, and his prestige as a popular hero for his role when the British invaded, the population of Córdoba preferred to support the revolution. This reduced the power of the counter-revolutionary army by means of desertions and sabotage. Liniers's troops were quickly defeated by the forces led by Francisco Ortiz de Ocampo. Ocampo refused to shoot the captive Liniers; hence the execution ordered by the Junta was carried out by Juan José Castelli. After the victory, the Primera Junta sent military expeditions to many other cities, to demand support and the election of representatives to it.[172]
Montevideo, which had a historical rivalry with Buenos Aires, opposed the Primera Junta and the Council of Regency declared it the new capital of the Viceroyalty, along with Francisco Javier de Elío as the new Viceroy.The city was well defended, so it could easily resist an invasion. Peripheral cities in the Banda Oriental acted contrary to Montevideo's will and supported the Buenos Aires Junta. José Gervasio Artigas led them, and kept Montevideo under siege. The final defeat of the Montevidean royalists was carried out by Carlos María de Alvear and William Brown.
The Captaincy General of Chile followed a process analogous to that of the May Revolution, and elected a Government Junta that inaugurated the brief period known as Patria Vieja. The Junta was defeated in 1814 at the Battle of Rancagua, and the subsequent Reconquista of Chile would make it a royalist stronghold once more. The Andes provided an effective natural barrier between the Argentine revolutionaries and Chile, so there was no military confrontation between them until the Crossing of the Andes, led by José de San Martín in 1817, a campaign that resulted in the defeat of the Chilean royalists.
The Primera Junta increased in size when it incorporated the representatives sent by the provinces. From then on, the Junta was renamed the Junta Grande. It was dissolved shortly after the June 1811 defeat of the Argentine troops at the Battle of Huaqui, and two successive triumvirates exercised executive power over the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.In 1814, the second triumvirate was replaced by the authority of the Supreme Director. Meanwhile, Martín Miguel de Güemes contained the royalist armies sent from the Viceroyalty of Peru at Salta, while San Martín advanced towards the royalist stronghold of Lima by sea, on a Chilean–Argentine campaign. The war for independence gradually shifted towards northern South America. From 1814, Argentina descended into civil war.
Consequences
One of the most important societal consequences of the May Revolution was the shift in the way the people and its rulers related. Until then, the conception of the common good prevailed: while royal authority was fully respected, if an instruction from the crown of Spain was considered detrimental to the common good of the local population, it was half-met or simply ignored. With the revolution, the concept of common good gave way to that of popular sovereignty, as theorized by Moreno, Castelli and Monteagudo, among others. This idea held that, in the absence of a legitimate authority, the people had the right to appoint their own leaders. Over time, popular sovereignty would give way to the idea of majority rule. This maturation of ideas was gradual, taking many decades to crystallize into stable electoral and political systems, but it was what ultimately led to the adoption of the republican system as the form of government for Argentina. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento stated similar views in his Facundo, and noted that cities were more receptive to republican ideas, while rural areas were more resistant to them, which led to the surge of caudillos.
Another consequence, also according to Luna, was the dissolution of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata into several different units. Most of the cities and provinces had distinctive populations, economies, attitudes, contexts, and interests. Until the revolution, all of these peoples were held together by the authority of the Spanish government, but with its disappearance, people from Montevideo, Paraguay and the Upper Peru began to distance themselves from Buenos Aires. The brief existence of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, which had lasted barely 38 years, impeded the consolidation of a patriotic feeling and failed to bring a sense of community to all of the population. The new country of Argentina lacked an established concept of national identity capable to unite the population under a common idea of statehood. Juan Bautista Alberdi sees the May Revolution as one of the early manifestations of the power struggles between the city of Buenos Aires and the provinces—one of the axial conflicts at play in the Argentine civil wars. Alberdi wrote in his book "Escritos póstumos":
The revolution of May 1810 in Buenos Aires, intended to win the independence of Argentina from Spain, also had the consequence of emancipating the province of Buenos Aires from Argentina or, rather, of imposing the authority of this province upon the whole nation emancipated from Spain. That day, Spanish power over the Argentine provinces ended and that of Buenos Aires was established.
 Revolutionary purposes
The government created on May 25 pronounced itself loyal to the deposed King of Spain Ferdinand VII, but historians disagree on whether this was sincere or not. Since Mitre, many historians think that this professed loyalty was merely a political deception to gain autonomy. The Primera Junta did not pledge allegiance to the Council of Regency, which was still in operation, and in 1810 it still seemed unlikely that Napoleon would be defeated and Ferdinand returned to the throne (which finally happened on December 11, 1813, with theTreaty of Valençay). The purpose of such a deception would have been to gain time to strengthen the position of the patriotic cause and avoid reactions that may have led to a counter-revolution, by making it appear that monarchical authority was still respected and that no revolution had taken place. The ruse is known as the "Mask of Ferdinand VII". It was upheld by the Primera Junta, the Junta Grande and the First Triumvirate. The Assembly of Year XIII was intended to declare independence, but failed to do so because of other political conflicts between its members. However, it suppressed mention of Ferdinand VII in official documents. Before the declaration of independence of 1816, the supreme directors considered other options, such as to negotiate with Spain or become a British protectorate.
The change was potentially favorable for Britain, as trade with the cities of the area was facilitated, without the monopoly that Spain had maintained over their colonies for centuries. However, Britain's first priority was the war against France in Europe, and they could not appear to support American independence movements or allow the military attention of Spain to be divided onto two different fronts. Consequently, they pushed to avoid explicit independence demonstrations. This pressure was exerted by Lord Strangford, the British ambassador at the court of Rio de Janeiro; he expressed support for the Junta, but under the condition that "...the behavior is consistent, and that [the] Capital [is] retained on behalf of Mr. Dn. Ferdinand VII and his legitimate successors".Later conflicts between Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Artigas led to internal conflicts on the British front, between Strangford and the Portuguese regent John VI of Portugal.
Juan Bautista Alberdi and later historians such as Norberto Galasso, Luis Romero and José Carlos Chiaramonte doubted Mitre's interpretation and put forward different ones. Alberdi thought that "the Argentine revolution is a chapter of the Hispano-American revolution, as also of the Spanish one, as also of the French and European one". They did not consider it a dispute between independentism and colonialism, but instead a dispute between new libertarian ideas and absolutism. The intention was not to cut ties with Spain, but to reformulate the relationship; similarly, the American Revolution was not separatist at its initial steps either. Thus, it would have the characteristics of a civil war instead. Some points that would justify the idea would be the inclusion of Larrea, Matheu, and Belgrano in the Junta and the later appearance of José de San Martín: Larrea and Matheu were Spanish, Belgrano studied for many years in Spain, and San Martín had spent most of his adult life waging war in Spain against the French. When San Martín talked about enemies, he called them "royalists" or "Goths", but never "Spanish".
According to those historians, the Spanish revolution against absolutism got mixed up with the Peninsular War. When Ferdinand VII stood against his father Charles IV, who was seen as an absolutist king, many Spaniards got the mistaken impression that he sympathized with the new enlightened ideas. Thus, the revolutions made in the Americas in the name of Ferdinand VII (such as the May Revolution, the Chuquisaca Revolution, or the one in Chile) would have sought to replace absolutist power with power formulated under the new ideas. Even if Spain was at war with France, the ideals of the French Revolution (liberty, equality and fraternity) were still respected. Those revolutions pronounced themselves enemies of Napoleon, but did not face any active French military attack; they promoted instead fights between Spanish armies for keeping either the old or new order. This situation would change with the final defeat of Napoleon and the return of Ferdinand VII to the throne, as he began the Absolutist Restoration and persecuted the supporters of the new libertarian ideas within Spain. For people in South America, to stay as a part of the Spanish Empire, but with a new relationship with the mother country, was no longer a feasible option: the only remaining options at this point were to return to absolutism or to adopt independentism.

•	Argentine War of Independence
The Argentine War of Independence was fought from 1810 to 1818 by Argentine patriotic forces under Manuel Belgrano, Juan José Castelli and José de San Martín against royalist forces loyal to the Spanish crown. On July 9, 1816, an assembly met in San Miguel de Tucumán, declared full independence with provisions for a national constitution.
Background
The territory of modern Argentina was part of the Spanish Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, with the same capital city in Buenos Aires, seat of government of the Spanish viceroy. Modern Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia were part of it as well, and began their push for autonomy during the conflict, becoming independent countries afterwards. The vast area of the territory and slow communications led most populated areas to become isolated from each other. The wealthiest regions of the viceroyalty were in Upper Peru, (modern-day Bolivia). Salta and Córdoba had closer ties with Upper Peru than with Buenos Aires. Similarly, Mendoza in the west had closer ties with the Captaincy General of Chile, although the Andes mountain range was a natural barrier. Buenos Aires and Montevideo who had a local rivalry, located in the La Plata Basin, had naval communications allowing them to be more in contact with European ideas and economic advances than the inland populations. Also, Paraguay was isolated from all other regions.
In the political structure most authoritative positions were filled by people designated by the Spanish monarchy, most of them Spanish people from Europe, without strong compromises for American problems or interests. This created a growing rivalry between the Criollos, people born in America, and the peninsulares, people arrived from Europe (the term "Criollo" is usually translated to English as "Creole", despite being unrelated to most other Creole peoples). Despite the fact that all of them were considered Spanish, and that there was no legal distinction between Criollos and Peninsulares, most Criollos thought that Peninsulares had undue weight in political conflicts and expected a higher intervention in them. The ideas of the American and French Revolutions, and the Age of Enlightenment, promoted desires of social change within the criollos. The full prohibition imposed by Spain to trade with other nations was seen, as well as a cause of damage to the viceroyalty's economy.
The population of Buenos Aires was highly militarized during the British invasions of the Río de la Plata, part of the Anglo-Spanish War. Buenos Aires was captured in 1806, and then liberated by Santiago de Liniers with forces from Montevideo. Fearing a counter-attack, all the population of Buenos Aires capable to bear arms was arranged in military bodies, including slaves. A new British attack in 1807 captured Montevideo, but was defeated in Buenos Aires, and forced to leave the viceroyalty. The viceroy Rafael de Sobremonte was successfully deposed by the criollos during the conflict, and the Regiment of Patricians became a highly influential force in local politics, even after the end of the British threat.
The transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil generated military concern. It was feared that the British would launch a third attack, this time allied with Portugal. However, no military conflict took place, as when the Peninsular War started Britain and Portugal became allies of Spain against France. When the Spanish king Ferdinand VII was captured, his sister Carlota Joaquina sought to rule in the Americas as regent, but nothing came out of it because of the lack of support from both the Spanish Americans and the British.Javier de Elío created a Junta in Montevideo and Martín de Álzaga sought to make a similar move organizing a mutiny in Buenos Aires, but the local military forces intervened and thwarted it. Spain appointed a new viceroy, Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros, and Liniers handed the government to him without resistance, despite the proposals of the military to reject him.
The Revolution
The military conflict in Spain worsened by 1810. The city of Seville had been invaded by French armies, which were already dominating most of the Iberian Peninsula. The Junta of Seville was disestablished, and several members fled to Cádiz, the last portion of Spain still resisting. They established a Council of Regency, with political tendencies closer to absolutism than the former Junta. This began the May Revolution in Buenos Aires, as soon as the news were known. Several citizens thought that Cisneros, appointed by the disestablished Junta, did not have the right to rule anymore, and requested the convening of an open cabildo to discuss the fate of the local government. The military gave their support to the request, forcing Cisneros to accept. The discussion ruled the removal of viceroy Cisneros and his replacement with a government junta, but the cabildo attempted to keep Cisneros in power by appointing him president of such junta. Further demonstrations ensued, and the Junta was forced to resign immediately. It was replaced by a new one, the Primera Junta.
Buenos Aires requested the other cities in the viceroyalty to acknowledge the new Junta and send deputies. The precise purpose of these deputies, join the Junta or create a congress, was unclear at the time and generated political disputes later. The Junta was initially resisted by all the main locations around Buenos Aires: Córdoba, Montevideo, Paraguay and the Upper Peru. Santiago de Liniers came out of his retirement in Córdoba and organized an army to capture Buenos Aires, Montevideo had naval supremacy over the city, and Vicente Nieto organized the actions at the Upper Peru. Nieto proposed to José Fernando de Abascal y Sousa, viceroy of the Viceroyalty of Peru at the North, to annex the Upper Peru to it. He thought that the revolution could be easily contained in Buenos Aires, before launching a definitive attack.
Buenos Aires was declared a rogue city by the Council of Regency, which appointed Montevideo as capital of the viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, and Francisco Javier de Elíothe new viceroy. However, the May Revolution   was not initially separatist. Patriots supported the legitimacy of the Juntas in the Americas, whether royalists supported instead the Council of Regency; both ones acted on behalf of Ferdinand VII. All of them believed that, according to the retroversion of the sovereignty to the people, in the absence of the rightful king sovereignty returned to the people, which would be capable to appoint their own leaders. They did not agree on who was that people, and which territorial extension had the sovereignty. Royalists thought that it applied to the people on European Spain, who had the right to rule over all the Spanish empire. The leaders of the May Revolution thought that it applied to all the capitals of Spanish kingdoms. José Gervasio Artigas would lead later a third perspective: the retroversion applied to all regions, which should remain united under a confederative system. The three groups battled each other’s, but the disputes about the national organization of Argentina (either centralist or confederal) continued in Argentine Civil War, for many years after the end of the war of independence.

Armed conflict
The Primera Junta sent military campaigns to the viceroyalty, in order to secure support to the new authorities and retain the authority held as the capital of the viceroyalty. The victories and defeats of the military conflict delimited the areas of influence of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, the new name given by Buenos Aires to the former viceroyalty. With the non-aggression pact arranged with Paraguay early on, most of the initial conflict took place in the north, in Upper Peru, and in the east, in the Banda Oriental. In the second half of the decade, with the capture of Montevideo and the stalemate in Upper Peru, the conflict moved to the west, to Chile.
First Upper Peru campaign
One of the first two military campaigns sent from Buenos Aires moved to Córdoba. Santiago de Liniers organized a counter-revolution, but there was no battle: all the army deserted before it. Liniers attempted to move to the north and join Nieto and Goyeneche, but Francisco Ortiz de Ocampo captured him and the other leaders of the counter-revolution. Instead of executing them as instructed, he sent them to Buenos Aires as prisoners. He was demoted as a result, and Juan José Castelli appointed head of the military campaign instead. Castelli executed the prisoners, and the army headed then to the Upper Peru. Antonio González Balcarce moved ahead, and was defeated at the battle of Cotagaita. Castelli sent him reinforcements, and got the first victory at the battle of Suipacha, which gave control of the Upper Peru. The royalist generals Vicente Nieto, Francisco de Paula Sanz and José de Córdoba y Rojas were captured and executed.
Castelli proposed to the Junta to cross the Desaguadero River and expand the military conflict to the Viceroyalty of Peru, but his proposal was rejected. His army and Goyeneche's stationed near the frontier, while negotiating. Goyeneche advanced and defeated Castelli at the Battle of Huaqui, whose forces dispersed and left the provinces. The resistance of Cochabamba kept the royalists at the Upper Peru, preventing them from advancing to Buenos Aires. Castelli returned to the city and died of cancer during a lengthy trial of his actions. Other trialed officers would be pardoned later.
Paraguay campaign
Paraguay campaign (1810–1811): Another militia, commanded by Manuel Belgrano, made its way up the Paraná towards the Intendancy of Paraguay. A first battle was fought at Campichuelo, where the Argentines claimed victory. However, they were completely overwhelmed at the subsequent battles of Paraguarí and Tacuarí. Thus, this campaign ended in failure as well from a military point of view; however, some months later, inspired on the Argentine example, Paraguay broke its links with the Spanish crown and became an independent nation.
Violent internal disagreements and the undesired outcomes of these campaigns, led to the replacement of the Junta for a triumvirate in September 1811. The new government decided to promote another campaign to the Upper Peru with a reorganized Army of the North.
Second Upper Peru campaign
Second Alto Perú campaign (1812–1813): Facing the overwhelming invasion of a royalist army led by General Pío de Tristán , Manuel Belgrano, then commander of the Northern Army, turned to scorched-earth tactics. He ordered the evacuation of the people and the burning of anything else left behind, to prevent enemy forces from getting supplies or taking prisoners from the city of San Salvador de Jujuy. This action is commonly known as the Jujuy Exodus.
General Belgrano led the Northern Army to victory in the Battles of Tucumán and Salta, in the northwest of present-day Argentina, forcing the bulk of the royalist army to surrender their weapons. Tristán (a former fellow student with Belgrano at Salamanca University) and his men were granted amnesty and released. The cities of Tucumán and Salta have remained under the Argentine government ever since. But, then again the patriot army was defeated into the Upper Peru at the battles of Vilcapugio and Ayohuma.
Campaigns of José de San Martín
Meanwhile, the Triumvirate named a recently arrived from Spain José de San Martín Lieutenant Colonel, and ordered him to create the professional and disciplined cavalry unit Regiment of Mounted Grenadiers (Spanish: Granaderos a caballo). By late 1812, this same division helped a revolution that deposed the government and promoted the creation of a new Trimuvirate
On January 31, 1813, a Spanish army company coming from Montevideo landed near the town of San Lorenzo, Santa Fe Province. The Second Triumvirate urged San Martín to stop further raids on the west bank of the Parana River. The Granaderos division met the Spanish on a field near the town's convent and made it an easy victory on February 3. After the Battle of San Lorenzo, the Triumvirate awarded San Martín the rank of General.
Fearing a major Spanish attack, a general assembly known as Asamblea Del Año XIII was summoned in Buenos Aires on February 27, 1813, to discuss future military campaigns and with provisions for a Constitution. It was decided there to dissolve the Triumvirate and to create a new unipersonal office for an effective executive action. The assembly elected Gervasio Antonio de Posadas as the first Supreme Director on January 31, 1814. Posadas decided to create a naval fleet with the funding of Juan Larrea, and appointed William Brown as Lieutenant Colonel and Chief Commander of it, on March 1, 1814. This tiny fleet engaged in combat with the Spanish ships off the Montevideo coast, this action known as the Action of 14 May 1814, and defeated the Spanish three days later. This action secured the coasts of Buenos Aires and allowed the subsequent fall of Montevideo, executed by Carlos María de Alvear. All of this meant the end of the royalist menace from the Eastern Bank of the Uruguay River.
William Brown was awarded the rank of Admiral and Carlos María de Alvear succeeded his uncle Posadas as the Supreme Director, on January 11, 1815. However, he was resisted by the troops, so he was quickly replaced, on April 21, by Ignacio Álvarez Thomas. Álvarez Thomas appointed Alvear as General of the Northern Army, in replacement of José Rondeau, but the officiality would not recognize this and instead remained loyal to Rondeau.
•	Third Alto Perú campaign (1815): The Northern Army, unofficially commanded by José Rondeau, started another campaign, but this time without the formal authorization of Supreme Director Álvarez Thomas. Lacking official support, the army was faced with anarchy. Moreover, soon after it would lose as well the aid of the Provincial Army of Salta, commanded by Martín Miguel de Güemes. After the defeats of Venta y Media (October 21) and Sipe-Sipe (November 28), the northern territories of the Upper Peru were definitively lost. They were then reannexed by the Viceroyalty of Peru, and it later would became the modern nation of Bolivia. This unsuccessful outcome to the campaign would spread rumors in Europe that the May Revolution was over. However, the Spanish Army could not advance further south as they were successfully stopped at Salta by the Güemes guerrillas from this moment on.
By 1815, King Ferdinand VII was restored in his throne, so an urgent decision was needed regarding independence. On July 9, 1816, an assembly of representatives from all of the Provinces (except for Santa Fe, Entre Ríos,Corrientes and the Eastern Province, which formed a Federal League) met at the Congress of Tucumán, and declared the Independence of Argentina from the Spanish Crown with provisions for a national Constitution. Santa Fe, Entre Ríos and Corrientes later joined the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.
The following year, San Martín took command of the Northern Army, to prepare a new invasion of the Upper Peru. However, he quickly resigned as he foresaw yet another defeat. Instead, he developed a new strategy to attack the Viceroyalty of Perú through the Captaincy of Chile, inspired on the writings of Sir Thomas Maitland, who was quoted as saying that the only way to defeat the Spanish at Quito and Lima was attacking Chile first. San Martín asked to become Governor of the Province of Cuyo, where he prepared the Chilean campaign. From here on, the Argentine War of Independence gets mixed with the Chilean War of Independence, as patriots from both countries joined their forces.
Chile campaign (1817): Installed in the city of Mendoza, San Martín reorganized the Granaderos cavalry unit along with the Army of Cuyo and crossed the Andes Mountains to attack the Royalists in Chile at the beginning of 1817 in the Battle of Chacabuco. With the aid of Chilean patriot Bernardo O'Higgins he made a triumphant entry in the liberated city of Santiago de Chile. Argentine and Chilean armies merged in the unofficial South American Patriot Army and continued the campaign together against the Spanish division commanded by Osorio. However, their forces were surprised and very badly beaten at the Battle of Cancha Rayada on March 18, 1818. In the confusion, a false rumor spread that O'Higgins had died, and a panic seized the patriot troops, many of whom agitated for a full retreat back across the Andes to Mendoza. Crippled after his defeat at Cancha Rayada, O'Higgins delegated the command of the troops entirely to San Martín in a meeting on the plains of Maipú. Then, on April 5, 1818, San Martín inflicted a decisive defeat on Osorio in the Battle of Maipú, after which the depleted royalists retreated to Concepcion, never again to launch a major offensive against Santiago.
This is considered to be the conclusion of the Argentine War of Independence, but battles continued by land and sea into Peru until 1824, when the last decisive battle was fought in Ayacucho. These events were part of San Martín's own campaigning with O'Higgins and Simón Bolívar, and Buenos Aires no longer recognized his authority.
The meeting of Guayaquil
On 26 July 1822, San Martín met with Simón Bolívar at Guayaquil to plan the future of Latin America. Most of the details of this meeting are secret, and this has made the event a matter of much debate among historians. Some believe that Bolívar's refusal to share command of the combined forces made San Martín withdraw from Perú and resettle as a farmer in Mendoza, Argentina. Another theory claims that San Martín yielded to Bolívar's charisma and avoided a confrontation. It is widely believed that both men were members of Masonic societies, and the outcome of the meeting might have been arranged by hidden players, however this has been denied by the Great Masonic Lodges.

Argentine Civil Wars
The Argentine Civil Wars were a series of internecine wars that took place in Argentina from 1814 to 1880. These conflicts were separate from the Argentine War of Independence (1810–1820), though they first arose during this period. During this time Argentina was a failed state.
The main antagonists were, on a geographical level, Buenos Aires Province and the other provinces of modern Argentina, and on a political level, between the Party and the Unitarian Party. The central cause of the conflict was the excessive centralism advanced by Buenos Aires leaders and, for a long period, the monopoly on the use of the Port as the sole means for international commerce. Other participants at specific times included Uruguay, and the British and French empires, notably in the French blockade of the Río de la Plata of 1838 and in the Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata that ended in 1850.
Early conflicts against centralized rule
Regionalism had long marked the relationship among the numerous provinces of what today is Argentina, and the wars of independence did not result in national unity. The establishment of the League of the Free Peoples by the Eastern Bank of the Uruguay River and four neighboring provinces in 1814 marked the first formal rupture in the United Provinces of South America that had been created by the 1810 May Revolution.
The Battle of Cepeda (1820) thwarted the goal of Buenos Aires leaders to govern the country under the Argentine Constitution of 1819, and following a series of disorders and a short-lived Constitutional Republic led by Buenos Aires centralist Bernardino Rivadavia in 1826 and 1827, the United Provinces established in 1810 again became divided, and the Province of Buenos Aires would emerge as the most powerful among the numerous semi-independent states.
Rosas and the Unitarians
An understanding was entered into by Buenos Aires Governor Juan Manuel de Rosas and other Federalist leaders out of need and a shared enmity toward the still vigorous Unitarian Party, who advocated differing forms of centralized government. The latter's 1830 establishment of the Unitarian League by Córdoba leader José María Paz from nine western and northern provinces thus forced Buenos Aires, Corrientes and Entre Ríos Provinces into the Federal Pact of 1831, following which the Unitarian League   was dismantled. The Buenos Aires leader deposed by Rosas in 1829, General Juan Lavalle, also led a series of rebellions with different alliances against Rosas and the Federal Pact   until Lavalle's defeat and assassination in 1841.
Since the fall of Rivadavia and the lack of a proper head of state there was a dynamic whereby leaders (caudillos) from the hinterland provinces would delegate certain powers, such as foreign debt   payment or the management of international relations to the Buenos Aires leader. In addition, Rosas was granted the sum of public power. These powers also enabled Rosas to participate in the protracted Uruguayan Civil War in favor of Manuel Oribe, though unsuccessfully; Oribe, in turn, led numerous military campaigns on behalf of Rosas, and became an invaluable ally in the struggle against Lavalle and other Unitarians. The Argentine Confederation thus functioned, albeit amid ongoing conflicts, until the 1852 Battle of Caseros, when Rosas was deposed and exiled.
Urquiza and the secession of Buenos Aires
The central figure in the overthrow of Rosas, Entre Ríos Governor Justo José de Urquiza, failed   to secure Buenos Aires' ratification of the 1852 San Nicolás Agreement, and the State of Buenos Aireswas declared. The secessionist state rejected the 1853 Constitution of Argentina, and promulgated its own the following year. The most contentious issue remained the Buenos Aires Customs, which remained under the control of the city government and was the chief source of public revenue. Nations with which the Confederation maintained foreign relations, moreover, kept all embassies inBuenos Aires (rather than in the capital, Paraná)...
The State of Buenos Aires was also bolstered by its numerous alliances in the hinterland, including that of Santiago del Estero Province (led by Manuel Taboada), as well as among powerful Liberal Party governors in Salta, Corrientes, Tucumán and San Juan. The 1858 assassination of San Juan's Federalist governor, Nazario Benavídez, by Liberals inflamed tensions between the Confederation and the State of Buenos Aires, as did a free trade agreement between the chief Confederate port (the Port of Rosario) and the Port of Montevideo, which undermined Buenos Aires trade. The election of the intransigent Valentín Alsina further exacerbated disputes, which culminated in the Battle of Cepeda (1859).
Buenos Aires forces, led by General Bartolomé Mitre, were defeated by those led by the President of Argentina, Justo José de Urquiza. Ordered to subjugate Buenos Aires separatists by force, Urquiza instead invited the defeated to a round of negotiations, and secured the Pact of San José de Flores, which provided for a number of constitutional amendments and led to other concessions, including an extension on the province's customs house concession and measures benefiting the Bank of the Province of Buenos Aires, whose currency was authorized for use as legal tender at the customs house (thereby controlling much of the nation's foreign trade
Mitre ultimately abrogated the Pact of San José, leading to renewed civil war. These hostilities culminated in the 1861 Battle of Pavón, and to victory on the part of Mitre and Buenos Aires over Urquiza's national forces. President Santiago Derqui, who had been backed by Urquiza, resigned on November 4, 1861. Mitre, who despite victory reaffirmed his commitment to the 1860 constitutional amendments, was elected the republic's first president in 1862.
National unification
President Mitre instituted an limited suffrage electoral system known as the voto cantado ("intoned vote"), which depended on a pliant electoral college and would be conditioned to prevent the election of secessionists to high office through electoral fraud, if necessary. The 1874 election of Catamarca Province Nicolás Avellaneda, who had been endorsed by an erstwhile Buenos Aires separatist,Adolfo Alsina, led to renewed fighting when Mitre mutineed a gunboat to prevent the inaugural. He was defeated, however, and only President Avellaneda's commutation spared his life.
Vestigial opposition to the new order continued from Federalists, notably La Rioja leader Chacho Peñaloza, who was killed in 1863 following a long campaign of internecine warfare, and Entre Ríos leader Ricardo López Jordán, whose Jordanist rebellion of 1870 to 1876 marked the last Federalist revolt. The 1880 election of the leader of Conquest of the Desert, General Julio Roca, led to a final armed insurrection by Buenos Aires Governor Carlos Tejedor. Its quick defeat and a truce brokered by Mitre quieted the last source of open resistance to national unity (Buenos Aires autonomists), and resulted in the Federalization of Buenos Aires, as well as the hegemony of Roca's PAN and pro-modernization Generation of '80 policy makers over national politics until 1916.

•	Rise of the Modern Nation
Overpowering Urquiza in the 1861 Battle of Pavón, Bartolomé Mitre secured Buenos Aires predominance and was elected as the first president of the reunified country. He was followed by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Nicolás Avellaneda; these three presidencies set up the bases of the modern Argentine State. Starting with Julio Argentino Roca in 1880, ten consecutive federal governments emphasized liberal economic policies. The massive wave of European immigration they promoted—second only to the United States'—led to a near-reinvention of Argentine society and economy that by 1908 had placed the country as the seventh wealthiest developed nation in the world.
Driven by this immigration wave and decreasing mortality, the Argentine population grew fivefold and the economy 15-fold: from 1870 to 1910 Argentina's wheat exports went from per year, while frozen beef exports increased from per year, placing Argentina as one of the world's top five exporters. Its railway mileage rose from. Fostered by a new public, compulsory, free and secular education system, literacy skyrocketed from 22% to 65%, a level higher than most Latin American nations would reach even fifty years later. Furthermore, real GDP grew so fast that despite the huge immigration flux, per capita income between 1862 to 1920 went from 67% of developed country levels to 100%: By 1865 Argentina was already one of the top 25 nations by per capita income. By 1901 it had raised to the 10th place ahead of Germany, Austria and France.
By 1908 it had surpassed Denmark, Canada and The Netherlands to reach the 7th place behind Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, United States, Great Britain and Belgium. Argentina's per capita income was 70% higher than Italy's, 90% higher than Spain's, 180% higher than Japan's and 400% higher than Brazil’s. Despite these unique achievements, the country was slow to meet its original goals of industrialization: after steep development of capital-intensive local industries in the 1920s, a significant part of the manufacture sector remained labor-intensive in the 1930s.
In 1912, president Roque Sáenz Peña enacted universal and secret male suffrage, which allowed Hipólito Yrigoyen, leader of the Radical Civic Union, to win the 1916 election. He enacted social and economic reforms and extended assistance to family farmers and small businesses. Argentina stayed neutral during World War I. The second administration of Yrigoyen faced an economic crisis, influenced by the Great Depression.
Generation of '80
The Generation of '80 (Spanish: Generación del '80) was the governing elite in Argentina from 1880 to 1916. Members of the oligarchy of the provinces and the country's capital, they first joined the League of Governors (Liga de Gobernadores), and then the National Autonomist Party. They filled the highest public political, economic, military and religious positions, staying in power through electoral fraud.
In spite of the growing opposition politically centred around the Radical Civic Union (Unión Cívica Radical, UCR), and anarchist and socialist groups workers formed mainly by immigrantworkers, the Generation of '80 managed to stay at the government until the sanction of the Sáenz Peña Law of secret, universal, and obligatory male suffrage.

Economic liberalism and social conservatism
The project of the Generation of '80 consisted of keeping the country free of any kind of unrest, with harsh responses towards any kind of revolts, to maintain a stability that would attract foreign investment, while centering the economy of the country in the production of primary food products to support the import of the needed manufactured goods.
On the social level, the concept of progress was linked to the creation of public, free and compulsory primary education, and the incentive of European immigration.
The fall
The art from this period featured the social issues of the Generation of '80. From left to right: Without bread and without work (1894) by Ernesto de la Cárcova and The soup of the poor (1884) by Reinaldo Giudici.
The positive international balance of trade of the country was not re-invested in modernization and industrialization of the basic production of the country, but expended by the richest groups with luxury items and imposing constructions
The European Immigration  brought not only educated people (in comparison with the uneducated gauchos and Native Americans, as seen by Domingo Sarmiento), but also several political ideologies that were rising in Europe: socialism and anarchism, which clashed with the liberal position of the governing elite.
During the second presidency of Julio A. Roca, Law 4144 or Law of Argentine Residence was sanctioned, which allowed the immediate expulsion of any activists opposing the national government. Juárez Celman had to resign after the Revolución Del Parque (English: Revolution of the Park, because it started with the capture of the Buenos Aires Artillery Park). In 1905 the UCR coordinated an armed rebellion between several provinces.Even though there were a few mild changes towards the conciliation with the workers, such as the creation of the National Work Department in 1907, such enterprises were merely decorative.In 1910, as celebration of the centenary of the National Independence approached, the Law of Social Defense was sanctioned, which allowed arrests for the prevention of revolts.
But the increasing number of workers' strikes and press criticism forced the sanction of the Sáenz Peña Law in 1912. In the following elections of 1916, the first ones open to every male Argentine citizen, radical candidate Hipólito Yrigoyen was elected president.

•	The Infamous Decade
Short Background of this section: In 1930 Yrigoyen was ousted from power by the military led by José Félix Uriburu. Although Argentina remained among the fifteen richest countries until mid-century, this coup d'état marks the start of the steady economic and social decline that pushed the country back which halted prosecutions further down the chain of command. The worsening economic crisis and hyperinflation reduced his popular support and the Peronist Carlos Menem won the 1989 election. Soon after, riots forced Alfonsín to an early resignation.
Menem embraced neoliberal policies: a fixed exchange rate, business deregulation, privatizations and dismantling of protectionist barriers normalized the economy for a while. He pardoned the officers who had been sentenced during Alfonsín's government. The 1994 Constitutional Amendment allowed Menem to be elected for a second term. The economy began to decline in 1995, with increasing unemployment and recession; led by Fernando de la Rúa, the UCR returned to the presidency in the 1999 elections.
De la Rúa kept Menem's economic plan despite the worsening crisis, which led to growing social discontent. A massive capital flight was responded to with a freezing of bank accounts, generating further turmoil. The December 2001 riots forced him to resign. Congress appointed Eduardo Duhalde as acting president, who abrogated the fixed exchange rate established by Menem. By the late 2002 the economic crisis began to recess, but the assassination of two piqueteros by the police caused political commotion, prompting Duhalde to move elections forward. Néstor Kirchner was elected as the new president.
Boosting the neo-keynesian economic policies laid by Duhalde, Kirchner ended the economic crisis attaining significant fiscal and trade surpluses, and steep GDP growth. Under his administration Argentina restructured its defaulted debt with an unprecedented discount of about 70% on most bonds, paid off debts with the International Monetary Fund, purged the military of officers with doubtful human rights records, nullified and voided the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws, ruled them as unconstitutional, and resumed legal prosecution of the Juntas' crimes. He did not run for reelection, promoting instead the candidacy of his wife, Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was elected in 2007 and reelected in 2011.
Infamous Decade
The Infamous Decade (in Spanish, Década Infame) in Argentina is the name given to the period of time that began in 1930 with the coup d'état against President Hipólito Yrigoyen by José Félix Uriburu and resulted in the rising to power of Juan Domingo Perón after the Military coup of 1943. This decade was marked by significant rural exodus, many small rural landowners being ruined by the Great Depression, which in turn pushed the country towards import substitution industrialization. The poor economic results of the policy and popular discontent led to another coup in 1943, the "Revolution of '43", by the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos (GOU), the nationalist faction of the Armed Forces, against acting president Ramón Castillo, putting an end to the Infamous Decade.
This period was characterized by electoral fraud, persecution of the political opposition (mainly against the UCR) and generalized government corruption, against the background of the Great Depression. The impact of the economic crisis forced many farmers and other countryside workers to relocate to the outskirts of the larger cities, resulting in the creation of the first villas miseria (shanty towns). Thus, the population of Buenos Aires jumped from 1.5 million inhabitants in 1914 to 3.5 million in 1935.[1] Lacking in political experience, in contrast with the European immigrants who brought with them socialist and anarchist ideas, these new city-dwellers would provide the social base, in the next decade, for Peronism.
Political and economic scandals
The democratic liberal senator Lisandro de la Torre (founder in 1914 of the Democratic Progressive Party) denounced various scandals, directing an investigation on the meat trade starting in 1935. In the midst of the investigation, de la Torre's disciple, senator-elect Enzo Bordabehere, was murdered by Ramón Valdez Cora on the Senate floor, and the province of Santa Fe was intervened. The murder was depicted by Juan José Jusid's 1984 film, Asesinato en el Senado de la Nación.
CHADE (Companía Hispano Argentina de Electricidad, an offshoot of the Sofina multinational conglomerate) was also at the heart of an important political and financial scandal. The CHADE scandal, symbol of the Infamous Decade, led to investigations following the Revolution of 1943 which deposed Ramón Castillo's government in a military coup, and to the subsequent Rodríguez Conde report on concessions given to the electrical companies.
The Argentine Sacco & Vanzetti show trial
In 1931, a year after the execution of the Italian anarchist Severino Di Giovanni and his comrade Paulino Scarfó, who had implemented a propaganda of the deed campaign aimed both at international support of the Sacco and Vanzetti case and at attacking Fascist Italy's interests in Argentina, three anarchists were given a life sentence, during a show trial in which they were tortured, on the charges of having assassinated family members of the conservative politician José M. Blanch. Known as the "prisoners of Bragado" (presos de Bragado), the case raised international public indignation. Anarchists, who had created a solidarity network with comrades expelled under the 1902 Law on Residency which legalized the expulsion of immigrants who "compromise national security or disturb public order", were considered as public enemies by Uriburu's dictatorship. Prior to their execution, three anarchist bombs had detonated at three strategic places on the Buenos Aires   railway network on 20 January 1931, killing three and wounding 17.
In 1942, Minister Solano Lima signed a release of the prisoners, whose names were cleared by a 1993 law upheld by Socialist deputy Guillermo Estévez Boero. In 2003, a law granted a pension to the daughter of one of the anarchist victim of this show trial.[2]
Justo's presidency (1932–1938)
In 1933, Arturo Jauretche took part in a failed uprising, led by Colonels Francisco Bosch and Gregorio Pomar in Paso de los Libres, in the province of Corrientes, and was subsequently detained.

The Roca-Runciman Treaty
It was during Justo's term that Argentina signed the Roca-Runciman Treaty with the United Kingdom, which assured the UK a provision of fresh meat in exchange for important investments in the field of transportation in Argentina, given certain economic concessions from Argentina, such as giving control over the public transport in Buenos Aires to a British company, the Corporación de Transportes.
At the 1932 Ottawa Conference, the British had adopted measures that favored imports from its own colonies and dominions. The pressure from the Argentine landowners for whom the government restored trade with the main buyer of Argentine grain and meat had been very strong. Led by the president of the British Trade Council, Viscount Walter Runciman, they were intense and resulted in the signing on April 27 of the Roca-Runciman Treaty.
The treaty created a scandal, because the UK allotted Argentina a quota less than any of its dominions. 390,000 tons of meat per year were allotted to Argentina in exchange for many concessions to British companies. 85% of exportation had to be arranged through British refrigerated shippers. The tariffs of the railways operated by the UK were not regulated. They had not established customs fees over coal. They had given special dispensation to the British companies with investments in Argentina. They had reduced the prices of their exports. As many problems resulted from the declarations of the vice-president Roca, who affirmed after the signing of the treaty, "By its economic importance, Argentina resembles just a large British dominion."
Lisandro de la Torre, one of his principal and most vociferous opponents, mocking the words of Roca in an editorial, wrote, "In these conditions we wouldn't be able to say that Argentina had been converted into a British dominion because England does not take the liberty to impose similar humiliations upon its dominions."[
The National Democratic Party, one of the parties who had supported the nomination of Justo for President, had split because of this controversy. Finally, the Senate rescinded the treaty on July 28. Many workers strikes followed the deliberations, especially in the Santa Fé Province, which ended with government intervention.
Import substitution industrialization and Pinedo's economic policies
On the other hand, the trade isolationism of the world powers ultimately prompted the beginning of Argentine industrial development via import substitution. Important firms, such as the Bunge & Born agribusiness food company, or the Tornquist group, previously turned towards exports, began to diversify their activities and invest in national industries aimed at local consumption.
Under the direction of the conservative Minister of Economy Federico Pinedo, economic policy became interventionist, although still in a conservative aim. Pinedo created the Central Bank (BCRA), which was advised by Sir Otto Niemeyer, the director of the Bank of England. The BCRA's board of director was mainly composed of personalities tied to private banks. It had as its missions the managing of the peso and the regulation of interest rates. Writer and thinker Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz was a strong critic of British involvement in Argentina, of which the BCRA itself was the prime example.
The Juntas Reguladores Nacionales were also created during this period, aimed at developing private and state activities and controlling the quality of products, both for national consumption and for export.[5] In order to support prices of products and avoid overproduction, the Juntas destroyed entire loads of corn, used as fuel for locomotives, despite popular hunger. 30 million pesos per year were used to destroy wine products.
Furthermore, Pinedo launched a national project of road construction, the national network reaching 30,000 kilometers in 1938 (although many remained without pavement). This competed with the railway system, in the hands of mostly British companies, and furthered the penetration of US firms selling motorized vehicles, in the Argentine market. US foreign direct investment (FDI) grew during this time, with firms such as the textile firms Sudamtex,Ducilo and Anderson Clayton establishing themselves in Argentina, as well as the tire companies Firestone and Goodyear, the electronics firm Philco and the chemistry firm Johnson & Johnson.
Notable exceptions to these conservative policies were the policies of Luciano Molinas, governor of the Santa Fe Province (1932–1936) and one of the leader of the Democratic Progressive Party, and of Amadeo Sabattini,Governor of Córdoba (1936–1940). The first act of governor Molinas, assuming office on February 20, 1932, was to re-establish the progressive Constitution of the Santa Fe Province established by the Constituent Assembly of 1921, which had been abrogated by the radical governor Enrique Mosca. He also ensured independence of the judicial system, tax equality, secular education, women's suffrage and right of foreigners' to vote for the election of communal authorities.[6] Molinas' administration also created the Provincial Department of Labour, which ensured the observance of article 28 of the provincial Constitution, concerning the 8 hours day, minimum wages and regulation of child and female labour. Molinas also reduced his salary from 2,500 to 1,800 pesos, suspended payment of the external debt of the province, which permitted Santa Fe's budget to become positive. Henceforth, he subsidized public works under the impulsion of the minister Alberto Casella, leading to increased local employment. He also implemented moderate land reforms, harshly opposed by the conservative and Alvearist radicals, as well as the Sociedad Rural. Finally, he created the Experimental Institute of Agricultural Investigation, a predecessor of the National Agricultural Technology Institute (INTA).
However, fearing electoral defeats for the Concordancia both in Santa Fe and in the Electoral College, Justo ordered military intervention in the Santa Fe Province on October 3, 1935, sending the Colonel Perlinger and the minister Joaquín F. Rodríguez to take control of the local government. Armed resistance against the federal intervention occurred, but in order to avoid a bloodbath, Molinas and De la Torre rejected the resistance. Rodríguez soon abrogated again the 1921 Constitution and progressively dismantled Molinas' achievements.
Justo had already ordered intervention in the Provinces of San Juan and Tucumán in 1934, and ordered similar military interventions in Catamarca, Santa Fe and Buenos Aires in 1935 (the latter enabling the fraudulent election ofManuel Fresco as governor). Despite this federal intervention, Marcelo Alvear's Radical party (UCR) decided in 1935 to abandon its abstentionist policy protesting the fraud. Opposed to Alvear's turnaround, in 1935, young Yrigoyenistas from a nationalist background founded FORJA (Fuerza Orientadora Radical de la Juventud Argentina, Radical Orienting Force of Argentine Youth), which had as leaders the Socialist Arturo Jauretche, Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz and Gabriel del Mazo. FORJA's motto was: "We are a colonial Argentina, we want to be a free Argentina." [9] Among other things, FORJA denounced the silence of the government on many problems such as the creation of the Central Bank, "economic sacrifices imposed in benefices of foreign capitalism", "petroleum politics", "arbitrary military interventions", "restrictions to freedom of opinion", "incorporation to the League of Nations", "suppression of relations with Russia", "parliamentary investigations", "the Senate crime", etc.
The workers' movement
At the time of the 1930 coup, three trade unions existed in Argentina: the Confederación Obrera Argentina (COA, founded in 1926 and linked to the Socialist Party), the Unión Sindical Argentina (USA, anarcho-syndicalist) and theFORA V (dissolved by Uriburu). On September 20, 1930, the COA and the USA merged in the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), although the two rival tendencies remained.
Meanwhile, the syndicalist current of the CGT was discredited, because of its supporting alliance with the government in order to achieve social advances, while the socialist current proposed open opposition, tied to political support to the Socialist party. The syndicalist current was in particular affected by its agreements with the pro-fascist governor of Buenos Aires, Manuel Fresco (1936–1940). The latter, who had been elected during one of the "most burlesque" and "fraudulent" elections of the Infamous Decade (according to the words of the US embassador ), commissionned the architect Francisco Salamone various buildings, which combined Art Deco, functionalism,Futurism and Fascist architectures.
Although the Great Depression and the subsequent rural exodus had brought many politically inexperienced workers to Buenos Aires, the spontaneous import substitution industrialization enabled, starting in 1935, coupled to the strengthening of trade unions, wages' increase. Henceforth, a 48-hour general strike was launched in January 1936 by workers' in construction, during which 3 workers and 3 policemen were killed.
Ortiz and Castillo administration (1938–1943)
Roberto Marcelino Ortiz and Ramón S. Castillo's candidacies, respectively as president and vice-president, for the 1938 elections were launched at the British Chamber of Commerce, and supported by its president William Mc Callum. Ortiz, a former Alvearista, was fraudulently elected, and assumed his new office in February 1938. However, without much success, he attempted to clean up the country's corruption, ordering federal intervention in the Province of Buenos Aires, governed by Manuel Fresco, and cancelling the fraudulent elections which had been won by the conservative Alberto Barceló.
Federico Pinedo, still Minister of Economy, presented on 18 November 1940 an "Economic Reactivation Plan", which was to implement some protectionist measures and building of social lodging in order to face the crisis. He also proposed the nationalization of the British railways, having agreed upon advantageous terms for their owners with them beforehand. However, the conservatives voted against his plan, which led him to resign.
During World War II, Argentina maintained the same neutrality it had adopted during the First World War, which was advantageous for Great Britain. Although the USA attempted to push the country into the war, during the January 1942 Rio de Janeiro Conference, Argentina resisted, with support from the British.[14] A few months later, in June 1942, Ortiz resigned because of his sickness, and died a month later.
He was replaced by his vice-president Castillo, who began to work to launch the candidacy of Robustiano Patrón Costas, vice-president of the Senate and sugar entrepreneur, who had supported him in 1938. Meanwhile, theDemocratic Union political coalition (which included the Radical Civic Union, the Democratic Progressive Party, as well as the Socialist Party and the Communist Party) had been formed in 1942. Their electoral platform, aimed against endemic corruption, announced the needs to guarantee "freedom of thought and assembly" and "labor union rights", as well as vouching for "active solidarity with the people struggling against the Nazi-Fascist aggression".
June 1943 coup

On 4 June 1943, the nationalist faction of the army, gathered around the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos (GOU, formed in March 1943) opposed both to corruption and to the Left, overthrew Castillo in a coup. Composed under the initiative of the colonel Miguel A. Montes and Urbano de la Vega, the GOU included as main members the colonel Juan Domingo Perón and Enrique P. González. Sympathisers of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy,[15] the GOU established General Pedro Ramírez as chief of state, despite a short attempt by General Arturo Rawson to claim the office.
•	Argentina during World War II
The history of Argentina during World War II is a complex period of time beginning in 1939, following the outbreak of war in Europe, and ending in 1945 with the surrender of Japan.German influence in Argentina was strong, mainly due to the presence of a large number of German immigrants, and Argentina's traditional rivalry with Great Britain furthered the belief that the Argentine government was sympathetic to the German cause. Because of the close ties between Germany and Argentina, the latter stayed neutral for most of World War II, despite internal disputes and pressure from the United States to join the Allies. However, Argentina eventually gave in to the Allies' pressure, broke relations with the Axis powers on January 26, 1944, and declared war on March 27, 1945.
The first years
Roberto María Ortiz was the president of Argentina at the beginning of the war, in 1939. The country was in a period of political conservatism and economic crisis known as the Infamous Decade. The Concordancia was accused of electoral fraud and corruption. The Radical Civic Union was divided between FORJA, a line supporting the deposed radical president Hipólito Yrigoyen, and the official leadership of Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear, close to the Concordancia. The Socialist Party and the Progressist Democracy were conservative as well. The Communist Party was initially close to the trade unions but gave priority to advancing the interests of the Soviet Union. The Argentine army was highly Germanophile; this influence had grown since 1904 and predated both world wars. It did not involve a rejection of democracy but rather an admiration of German military history. This admiration, combined with an intense Argentine nationalism, influenced the main stance of the army towards the war: to stay neutral. The arguments in favor ranged from Argentine military tradition (Argentina was neutral during World War I and the War of the Pacific), to the perception of the war as a conflict between foreign countries with no Argentine interests at stake, to Anglophobia, to rejection of foreign attempts to force Argentina into joining the war. Only a handful of military leaders actually supported Adolf Hitler.
The war resulted in a small boost to the Argentine economy, as trade with Britain was reduced. Thus began a process of import substitution industrialization, which had some antecedents during the Great Depression. This industrialization began a process of internal migration as well, with people living in the countryside or in small villages moving to urban centers.
Growing divisions
Reactions and stances towards the war became more complex as the conflict advanced. The main political parties, newspapers and intellectuals supported the Allies, but Vice-President Ramón Castillo maintained neutrality. Ortiz, who was ill of diabetes, was unable to serve as president, but he did not resign. The position of Argentina vis-à-vis the war generated disputes between them, with Castillo prevailing.[8] The FORJA supported neutrality and considered the position a chance to get rid of what it saw as British meddling with the Argentine economy. Some Trotskyists promoted the fight against Nazism as an early step of an international class struggle. The army and some nationalists supported industrialization and promoted neutrality as a way to oppose Britain. Finally, the newspaper El Pampero, financed by the German embassy, supported Hitler.
As for the reasons of Castillo in staying neutral, there are several interpretations. One interpretation focuses on the Argentine tradition of neutrality. Others see Castillo as a nationalist, not being influenced by the power structure in Buenos Aires (since he was from Catamarca), so, with the support of the army, he could simply defy the pressure to join the Allies. A similar perspective considers instead that Castillo simply had no power to go against the wishes of the army, and if he declared war he would be deposed in a military coup. A third interpretation considers that only the United States wanted Argentina to declare war, whereas Britain was benefited by Argentine neutrality because the country was able to supply the British with livestock. This interpretation, however, fails to acknowledge the constant   requests to declare war from Anglophile factions. Most likely, it was a combination of the desires of the British diplomacy and the Argentine army, which prevailed over the pro-war factions.
Socialist deputy Enrique Dickmann created a commission in the National Congress to investigate a rumored German attempt to seize Patagonia and then conquer the rest of the country. The conservative deputy Videla Dorna claimed that the real risk was a similar Communist invasion, and FORJA believed that a German invasion was only a potential risk, whereas British dominance of the Argentine economy was a reality.
A diplomatic mission by the British Lord Willingdon arranged commercial treaties whereby Argentina sent thousands of cattle to Britain at no charge, decorated with the Argentine colours and with the phrase "good luck" written on them. Alvear, El Pampero and FORJA criticized this arrangement, and Arturo Jauretche said that there were Argentine provinces suffering from malnutrition.
Pearl Harbor
The situation changed dramatically after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent United States declaration of war upon Japan. The United States wanted every Latin American country to join the Allies, in order to generate a continent-wide resistance. Argentine resistance to do so motivated an embargo and blockade against Argentina. Castillo did, however, declare a state of emergency in Argentina after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Military plots
Castillo's term was due to end in 1944. Initially, it was arranged that Agustín Pedro Justo would run for the presidency a second time, but after his unexpected death in 1943 Castillo had to seek another candidate to propose. As a result, he supported Robustiano Patrón Costas.[18] The army was not willing to support the electoral fraud that would be necessary to secure Costas' victory, nor to continue conservative policies. They also feared that Costas might attempt to break the neutrality kept to then. A group of generals thus created a secret organization, the United Officers' Group (GOU), in order to oust Castillo from power. Juan Perón was part of this group, but did not support an early coup, asking instead to overthrow the governmen once the plotters had developed a plan to make necessary reforms. The coup was to have been made close to the elections, if the electoral fraud had been confirmed, but it was instead carried off earlier, upon rumors of the possible sacking of the minister of war, Pedro Pablo Ramírez.[19]
It is unknown whether Costas would have maintained neutrality or not. As he was proposed by Castillo, who stayed neutral, Costas may have been neutral as well. Some weak declarations of support to Britain and his ties with pro-allied factions may suggest instead that he would have declared war if he had become president.[20]
The military coup that deposed Castillo took place on June 4, 1943. It is considered the end of the Infamous Decade and the starting point of the Revolution of '43. Arturo Rawson took power as de facto president. The nature of the coup was confusing during its first days: German embassy officials thought it was a pro-Allied coup and burned their documentation, while the United States embassy thought it was a pro-Nazi coup. Rawson met a delegate from the British embassy on June 5 and promised that in three days he would break relations with the Axis powers and declare war. This turn of events enraged the GOU,] as did Rawson's choices for his cabinet. A new coup took place, replacing Rawson with Pedro Pablo Ramírez. Thus Rawson ruled for just three days, the shortest period for a non-interim president in Argentine history.
The Revolution of '43
The new government proceeded with both progressive and reactionary policies. It set maximum prices for popular products, reduced rents, annulled the privileges of the Chadopyff factory and made hospitals free, but it also intervened in unions, closed the Communist newspaper La Hora, and imposed religious education at schools. Juan Perón and Edelmiro Julián Farrell, from the ministry of war, fostered better relations with the unions.
The Communist Party managed local politics in line with the diplomatic alignments of the Soviet Union. As a result, it supported neutrality and opposed the British influence in Argentina during the early stages of the war, in line with the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union. The launching of the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the consequent Soviet entry in the war changed that attitude. The Communists became pro-war and did not support further labour strikes against British factories located in Argentina. This switch reduced workers' support for the Communist Party, and they began to support Perón and the new government instead.
As a result, the Communist Party opposed the government, rejecting it as pro-Nazi. Perón countered the Communist complaints, saying that "The excuses they seek are very well known. They say that we are 'Nazis', I declare we are as far from Nazism as from any other foreign ideology. We are only Argentines and want, above all, the common good for Argentines. We do not want any more [electoral] fraud, nor more lies. We do not want that those who do not work live from those who do".
The government had diplomatic discussions with the United States, and Argentina requested planes, fuel, ship, and military hardware. Storni argued that, although Argentina did not join the war, it was closer to the Allies, sending them food, and that up to then the Axis powers had not taken action against the country to justify a declaration of war. Secretary of State Cordell Hullreplied that Argentina was the only Latin American country not to have broken relations with the Axis, that Argentine food was sold at lucrative return, and that United States military hardware was intended for countries already at war, some of which were facing more severe fuel shortages than was Argentina. Storni, the Argentine chancellor, resigned after this rejection.
The United States took further measures to increase pressure on Argentina. All Argentine companies suspected of having ties with the Axis powers were blacklisted, and the supply of newsprint was limited to pro-allied newspapers. There were also boycotts. American exports of electronic appliances, chemical substances and oil production infrastructure were halted. The properties of forty-four Argentine companies were seized, and scheduled loans were halted. Hull wanted to weaken the Argentine government, or force its resignation. Torn between diplomatic and economic pressure as opposed to an open declaration of war against Argentina, he opted for the former way, to avoid disrupting the supply of food to Britain. Nevertheless, he also saw the situation as a chance for the United States to have a greater influence over Argentina than Britain.
The United States also threatened to accuse Argentina of being involved with the coup of Gualberto Villarroel in Bolivia, and a plot to receive weapons from Germany, after the allied refusal, to face the possible threat of either the United States itself or Brazil acting on their behalf. However, it would be unlikely that Germany would provide such weapons, given their fragile situation in 1944. Ramírez called a new meeting of the GOU, and it was agreed to break diplomatic relations with the Axis powers (albeit without yet a declaration of war) on January 26, 1944.
The break in relations generated unrest within the military, and Ramírez considered removing the influential Farrell and Perón from the government. However, their faction discovered Ramírez's plan. They broke up the GOU, to avoid letting the military loyal to Ramírez know they were aware of his plot, and then initiated a coup against him. Edelmiro Julián Farrell became then the new president of Argentina, on February 24.
The United States denied recognition to Farrell, as he would keep the neutralist policy. Farrell confirmed it on March 2, and the United States broke relations with Argentina two days later. Winston Churchill complained about the harsh policy of the United States against Argentina, pointing out that Argentine supplies were vital to the British, and that by removing their diplomatic presence from the country they would even force Argentina to seek German protection. British diplomacy sought to guarantee the supply of Argentine food by signing a treaty covering it, while US diplomatic policy sought to prevent such a treaty. Hull ordered the confiscation of Argentine goods, cessation of foreign trade with her, avoidance of any of US ships landing at Argentine ports, and he denounced Argentina as the "nazi headquarters in the occidental hemisphere".
By this time, the United States considered the option of supporting Brazil in an attack against Argentina, rather than attacking Argentina themselves. The Brazilian ambassador in Washington pointed out that Buenos Aires could be completely destroyed by the Brazilian air force. This would have allowed Argentina to be dominated without the open intervention of the United States, who would support Brazil by providing ships and bombs.
End of the war
The liberation of Paris in August 1944, which would lead to the complete liberation of France, gave new hopes to the pro-allies factions in Argentina, who saw it as an omen of the possible fall of the Argentine government, and calls for new elections. The demonstrations in support of Paris soon turned into demonstrations against the government, leading to incidents with the police.
It was rumored that some Argentine politicians in Uruguay would create a government in exile, but the project never worked. Franklin D. Roosevelt supported Hull's claims about Argentina, saying similar things against the country. He also cited Churchill when he stated that history would judge all nations for their role in the war, both belligerents and neutrals.
By early 1945, World War II was nearing its end. The Soviets had liberated Warsaw, they were closing on the German border. Berlin itself was under attack; allied victory was inevitable. Perón, the strong man of the Argentine government, foresaw that the Allies would dominate international politics for decades, and although Argentina had successfully resisted the pressure to force her to join the war, remaining neutral until the war's end would force the country into isolationism at best or, worse, face military attack. Negotiations were eased by the departure of Hull as Secretary of State, replaced by Edward Stettinius, Jr.. The demands to Argentina were: the calling of elections, declaration of war to the Axis powers, eradication of any Nazi presence in the country, and complete cooperation with international organizations. Perón agreed: German organizations were curtailed, pro-nazi manifestations were banned, and German goods were seized. The Argentine merchant navy was instructed to ignore the German blockade.
Those measures eased relations with the United States. When the Allies advanced into Frankfurt, Argentina finally formalized the negotiations. On March 27, with the decree 6945, Argentina declared war on Japan, and on Germany as an ally of Japan. FORJA distanced itself from the government because of this, but Arturo Jauretche would understand the reasons year later. Jauretche reasoned that the United States opposed Argentina because of its perceived nazism by refusing to declare war, while neutrality was based instead in the Argentine interests; interests that were no longer at stake with a declaration of war at a point when the country would not actually join the conflict. Jauretche admitted that Perón's pragmatism was better for the country than his own idealistic perspective of keeping a neutral stance to the end of the war.
A few days later, on April 10, Britain, France, the United States and the other Latin American countries restored diplomatic relations with Argentina. Still, the diplomatic hostility against Argentina from the United States resurfaced after the unexpected death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was succeeded by Harry S. Truman. The ambassador Spruille Braden would organize opposition to the government of Farrell and Perón.
The final Nazi defeat in the European Theatre of World War II took place a month later, greeted with demonstrations of joy in Buenos Aires. Similar demonstrations took place in August, after the surrender of Japan, bringing World War II to its final end. Farrell lifted the state of emergency, declared by Castillo after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Argentines in World War II
During World War II, 4,000 Argentines served with all three British armed services, even though Argentina was officially a neutral country during the war. Over 600 Argentine volunteers served with both the Royal Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force, mostly in No. 164 (Argentine) squadron, whose shield bore the sun from the Flag of Argentina and the motto,"Determined We Fly (Firmes Volamos)".
Maureen Dunlop, born in Quilmes, left her Australian/English parents to join the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). She recorded over 800hrs service, ferrying Spitfires, Mosquitos P-51 Mustangs,Typhoons, and bomber types including the Wellington and Lancaster to the frontline RAF stations. After being photographed exiting her Fairey Barracuda, she featured on the cover of Picture Post on September 16, 1942 and became a wartime pin-up. Dunlop returned to Argentina after the war, and continued work as a commercial pilot who also flew for and trained pilots of theArgentine Air Force. She later raised pure-blood Arab horses with her husband on their stud farm, "Milla Lauquen Stud".
Many members of the Anglo-Argentine community also volunteered in non-combat roles, or worked to raise money and supplies for British troops. In April 2005, a special remembrance service was held at the RAF church of St Clement Danes in London.
Nazi presence
Before the war Argentina hosted a strong, very-well-organized pro-Nazi element that was controlled by the German ambassador. In 1945-46, under Peron's leadership the government quietly allowed entry of a number of Nazi leaders fleeing Europe after Germany's collapse. The number of Nazi fugitives that fled to Argentina surpassed 300. In May 1960, Holocaust administratorAdolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina by the Israeli Mossad and brought to trial, and execution, in Israel.

•	Peronism
Peronism (Spanish: Peronismo), or Justicialism (Justicialismo), is an Argentine political movement based on the legacy of former President Juan Domingo Perón and his second wife, Eva Perón. The party, the Justicialist Party (Partido Justicialista), derived its name from the Spanish words for "social justice" (justicia social).
The pillars of the Peronist ideal, known as the "three flags", are social justice, economic independence, and political sovereignty. Peronism can be described as a third position ideology, as it rejects the extremes of capitalism and communism. Peronism espouses corporatism and thus aims to mediate tensions between the classes of society, with the state responsible for negotiating compromise in conflicts between managers and workers.
It is, however, a generally ill-defined ideology; different, and sometimes contradictory sentiments are expressed in the name of Peronism. Today, the legacy and thought of Perón have transcended the confines of any single political party and bled into the broader political landscape of Argentina, therefore Peronists are usually described as a 'movement'. Traditionally the Peronist movement has drawn its strongest support from the working class and sympathetic unions, and has been characterized as proletarian in nature
From the perspective of opponents, Peronism is an authoritarian ideology. Perón was often compared to fascist dictators, accused of demagoguery, and his policies derided as populist. Proclaiming himself the embodiment of nationality, Perón's regime often silenced dissent by accusing opponents of being unpatriotic. The corporatist character of Peronism drew attacks from socialists who accused his administration of preserving capitalist exploitation and class division. Conservatives rejected its modernist ideology and felt their status threatened by the ascent of the Peronist apparat. Liberals condemned the Perón regime's arbitrariness and dictatorial tendencies.
Defenders of Peronism also describe the doctrine as populist, albeit in the sense that they believe it embodies the interests of the masses, and in particular the most vulnerable social strata. Admirers hold Perón in esteem for his administration's anti-imperialism, and non-alignment, as well as its socially progressive initiatives. Amongst other measures introduced by Perón’s governments, social security was made universal, while education was made free to all who qualified, and working students were given one paid week before every major examination. Vast low-income housing projects were created, and paid vacations became standard. All workers (including white-collar employees) were guaranteed free medical care and half of their vacation-trip expenses, and mothers-to-be received three paid months off prior to and after giving birth. Workers’ recreation centers were constructed all over the country, including a vast resort in the lower Sierras de Córdoba that included eight hotels , riding stables, swimming pools,movies and scores of cabins.
Since its inception in 1946, Peronist candidates have won 9 of the 11 presidential elections that they have not been banned from participating in. As of 2012, Perón was the only Argentine to have been elected president three times.

Perón's policies [
Perón's ideas were widely embraced by a variety of different groups in Argentina across the political spectrum. Perón's personal views later became a burden on the ideology; for example, hisanti-clericalism did not strike a sympathetic chord with upper-class Argentinians.
Peronism is widely regarded as a form of corporate socialism, or "right-wing socialism”. Perón’s public speeches were consistently nationalist and populist. It would be difficult to separate Peronism from corporate nationalism, for Perón nationalized Argentina's large corporations, blurring distinctions between corporations and government. At the same time, the unions became corporate, ceding the right to strike in agreements with Perón as Secretary of Welfare in the military government from 1943-45. In exchange, the state was to assume the role of negotiator between conflicting interests.
A military and civilian coup, the Revolución Libertadora, led by General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, overthrew the Perón regime in 1955. Perón spent 18 years in exile, mostly in Francisco Franco's Spain, although his feelings for Franco were mixed.
Perón and his administration resorted to organized violence and dictatorial rule. Perón showed contempt for any opponents, and regularly characterized them as traitors and agents of foreign powers. Perón maintained the institutions of democratic rule, but subverted freedoms through such actions as nationalizing the broadcasting system, centralizing the unions under his control, and monopolizing the supply of newspaper print. At times, Perón also resorted to tactics such as illegally imprisoning opposition politicians and journalists, including Radical Civic Union leader Ricardo, and shutting down opposition papers, such as La Prensa.
Peronism also lacked a strong interest in matters of foreign policy other than the belief that the political and economic influences of other nations should be kept out of Argentina; he was somewhat isolationist. Early in his presidency, Perón envisioned Argentina's role as a model for other countries in Latin America and beyond. Such ideas were ultimately abandoned. Despite his oppositional rhetoric, Perón frequently sought cooperation with the United States government on various issues
Perón's admiration for Benito Mussolini is well documented. Many scholars categorize Peronism as a fascist ideology. Carlos Fayt believes that Peronism was just "an Argentine implementation of fascism”. Hayes reaches the conclusion that "the Peronist movement produced a form of fascism that was distinctively Latin American".
One of the most vocal critics of Peronism was the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. After Perón ascended to the presidency in 1946, Borges spoke before the Argentine Society of Writers (SADE), saying
"Dictatorships breed oppression, dictatorships breed servility, dictatorships breed cruelty; more loathsome still is the fact that they breed idiocy. Bellboys babbling orders, portraits of caudillos, prearranged cheers or insults, walls covered with names, unanimous ceremonies, and mere discipline usurping the place of clear thinking... Fighting these sad monotonies is one of the duties of a writer. Need I remind readers of Martín Fierro or Don Segundo that individualism is an old Argentine virtue."
Attitudes towards Jews
Perón's ideology was economic and political in character and did not have the racism of Nazi Germany, though he was sympathetic to the Nazi government. He made arrangements for many Nazi war criminals and collaborators to reach Argentina under false passports after the Second World War. Among them were Joseph Mengele, Adolf Eichmann, and Erich Priebke.
Before Perón came to power in Argentina, Argentina had the largest Jewish population in Latin America. After becoming president, he invited members of the Jewish community to participate in his government. One of his advisors was José Ber Gelbard, a Jewish man from Poland. Peronism did not have anti-Semitic or other racial bias. The Jewish Virtual Library writes that while Juan Perón had sympathized with the Axis powers, "Perón also expressed sympathy for Jewish rights and established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1949. Since then, more than 45,000 Jews have immigrated to Israel from Argentina."
In the book Inside Argentina from Perón to Menem author Laurence Levine, former president of the US–Argentine Chamber of Commerce, writes: "although anti-Semitism existed in Argentina, Perón's own views and his political associations were not anti-Semitic.... While Perón allowed many Nazi criminals to take refuge in Argentina, he also attracted many Jewish immigrants. Argentina has a Jewish population of over 200,000 citizens, the largest in Latin America and one of the largest in the world.
From the 1960s to modern day
The absence of Perón, who lived for 20 years in exile in Francoist Spain, is an important key to understanding Peronism. After he went into exile, he could be invoked by a variety of Argentine sectors opposed to the current state of affairs. The personality cult of Eva Perón, in particular, was conserved by supporters, while despised by the "national bourgeoisie". In the 1960s, John William Cooke's writings became an important source of left-wing revolutionary Peronism. Left-wing Peronism was represented by many organizations, from theMontoneros and the Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas to the Peronist Youth, the Frente Revolucionario Peronista and the Revolutionary Peronist Youth, passing by Peronismo en Lucha orPeronismo de Base, which supported a Marxist viewpoint.
On the other hand, older Peronists formed the base of the orthodox bureaucracy, represented by the Unión Obrera Metalúrgica (Augusto Vandor, famous for his 1965 slogan "For a Peronism without Perón," and declaring as well: "to save Perón, one has to be against Perón", or José Ignacio Rucci). Another current was formed by the "62 Organizaciones 'De pie junto a Perón'", led by José Alonso and opposed to the right-wing Peronist unionist movement. In the early 1970s, left-wing Peronism rejected liberal democracy and political pluralism as the mask of bourgeois domination. The anti-communist right-wing Peronism also rejected it, in the name of corporatism, claiming to return to a "Christian and humanist, popular, national socialism".
By 1970, many groups from opposite sides of the political spectrum had come to support Perón, from the left-wing and Catholic Montoneros to the fascist-leaning and strongly anti-Semitic Tacuara Nationalist Movement, one of Argentina's first guerrilla movements. In March 1973, Héctor José Cámpora, who had been named as Perón's personal delegate, was elected President of Argentina. A few months after Perón's return and the subsequent Ezeiza massacre, during which the Peronist Left and Right violently clashed, new elections were held in September.
José Cámpora, a left-wing Peronist, was replaced by interim President Raúl Alberto Lastiri, while Perón chose to openly support the Peronist right. On October 1, 1973, senator Humberto Martiarena, who was the national secretary of the Superior Council of the National Justicialist Movement, publicized a document giving directives to confront "subversives, terrorist and Marxist groups" which had allegedly initiated a "war" inside the Peronist organizations. From then on, the Superior Council took a firm grip on the Peronist organizations to expel the Left from it.
On that same day, a meeting took place among President Raúl Lastiri, Interior Minister Benito Llambí, Social Welfare Minister José López Rega, general secretary of the Presidency José Humberto Martiarena and various provincial governors, which has been alleged to have been the foundational act of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance death-squad.
•	Dirty War
	The Dirty War (Spanish: Guerra Sucia) was the name used by the Argentine Government for a period of state terrorism in Argentina against political dissidents, with military and security forces conducting urban and rural guerrilla violence against left-wing guerrillas, political dissidents, and anyone believed to be associated with socialism. Victims of the violence included an estimated 15,000 to 30,000 left-wing activists and militants, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers. Some 10,000 of the "disappeared" were believed to be guerrillas of the Montoneros (MPM), and the Marxist People's Revolutionary Army (ERP). The guerrillas were responsible for causing at least 6,000 casualties among the military, police forces and civilian population according to a National Geographic Magazine article in the mid-1980s. The disappeared ones were considered to be a political or ideological threat to the military junta and their disappearances an attempt to silence the opposition and break the determination of the guerillas.
Declassified documents of the Chilean secret police cite an official estimate by the Batallón de Inteligencia 601 of 22,000 killed or "disappeared" between 1975 and mid-1978. During this period, in which it was later revealed 8,625 "disappeared" in the form of PEN (Poder Ejecutivo Nacional, anglicized as "National Executive Power") detainees who were held in clandestine detention camps throughout Argentina before eventually being freed under diplomatic pressure. The number of people believed to have been killed or "disappeared," depending on the source, range from 9,089 to 30,000 in the period from 1976 to 1983, when the military was forced from power following Argentina's defeat in the Falklands War. The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons estimates that around 13,000 were disappeared.
After democratic government was restored, Congress passed legislation to provide compensation to victims' families. Some 11,000 Argentines have applied to the relevant authorities and received up to US $200,000 each as monetary compensation for the loss of loved ones during the military dictatorship.
The exact chronology of the repression is still debated, however, as in some senses the long political war started in 1969. Trade unionists were targeted for assassination by the Peronist and Marxist paramilitary as early as 1969, and individual cases of state-sponsored terrorism against Peronism and the left can be traced back to the Bombing of Plaza de Mayo 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 in 1975, have also been suggested as dates for the beginning of the Dirty War.
The Dirty War [
The military opposed Juan Perón's populist government and attempted a coup d'état in 1951 and two in 1955, before succeeding with one later that year. After taking control, the armed forces proscribed Peronism. Soon after the coup, Peronist resistance began organizing in workplaces and trade unions, as the working classes sought economic and social improvements. Over time, as democratic rule was partially restored but promises of legalizing the expression and political liberties for Peronism were not respected, guerrilla groups began to operate in the 1960s, namely the Peronist Uturuncos and the Guevarist People's Guerrilla Army (EGP). Both were small and quickly defeated.
Jorge Ricardo Masetti, leader of the EGP, which had infiltrated into Salta Province from Bolivia in 1964, is considered by some as Argentina's first "disappeared", as he went missing after the party militants' defeat in clashes with the Argentine gendarmerie. Prior to 1973 the major revolutionary groups were the Peronist Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas, FAP), the Marxist-Leninist-Peronist the Revolutionary Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias or FAR), and the Marxist-Leninist Armed Forces of Liberation (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación or FAL). The FAL guerrillas raided Campo de Mayo in April 1969 and stole 100 assault rifles from the elite 1st Infantry Regiment Patricios.
In time these armed groups consolidated, with the FAR joining the Montoneros, formerly an urban group of intellectuals and students, and the FAP and FAL being absorbed into the ERP. In 1970, Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, one of the military leaders of the 1955 coup, was kidnapped and killed by the Montoneros, in its first claimed military action. In 1970, the Marxist People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) was founded. By the early 1970s, leftist guerrillas kidnapped and assassinated high-ranking military and police officers almost weekly.
The extreme left bombed and destroyed numerous buildings in the 1970s in its campaign against the government; these belonged chiefly to military and police hierarchies. But a number of civilian and non-governmental buildings were targeted as well, such as the Sheraton Hotel in Buenos Aires, which was bombed in 1972, killing a woman and injuring her husband; a crowded theatre in downtown Buenos Aires was bombed in 1975.
In 1973, as Juan Perón returned from exile, the Ezeiza massacre marked the end of the alliance between left- and right-wing factions of Peronism. In 1974, Perón withdrew his support of the Montoneros shortly before his death. During the presidency of his widow Isabel, the far-right paramilitary death squad Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A) emerged. Armed struggle increased, and in 1975 Isabel signed a number of decrees empowering the military and the police to "annihilate" left-wing subversion, most prominently the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) armed activity in the province of Tucumán.
Isabel Martínez de Perón was ousted in 1976 by a military coup. According to the International Congress for Victims of Terrorism in 2010, prior to the military takeover in 1976, there were a total of 16,000 casualties (including killed, wounded or abducted) of left-wing terrorism in Argentina, including civilians and military personnel. Years later in 1995, Argentine intelligence officers claimed that the ERP guerrillas were responsible for the deaths of at least 700 people, in addition to scores of attacks on police and military units, as well as kidnappings and robberies.
In 1978, a powerful bomb meant to kill an Argentine admiral ripped through a nine-story apartment building, killing three civilians and trapping others beneath the debris.
The juntas, led by Jorge Rafael Videla until 1981, and then by Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri until 1983, organised and carried out strong repression of political dissidents (and perceived dissidents) through the government's military and security forces. They were responsible for the illegal arrests, tortures, killings and/or forced disappearances of an estimated 15,000 to 30,000 people. Assassination occurred domestically in Argentina via mass shootings and the throwing of live citizens from airplanes to death in the oceans below. 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. These actions against victims called desaparecidos, because they simply “disappeared” without explanation, were confirmed via Argentine navy officer Adolfo Scilingo, who has publically confessed his participation in the Dirty War, stating, “…we did worse things than the Nazis” (Verbitsky 7). The victims included armed combatants of the ERP and Montoneros guerrillas, but also trade-unionists, students and left-wing activists, journalists and other intellectuals, and their families. The junta referred to their policy of suppressing opponents as the "National Reorganization Process" (El proceso). However, the result of these disappearances was not submission of the opposition; it later led to a subversion the military junta in conjunction with other causes. 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, as in Operation Condor. Until 1983, Argentine officials declared the necessity of these practices despite acknowledgement that the vast majority of their subversives were unarmed and without tangible guilt. Accounts by Dirty War survivors indicate that the Argentine government commonly seized innocent witnesses to the capture of targeted individuals in public places; physicians’ reports confirm the torture endured by survivors.
In 1979, US President Jimmy Carter offered to accept 3,000 PEN detainees, as long as they had no terrorist background.
Faced with increasing public opposition and severe economic problems, the military tried to regain popularity by occupying the disputed Falkland Islands. It lost any remaining favour in its lopsided defeat by Britain in the resultingFalklands War, and stepped aside in disgrace for the restoration of democracy.
Restoration of democracy and accounting for disappeared
The democratic government of Raúl Alfonsín was elected to office in 1983. It organized the National Commission CONADEP to investigate crimes committed during the Dirty War and heard testimony from hundreds of witnesses. According to the official count of the 1984 truth commission, between 1976 and 1979 alone, 8,353 Argentines were killed or "disappeared", and 113 were killed or disappeared at the hands of the military regime between 1980 and 1983.
Documents by Chilean agents in Argentina found in 2006 report that the Argentine military had internally documented 22,000 cases of deaths and abductions from 1976 to 1978.[34] Amnesty International reported in 1979 that 15,000 disappeared had been abducted, tortured and possibly killed by the military dictatorship up to that time.
The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who organised during the Dirty War to confront the government on the "disappearances" and seek the fates of their missing loved ones, criticised the CONADEP commission as counting only documented cases, and thus missing those who had been overlooked or whose records had been destroyed. Human rights groups in Argentina often cite a figure of 30,000 disappeared; Amnesty International estimates 20,000. In 1988, the Asamblea por los Derechos Humanos (APDH or Assembly for Human Rights) published its findings on the disappearances, concluding that 12,261 people were killed or "disappeared" during the Dirty War.
Although there is strong disagreement on the total number of missing persons, it is commonly accepted today that between 9,000 and 30,000 people, depending on the source, had been killed or disappeared. Some 8,600 disappeared as PEN (Poder Ejecutivo Nacional) detainees who were held by security forces in secret camps, but survivors were eventually released under international pressure.
Trial of the Juntas
The government of Raúl Alfonsín began to develop cases against offenders. It organized a tribunal to conduct prosecution of offenders, and in 1985 the Trial of the Juntas was held. The top military officers of all the juntas were among the nearly 300 people prosecuted, and the top men were all convicted and sentenced for their crimes. This is the only Latin American example of the government conducting such trials. Threatening another coup, the military opposed subjecting more of its personnel to such trials and forced through passage of Ley de Punto Final in 1986, which "put a line" under previous actions and ended prosecutions for crimes under the dictatorship. Fearing military uprisings against them, Argentina’s first two presidents inflicted punishment only to top Dirty War ex-commanders, and even then, very conservatively. Despite President Raúl Alfonsín’s 1983 establishment of CONADEP, a commission to investigate the atrocities of the Dirty War, in 1986 the Ley de Punto Final (Full Stop Law) provided amnesty to Dirty War acts, stating that torturers were doing their “jobs".
Repeal of laws
In 2003 Congress repealed the Pardon Laws, and in 2005 the Argentine Supreme Court ruled they were unconstitutional. The government re-opened investigations and began prosecutions again of the war crimes committed by military and security officers.
In its 2006 sentencing of Miguel Etchecolatz, Director of Intelligence for the Buenos Aires Provincial Police, for conviction on numerous charges of kidnapping, torture and murder, an Argentine tribunal condemned the 1970s government's crimes as crimes against humanity and genocide of political dissidents. But the 21st-century courts declined to prosecute the crimes of the left-wing guerrilla groups that, according to Argentina's Center for the Legal Study of Terrorism and its Victims, killed or maimed some 13,000 Argentines.
Carlos Marcelo Shäferstein in his work, Cien años de subversión en Argentina, Alejandro García, and Antonius C. G. M. Robben have said that the Dirty War has longstanding roots. There was extensive political violence in Buenos Aires during the Tragic Week of 1919, and fighting took place in Patagonia in 1921 and 1922, between anarchists and elements of the Argentine government forces popularly known today as the Patagonia rebelde(Rebellious Patagonia). Alicia García, in her study of the National Security Doctrine in Argentina, also notes the government's use of paramilitary squads to smash labour unions during the 1919 Semana Tragica, and the mass executions ("disappearances") used by the Argentine army in 1920 against the anarchist strikers in Patagonia as examples of Argentina's traditional way of dealing with "subversives". In a brief memoir published in Panorama (14 April 1970), Juan Peron acknowledged that the first Argentine military coup in 1930 "had been prepared by the tragic week of 1919."
Origin of the term
The term "Dirty War" was originated by the military junta, which claimed that a war, albeit with "different" methods (including the large-scale application of torture ) was necessary to maintain social order and eradicate political subversives. This explanation has been questioned in court and 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 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 the return of democracy in 1983).
During the Trial of the Juntas, the prosecution established that the guerrillas were never substantial enough to pose a real threat to the state, and could not be considered a belligerent as in a war: "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."
Analysts say that crimes committed during this time may not be covered under the laws of war (jus in Bello), which shields soldiery of inferior rank from prosecution for acts committed under military or state orders. Paul H. Lewis, Professor of Political Science at Tulane University, who has written Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina, is among those who claim otherwise. Terence Roehrig in his The Prosecution of Former Military Leaders in Newly Democratic Nations: The Cases of Argentina, Greece, and South Korea (McFarland & Company, 2001) estimates that of the disappeared, "at least 10,000 were involved in various ways with the guerrillas". Justice Minister Ricardo Gil Lavedra, who formed part of the 1985 tribunal for the Trial of the Juntas, later went on record saying, "I sincerely believe that the majority of the victims of the illegal repression were guerrilla militants."] The Montoneros in a statement issued in 1984 acknowledged having lost 5,000 guerrillas killed, and the Marxist-Leninist People's Revolutionary Army (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo or ERP) in 2007 admitted the deaths of some 5,000 of their own armed fighters. Mario Firmenich, the commander of the Montoneros, in a radio interview in late 2001 from Spain said that, "In a country that experienced a civil war, everybody has blood on their hands."[
The government passed legislation to provide compensation to people who lost loved ones in the war under the dictatorship. To date, some 11,000 Argentines have applied for and received up to US $200,000 each as monetary compensation for their losses.
The program of extermination of dissidents was termed "genocide" by a court of law, for the first time in the official treatment of illegal crimes of the dictatorship, during the 2006 trial of Miguel Etchecolatz, a former senior official of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police.
Return of Peronism
Since former army officer Juan Perón was ousted from the presidency by a coup in 1955 (Revolución Libertadora), military hostility to Peronism and populist politics dominated Argentine politics. The 1963 Aramburu decreeprohibited the use of Perón's name, and when General Lanusse, who was part of the Revolución Argentina, called for elections in 1973 and authorised the return of political parties, 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 Peron was the real power behind him. 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; Perón's admiration for Benito Mussolini is often cited in support of that assertion. After World War II, Argentina became a popular country of exile for escaped Nazi war criminals who entered clandestinely via various ratlines
The absence of Perón, who spent 20 years in exile in Franquist Spain, is central to understanding Peronism, as his name was often invoked nostalgically by Argentines in all walks of life in protest of societal ills. Eva Perón, First Lady of Argentina from 1946 to her death in 1952, was warmly remembered by the working class, although she was despised by the national bourgeoisie. Thus, the left-wing and Montoneros supported Perón, as did the Fascist-leaning and strongly anti-Semitic Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara, one of Argentina's first guerrilla movements.
Following nearly two decades of weak civilian governments, economic decline, and military interventionism, Perón returned from exile on 20 June 1973 as the country was becoming engulfed in immense 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, duringHéctor Cámpora's first months of government (May–July 1973), approximately 600 social conflicts, strikes and factory occupations had taken place.
Immediately after the swearing in of President Cámpora on 25 May 1973, the Peronist Youth converged on the main prison, forcing the release and pardoning of 400 captured guerrilla fighters. The next day congress approved an amnesty for the revolutionary groups, repealed anti-terrorist legislation, and abolished the Federal Criminal Court of the Nation.
From the perspective of the military, Campora's decree had demonstrated the police actions to be insufficient in combating terrorism or guerrilla actions. Paul H. Lewis, Professor of Political Science at Tulane University opined: "Now it became clear to many officers that, if the anti-guerrilla war were ever resumed in the future, it would be better to kill captured terrorists outright than to see them released by sympathetic civilians to fight again."
On the economic side of his politics, Time Magazine (14 January 1974) estimated that 60% of foreign businessmen fled Argentina in 1973, prompted by the kidnapping of 170 businessmen that year. On several occasions, business executives involved in industrial disputes with militant workers, learned their homes had been burned down by the Montoneros. On 6 September 1973 the ERP "Compañía Ramón Rosa Jiménez" attacked the Army Medical Command in Buenos Aires, killing Lieutenant-Colonel Jorge Duarte Hardoy but lost several fighters killed or captured in that operation.-
Upon Perón's arrival at Buenos Aires Airport, snipers opened fire on the crowds of left-wing Peronist sympathizers. Known as the 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 neofascist Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara) and socialists like the Montoneros led by Mario Firmenich on the left.
Following the Ezeiza massacre, and Perón's denouncing of "bearded immature idealists", Perón sided with the Peronist right-wing, 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 the intervention of security forces to resolve internal conflicts of Peronism."[
The Montoneros were finally expelled from the Justicialist Party by Perón in May 1974. However, the Montoneros waited until after the death of Perón in July 1974 to react, with the exception of the assassination of José Ignacio Rucci, the right-wing Peronist Secretary General of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) on 25 September 1973, and some other military actions. They would then claim the "social revolutionary vision of authentic Peronism" and start guerrilla operations against Isabel Perón's government, who represented the Peronist right wing. A main aim of the Montoneros was to push authorities into repression, even severe repression, in the belief that in the end it would prove self-defeating.
Isabel Perón's government
Perón died on 1 July 1974, and was replaced by his vice-president and third wife, Isabel Perón, who ruled Argentina until 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 Triple A death squad(according to Argenpress, at least 25 trade-unionists were assassinated in 1974).
The Triple A had been created by José López Rega and Rodolfo Almirón (arrested in Spain in 2006; extradited to Argentina in 2008). López Rega was successively Minister of Social Welfare under Héctor José Cámpora, Raúl Alberto Lastiri, Perón and Isabel Perón and private secretary of the last two. Furthermore, after the 1980 police arrest of Licio Gelli, head of Propaganda Due (aka P2), which was involved in Italy's strategy of tension, in a villa in the French Côte d'Azur. It was discovered that Isabel Perón's Minister for Social Affairs, López Rega, had also been a member of this lodge.
One of the first terrorist attacks of the Triple a targeted Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen with a car bomb on 21 November 1973, which seriously injured him. A few days earlier, Solari Yrigoyen had criticised in the Senate the reform of laws concerning workers' trade-unions, which aimed at tightening the control of the trade-union bureaucracy on the workers' movement. A few days before the bombing, a leading representative of the trade-unionist bureaucracy, Lorenzo Miguel, had qualified Solari Yrigoyen as "public enemy number one". The Triple A assassinated Silvio Frondizi, brother of former president Arturo Frondizi, in September 1974.
However, 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 the repression in 1973: 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; Adrián Sánchez, on 8 November 1973 in the Province of Jujuy. Assassinations of trade-unionists, lawyers, etc. continued and increased in 1974 and 1975, while 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 GeneralRaimundo 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 the national direction of trade-unions, and the majority of its leaders and activists arrested. Most of them, including its Secretary General René Salamanca, were assassinated during the 1976–83 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.
The left-wing guerrillas were also responsible for a number of atrocities committed in this period. On 1 February 1973, First Lieutenant José Maria Naccarato was killed while driving in the city of Resistencia in Chaco Province when a bomb planted in his car detonated. On 4 February 1972, police corporal Conrado Likay Faldi was shot dead in the Bernal suburb of Buenos Aires. Between 16 and 17 September 1974, about 100 Montoneros bombs exploded throughout Argentina, against ceremonies commemorating the military revolt which ended Juan Perón's first term as president, and foreign companies.
Targets in the bombings included three Ford showrooms; Peugeot and IKA-Renault showrooms; Goodyear and Firestone tire distributors, Riker and Eli pharmaceutical laboratories, Union carbide Battery Company, Bank of Boston and Chase Manhattan Bank branches, Xerox Corporation; and Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola bottling companies. In all, 83 servicemen and policemen were killed in left-wing terrorist incidents, between 1973 and 1974.
The ERP publicly remained in the forefront. ERP guerrilla activity took the form of attacks on military outposts, police stations and convoys. Between March and July 1971 the Argentine newspapers reported 316 terrorist acts by the ERP. In 1971, the left-wing guerrillas killed 57 policemen, and in 1972 the ERP and Montoneros killed another 38 policemen. On 19 January 1974 60–70 ERP guerrillas travelling aboard captured army trucks attacked the 2,000-strong barracks at Azul, killing the Commanding Officer of the 10th 'Húsares de Pueyrredon' Armoured Cavalry Regiment, Colonel Camilo Arturo Gay and his wife, as well as capturing the Commanding Officer of the 1st Artillery Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Jorge Roberto Ibarzabal. The guerrillas, dressed as soldiers, held the barracks for seven hours.
In another case, the famous ERP "Compañía Ramón Rosa Jiménez" (with about 300 serving members between 1974–76 and a first class unit) struck the 17th Airborne Infantry Regiment in Catamarca and the Argentine Army's Villa Maria explosives factory in Córdoba. The attacks involved some 90 guerrillas of the "Compañía Ramón Rosa Jiménez" and supporting militants who on 10 August, with the ERP guerrillas again dressed in army fatigues attempted to raid simultaneously the factory and parachute unit. In the aftermath, 8 police and army paratroopers were killed or wounded and several ERP guerrillas were executed after having been captured wearing army uniforms.
On 1 November 1974 the Montoneros successfully blew up General Commissioner Alberto Villar, the chief of the Argentine federal police, in his yacht along with his wife. In 10 years of guerrilla operations (1969–79) there were 1,501 killings, 1,748 kidnappings, 5,215 bombings and 45 major attacks on military units blamed on leftist guerrillas.
"Annihilation decrees"
Meanwhile, the Guevarist People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), led by Roberto Santucho and inspired by Che Guevara's foco theory, began a rural insurgency in the province of Tucumán, in the mountainous northwest of Argentina. It started the campaign with no more than 100 men and women of the Marxist ERP guerrilla force and ended with about 300 in the mountains (including reinforcements in the form of the elite Montoneros 65-strong Jungle Company that arrived in February 1976 and later the ERP's "Decididos de Córdoba" Urban Company), which the Argentine Army managed to defeat, but at a cost.
On 5 January 1975, an Army DHC-6 transport plane was downed near the Monteros Mountains, apparently shot down by Guerrillas. All thirteen on board were killed. The military believe a heavy machine gun had downed the aircraft.
In response, Ítalo Luder, President of the National Assembly who acted as interim President substituting himself to Isabel Perón who was ill for a short period, signed in February 1975 the secret presidential decree 261, which ordered the army to neutralise and/or annihilate the insurgency in Tucumán, the smallest province of Argentina. Operativo Independencia granted power to the Armed Forces to "execute all military operations necessary for the effects of neutralising or annihilating the action of subversive elements acting in the Province of Tucumán." Santucho had declared a 620-mile (1,000 km) "liberated zone" in Tucuman and demanded Soviet-backed protection for its borders as well as proper treatment of captured guerrillas as POWs.
The Argentine Army Fifth Brigade, then consisting of the 19th, 20th and 29th Mountain Infantry Regiments and commanded by Brigadier-General Acdel Vilas received the order to move to Famailla in the foothills of the Monteros mountains on 8 February 1975. While fighting the guerrillas in the jungle, Vilas concentrated on uprooting the ERP support network in the towns, using tactics later adopted nation-wide, as well as a civic action campaign. The Argentine security forces used techniques no different from their US and French counterparts in Vietnam.
By July 1975, anti-guerrilla commandos were mounting search-and-destroy missions in the mountains. Army Special Forces discovered Santucho's base camp in August, then raided the ERP urban headquarters in September. Most of the Compania Del Monte's general staff was killed in October and the survivors dispersed by the end of the year.
The leadership of the rural guerrilla force was mostly eradicated and many of the ERP guerrillas and civilian sympathizers in Tucumán were either killed or forcefully disappeared. Efforts to restrain the rural guerrilla activity to Tucumán, however, remained unsuccessful despite the use of 24 recently arrived US-made Bell UH-1H Huey troop-transport helicopters. In early October, the 5th Brigade suffered a major blow at the hands of the Montoneros, when more than one hundred, and possibly several hundred Montoneros and supporters were involved in the Operation Primicia, the most elaborate operation of the "Dirty War", which involved hijacking of a civilian airliner, taking over the provincial airport, attacking the 29th Infantry Regiment (which had retired to barracks at Formosa Province) and capturing its cache of arms, and finally escaping by air. Once the operation was over, they escaped towards a remote area in Santa Fe Province. The aircraft, a Boeing 737, eventually landed on a crop field not far from the city of Rafaela.
In the aftermath, 12 soldiers and 2 policemen were killed and several wounded. The sophistication of the operation, and the getaway cars and safe houses they used to escape from the crash-landing site, suggest several hundred guerrillas and their supporters were involved. The Argentine security forces admitted to 43 army troops killed in action in Tucuman, although this figure does not take into account police and Gendarmerie troops, and the soldiers who died defending their barracks in Formosa province on 5 October 1975. By December 1975 the Argentine military could, with some justification claim that it was winning the 'Dirty War', but it was dismayed to find no evidence of overall victory.
On 23 December 1975, several hundred ERP fighters with the help of hundreds of underground supporters, staged an all-out battle with the 601st Arsenal Battalion nine miles (14 km) from Buenos Aires and occupied four local police stations and a regimental headquarters. 63 guerrillas, seven army troops and three policemen were killed. In addition 20 civilians were killed in the crossfire. Many of the civilian deaths occurred when the guerrillas and supporting militants burned 15 city buses near the arsenal to hamper military reinforcements. This development was to have far-reaching ramifications. On 30 December 1975, urban guerrillas exploded a bomb inside the Army's headquarters in Buenos Aires, injuring at least six soldiers.
The Montoneros movement successfully utilized divers in underwater infiltrations and blew the pier where the Argentine destroyer ARA Santísima Trinidad was being built, on 22 August 1975. The ship was effectively immobilised for several years. By mid-1975, the country was a stage for widespread violence. 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.
Assassinations and kidnappings by the Peronist Montoneros and the ERP contributed to the general climate of fear. In July, there was a general strike. On 6 July 1975, the government, presided temporarily by Italo Luder from the Peronist party, issued three decrees to combat the guerrillas. The decrees 2770, 2771 and 2772 created a Defense Council headed by the president and including his ministers and the 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 the country".
Military control was thus generalised to all of the country. These "annihilation decrees" are the source of the charges against her which led to the failed attempt to have Isabel Perón's arrested in Madrid more than thirty years later, in January 2007. The country was then divided into five military zones through a 28 October 1975 military directive of "Struggle against Subversion". As had been done during the 1957 Battle of Algiers (quadrillage), each zone was divided in subzones and areas, with its corresponding military authorities. Brigadier-General Antonio Domingo Bussi replaced Vilas in December 1975.
Raid in Santa Fe (March 1975)
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, Chrysler etc., and was sometimes carried on with support from the firms' executives and from the trade-unionist bureaucracies.
Left-wing terrorism in the automotive industry
In November 1971, in solidarity with militant car workers, Montoneros guerrillas took over a car manufacturing plant in Caseros, sprayed 38 Fiats with petrol, and then set them alight. Dr. Oberdan Sallustro, director-general of the Fiat Concord company in Argentina–which manufactured cars, rolling stock and power generators under licence from Fiat of Italy, the parent company–and an Italian citizen, was kidnapped by ERP guerrillas in Buenos Aires on 21 March 1972 and found murdered on 10 April, after having been held in a "people's prison" in a working-class suburb of the city. On 2 December, the bodyguards of a Chrysler Corporation executive were attacked by militants, two were killed and another wounded.
On 21 May 1973, Luis Giovanelli, a Ford Motor Company executive, was killed and a female employee was wounded when machine-gunned by the ERP guerrillas in a kidnapping attempt that netted them US$1 million from Ford as "protection money”. On 25 May, ERP guerrillas attempted to kill two Ford Motor Company executives but only wounded them. On 3 June 1973, militants in Buenos Aires kidnapped Jose Chohelo, a Peugeot representative and later released him for a reported US$200,000.
On 22 November 1973, FAP guerrillas ambushed and killed John Swint, the American general manager of a Ford Motor Company subsidiary and three of his bodyguards. On 29 December 1973, the director of Peugeot in Argentina was kidnapped by seven armed militants. Between 24–26 June 1974, seventeen bombs of the militants exploded in Buenos Aires, damaging offices, warehouses, showrooms including Ford, General Motors and Fiat dealerships, according to the Bangor Daily News.
On 27 August 1974, FAP guerrillas killed Ricardo Goya, the labour relations manager of the IKA-Renault Motor Company in Córdoba while he was driving to work. On 8 January 1975, Rodolfo Saurnier, manager of an auto parts factory, was kidnapped by Montoneros guerrillas. On 28 July 1975, a bomb of the urban militants exploded at the Peugeot dealership in La Plata. On 9 October 1975 several Molotov cocktails were thrown by militants at Car dealerships in city of Mendoza. On 24 October 1975, Heinrich Franz Metz, production manager of the Mercedes-Benz truck plant in Buenos Aires, was kidnapped by Montoneros guerrillas.
On 29 October 1975, four Montoneros killed the Fiat-Concord personnel manager. On 16 November, militants broke into the home of a Renault executive in Córdoba and took him hostage. On 26 March 1976, two security guards of a Ford executive were killed by militants firing from a car. On 14 April, militants in Buenos Aires killed an executive of the US Chrysler Corporation. On 4 May, militants assassinated a Fiat executive in a suburb of Buenos Aires.
The director of Renault Argentina was badly wounded by plastic explosives concealed in a box of flowers on 27 August. On 10 September a Chrysler executive was killed by militants while leaving his home in Buenos Aires. On 8 October, the Buenos Aires offices of Fiat, Mercedez Benz and Chevrolet were attacked by militants with bombs. On 10 October, Domingo Lozano, Argentine manager of the Renault plant in Córdoba, was shot and killed by Montoneros guerrillas after leaving a church service in Córdoba.
On 18 October 1976, five guerrillas killed Enrique Aroza Garay, an executive of the German-owned Borgward automobile factory. On 3 November, a Chrysler executive, Carlos Roberto Souto, was killed in Buenos Aires by Montoneros. Later the same month, the Montoneros kidnapped Franz Metz, the industrial director of Mercedez Benz in Argentina, but released him five weeks later when the German company agreed to pay a ransom, reportedly US $S 5 million. On 13 October 1977, a Montoneros car bomb detonated outside the home of a Chrysler executive. The businessman was not there, but his guard and a neighbour were killed. On 16 December, Montoneros killed Andre Gasparoux, a top French executive of the Peugeot Motor Company.
Military's rise to power
By the end of 1975, a total of 137 military regulars and national servicemen and police had been killed by left wing terrorism. US journalist Paul Hoeffel, in an article written for the Boston Globe, concluded that, "Although there is widespread reluctance to use the term, it is now impossible to ignore the fact that civil war has broken out in Argentina."
During the month of August 1975, the Argentine city of Córdoba witnessed a number of armed actions on the part of the left-wing guerrillas that resulted in the death of at least five policemen and units of the elite 4th Airborne Infantry Brigade were obliged to be called in to stand guard at strategic points around the city after the bombing of police headquarters and the police radio communications centre. Conservatives, including some among the wealthy elite, encouraged the army, which prepared to take control by making lists of people who should be "dealt with" after the planned 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", Videla declared in 1975 in support of the death squads. He was one of the military heads of the coup d'état that overthrew Isabel Perón on 24 March 1976. In her place, a military junta was installed, which was headed by Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera, who stepped out in September 1978, General Orlando Agosti and Videla himself. On 13 January 1976, left-wing guerrillas set fire to a Buenos Aires commuter train after forcing passengers to descend at gunpoint.
On 2 February 1976 about fifty Montoneros attacked the Juan Vucetich Police Academy in Buenos Aires in an attempt to capture the helicopter-gunships there but were repelled in heavy fighting. In the week preceding the military coup, the Montoneros killed 13 policemen as part of its Third National Military Campaign. On 15 March, a powerful guerrilla bomb exploded next to the Argentine Army Headquarters, smashing windows in the nearby Casa Rosada and wounding 15 military personnel and 6 civilians as well as killing a civilian passerby. During 1976, Videla himself narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in which a time bomb planted in the reviewing stand at the vast Campo de Mayo barracks blew out a metre-wide hole at the exact spot where he had been standing.
The junta, which dubbed itself "National Reorganization Process", systematised the repression, in particular through the way of "forced disappearances" (desaparecidos), which made it very difficult, as in Augusto Pinochet's Chile, to dismiss legal suits as the bodies were never found. The Generals organised a nation-wide system, from national to local scale, to track down so-called "subversives". Argentine newspaper La Opinión founded by Jacobo Timerman, who would himself later disappear, wrote on 31 December 1976 that the Argentine "guerrillas" had suffered losses of 4000, and that the Montoneros had lost 80% of their leaders. The Buenos Aires Herald estimated the victims in 1976 to be 1,100 dead. A clandestine newspaper added that "there is one dead each five hours, and one bomb each three hours." According to Argentine journalist Stella Calloni, author of the classic Los años del lobo, all of these numbers may be correct. In all, 293 servicemen and policemen were killed in left wing terrorist incidents between 1975 and 1976.
This generalisation of state terror tactics has been explained in part by the information received by the Argentine militaries 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 (1954–62).
In 1976 there was a successful series of Montoneros bomb attacks in which the general commanding the Federal Police, Cesáreo Cardozo was killed. Lieutenant-General Jorge Videla narrowly escaped three Montoneros assassination attempts between February 1976 and April 1977. The Montoneros conducted an assassination attempt against Navy Commandant Admiral Emilio Massera.
In an underwater mining attack on the Itati yacht of the Argentine Navy, the luxury craft was badly damaged by the explosives but Massera escaped unscathed. As pressure mounted on the Montoneros, the urban guerrillas struck back. On 2 July 1976 a Claymore shrapnel mine exploded at the headquarters of the Federal Police in west Buenos Aires during a secret meeting of the police leadership, killing 21, and injuring 60 others. On 12 September 1976, a car bomb destroyed a bus filled with police officers in Rosario, killing 9 policemen and 2 civilians and injuring at least 50.
On 29 September 1976 fierce fighting took place in the Floresta suburb of Buenos Aires, where one-hundred soldiers and policemen were forced to use bazookas and armoured cars against heavily armed guerrillas. On 2 October, Lieutenant-General Jorge Videla narrowly escaped death when a bomb packed in metal tubing supporting a reviewing stand at the Campo de Mayo army barracks exploded only moments after he left.
On 17 October a bomb blast in an Army Club Cinema in downtown Buenos Aires killed 11 and wounded about 50 officers and their families. On 15 December, another bomb planted in a Defense Ministry movie hall killed at least 14 and injured 30 officers and their families. By the first anniversary of the coup that ousted President Isabel Perón, 124 soldiers and police had been killed in incidents involving left wing guerrillas in what the military referred to as, "the Dirty War".
In 1976 there had been plans to send great part of the Uruguayan MLN Tupamaros, the Chilean Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) and the Bolivian Revolutionary Army (ELN) to fight alongside the ERP and Montoneros in Argentina, but the plans failed to materialise due to the military coup.
Furthermore, by 1976 Operation Condor, which had already centralised information from South American intelligence agencies for years, was at its height. Chilean exiles in Argentina were threatened again, and had to go into hiding or seek refuge in 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 CIA agent Michael Townley and DINA agent 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 answered directly to the General Commandant of the SIDE, Otto Paladino. Automotores Orletti was the main base of foreign intelligence services involved in Operation Condor. One of the 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, 22 years-old Jesús Cejas Arias, and 26 years-old Crescencio Galañega, tortured by Gordon's group and interrogated by a man who specially came one day 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, in the intersection between Calle Arribeños and Virrey del Pino, 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 a cable sent by Robert Scherrer, an FBI agent in Buenos Aires on 22 September 1976, where he mentions in passing that former CIA agent 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. Former head of the DINA confirmed to Argentine federal judge María Servini de Cubría on 22 December 1999, in Santiago de Chile, the presence of Michael Townley and Cuban Guillermo Novo Sampoll in the Orletti center. The two men travelled from Chile to Argentina on 11 August 1976, and "cooperated in the torture and assassination of the two Cuban diplomats". Luis Posada Carriles boasted in his autobiography, Los caminos del guerrero, of the murder of the two young men. According to the "terror archives" discovered in Paraguay in 1992, 50,000 persons were murdered in the frame of Condor, 9,000–30,000 disappeared (desaparecidos) and 400,000 incarcerated.
False flag actions by SIDE agents
During a 1981 interview whose contents were revealed by documents declassified by the CIA in 2000, former CIA and DINA agent Michael Townley explained that Ignacio Novo Sampol, member of CORU anti-Castro organisation, had agreed to commit the Cuban Nationalist Movement in the kidnapping, in Buenos Aires, of a president of a Dutch bank. The abduction, organised by civilian SIDE agents, the Argentine intelligence agency, was 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 US, 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 organisation, which was to claim credit for the abduction of the Dutch banker. Townley declared that the pamphlets were distributed in Mendoza and Córdoba in relation with false flag bombings perpetrated by SIDE agents, which had as aim to accredit the existence of the fake Grupo Rojo. However, the SIDE agents procrastinated too much, and the kidnapping finally was not carried out.
Human rights violations and guerrilla activity from 1976 to 1983
On 5 January 1979, the New York Times published an article by David Vidal, who claimed that the number of disappeared in Latin America now numbered 30,000. The Christian Science Monitor and Boston Globe followed suit with similar articles claiming that 30,000 people had disappeared under military dictatorships in Latin America. The Los Angeles Times repeated the claims of 30,000 Latin Americans disappeared in a new article in October and November of that year. In May 1980, the Montreal Gazette, in an interview with the sister of the slain guerrilla commander Ernesto (Che) Guevara, Cecilia Guevara, said that in Argentina alone more 30,000 people had disappeared and another 15,000 had been imprisoned.
On 10 December 1983, Raúl Alfonsín assumed the presidency in Argentina, and on 17 December he announced that he was setting up a commission to investigate the disappearances of what he believed to be more than 6,000 Argentines in nearly eight years of military rule.
The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) researched and recorded, case by case, the "disappearance" of about 9,000 persons, though Argentine human rights group maintain that 30,000 disappeared. However, official records put the number of disappeared at 13,000. An estimated 15,000 people "disappeared" in Argentina, according to a Human Rights Watch report in 2002. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International were gravely concerned by the state's use of 'disappearances' and periodical use ofextrajudicial killings against what were supposed 'subversives'. In the last months of military junta under Lieutenant-General Reynaldo Bignone, Amnesty International estimated the total number of disappeared in Argentina to be 15,000.
Anyone believed to be associated with activist groups, including trade-union members, students (including very young students, for example in September 1976 during the Night of the Pencils, an operation directed by Ramón Camps, General and head of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police from April 1976 to December 1977), people who had uncovered evidence of government corruption, and people thought to hold left-wing views (for example French nuns Léonie Duquet and Alice Domon, kidnapped by Alfredo Astiz). Ramón Camps told Clarín in 1984 that he had used torture as a method of interrogation and orchestrated 5,000 forced disappearances, and justified the appropriation of newborns from their imprisoned mothers "because subversive parents will raise subversive children". But, there are people such as Professor Paul H. Lewis, who has written Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina, that claim the guerrilla threat was real and that the guerrillas had countless sympathizers among the civilian population. Terence Roehrig, who has written The prosecution of former military leaders in newly democratic nations. The cases of Argentina, Greece, and South Korea (McFarland & Company, 2001), estimates that of the disappeared "at least 10,000 were involved in various ways with the guerrillas". Many of the "disappeared" were pushed out of planes and into the Río de la Plata or the Atlantic Ocean to drown. This form of disappearance, theorised by Luis María Mendía, former chief of naval operations in 1976–77 who is today before the court for his role in the ESMA case, was termed vuelos de la muerte (death flights). These individuals who suddenly vanished are called los desaparecidos, meaning "the missing ones" or "vanished ones". This term often refers to the 9,000–30,000 Argentines that went missing. Tomás Di Toffino, Deputy Secretary General of Luz y Fuerza de Córdoba, was kidnapped on 28 November 1976 and executed in a military camp in Córdoba on 28 February 1977, in a "military ceremony" presided by General Luciano Benjamín Menéndez.
In December 1976, 22 captured Montoneros responsible for the death of General Cáceres Monié and the attack on the Argentine Army 29th Mountain Infantry Regiment[129] 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, as well as Cristino Nicolaides, junta leader Leopoldo Galtieri and Santa Fe Provincial Policechief Wenceslao Ceniquel. The same year, fifty anonymous persons were illegally executed by a firing-squad in Córdoba.
Victims' relatives uncovered evidence that some children taken from their mothers soon after birth were being raised as the adopted children of military men, 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 five hundred. 77 of the kidnapped children have been located so far.
On 28 January 1977, Montoneros planted a bomb in a suburban police station, killing three policemen and wounding at least 10 others. On 18 February, left-wing guerrillas bombed a crowded bus in Buenos Aires and several civilians suffered severe burns in the attack. On 26 March, left-wing guerrillas bombed the ground floor of the Sheraton hotel in Buenos Aires, wounding a Spanish tourist and six hotel employees. On 5 April, the Montoneros detonated a powerful bomb inside the building housing the Argentine Air Force Headquarters located in Buenos Aires. On 11 April, Montoneros guerrillas shot and killed Luis Liberato Arce, of the Surrey company, an air conditioner maker. On 7 May, the Montoneros mortally wounded Vice-Admiral César Augusto Guzzetti of the Argentine Navy. On 30 July 6 left-wing guerrillas were killed in a shootout with security forces in the La Plata suburb of Buenos Aires, and a kidnapped executive, Roberto Leon Lanzilliota was freed. In 1977, 36 policeman in Buenos Aires alone were assassinated or killed in action with militants and left-wing guerrillas. That year, Videla told British journalists: "I emphatically deny that there are concentration camps in Argentina, or military establishments in which people are held longer than is absolutely necessary in this ... fight against subversion". Alicia Partnoy, who was tortured and wrote her story in "The Little School", and others, have claimed otherwise.
In September 1977, General Albano Harguindeguy, minister of the interior, admitted that in May of that year 5,618 disappeared in the form of PEN detenidos-desaparecidos were being held in detention camps throughout Argentina.
The Montoneros tried to disrupt the World Cup Soccer Tournament being hosted in Argentina in 1978 by launching a number of bomb attacks.
In late September 1979, Major-General Luciano Benjamín Menéndez tried to stage a military takeover from Córdoba, calling for Lieutenant-General Roberto Eduardo Viola's resignation, charging the army chief had not "kept the promise to completely eradicate subversion, making it impossible for Marxism to make a comeback in the country in the future".Viola, a moderate who favoured a return to democracy, was forced to send in 4,000 paratroopers to put down the rebellion.
In late 1979, the Montoneros launched a "strategic counteroffensive" in Argentina, and lost more than one hundred commandos killed. Among their targets was Francisco Soldatti, a top banking figure killed along with his driver at a busy downtown intersection in Buenos Aires on the morning of 6 November 1979. The exiled Montoneros had been sent back to Argentina after receiving special forces training in terrorist camps in the Middle East. The Montoneros leadership had wrongly believed the moment was ripe for revolution in Argentina. More than 600 Argentines, the majority of them civilians, had disappeared in 1978, and as the decade came to an end there were "only" 36 reported incidents of disappearances since January 1979.
In 1980, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a Catholic human rights activist who had organised the Servicio de Paz y Justicia (Peace and Justice Service) and suffered torture while held without trial for 14 months in a Buenos Aires concentration camp, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in the defence of human rights in Argentina. On 17 September 1980, a team of former ERP commanders killed Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the former president of Nicaragua, in a carefully planned ambush that also killed his driver and his financial advisor. Unable to operate in Argentina any longer, some Argentine guerrillas relocated to Central America. During the 1980s, a captured Sandinista guerrilla revealed that Montoneros "Special Forces" were training Sandinista frogmen and conducting gun runs across the Gulf of Fonseca to the Sandinista allies in El Salvador, FMLN guerrillas.
In 1981, Videla retired and General Roberto Eduardo Viola replaced him, but nine months later, Viola stepped down, allegedly for health reasons, and General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri took the post. Democracy returned withRaúl Alfonsín, who created the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) on 15 December 1983. Under Alfonsín, Congress would then pass the Ley de Punto Final and Ley de Obediencia Debida as amnesty laws, overturned in June 2005 by the Supreme Court.
According to Argentine war correspondent Nicolas Kasanzew, a pro-Montoneros group of Buenos Aires national servicemen saw action in the Falklands War with the 7th Infantry Regiment, unbeknown to their superiors. Upon returning to Argentina, these soldiers formed a vocal veterans group that repeatedly accused their officers of cowardice and maltreatment. They were largely ignored by the Alfonsin and Menem governments. But their attempts to arrest and put on trial their former commanders gained momentum under the presidency of the Kirchners. The case ran its course but their case was declared null and void in May 2011 when it was discovered that Pablo Andres Vassel, a former Corrientes human rights' lawyer representing their case, was paying for false testimonies against Argentine Army officers and NCOs.
The Disappeared held under PEN
By the time of the coup on 24 March 1976, the number of disappeared held under Poder Ejecutivo Nacional (PEN) stood at least 5,182. Some 18,000 disappeared in the form of PEN detainees were imprisoned in Argentina by the end of 1977 and it is estimated that some 3,000 deaths occurred in the Navy Engineering School (ESMA) alone.These disappeared were held incommunicado and reportedly tortured. Some, like senator Hipolito Solari Yrigoyen and socialist leader professor Alfredo Bravo, were "detenidos-desaparecidos".Alicia Partnoy, a poet and member of the Peronist Youth that had links with the Montoneros, also counts as one of the victims who had disappeared but later "reappeared." On 10 November 1977, Colonel Ricardo Flouret and captain Eduardo Andujar, representing the interior ministry, explained to Amnesty International that many of the disappeared were guerrillas who had gone underground or fled the country.
By refusing to acknowledge the existence of what was later established to be at least 340 concentration camps throughout the country they also denied the existence of their occupants, some 30,000 Argentines are estimated to have passed through the camps. The total number of people who were detained for long periods was 8,625. Among them was future President Carlos Menem, who between 1976 and 1981 had been a political prisoner.
US President Jimmy Carter offered to accept 3,000 PEN detainees, as long as they had no terrorist background. Some 8,600 PEN disappeared were eventually released under international pressure. Of these 4,029 were held in illegal detention centres for less than a year, 2,296 for one to three years, 1,172 for three to five years, 668 for five to seven years, and 431 for seven to nine years. Of these detenidos-desaparecidos 157 were murdered after being released from detention.
In one frank memo, written in 1977, an official at the Foreign Ministry issued the following warning:
Our situation presents certain aspects which are without doubt difficult to defend if they are analyzed from the point of view of international law. These are: the delays incurred before foreign consuls can visit detainees of foreign nationality, (contravening article 34 of the Convention of Vienna.) the fact that those detained under Executive Power (PEN) are denied the right to legal advice or defense, the complete lack of information of persons detained under PEN, the fact that PEN detainees are not processed for long periods of time, the fact that there are no charges against detainees. The kidnapping and disappearance of people.
Children of the Disappeared
At the time when the CONADEP report was prepared, the Asociación Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo or Abuelas), had records of 172 children who disappeared together with their parents or were born at the numerous concentration camps and had not been returned to their families.
The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo now believe up to 500 grandchildren were stolen. 102 are believed to have been located.  On 13 April 2000, the grandmothers received a tip off that the birth certificate of Rosa Roisinblit's infant grandson, born in detention, had been falsified and the child given to an Air Force civil agent and his wife. Following the anonymous phone call, he was located and agreed to a DNA blood test, confirming his true identity. Rodolfo Fernando, grandson of Roisinblit, is the first known newborn of missing children returned to his family through the work of the grandmothers. Roisinblit's daughter, 25-year-old Patricia Julia Roisinblit de Perez, who was active in the Montoneros, was kidnapped along with her husband, 24-year-old José Martínas Pérez Rojo, on 6 October 1978.
The case of Maria Eugenia Sampallo (born some time in 1978) also received considerable attention. Sampallo sued the couple who adopted her illegally as a baby after her parents disappeared, both Montoneros. Her grandmother spent 24 years looking for her. The case was filed in 2001, after DNA tests indicated that Osvaldo Rivas and Maria Cristina Gomez were not her biological parents. They, along with Army Captain Enrique Berthier, who furnished the couple with the baby, were sentenced respectively to 8, 7 and 10 years in prison for kidnapping.
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo
The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo is the best-known Argentine human rights organization. For over thirty years, the Mothers have campaigned to find out about the fate of their lost relatives. The Mothers first held their vigil at Plaza de Mayo in 1977, where they continue to gather there every Thursday afternoon.
An article of the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo monthly publication caused quite a stir in the mid-1980s, when the Human Rights Group Familiares were quoted as saying: "Familiares assumes the causes of their children's fight as their own, vindicates all the disappeared as fighters of the people, ... [and when occurs] the defeat of imperialism and the sovereignty of the people, we will have achieved our objectives".
In 1986 the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo split into two groups: Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo – Linea Fundadora (Founding Line), remains focused in recovering the remains of the missing and bringing former police and military commanders to justice. The Asociacion de Madres de Plaza de Mayo (The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo Association) on the other hand, is opposed to the search for and identification of the missing and have also rejected monetary compensation.
In April 2004, the former head of the Mothers of Plaza, Hebe de Bonafini declared her admiration for her missing children, Jorge Omar and Raúl Alfredo for taking up arms as left-wing guerrillas.
In September 2011, the original Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo organisation became embroiled in a major corruption scandal over alleged money laundering and fraud with government housing funds granted.
On 26 January 2012, former Argentine President Eduardo Duhalde criticised Hebe de Bonafini for openly supporting the Basque separatist group ETA and the Colombian left-wing FARC guerrilla movement.
Falklands War
In 1982, the Argentine military invaded the British-controlled Falkland Islands in a desperate attempt to rally the population behind a war. The junta hoped that the United States would side with the Argentines based on, among other things, the Argentine/CIA intervention in Central America against the Sandinistas and that the British would not be willing to go to war over the islands. However, the US aligned with the British who, led by Margaret Thatcher, defeated the Argentines after 74 days. The loss of the war led to the resignation of Galtieri on 17 June of the same year and a fourth (and last) junta was placed in power under a new president, Reynaldo Bignone. Raúl Alfonsín's civilian government took control of the country on 10 December 1983. Galtieri, along with other members of the former junta, was soon arrested and charged in a military court with mismanagement during the war. They were also charged later on human rights violations during the Trial of the Juntas.
Anti-Communism
The junta's mission was stated to defend against international communism.Indeed, the "ideological war" doctrine of the Argentine military focused on eliminating the supposed social base of insurgency, as much as targeting actual guerrillas. Associated with other South American dictatorships in Operation Condor, they also worked closely with the Asian-based World Anti-Communist League and its Latin American affiliate, the Confederación Anticomunista Latinoamericana. In 1980, the Argentine military helped Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, Stefano Delle Chiaie and major drug lords mount the bloody Cocaine Coup of Luis García Meza Tejada in neighbouring Bolivia. They hired 70 foreign agents for this task, which was managed in particular by the 601st Intelligence Battalion headed by General Guillermo Suárez Mason.
After having been trained by the French military, the Argentine Armed Forces would train their counterparts, in Nicaragua, but also El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, in the frame of Operation Charly. From 1977 to 1984, after the Falklands War, the Argentine Armed Forces exported counter-insurgency tactics, including the systemic use of torture, death squads and disappearances. Special force units, such as Batallón de Inteligencia 601, headed in 1979 by Colonel Jorge Alberto Muzzio, trained the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, in particular in Lepaterique base. Following the release of classified documents and an interview with Duane Clarridge, former CIAresponsible for operations with the Contras, the Clarín showed that with the election of President Jimmy Carter in 1977, the CIA was blocked from engaging in the special warfare it had previously been engaged in. In conformity with the National Security Doctrine, the Argentine military supported US goals in Latin America, while they pressured the US to be more active in counter-revolutionary activities. In 1981 following the election of Ronald Reagan the CIA took over training of the Contras from Batallón 601
Many Chilean and Uruguayan exiles in Argentina were murdered by Argentine security forces (including high-profile figures such as General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires in 1974, Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz and Zelmar Michelini in Buenos Aires in 1976). Others, such as Wilson Ferreira Aldunate escaped death. Central Intelligence Agency documents released in 2002 show that Argentina's brutal policies were known and tolerated by the United States State Department, led by Henry Kissinger under Gerald Ford's presidency, and that the Argentine military believed that the US approved of the Dirty War.
US involvement with the Junta
Despite the fact that at least six US citizens had been "disappeared" by the Argentine military by 1976 and the fact that the US embassy in Buenos Aires had been pushing Argentina's government to respect human rights, high ranking state department officials including then Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger had secretly given their approval to Argentina's new military rulers.
State Department documents obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act show that in October 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissingerand high-ranking US officials gave their full support to the Argentine military junta and urged them to hurry up and finish their actions before the US Congress cut military aid.
On 5 October 1976 Henry Kissinger met with Argentina's Foreign Minister and stated:
“	Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed the better... The human rights problem is a growing one. Your Ambassador can apprise you. We want a stable situation. We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better. Whatever freedoms you could restore would help.	”
The US was also a key provider of economic and military assistance to the Videla regime during the earliest and most intense phase of the repression. In early April 1976, the US Congress approved a request by the Ford Administration, written and supported by Henry Kissinger, to grant $50,000,000 in security assistance to the junta. At the end of 1976, Congress granted an additional $30,000,000 in military aid, and recommendations by the Ford Administration to increase military aid to $63,500,000 the following year were also considered by congress. US assistance, training and military sales to the Videla regime continued under the successive Carter Administration up until at least 30 September 1978 when military aid was officially called to a stop within section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act.
In 1977 and 1978 the United States sold more than $120,000,000 in military spare parts to Argentina, and in 1977 the US Department of Defense was granted $700,000 to train 217 Argentine military officers. By the time the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program was suspended to Argentina in 1978, total US training costs for Argentine military personnel since 1976 totalled $1,115,000. After the onset of the US military cutoff, Israel became Argentina's principal supplier of weapons. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Israel earned more than $1 billion a year selling weapons, many of them originating from the United States, to the military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil. "Thus while Argentine Jewish newspaper publisher and human rights advocate Jacobo Timerman was being tortured by the Argentine military in cells painted with swastikas, three Israeli generals, including the former armed chief of staff, were visiting Buenos Aires on a 'friendly mission' to sell arms."
The Reagan Administration, whose first term began in 1981, however, asserted that the previous Carter Administration had weakened US diplomatic relationships with Cold War allies in Argentina, and reversed the previous administration's official condemnation of the junta's human rights practices. The re-establishment of diplomatic ties allowed for CIA collaboration with the Argentine intelligence service in training and arming the Nicaraguan Contrasagainst the Sandinista government. The 601 Intelligence Battalion, for example, trained Contras at Lepaterique base, in Honduras.
Cuban involvement with the guerrillas
During the height of Argentine left-wing terrorism, the Cubans used their embassy in Buenos Aires to maintain direct contact with Argentine guerrillas. In 1973, the Montoneros merged with the Cuban-backed FAR (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias or Armed Revolutionary Forces) that in 1972 had planted a bomb in the Sheraton hotel in Buenos Aires that killed a Canadian tourist.[ On 13 February 1974, a clandestine meeting was held in Mendoza, Argentina, and the Junta de Coordinacion Revolucionaria (JCR or Junta of Revolutionary Coordination) was formed. The JCR consisted of four guerrilla groups: the Uruguayan Tupamaros (MLN-T), the Chilean Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) and the Bolivian Revolutionary Army (ELN). The ERP guerrillas maintained a guerrilla warfare training school, an arms factory, and a false documentation center in Argentina. These were all closed down in 1975 by Argentine security forces. In 1976, ERP guerrillas started receiving training in Cuba on an 1800 hectare (7 square miles) estate near Guanabo as well as at another site in Pinar del Rio. The course lasted at least three months and included the use of explosives, weapons tactics, survival in rugged terrain, tank warfare, and the techniques of clandestine warfare. Members of the ERP and Montoneros also received training from Iraq and Libya. In 1976 there had been plans to send great part of the Uruguayan, Chilean and Bolivian guerrillas to fight alongside the ERP and Montoneros in Argentina, but the plans failed to materialise because of the military coup. In 1978 Castro permitted the Montonero command to relocate to Cuba and supplied them with false documentation and funds from Cuban diplomatic circles. Following their relocation to Cuba, the Montoneros leadership made repeated attempts to infiltrate commando units to Argentina after these guerrillas had received special forces training in the Middle East as part of a combined effort between Palestinian PLO and Cuba.
"French Connection"
French journalist Marie-Monique Robin has found in the archives of the Quai d'Orsay, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the original document proving that a 1959 agreement between Paris and Buenos Aires initiated a "permanent French military mission", formed of veterans who had fought in the Algerian War, and which was located in the offices of the chief of staff of the Argentine Armed Forces. It was continued until 1981, date of the election of socialist François Mitterrand. She showed how Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's government secretly collaborated with Videla's junta in Argentina and with Augusto Pinochet's regime in Chile. The first Argentine officers, among whom Alcides Lopez Aufranc, went to Paris to study for two years at the Ecole de Guerre military school in 1957, two years before the Cuban Revolution and when no Argentine guerrilla existed."In practice, declared Robin to Página/12, the arrival of the French in Argentina led to a massive extension of intelligence services and of the use of torture as the primary weapon of the anti-subversive war in the concept of modern warfare." The annihilation decrees signed by Isabel Perón had been inspired by French texts. During the Battle of Algiers, the police forces were put under the authority of the Army, and in particular of the paratroopers, who generalizedinterrogation sessions, systematically using torture and then disappearances. 30,000 persons disappeared in Algeria. Reynaldo Bignone, named President of the Argentine junta in July 1982, declared in her film: "The March 1976 order of battle is a copy of the Algerian battle." The same statements were issued by Generals Albano Harguindeguy, Videla's Interior Minister, and Diaz Bessone, former Minister of Planification and ideologue of the junta. The French military would transmit to their Argentine counterparts the notion of "internal enemy" and the use of torture, death squads and "quadrillages".
Green members of parliament Noël Mamère, Martine Billard and Yves Cochet filed on 10 September 2003 a request for the constitution of a Parliamentary Commission on the "role of France in the support of military regimes in Latin America from 1973 to 1984" before the Foreign Affairs Commission of the National Assembly, presided by Edouard Balladur (UMP). Apart from Le Monde, French newspapers remained silent on that request. However, UMP deputy Roland Blum, in charge of the Commission, refused to hear Marie-Monique Robin, and published in December 2003 a 12-page report qualified by Robin as the summum of bad faith. It claimed that no agreement had been signed, despite the agreement found by Robin in the Quai d'Orsay.
When Minister of Foreign Affairs Dominique de Villepin travelled to Chile in February 2004, he claimed that no co-operation between France and the military regimes had occurred.
Reporter Marie-Monique Robin thus declared to L'Humanité newspaper: "French have systematized a military technique in urban environment which would be copied and pasted to Latin American dictatorships." The methods employed during the 1957 Battle of Algiers were systematised and exported to the War School in Buenos Aires. Roger Trinquier's famous book on counter-insurgency had a very strong influence in South America. She declared being shocked to learn that the DST French intelligence agency communicated to the DINA the name of the refugees who returned to Chile (Operation Retorno). All of these Chileans have been killed. "Of course, this puts in cause the French government, and Giscard d'Estaing, then President of the Republic. I was very shocked by the duplicity of the French diplomatic position which, on one hand, received with open arms the political refugees, and, on the other hand, collaborated with the dictatorships."
Marie-Monique Robin also demonstrated ties between the French far right and Argentina since the 1930s, in particular through the Catholic fundamentalist organisation Cité catholique, created by Jean Ousset, a former secretary of Charles Maurras, the founder of the royalist Action Française movement, who was awarded the Francisque under Vichy (1940–4). La Cité edited a review, Le Verbe, which influenced militaries during the Algerian War, notably by justifying the use of torture. At the end of the 1950s, the Cité catholique installed itself in Argentina and organised their cells in the Army. It greatly expanded itself during the government of General Juan Carlos Onganía, in particular in 1969. The key figure of the Cité catholique was priest Georges Grasset, who became Videla's personal confessor and had been the spiritual guide of the Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) pro-French Algeria terrorist movement founded in Franquist Spain. This Catholic fundamentalist current in the Argentine Army explains, according to Robin, the importance and length of the French-Argentine co-operation. In Buenos Aires, Georges Grasset maintained links with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of Society of St. Pius X in 1970 and excommunicated in 1988. The Society of Pius-X has four monasteries in Argentina, the largest one in La Reja. There, a French priest declared to Marie-Monique Robin: "To save the soul of a Communist priest, one must kill him." There, she met Luis Roldan, former Under Secretary of Cult under Carlos Menem, President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999, who was presented by Dominique Lagneau, the priest in charge of the monastery, as "Mr. Cité catholique in Argentina". Bruno Genta and Juan Carlos Goyeneche represent this ideology.
Antonio Caggiano, archbishop of Buenos Aires from 1959 to 1975 wrote in 1961 a prologue to Jean Ousset's Spanish version of Le Marxisme-léninisme. Caggiano explained that "Marxism is the negation of Christ and his Church" and spoke of a Marxist conspiracy to take over the world, for which it was necessary to "prepare for the decisive battle". Together with President Arturo Frondizi (Radical Civic Union, UCR), he inaugurated the first course on counter-revolutionary warfare in the Higher Military College (Frondizi was eventually overthrown for being "tolerant of Communism").
By 1963, cadets at the (then infamously well-known) Navy Mechanics School started receiving counter-insurgency classes aided by the film The Battle of Algiers, which showed the methods used by the French Army in Algeria. Caggiano, the military chaplain at the time, introduced the film approvingly and added a religiously oriented commentary to it. On 2 July 1966, four days after President Arturo Umberto Illia was removed from office and replaced by the dictator Juan Carlos Onganía, Caggiano declared: "We are at a sort of dawn, in which, thanks to God, we all sense that the country is again headed for greatness."
Argentine Admiral Luis María Mendía, who had theorised the practice of "death flights", testified in January 2007, before the Argentine judges, that a French intelligence "agent", Bertrand de Perseval, had participated in the abduction of the two French nuns, Léonie Duquet and Alice Domont. Perseval, who lives today in Thailand, denied any links with the abduction, but did admit being a former member of the OAS, and having escaped from Argentina after the March 1962 Évian Accords putting an end to the Algerian War (1954–62). Referring to Marie Monique Robin's film documentary titled The Death Squads – the French School (Les escadrons de la mort – l'école française), Luis María Mendía asked before the Argentine Court that former French president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, former French premier Pierre Messmer, former French embassador to Buenos Aires Françoise de la Gosse, and all officials in place in the French embassy in Buenos Aires between 1976 and 1983 be convoked before the court.[196] Besides this "French connection", he has also charged former head of state Isabel Perón and former ministers Carlos Ruckauf and Antonio Cafiero, who had signed the "anti-subversion decrees" before Videla's 1976 coup d'état. According to ESMA survivor Graciela Dalo, this is another tactic which pretends that these crimes were legitimate as the 1987 Obediencia Debida Act claimed them to be and that they also obeyed to Isabel Perón's "anti-subversion decrees" (which, if true, would give them a formal appearance of legality, despite torture being forbidden by the Argentine Constitution) Alfredo Astiz also referred before the courts to the "French connexion".
When Minister of Foreign Affairs Dominique de Villepin travelled to Chile in February 2004, he claimed that no co-operation between France and the military regimes had occurred.[194]
Truth commission, decrees revoked
The junta relinquished power in 1983. After democratic elections, president elect Raúl Alfonsín created the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) in December 1983, led by writer Ernesto Sábato, to collect evidence about the Dirty War crimes. The gruesome details, including documentation of the disappearance of nearly 9,000 people, shocked the world. Jorge Rafael Videla, head of the junta, was among the generals convicted of human rights crimes, including forced disappearances, torture, murders and kidnappings. President Alfonsín ordered that the nine members of the military junta be judicially charged, during the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, together with guerrilla leaders Mario Firmenich, Fernando Vaca Narvaja, Rodolfo Galimberti, Roberto Perdía, and Enrique Gorriarán Merlo. As of 2010, most of the military officials are in trial or jail. In 1985, Videla was sentenced to life imprisonment at the military prison of Magdalena. Several senior officers also received jail terms. In the Prologue to the Nunca Más report ("Never Again"), Ernesto Sábato wrote:
From the moment of their abduction, the victims lost all rights. Deprived of all communication with the outside world, held in unknown places, subjected to barbaric tortures, kept ignorant of their immediate or ultimate fate, they risked being either thrown into a river or the sea, weighted down with blocks of cement, or burned to ashes. They were not mere objects, however, and still possessed all the human attributes: they could feel pain, could remember a mother, child or spouse, could feel infinite shame at being raped in public...
Reacting to the human rights trials, hardliners in the Argentine army staged a series of uprisings against the Alfonsín government. They barricaded themselves in several military barracks demanding an end of the trials. During Holy Week (Semana Santa) of April 1987, Lieutenant-Colonel Aldo Rico (commander of the 18th Infantry Regiment in Misiones province) and several junior army officers, barricaded themselves in the Campo de Mayo army barracks. The military rebels, who were called the carapintadas, called for an end to the trials and the resignation of army chief of staff General Hector Rios Erenu. Rico believed that the Alfonsin government would be unwilling or unable to put down the uprising. He was correct, as the Second Army Corps commander's orders to surround the barracks were ignored by his subordinates. Alfonsin called on the people to come to the Plaza de Mayo to defend democracy, and hundreds of thousands responded. After a helicopter visit by Alfonsin to Campo de Mayo, the rebels finally surrendered. There were denials of a deal but several generals were forced into early retirement and General Jose Dante Caridi was soon replaced Erenu as commander of the army.
In January 1988, a second military rebellion took place when Rico refused to accept the detention orders issued by a military court for having led the previous uprising. This time he set up base in the 4th Infantry Regiment in Monte Caseros and repudiated Caridi's calls to hand himself in. Rico again demanded an end to the human rights trials saying the promises of Alfonsin to the rebels had not been fulfilled. Caridi ordered several army units to suppress the rebellion. Their advance to the Monte Caseros barracks was slowed down by the rains and the news that rebel soldiers had laid mines that had wounded three loyal officers. Nevertheless, Rico's forces were defeated after a three-hour battle. They surrendered on 17 January 1988 and 300 rebels were arrested, and sentenced to jail.
A third uprising took place in December 1988. This time the uprising was led by Lieutenant-Colonel Mohammed Alí Seineldín and was supported by 1,000 rebel troops. This uprising proved successful. Several of the demands of Seineldin and his followers were met. Caridi was forced into retirement and replaced by General Francisco Gassino, who had served in the Falklands/Malvinas War and was held in high esteem by the carapintadas. On 5 October 1989 as part of a sweeping reform, the newly elected president, Carlos Menem, pardoned those convicted in the human right trials and the rebel leaders imprisoned for taking part in the military uprisings. Menem also pardoned the leftist guerrilla commanders accused of terrorism. In a televised address to the nation, President Menem said, "I have signed the decrees so we may begin to rebuild the country in peace, in liberty and in justice ... We come from long and cruel confrontations. There was a wound to heal."
Some viewed the pardons as a pragmatic decision of national reconciliation. Others condemned them as unconstitutional, noting that the constitutionally acknowledged right of the president to pardon does not extend to those who have not yet been convicted – which was the situation in the case of some military officials. Others consider that this presidential privilege is inappropriate for modern times, a relic of monarchic rule that should be abolished. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize and chairman of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission that advocated for forgiveness and reconciliation, said: "without forgiveness there is no future".Lieutenant-General Félix Martín Bonnet, who was then commander of the Argentine Army, welcomed the pardons as an "inspiration of the armed forces, not only because those who had been their commanders were deprived of their freedom, but because many of their present members fought, and did so, in fulfillment of express orders."
In September 1999, in the aftermath of the bloodshed witnessed in the break-up from Indonesia, the East Timorese leader, Xanana Gusmao, also called for reconciliation. Not everyone agreed with his decision.
Foreign governments whose citizens were victims of the Dirty War (which included citizens of Czechoslovakia, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Paraguay, Bolivia, Spain, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, and several other nations) are pressing individual cases against the former military regime. France has sought the extradition of Captain Alfredo Astiz for the kidnapping and murder of its nationals, among them nuns Léonie Duquet and Alice Domon. Adolfo Scilingo, a former Argentine naval officer, was convicted in Spain, on 19 April 2005, to 640 years on charges of crimes against humanity. In 1998, Videla received a prison sentence for his role in the kidnapping of eleven children during the regime and for the forgery of the children's identity documents (the "stolen babies", kidnapped from the parents arrested, and raised by military families). Videla served much of his sentence under house arrest before being imprisoned in Marcos Paz prison late in 2010 after convictions on new human-rights charges; he died in that prison in May, 2013.
In 1986 and 1987, Congress passed the Pardon Laws, the Final Line and Due Obedience, which ended prosecutions of military and security officers for crimes committed during the military dictatorship. The Ley de Punto Final had been voted on 24 December 1986, under Alfonsín's presidency. It extinguished any charges for human rights violations for all acts preceding 12 December 1983. The military had pressed for the legislation under threat of another coup. Under the presidency of Carlos Menem, the military, police and left-wing guerrilla commandersaccused of killings and torture during Argentina's "dirty war" of the 1970s could not be prosecuted for their crimes. These amnesty laws were long unpopular with surviving victims of the Dirty War and their families.
In October 2002, DaimlerChrysler announced an external investigation into claims made by Amnesty International that 14 union activists had been handed over to Argentina's military during the Dirty War.
Continuing controversies
On 23 January 1989, a heavily armed group of around 40 guerrillas, a faction of the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (MTP or All for the Fatherland Movement), attacked the La Tablada army barracks on the outskirts of Buenos Aires to "prevent" a military coup. The attack resulted in fierce fighting, with 28 of the guerrillas killed, five "disappeared" and 13 imprisoned. Eleven police and military died, and 53 were wounded in the fighting. President Raúl Alfonsín declared that the attack, with the goal of sparking a massive popular uprising, could have led to civil war. The guerrillas claimed to have acted to prevent a military coup.
In 1992 and 1994, two bombs devastated the Argentine Jewish community in Buenos Aires. On 17 March 1992, 29 people were killed and 242 injured when a car bomb exploded at the Israeli Embassy in the capital. On 18 July 1994, a bomb exploded in front of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 86 people and wounding several hundred. While the two cases, which are thought to be related, have been officially under investigation for over 17 years, little progress has been made.
Initial suspects in the attack included policemen and ex-carapintadas. They were later acquitted in 2004. Federal judge Juan José Galeano, who was in charge of the case, was impeached and removed from his post for having paid $400,000 to a suspect, Carlos Telleldín, to falsely accuse police officers of being involved in the plot.
Michael Soltys wrote an editorial suggesting that President Cristina Kirchner was reluctant to define the AMIA terrorist attack as a crime against humanity since the charge could be used against former Montoneros members serving in her administration who may have been linked to earlier terrorism. In 2009, George Karim Chaya, a journalist and political analyst, told relatives of victims of left-wing terrorism that both attacks were conducted byHezbollah and Montoneros terrorists, but this has not been proven.
Repeal of Pardon Laws and renewal of prosecutions
Under Néstor Kirchner's term as president, in 2003 the Argentine Congress revoked the longstanding amnesty laws, also called the "Pardon Laws." In 2005 the Argentine Supreme Court ruled these laws were unconstitutional. The government re-opened prosecution of war crimes. From then through October 2011, 259 persons were convicted for crimes against humanity and sentenced in Argentine courts, including Alfredo Astiz, a notorious torturer, that month.
In 2006, 24 March was designated as a public holiday in Argentina, the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice. That year, on the 30th anniversary of the coup, a huge crowd filled the streets to remember what happened during the military government, and ensure it did not happen again.
In 2006, the government began its first trials of military and security officers since the repeal of the "Pardon Laws." Miguel Etchecolatz, the police commissioner of the province of Buenos Aires in the 1970s, faced trial on charges of illegal detention, torture and homicide. He was found guilty of six counts of murder, six counts of unlawful imprisonment, and seven counts of torture, and sentenced in September 2006 to life imprisonment.
In February 2006, some former Ford Argentine workers sued the US-based company, alleging that local managers worked with the security forces to detain union members on the premises and torture them. The civil suit against Ford Motor Company and Ford Argentina called for four former company executives and a retired military officer to be questioned. According to Pedro Norberto Troiani, one of the plaintiffs, 25 employees were detained in the plant, located 40 miles (60 km) from Buenos Aires. Allegations have surfaced since 1998 that Ford officials were involved in state repression, but the company has denied the claims. Army personnel were reported to have arrived at the plant on the day of the military coup, 24 March 1976, and "disappearances" immediately started.
Since her rise to office in 2007, President Cristina Kirchner has continued prosecution of military and security officers responsible for the "disappearances." The effort to prosecute junior officers has divided Argentine politicians. For instance, former lieutenant-colonel Aldo Rico, a conservative opposition leader and Falklands/Malvinas War hero, argued in 2008 that it is counterproductive to "return to the past."
On the other hand, Nora Ginzburg, a federal legislator, suggests that leftist terrorists should also be prosecuted. Based on 677 affidavits concerning civilians and servicemen killed in leftist terrorist acts, Ginzburg wrote in the Nueva Provincia newspaper, "The subversive terrorists committed their killings in a systematic manner. They possessed a military structure, specific units, and had their flag and logo."
On 14 December 2007, some 200 ex-soldiers who fought against the rural guerrillas in Tucumán province demanded an audience with the governor of Tucumán Province, José Jorge Alperovich, claiming they too were victims of the "Dirty War." They demanded a government-sponsored military pension as veterans of the counter-insurgency campaign in northern Argentina.
In February 2010, a German court issued an international arrest warrant for former dictator Jorge Videla in connection with the death of 20-year-old Rolf Stawowiok in Argentina. He was a German citizen born in Argentina while his father was doing development work there. Rolf Stawowiok disappeared on 21 February 1978, after leaving the Argentine factory where he was working as a chemist. His father, Desiderius Stawowiok, said that Rolf was not active in the Argentine underground but was a sympathiser of the urban Montoneros guerrillas. They were largely destroyed under Videla. In earlier cases, France, Italy, and Spain had requested extradition of the Navy captainAlfredo Astiz for war crimes related to his work with ESMA, but were never successful.
Casualty estimates
The New York Times reporter David Vidal wrote on 5 January 1979 that the number of disappeared in Latin America as a whole now numbered 30,000. The Christian Science Monitor and The Boston Globe soon followed suit with similar stories, claiming 30,000 people had disappeared under military dictatorships in Latin America and not only in Argentina.[233][234] The Los Angeles Times repeated the claims of 30,000 Latin Americans and not just Argentines, disappeared in a new article published in October 1979and Novemberof that year.
The Nunca Más report issued by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) in 1984, identified 8,961 persons "disappeared" between 1976 and 1983, in a case by case verification, and another list of 1,300 victims seen alive in clandestine detention centres. The report explains that they are "open lists", because "we know also that many disappearings had not been denounced".
In 1977, General Albano Harguindeguy, Interior Minister, admitted that 5,618 people disappeared in the form of PEN detenidos-desaparecidos were being held in detention camps throughout Argentina. According to a secret cable from DINA (Chilean secret police) in Buenos Aires, an estimate by the Argentine 601st Intelligence Battalion in mid-July 1978, which started counting victims in 1975, gave the figure of 22,000 persons – this document was first published by John Dinges in 2004.
The total number of disappeared in the form of PEN prisoners was 8,625 and of these disappeared 157 were killed after being released from detention. Human Rights Groups in Argentina often cite a figure of 30,000 disappeared, Amnesty International estimates 20,000 while other observers think 12,000 is a more accurate figure. In 1988, the Asamblea por los Derechos Humanos (APDH or Assembly for Human Rights) published its findings on the disappearances and stated that 12,261 people were killed or disappeared during the Dirty War.
The Montoneros admitted losing 5,000 guerrillas killed, and the ERP admitted 5,000 of their own guerrillas had been killed. By comparison, Argentine security forces cite 523 deaths of their own between 1969 and 1975 and 205 deaths between 1976 and 1978. There were 16,000 victims of left-wing terrorism in Argentina, including civilians and military personnel.
There is no agreement on the number of detenidos-desaparecidos. In a 2009 interview with the Buenos Aires daily newspaper Clarín, Graciela Fernández Meijide, who formed part of the 1984 truth commission, claimed that thedocumented number of Argentines killed or disappeared was closer to 9,000. Between 1969 and 1979, left-wing guerrillas accounted for 3,249 kidnappings and murders and 5,215 bombings. CONADEP also recorded 458 assassinations (attributed to the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance) and about 600 forced disappearances during the period of democratic rule between 1973 and 1976.
In a final report televised on 28 April 1983 as the military prepared their departure, the ruling junta officially declared that the disappeared were all dead but said the military junta had saved the nation by their actions. Human Rights Group condemned the junta's final report and claimed at the time, that between 6,000 and 15,000 people had disappeared in Argentina between 1975 and 1979.
Some 11,000 Argentines have applied for and received up to US $200,000 each as monetary compensation for the loss of loved ones during the military dictatorship. In more recent times, journalist Alfonso Daniels put forward the claim in an article he wrote for the Daily Telegraph that over 30,000 Argentines disappeared.

Falklands War
The Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas), also known as the Falklands Conflict, Falklands Crisis and the Guerra del Atlántico Sur (Spanish for "South Atlantic War"), was a ten-week war between Argentina and the United Kingdom over two British overseas territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. It began on Friday 2 April 1982 when Argentina invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands (and, the following day, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands) in an attempt to establish the sovereignty it had long claimed over them. On 5 April, the British government dispatched a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Air Force before making an amphibious assault on the islands. The conflict lasted 74 days and ended with the Argentine surrender on 14 June 1982, returning the islands to British control. 649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel and three Falkland Islanders died during the hostilities.
The conflict was a major episode in the protracted historical confrontation over the territories' sovereignty. Argentina has asserted and maintains that the islands have been Argentinian territory since the 19th century and, as such, the Argentine government characterized their action as the reclamation of their own territory. The British government saw it as an invasion of territory that has been British since the 19th century. Neither state, however, officially declared war and hostilities were almost exclusively limited to the territories under dispute and the area of the South Atlantic where they lie.
The conflict has had a strong impact in both countries and has been the subject of various books, articles, films and songs. Patriotic sentiment ran high in Argentina, but the outcome prompted large protests against the ruling military government, hastening its downfall. In the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party government, bolstered by the successful outcome, was re-elected the following year. The cultural and political weight of the conflict has had less effect in Britain than in Argentina, where it remains a ready topic for discussion.
Relations between the United Kingdom and Argentina were restored in 1989 following a meeting in Madrid, Spain, at which the two countries' governments issued a joint statement. No change in either country's position regarding the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands was made explicit. In 1994, Argentina's claim to the territories was added to its constitution.[12]
Lead-up to the conflict
In the period leading up to the war – and, in particular, following the transfer of power between the military dictators General Jorge Rafael Videla and General Roberto Eduardo Viola late in March 1981 – Argentina had been in the midst of a devastating economic stagnation and large-scale civil unrest against the military junta that had been governing the country since 1976. In December 1981 there was a further change in the Argentine military regime bringing to office a new junta headed by GeneralLeopoldo Galtieri (acting president), Brigadier Basilio Lami Dozo and Admiral Jorge Anaya. Anaya was the main architect and supporter of a military solution for the long-standing claim over the islands, calculating that the United Kingdom would never respond militarily.


By opting for military action, the Galtieri government hoped to mobilise the long-standing patriotic feelings of Argentines towards the islands, and thus divert public attention from the country's chronic economic problems and the regime's ongoing human rights violations. Such action would also bolster its dwindling legitimacy. The newspaper La Prensa speculated in a step-by-step plan beginning with cutting off supplies to the Islands, ending in direct actions late in 1982, if the UN talks were fruitless.
The ongoing tension between the two countries over the islands increased on 19 March when a group of Argentine scrap metal merchants (actually infiltrated by Argentine marines) raised the Argentine flag at South Georgia, an act that would later be seen as the first offensive action in the war. The Royal Navy ice patrol vessel HMS Endurance was dispatched from Stanley to South Georgia in response, subsequently leading to the invasion of South Georgia by Argentine forces on 3 April. The Argentine military junta, suspecting that the UK would reinforce its South Atlantic Forces, ordered the invasion of the Falkland Islands to be brought forward to 2 April.
Britain was initially taken by surprise by the Argentine attack on the South Atlantic islands, despite repeated warnings by Royal Navy captain Nicholas Barker and others. Barker believed that Defence Secretary John Nott's 1981 review (in which Nott described plans to withdraw the Endurance, Britain's only naval presence in the South Atlantic) sent a signal to the Argentines that Britain was unwilling, and would soon be unable, to defend its territories and subjects in the Falklands.
Argentine invasion
On 2 April 1982, Argentine forces mounted amphibious landings of the Falkland Islands, following the civilian occupation of South Georgia on 19 March, before the Falklands War began. The invasion met a nominal defence organised by the Falkland Islands' Governor Sir Rex Hunt, giving command to Major Mike Norman of the Royal Marines. Events included the landing of Lieutenant Commander Guillermo Sanchez-Sabarots' Amphibious Commandos Group, the attack on Moody Brook barracks, the engagement between the troops of Hugo Santillan and Bill Trollope at Stanley, and the final engagement and surrender at Government House.
Initial British response
Word of the invasion first reached Britain from Argentine sources. A Ministry of Defence operative in London had a short telex conversation with Governor Hunt's telex operator, who confirmed that Argentines were on the island and in control. Later that day, BBC journalist Laurie Margolis was able to speak with an islander at Goose Green via amateur radio, who confirmed the presence of a large Argentine fleet and that Argentine forces had taken control of the island. Operation Corporate was the codename given to the British military operations in the Falklands War. The commander of task force operations was Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse. Operations lasted from 1 April 1982 to 20 June 1982. The British undertook a series of military operations as a means of recapturing the Falkands from Argentine occupation. The British government had taken action prior to the 2 April invasion. In response to events on South Georgia the submarines HMS Splendidand HMS Spartan were ordered to sail south on 29 March, whilst the stores ship Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) Fort Austin was dispatched from the Western Mediterranean to support HMSEndurance. Lord Carrington had wished to send a third submarine but the decision was deferred due to concerns about the impact on operational commitments. Co-incidentally on 26 March, the submarine HMS Superb left Gibraltar and it was assumed in the press it was heading south. There has since been speculation that the effect of those reports was to panic the Argentine junta into invading the Falklands before nuclear submarines could be deployed.
The following day, during a crisis meeting headed by the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sir Henry Leach, advised them that "Britain could and should send a task force if the islands are invaded". On 1 April Leach sent orders to a Royal Navy force carrying out exercises in the Mediterranean to be prepared to sail south. Following the invasion on 2 April, after an emergency meeting of the cabinet, approval was given for the formation of a task force to retake the islands. This was backed in an emergency session of the House of Commons the next day.
On 6 April, the British Government set up a War Cabinet to provide day-to-day political oversight of the campaign. This was the critical instrument of crisis management for the British with its remit being to "keep under review political and military developments relating to the South Atlantic, and to report as necessary to the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee." Until it was dissolved on 12 August, the War Cabinet met at least daily. Although Margaret Thatcher is described as dominating the War Cabinet, Lawrence Freedman notes in the Official History of the Falklands Campaign that she did not ignore opposition or fail to consult others. However, once a decision was reached she "did not look back".
Position of third party countries
On the evening of 3 April, Britain's United Nations ambassador Sir Anthony Parsons put a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council. The resolution, which condemned the hostilities and demanded immediate Argentine withdrawal from the Islands, was adopted by the council the following day as United Nations Security Council Resolution 502, which passed with ten votes in support, one against (Panama) and four abstentions (China, the Soviet Union, Poland and Spain). The UK received further political support from the Commonwealth of Nations and the European Economic Community. The EEC also provided economic support by imposing economic sanctions on Argentina. Argentina itself was politically backed by a majority of countries in Latin America and the Non-Aligned Movement. On 20 May 1982 the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Robert Muldoon, announced that he would make HMNZS Canterbury available for use where the British thought fit to release a Royal Navy vessel for the Falklands.
The war was an unexpected event in a world strained by the Cold War and the North–South divide. The response of some countries was the effort to mediate the crisis and later as the war began, the support (or criticism) based in terms of anti-colonialism, political solidarity, historical relationships or realpolitik. In other cases it was only verbal support.
The United States was concerned by the prospect of Argentina turning to the Soviet Union for support, and initially tried to mediate an end to the conflict. However, when Argentina refused the US peace overtures, US Secretary of State Alexander Haig announced that the United States would prohibit arms sales to Argentina and provide material support for British operations. Both Houses of the US Congress passed resolutions supporting the US action siding with the United Kingdom.
The US provided the United Kingdom with military equipment ranging from submarine detectors to the latest missiles. President Ronald Reagan approved the Royal Navy's request to borrow the Sea Harrier-capable amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2) if the British lost an aircraft carrier. The United States Navy developed a plan to help the British man the ship with American military contractors, likely retired sailors with knowledge of the Iwo Jima's systems. France provided dissimilar aircraft training so Harrier pilots could train against the French aircraft used by Argentina. French and British intelligence also worked to prevent Argentina from obtaining more Exocet missiles on the international market, while at the same time Peru attempted to purchase 12 missiles for Argentina, in a failed secret operation. Chile gave support to Britain in the form of intelligence about Argentine military and early warning radar. Throughout the war, Argentina was afraid of a Chilean military intervention in Patagonia and kept some of her best mountain regiments away from the Falklands near the Chilean border as a precaution.
While France overtly backed the United Kingdom, a French technical team remained in Argentina throughout the war. French government sources have said the French team was engaged in intelligence-gathering; however, it simultaneously provided direct material support to the Argentines, identifying and fixing faults in Exocet missile launchers. According to the book Operation Israel, advisors from Israel Aerospace Industries were already in Argentina and continued their work during the conflict. The book also claims that Israel sold weapons and drop tanks in a secret operation in Peru. Peru also openly sent "Mirages, pilots and missiles" to Argentina during the war. Peru had earlier transferred ten Hercules transport planes to Argentina soon after the British Task Force had set sail in April 1982. Nick van der Bijl records that after the Argentine defeat at Goose Green, Venezuela and Guatemala offered to send paratroops to the Falklands. Through Libya, under Muammar Gaddafi, Argentina received 20 launchers and 60 SA-7 missiles, as well as machine guns, mortars and mines; all in all, the load of four trips of two Boeing 707 of the AAF, refuelled in Recife with the knowledge and consent of the Brazilian government. Some of these clandestine logistics operations were mounted by the Soviet Union.
British Task Force
The British government had no contingency plan for an invasion of the islands, and the task force was rapidly put together from whatever vessels were available. The nuclear submarine Conqueror set sail from France on 4 April, whilst the two aircraft carriers Invincible and Hermes, in the company of escort vessels, left Portsmouth only a day later. Upon its return to Southampton from a world cruise on 7 April, the ocean liner SS Canberra was requisitioned and set sail two days later with 3 Commando Brigade aboard. The ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 was also requisitioned and left Southampton on 12 May with 5th Infantry Brigade on board. The whole task force eventually comprised 127 ships: 43 Royal Navy vessels, 22Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships and 62 merchant ships.
The retaking of the Falkland Islands was considered extremely difficult: the main constraint being the disparity in deployable air cover. The British had a total of 42 aircraft (28 Sea Harriersand 14 Harrier GR.3s) available for air combat operations, against approximately 122 serviceable jet fighters, of which about 50 were employed as air superiority fighters and the remainder as strike aircraft, in Argentina's air forces during the war. The US Navy considered a successful counter-invasion by the British to be 'a military impossibility'.
By mid-April, the Royal Air Force had set up the airbase of RAF Ascension Island, co-located with Wideawake Airfield (USA) on the mid-Atlantic British overseas territory of Ascension Island, including a sizeable force of Avro Vulcan B Mk 2 bombers, Handley Page Victor K Mk 2 refuelling aircraft, and McDonnell Douglas Phantom FGR Mk 2 fighters to protect them. Meanwhile the main British naval task force arrived at Ascension to prepare for active service. A small force had already been sent south to recapture South Georgia.
Encounters began in April; the British Task Force was shadowed by Boeing 707 aircraft of the Argentine Air Force during their travel to the south. Several of these flights were intercepted by Sea Harriers outside the British-imposed exclusion zone; the unarmed 707s were not attacked because diplomatic moves were still in progress and the UK had not yet decided to commit itself to armed force. On 23 April a Brazilian commercial Douglas DC-10 from VARIG Airlines en route to South Africa was intercepted by British Harriers who visually identified the civilian plane.
Recapture of South Georgia and the attack on the Santa Fe
The South Georgia force, Operation Paraquet, under the command of Major Guy Sheridan RM, consisted of Marines from 42 Commando, a troop of the Special Air Service (SAS) andSpecial Boat Service (SBS) troops who were intended to land as reconnaissance forces for an invasion by the Royal Marines. All were embarked on RFA Tidespring. First to arrive was theChurchill-class submarine HMS Conqueror on 19 April, and the island was over-flown by a radar-mapping Handley Page Victor on 20 April.
The first landings of SAS troops took place on 21 April, but—with the southern hemisphere autumn setting in—the weather was so bad that their landings and others made the next day were all withdrawn after two helicopters crashed in fog on Fortuna Glacier. On 23 April, a submarine alert was sounded and operations were halted, with the Tidespring being withdrawn to deeper water to avoid interception. On 24 April, the British forces regrouped and headed in to attack.
On 25 April, after resupplying the Argentine garrison in South Georgia, the submarine ARA Santa Fe was spotted on the surface by a Westland Wessex HAS Mk 3 helicopter from HMS Antrim, which attacked the Argentine submarine with depth charges. HMS Plymouth launched a Westland Wasp HAS.Mk.1 helicopter, and HMS Brilliant launched a Westland Lynx HAS Mk 2. The Lynx launched a torpedo, and strafed the submarine with its pintle-mounted general purpose machine gun; the Wessex also fired on the Santa Fe with its GPMG. The Wasp from HMS Plymouth as well as two other Wasps launched from HMS Endurance fired AS-12 ASM antiship missiles at the submarine, scoring hits. Santa Fe was damaged badly enough to prevent her from diving. The crew abandoned the submarine at the jetty at King Edward Point on South Georgia.
With the Tidespring now far out to sea and the Argentine forces augmented by the submarine's crew, Major Sheridan decided to gather the 76 men he had and make a direct assault that day. After a short forced march by the British troops and a naval bombardment demonstration by two Royal Navy vessels (Antrim and Plymouth), the Argentine forces surrendered without resistance. The message sent from the naval force at South Georgia to London was, "Be pleased to inform Her Majesty that the White Ensign flies alongside the Union Jack in South Georgia. God Save the Queen." The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, broke the news to the media, telling them to "Just rejoice at that news, and congratulate our forces and the Marines!"
Black Buck raids
On 1 May British operations on the Falklands opened with the "Black Buck 1" attack (of a series of five) on the airfield at Stanley. A Vulcan bomber from Ascension flew on an 8,000-nautical-mile (15,000 km; 9,200 mi) round trip dropping conventional bombs across the runway at Stanley and back to Ascension. The mission required repeated refueling, and required several Victor tanker aircraft operating in concert, including tanker to tanker refueling. The overall effect of the raids on the war is difficult to determine, and the raids consumed precious tanker resources from Ascension, but also prevented Argentina from stationing fast jets on the islands.
The raids did minimal damage to the runway, and damage to radars was quickly repaired. As of 2014 the Royal Air Force Web site continued to state that all the three bombing missions had been successful, but historian Lawrence Freedman, who had access to classified documents, said in a 2005 book that the subsequent bombing missions were failures. Argentine sources said that the Vulcan raids influenced Argentina to withdraw some of its Mirage IIIs from Southern Argentina to the Buenos Aires Defence Zone. This was later described as propaganda by Falklands veteran Commander Nigel Ward. The effect of this action was, however, watered down when British officials made clear that there would be no strikes on air bases in Argentina.
Of the five Black Buck raids, three were against Stanley Airfield, with the other two anti-radar missions using Shrike anti-radiation missiles.
Escalation of the air war
The Falklands had only three airfields. The longest and only paved runway was at the capital, Stanley, and even that was too short to support fast jets (although an arrestor gear was fitted in April to support Skyhawks). Therefore, the Argentines were forced to launch their major strikes from the mainland, severely hampering their efforts at forward staging, combat air patrolsand close air support over the islands. The effective loiter time of incoming Argentine aircraft was low, and they were later compelled to overfly British forces in any attempt to attack the islands.
The first major Argentine strike force comprised 36 aircraft (A-4 Skyhawks, IAI Daggers, English Electric Canberras, and Mirage III escorts), and was sent on 1 May, in the belief that the British invasion was imminent or landings had already taken place. Only a section of Grupo 6 (flying IAI Dagger aircraft) found ships, which were firing at Argentine defences near the islands. The Daggers managed to attack the ships and return safely. This greatly boosted morale of the Argentine pilots, who now knew they could survive an attack against modern warships, protected by radar ground clutter from the Islands and by using a late pop-up profile. Meanwhile, other Argentine aircraft were intercepted by BAE Sea Harriers operating fromHMS Invincible. A Dagger and a Canberra were shot down. Combat broke out between Sea Harrier FRS Mk 1 fighters of No. 801 Naval Air Squadron and Mirage III fighters of Grupo 8. Both sides refused to fight at the other's best altitude, until two Mirages finally descended to engage. One was shot down by an AIM-9L Sidewinder air-to-air missile (AAM), while the other escaped but was damaged and without enough fuel to return to its mainland air base. The plane made for Stanley, where it fell victim to friendly fire from the Argentine defenders.
As a result of this experience, Argentine Air Force staff decided to employ A-4 Skyhawks and Daggers only as strike units, the Canberras only during the night, and Mirage IIIs (without air refuelling capability or any capable AAM) as decoys to lure away the British Sea Harriers. The decoying would be later extended with the formation of the Escuadrón Fénix, a squadron of civilian jets flying 24 hours-a-day simulating strike aircraft preparing to attack the fleet. On one of these flights, an Air Force Learjet was shot down, killing the squadron commander, Vice Commodore Rodolfo De La Colina, the highest-ranking Argentine officer to die in the war. Stanley was used as an Argentine strongpoint throughout the conflict. Despite the Black Buck and Harrier raids on Stanley airfield (no fast jets were stationed there for air defence) and overnight shelling by detached ships, it was never out of action entirely. Stanley was defended by a mixture of surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems (Franco-German Roland and British Tigercat) and Swiss-built Oerlikon 35 mm twin anti-aircraft cannons. Lockheed Hercules transport night flights brought supplies, weapons, vehicles, and fuel, and airlifted out the wounded up until the end of the conflict.
The only Argentine Hercules shot down by the British was lost on 1 June when TC-63 was intercepted by a Sea Harrier in daylight when it was searching for the British fleet north-east of the islands after the Argentine Navy retired its last SP-2H Neptune due to airframe attrition.
Various options to attack the home base of the five Argentine Etendards at Río Grande were examined and discounted (Operation Mikado), subsequently five Royal Navy submarines lined up, submerged, on the edge of Argentina's 12-nautical-mile (22 km; 14 mi) territorial limit to provide early warning of bombing raids on the British task force.
Sinking of ARA General Belgrano
Two separate British naval task forces (one of surface vessels and one of submarines) and the Argentine fleet were operating in the neighbourhood of the Falklands, and soon came into conflict. The first naval loss was the World War II-vintage Argentine light cruiser ARA General Belgrano. The nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror sank General Belgrano on 2 May. Three hundred and twenty-three members of General Belgrano's crew died in the incident. Over 700 men were rescued from the open ocean despite cold seas and stormy weather. The losses from General Belgrano totalled nearly half of the Argentine deaths in the Falklands conflict and the loss of the ship hardened the stance of the Argentine government.
Regardless of controversies over the sinking, it had a crucial strategic effect: the elimination of the Argentine naval threat. After her loss, the entire Argentine fleet, with the exception of the conventional submarine ARA San Luis, returned to port and did not leave again for the duration of hostilities. The two escorting destroyers and the battle group centred on the aircraft carrier ARA Veinticinco de Mayo both withdrew from the area, ending the direct threat to the British fleet that their pincer movement had represented.
In a separate incident later that night, British forces engaged an Argentine patrol gunboat, the ARA Alferez Sobral. At the time, Alferez Sobral was searching for the crew of the Argentine Air Force Canberra light bomber shot down on 1 May. Two Royal Navy Lynx helicopters fired four Sea Skua missiles at her. Badly damaged and with eight crew dead, Alferez Sobral managed to return to Puerto Deseado two days later. The Canberra's crew were never found.
Sinking of HMS Sheffield
On 4 May, two days after the sinking of Belgrano, the British lost the Type 42 destroyer HMS Sheffield to fire following an Exocet missile strike from the Argentine 2nd Naval Air Fighter/Attack Squadron. Sheffield had been ordered forward with two other Type 42s to provide a long-range radar and medium-high altitude missile picket far from the British carriers. She was struck amidships, with devastating effect, ultimately killing 20 crew members and severely injuring 24 others. The ship was abandoned several hours later, gutted and deformed by the fires that continued to burn for six more days. She finally sank outside the Maritime Exclusion Zone on 10 May.
The incident is described in detail by Admiral Sandy Woodward in his book One Hundred Days, Chapter One. Woodward was a former commanding officer of Sheffield.
The tempo of operations increased throughout the second half of May as United Nations attempts to mediate a peace were rejected by the British, who felt that any delay would make a campaign impractical in the South Atlantic storms. The destruction of Sheffield (the first Royal Navy ship sunk in action since World War II) had a profound impact on the British public, bringing home the fact that the "Falklands Crisis", as the BBC News put it, was now an actual "shooting war".
British special forces operations
Given the threat to the British fleet posed by the Etendard-Exocet combination, plans were made to use SAS troops to attack the home base of the five Etendards at Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego. The operation was codenamed "Mikado". The operation was later scrapped, after acknowledging its chances of success were limited, and replaced the use of C-130s with a plan to lead HMS Onyx to drop SAS operatives several miles offshore at night for them to make their way to the coast aboard rubber inflatables and proceed to destroy Argentina's remaining Exocet stockpile.
An SAS reconnaissance team was dispatched to carry out preparations for a seaborne infiltration. A Westland Sea King helicopter carrying the assigned team took off from HMS Invincible on the night of 17 May, but bad weather forced it to land 50 miles (80 km) from its target and the mission was aborted. The pilot flew to Chile, landed south of Punta Arenas, and dropped off the SAS team. The helicopter's crew of three then destroyed the aircraft, surrendered to Chilean police on 25 May, and were repatriated to the UK after interrogation. The discovery of the burnt-out helicopter attracted considerable international attention. Meanwhile, the SAS team crossed and penetrated deep into Argentina, but cancelled their mission after the Argentines suspected an SAS operation and deployed some 2,000 troops to search for them. The SAS men were able to return to Chile, and took a civilian flight back to the UK.
According to Col. Richard Hutchings, the helicopter pilot who took part in that operation, as well as testimonies by Argentine veterans, sabotage operations were carried out by the SAS and SBS inside Argentina. Thousands of Argentine troops were stationed throughout Patagonia, guarding strategic targets, especially airfields and aviation fuel dumps, from sabotage by British commandos. SAS and SBS troops were allegedly involved in a number of firefights with Argentine troops during sabotage missions, including engagements with Argentine Special Forces. Hutchings, who was given access to Argentine military records and incident reports, claimed that 15 Argentine soldiers were killed in firefights with British Special Forces on the Argentine mainland.
On 14 May the SAS carried out the raid on Pebble Island at the Falklands, where the Argentine Navy had taken over a grass airstrip for FMA IA 58 Pucará light ground-attack aircraft and T-34 Mentors. The raid destroyed several aircraft.
Land battles
Landing at San Carlos—Bomb Alley
During the night on 21 May the British Amphibious Task Group under the command of Commodore Michael Clapp (Commodore, Amphibious Warfare – COMAW) mounted Operation Sutton, the amphibious landing on beaches around San Carlos Water, on the northwestern coast of East Falkland facing onto Falkland Sound. The bay, known as Bomb Alley by British forces, was the scene of repeated air attacks by low-flying Argentine jets.
The 4,000 men of 3 Commando Brigade were put ashore as follows: 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment (2 Para) from the RORO ferry Norland and 40 Commando Royal Marines from the amphibious ship HMS Fearless were landed at San Carlos (Blue Beach), 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment (3 Para) from the amphibious ship HMS Intrepid were landed at Port San Carlos (Green Beach) and 45 Commando from RFA Stromness were landed at Ajax Bay (Red Beach). Notably the waves of eight LCUs and eight LCVPs were led by Major Ewen Southby-Tailyour, who had commanded the Falklands detachment only a year previously. 42 Commando on the ocean liner SS Canberra was a tactical reserve. Units from the Royal Artillery, Royal Engineers, etc. and armoured reconnaissance vehicles were also put ashore with the landing craft, the Round table class LSL and mexeflote barges. Rapier missile launchers were carried as underslung loads of Sea Kings for rapid deployment.
By dawn the next day they had established a secure beachhead from which to conduct offensive operations. From there Brigadier Julian Thompson's plan was to capture Darwin and Goose Greenbefore turning towards Port Stanley. Now, with the British troops on the ground, the Argentine Air Force began the night bombing campaign against them using Canberra bomber planes until the last day of the war (14 June).
At sea, the paucity of the British ships' anti-aircraft defences was demonstrated in the sinking of HMS Ardent on 21 May, HMS Antelope on 24 May, and MVAtlantic Conveyor (struck by two AM39 Exocets) on 25 May along with a vital cargo of helicopters, runway-building equipment and tents. The loss of all but one of the Chinook helicopters being carried by the Atlantic Conveyor was a severe blow from a logistics perspective.
Also lost on this day was HMS Coventry, a sister to Sheffield, whilst in company with HMS Broadsword after being ordered to act as decoy to draw away Argentine aircraft from other ships at San Carlos Bay. HMS Argonaut and HMS Brilliant were badly damaged. However, many British ships escaped being sunk because of the Argentine pilots' bombing tactics.
To avoid the highest concentration of British air defences, Argentine pilots released ordnance from very low altitude, and hence their bomb fuzes did not have sufficient time to arm before impact. The low release of the retarded bombs (some of which had been sold to the Argentines by the British years earlier) meant that many never exploded, as there was insufficient time in the air for them to arm themselves. A simple free-fall bomb will, during a low altitude release, impact almost directly below the aircraft which is then within the lethal fragmentation zone of the resulting explosion.
A retarded bomb has a small parachute or air brake that opens to reduce the speed of the bomb to produce a safe horizontal separation between the two. The fuze for a retarded bomb requires a minimum time over which the retarder is open to ensure safe separation. The pilots would have been aware of this, but due to the high concentration levels required to avoid SAMs and Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA), as well as any British Sea Harriers, many failed to climb to the necessary release point. The Argentinian forces solved the problem by fitting an improvised retarding devices, allowing the pilots to effectively employ low-level bombing attacks on 8 June.
In his autobiographical account of the Falklands War, Admiral Woodward blamed the BBC World Service for disclosing information that led the Argentines to change the retarding devices on the bombs. The World Service reported the lack of detonations after receiving a briefing on the matter from a Ministry of Defence official. He describes the BBC as being more concerned with being "fearless seekers after truth" than with the lives of British servicemen. Colonel 'H'. Jones levelled similar accusations against the BBC after they disclosed the impending British attack on Goose Green by 2 Para.
Thirteen bombs hit British ships without detonating. Lord Craig, the retired Marshal of the Royal Air Force, is said to have remarked: "Six better fuses and we would have lost" although Ardent and Antelope were both lost despite the failure of bombs to explode. The fuzes were functioning correctly, and the bombs were simply released from too low an altitude. The Argentines lost 22 aircraft in the attacks.
Battle of Goose Green
From early on 27 May until 28 May 2 Para, (approximately 500 men) with artillery support from 8 (Alma) Commando Battery, Royal Artillery, approached and attacked Darwin and Goose Green, which was held by the Argentine 12th Infantry Regiment. After a tough struggle that lasted all night and into the next day, the British won the battle; in all, 17 British and 47 Argentine soldiers were killed. In total 961 Argentine troops (including 202 Argentine Air Force personnel of the Condor airfield) were taken prisoner.
The BBC announced the taking of Goose Green on the BBC World Service before it had actually happened. It was during this attack that Lieutenant Colonel H. Jones, the commanding officer of 2 Para was killed at the head of his battalion while charging into the well-prepared Argentine positions. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
With the sizeable Argentine force at Goose Green out of the way, British forces were now able to break out of the San Carlos beachhead. On 27 May, men of 45 Cdo and 3 Para started a loaded march across East Falkland towards the coastal settlement of Teal Inlet.
Special forces on Mount Kent
Meanwhile, 42 Commando prepared to move by helicopter to Mount Kent. Unknown to senior British officers, the Argentine generals were determined to tie down the British troops in the Mount Kent area, and on 27 and 28 May they sent transport aircraft loaded with Blowpipe surface-to-air missiles and commandos (602nd Commando Company and 601st National Gendarmerie Special Forces Squadron) to Stanley. This operation was known as Operation AUTOIMPUESTA (Self-Determination-Initiative).
For the next week, the SAS and the Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre (M&AWC) of 3 Commando Brigade waged intense patrol battles with patrols of the volunteers' 602nd Commando Company under Major Aldo Rico, normally 2nd in Command of the 22nd Mountain Infantry Regiment. Throughout 30 May, Royal Air Force Harriers were active over Mount Kent. One of them, Harrier XZ963, flown by Squadron Leader Jerry Pook—in responding to a call for help from D Squadron, attacked Mount Kent's eastern lower slopes, and that led to its loss through small-arms fire. Pook was subsequently awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
The Argentine Navy used their last AM39 Exocet missile attempting to attack HMS Invincible on 30 May. There are Argentine claims that the missile struck; however the British have denied this, some citing that HMS Avengershot it down. When Invincible returned to the UK after the war she showed no signs of missile damage.
On 31 May, the M&AWC defeated Argentine Special Forces at the Battle of Top Malo House. A 13-strong Argentine Army Commando detachment (Captain José Vercesi's 1st Assault Section, 602nd Commando Company) found itself trapped in a small shepherd's house at Top Malo. The Argentine commandos fired from windows and doorways and then took refuge in a stream bed 200 metres (700 ft) from the burning house. Completely surrounded, they fought 19 M&AWC marines under Captain Rod Boswell for forty-five minutes until, with their ammunition almost exhausted, they elected to surrender.
Three Cadre members were badly wounded. On the Argentine side there were two dead including Lieutenant Ernesto Espinoza and Sergeant Mateo Sbert (who were decorated for their bravery). Only five Argentines were left unscathed. As the British mopped up Top Malo House, down from Malo Hill came Lieutenant Fraser Haddow's M&AWC patrol, brandishing a large Union Flag. One wounded Argentine soldier, Lieutenant Horacio Losito, commented that their escape route would have taken them through Haddow's position.
601st Commando tried to move forward to rescue 602nd Commando Company on Estancia Mountain. Spotted by 42 Commando, they were engaged with 81mm mortars and forced to withdraw to Two Sisters mountain. 602nd Commando Company on Estancia Mountain realised his position had become untenable and after conferring with fellow officers ordered a withdrawal.
The Argentine operation also saw the extensive use of helicopter support to position and extract patrols; the 601st Combat Aviation Battalion also suffered casualties. At about 11.00 am on 30 May, an Aerospatiale SA-330 Pumahelicopter was brought down by a shoulder-launched Stinger surface-to-air missile (SAM) fired by the SAS in the vicinity of Mount Kent. Six National Gendarmerie Special Forces were killed and eight more wounded in the crash.
As Brigadier Thompson commented, "It was fortunate that I had ignored the views expressed by Northwood HQ that reconnaissance of Mount Kent before insertion of 42 Commando was superfluous. Had D Squadron not been there, the Argentine Special Forces would have caught the Commando before de-planing and, in the darkness and confusion on a strange landing zone, inflicted heavy casualties on men and helicopters."
Bluff Cove and Fitzroy
By 1 June, with the arrival of a further 5,000 British troops of the 5th Infantry Brigade, the new British divisional commander, Major General Jeremy Moore RM, had sufficient force to start planning an offensive against Stanley. During this build-up, the Argentine air assaults on the British naval forces continued, killing 56. Of the dead, 32 were from the Welsh Guards on RFA Sir Galahad and RFA Sir Tristram on 8 June. According to Surgeon-Commander Rick Jolly of the Falklands Field Hospital, more than 150 men suffered burns and injuries of some kind in the attack, including, famously, Simon Weston.
The Guards were sent to support an advance along the southern approach to Stanley. On 2 June a small advance party of 2 Para moved to Swan Inlet house in a number of Army Westland Scout helicopters. Telephoning ahead to Fitzroy, they discovered the area clear of Argentines and (exceeding their authority) commandeered the one remaining RAF Chinook helicopter to frantically ferry another contingent of 2 Para ahead to Fitzroy (a settlement on Port Pleasant) and Bluff Cove (a settlement on Port Fitzroy).
This uncoordinated advance caused planning nightmares for the commanders of the combined operation, as they now found themselves with a 30 miles (48 km) string of indefensible positions on their southern flank. Support could not be sent by air as the single remaining Chinook was already heavily oversubscribed. The soldiers could march, but their equipment and heavy supplies would need to be ferried by sea. Plans were drawn up for half the Welsh Guards to march light on the night of 2 June, whilst the Scots Guards and the second half of the Welsh Guards were to be ferried from San Carlos Water in the Landing Ship Logistics (LSL) Sir Tristram and the landing platform dock (LPD) Intrepid on the night of 5 June. Intrepid was planned to stay one day and unload itself and as much of Sir Tristram as possible, leaving the next evening for the relative safety of San Carlos. Escorts would be provided for this day, after which Sir Tristram would be left to unload using a Mexeflote (a powered raft) for as long as it took to finish.
Political pressure from above to not risk the LPD forced Commodore Clapp to alter this plan. Two lower-value LSLs would be sent, but without suitable beaches on which to land, Intrepid's landing craft would need to accompany them to unload. A complicated operation across several nights with Intrepid and her sister ship Fearless sailing half-way to dispatch their craft was devised. The attempted overland march by half the Welsh Guards failed, possibly as they refused to march light and attempted to carry their equipment. They returned to San Carlos and were landed directly at Bluff Cove when Fearless dispatched her landing craft. Sir Tristram sailed on the night of 6 June and was joined by Sir Galahad at dawn on 7 June. Anchored 1,200 feet (370 m) apart in Port Pleasant, the landing ships were near Fitzroy, the designated landing point.
The landing craft should have been able to unload the ships to that point relatively quickly, but confusion over the ordered disembarcation point (the first half of the Guards going direct to Bluff Cove) resulted in the senior Welsh Guards infantry officer aboard insisting his troops be ferried the far longer distance directly to Port Fitzroy/Bluff Cove. The alternative was for the infantrymen to march via the recently repaired Bluff Cove bridge (destroyed by retreating Argentine combat engineers) to their destination, a journey of around seven miles (11 km).
On Sir Galahad's stern ramp there was an argument about what to do. The officers on board were told they could not sail to Bluff Cove that day. They were told they had to get their men off ship and onto the beach as soon as possible as the ships were vulnerable to enemy aircraft. It would take 20 minutes to transport the men to shore using the LCU and Mexeflote. They would then have the choice to walk the 7 miles to Bluff Cove or wait until dark to sail there. The officers on board said they would remain on board until dark and then sail. They refused to take their men off the ship. They possibly doubted that the bridge had been repaired due to the presence on board Sir Galahad of the Royal Engineer Troop whose job it was to repair the bridge. The Welsh Guards were keen to rejoin the rest of their Battalion who were potentially facing the enemy without their support. They had also not seen any enemy aircraft since landing at San Carlos and may have been overconfident in the air defences. Ewen Southby-Tailyour gave a direct order for the men to leave the ship and go to the beach. The order was ignored.
The longer journey time of the landing craft taking the troops directly to Bluff Cove and the squabbling over how the landing was to be performed caused enormous delay in unloading. This had disastrous consequences. Without escorts, having not yet established their air defence, and still almost fully laden, the two LSLs in Port Pleasant were sitting targets for two waves of Argentine A-4 Skyhawks.
The disaster at Port Pleasant (although often known as Bluff Cove) would provide the world with some of the most sobering images of the war as TV news video footage showed Navy helicopters hovering in thick smoke to winch survivors from the burning landing ships. British casualties were 48 killed and 115 wounded. Three Argentine pilots were also killed. The air strike delayed the scheduled British ground attack on Stanley by two days.]However, Argentine General Mario Menendez, commander of Argentine forces in the Falklands, was told that 900 British soldiers had died. He expected that the losses would cause enemy morale to drop and the British assault to stall.
Fall of Stanley
On the night of 11 June, after several days of painstaking reconnaissance and logistic build-up, British forces launched a brigade-sized night attack against the heavily defended ring of high ground surrounding Stanley. Units of 3 Commando Brigade, supported by naval gunfire from several Royal Navy ships, simultaneously attacked in the Battle of Mount Harriet, Battle of Two Sisters, and Battle of Mount Longdon. Mount Harriet was taken at a cost of 2 British and 18 Argentine soldiers. At Two Sisters, the British faced both enemy resistance and friendly fire, but managed to capture their objectives. The toughest battle was at Mount Longdon. British forces were bogged down by assault rifle, mortar, machine gun, artillery fire, sniper fire, and ambushes. Despite this, the British continued their advance.
During this battle, 13 were killed when HMS Glamorgan, straying too close to shore while returning from the gun line, was struck by an improvised trailer-based Exocet MM38 launcher taken from the destroyer ARA Seguí by Argentine Navy technicians. On the same day, Sgt Ian McKay of 4 Platoon, B Company, 3 Para died in a grenade attack on an Argentine bunker, which earned him a posthumous Victoria Cross. After a night of fierce fighting, all objectives were secured. Both sides suffered heavy losses.
The night of 13 June saw the start of the second phase of attacks, in which the momentum of the initial assault was maintained. 2 Para with CVRTsupport from The Blues and Royals, captured Wireless Ridge at the Battle of Wireless Ridge, with the loss of 3 British and 25 Argentine lives, and the 2nd battalion, Scots Guards captured Mount Tumbledown at the Battle of Mount Tumbledown, which cost 10 British and 30 Argentine lives.
With the last natural defence line at Mount Tumbledown breached, the Argentine town defences of Stanley began to falter. In the morning gloom, one company commander got lost and his junior officers became despondent. Private Santiago Carrizo of the 3rd Regiment described how a platoon commander ordered them to take up positions in the houses and "if a Kelperresists, shoot him", but the entire company did nothing of the kind.
A ceasefire was declared on 14 June and the commander of the Argentine garrison in Stanley, Brigade General Mario Menéndez surrendered to Major General Jeremy Moore the same day.


Red Cross Box
Before British offensive operations began, the British and Argentine governments agreed to establish an area on the high seas where both sides could station hospital ships without fear of attack by the other side. This area, a circle 20 nautical miles in diameter, was referred to as the Red Cross Box (48°30′S 53°45′W), about 45 miles (72 km) north of Falkland Sound). Ultimately, the British stationed four ships (HMS Hydra, HMS Hecla and HMS Heraldand the primary hospital ship Uganda) within the box, while the Argentinians stationed three (Almirante Irizar, Bahia Paraiso and Puerto Deseado).
The hospital ships were non-warships converted to serve as hospital ships. The three British naval vessels were survey vessels and Uganda was a passenger liner. Almirante Irizar was an icebreaker, Bahia Paraiso was an Antarctic supply transport and Puerto Deseado was a survey ship. The British and Argentine vessels operating within the Box were in radio contact and there was some transfer of patients between the hospital ships. For example, the British hospital ship SS Uganda on four occasions transferred patients to an Argentinian hospital ship. The British naval hospital ships operated as casualty ferries, carrying casualties from both sides from the Falklands to Uganda and operating a shuttle service between the Red Cross Box and Montevideo.
Throughout the conflict officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) conducted inspections to verify that all concerned were abiding by the rules of the Geneva Convention. On 12 June some personnel transferred from the Argentine hospital ship to the British ships by helicopter. Argentine naval officers also inspected the British casualty ferries in the estuary of the River Plate.
British casualty evacuation
Hydra worked with Heclaand Herald, to take casualties from Uganda to Montevideo, Uruguay, where a fleet of Uruguayan ambulances would meet them. RAF VC10 aircraft then flew the casualties to the UK for transfer to the Princess Alexandra Royal Air Force Hospital at RAF Wroughton, near Swindon.
Aftermath
This brief war brought many consequences for all the parties involved, besides the considerable casualty rate and large materiel loss, especially of shipping and aircraft, relative to the deployed military strengths of the opposing sides.
In the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher's popularity increased. The success of the Falklands campaign was widely regarded as the factor in the turnaround in fortunes for the Conservative government, who had been trailing behind the SDP-Liberal Alliance in the opinion polls for months before the conflict began, but after the success in the Falklands the Conservatives returned to the top of the opinion polls by a wide margin and went on to win the following year's general election by a landslide. Subsequently, Defence Secretary Nott's proposed cuts to the Royal Navy were abandoned.
The islanders subsequently had full British citizenship restored in 1983, their lifestyle improved by investments Britain made after the war and by the liberalisation of economic measures that had been stalled through fear of angering Argentina. In 1985, a new constitution was enacted promoting self-government, which has continued to devolve power to the islanders.
In Argentina, the Falklands War meant that a possible war with Chile was avoided. Further, Argentina returned to a democratic government in the 1983 general election, the first free general election since 1973. It also had a major social impact, destroying the military's image as the "moral reserve of the nation" that they had maintained through most of the 20th century.
Various figures have been produced for the number of veterans who have committed suicide since the war. Some studies have estimated that 264 British veterans and 350–500 Argentine veterans have committed suicide since 1982. However, a detailed study of 21,432 British veterans of the war commissioned by the UK Ministry of Defence found that only 95 had died from "intentional self-harm and events of undetermined intent (suicides and open verdict deaths)", a ratio no higher than that of the general population.
Military analysis
Militarily, the Falklands conflict remains the largest air-naval combat operation between modern forces since the end of the Second World War.As such, it has been the subject of intense study by military analysts and historians. The most significant "lessons learned" include: the vulnerability of surface ships to anti-ship missiles and submarines, the challenges of co-ordinating logistical support for a long-distance projection of power, and reconfirmation of the role of tactical air power, including the use of helicopters.
Memorials
In addition to memorials on the islands, there is a memorial in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral, London to the British war dead. In Argentina, there is a memorial at Plaza San Martín in Buenos Aires, another one in Rosario, and a third one in Ushuaia.
During the war, British dead were put into plastic body bags and buried in mass graves. After the war the bodies were recovered; 14 were reburied at Blue Beach Military Cemetery and 64 were returned to Britain.
The Argentine dead are buried in the Argentine Military Cemetery west of the Darwin Settlement. The United Kingdom offered to return the dead to Argentina, but Argentina refused, knowing that the remains would ensure a continuing Argentine presence on the islands.
Minefields
As of 2011 there were 113 uncleared minefields on the Falkland Islands and unexploded ordnance (UXOs) covering an area of 13 km2 (5.0 sq mi). Of this area, 5.5 km2 (2.1 sq mi) on the Murrell Peninsula were classified as being "suspected minefields" – the area had been heavily pastured for the previous 25 years without incident. It was estimated that these minefields had 20,000 anti-personnel mines and 5,000 anti-tank mines. No human casualties from mines or UXO have been reported in the Falkland Islands since 1984, and no civilian mine casualties have ever occurred on the islands. The UK reported six military personnel were injured in 1982 and a further two injured in 1983. Most military accidents took place while clearing the minefields in the immediate aftermath of the 1982 conflict or in the process of trying to establish the extent of the minefield perimeters, particularly where no detailed records existed.
On 9 May 2008, the Falkland Islands Government asserted that the minefields which represent 0.1% of the available farmland on the islands "present no long term social or economic difficulties for the Falklands" and that the impact of clearing the mines would cause more problems than containing them. However, the British Government, in accordance with its commitments under the Mine Ban Treaty has a commitment to clear the mines by the end of 2019.  In May 2012, it was announced that 3.7 km2 (1.4 sq mi) of Stanley Common (which lies between the Stanley – Mount Pleasant road and the shoreline) was made safe and had been opened to the public, opening up a 3-kilometre (1.9 mi) stretch of coastline and a further two kilometres of shoreline along Mullet's Creek
Press and publicity
Argentina
Selected war correspondents were regularly flown to Port Stanley in military aircraft to report on the war. Back in Buenos Aires newspapers and magazines faithfully reported on "the heroic actions of the largely conscript army and its successes".
Officers from the intelligence services were attached to the newspapers and 'leaked' information confirming the official communiqués from the government. The glossy magazines Gente andSiete Días swelled to sixty pages with colour photographs of British warships in flames – many of them faked – and bogus eyewitness reports of the Argentine commandos' guerrilla war on South Georgia (6 May) and an already dead Pucará pilot's attack on HMS Hermes (Lt. Daniel Antonio Jukic had been killed at Goose Green during a British air strike on 1 May). Most of the faked photos actually came from the tabloid press. One of the best remembered headlines was "Estamos ganando" ("We're winning") from the magazine Gente, that would later use variations of it.
The Argentine troops on the Falkland Islands could read Gaceta Argentina—a newspaper intended to boost morale among the servicemen. Some of its untruths could easily be unveiled by the soldiers who recovered corpses.
The Malvinas course united the Argentines in a patriotic atmosphere that protected the junta from critics, and even opponents of the military government supported Galtieri; Ernesto Sabatosaid: "Don't be mistaken, Europe; it is not a dictatorship who is fighting for the Malvinas, it is the whole Nation. Opponents of the military dictatorship, like me, are fighting to extirpate the last trace of colonialism." The Madres de Plaza de Mayo were even exposed to death threats from ordinary people.
HMS Invincible was repeatedly sunk in the Argentine press,and on 30 April 1982 the Argentine magazine Tal Cual showed Prime Minister Thatcher with an eyepatch and the text: Pirate, witch and assassin. Guilty.  Three British reporters sent to Argentina to cover the war from the Argentine perspective were jailed until the end of the war.
United Kingdom
Seventeen newspaper reporters, two photographers, two radio reporters and three television reporters with five technicians sailed with the Task Force to the war. The Newspaper Publishers' Association selected them from among 160 applicants, excluding foreign media. The hasty selection resulted in the inclusion of two journalists among the war reporters who were interested only in Queen Elizabeth II's son Prince Andrew, who was serving in the conflict.
Merchant vessels had the civilian Inmarsat uplink, which enabled written telex and voice report transmissions via satellite. SS Canberra had a facsimile machine that was used to upload 202 pictures from the South Atlantic over the course of the war. The Royal Navy leased bandwidth on the US Defense Satellite Communications System for worldwide communications. Television demands a thousand times the data rate of telephone, but the Ministry of Defence was unsuccessful in convincing the US to allocate more bandwidth.
TV producers suspected that the enquiry was half-hearted; since the Vietnam War television pictures of casualties and traumatised soldiers were recognised as having negative propaganda value. However the technology only allowed uploading a single frame per 20 minutes – and only if the military satellites were allocated 100% to television transmissions. Videotapes were shipped to Ascension Island, where a broadband satellite uplink was available, resulting in TV coverage being delayed by three weeks.
The press was very dependent on the Royal Navy, and was censored on site. Many reporters in the UK knew more about the war than those with the Task Force.
The Royal Navy expected Fleet Street to conduct a Second World War-style positive news campaign but the majority of the British media, especially the BBC, reported the war in a neutral fashion. These reporters referred to "the British troops" and "the Argentinian troops" instead of "our lads" and the "Argies".The two main tabloid papers presented opposing viewpoints: The Daily Mirror was decidedly anti-war, whilst The Sun became well known for headlines such as "Stick It Up Your Junta!", which, along with the reporting in other tabloids, led to accusations of xenophobia and jingoism. The Sun was condemned for its "Gotcha" headline following the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano.
Cultural impact
There were wide-ranging influences on popular culture in both the UK and Argentina, from the immediate postwar period to the present. The then elderly Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges described the war as "a fight between two bald men over a comb". The words yomp and Exocet entered the British vernacular as a result of the war. The Falklands War also provided material for theatre, film and TV drama and influenced the output of musicians. In Argentina, the military government banned the broadcasting of music in the English language, giving way to the rise of local rock musicians.
Contemporary era
Raúl Alfonsín won the 1983 elections campaigning for the prosecution of those responsible for human rights violations during the Proceso: the Trial of the Juntas and other martial courts sentenced all the coup's leaders but, under military pressure, he also enacted the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws, which halted prosecutions further down the chain of command. The worsening economic crisis and hyperinflation reduced his popular support and the Peronist Carlos Menem won the 1989 election. Soon after, riots forced Alfonsín to an early resignation.
Menem embraced neoliberal policies: a fixed exchange rate, business deregulation, privatizations and dismantling of protectionist barriers normalized the economy for a while. He pardoned the officers who had been sentenced during Alfonsín's government. The 1994 Constitutional Amendment allowed Menem to be elected for a second term. The economy began to decline in 1995, with increasing unemployment and recession; led by Fernando de la Rúa, the UCR returned to the presidency in the 1999 elections.
De la Rúa kept Menem's economic plan despite the worsening crisis, which led to growing social discontent. A massive capital flight was responded to with a freezing of bank accounts, generating further turmoil. The December 2001 riots forced him to resign. Congress appointed Eduardo Duhalde as acting president, who abrogated the fixed exchange rate established by Menem. By the late 2002 the economic crisis began to recess, but the assassination of two piqueteros by the police caused political commotion, prompting Duhalde to move elections forward. Néstor Kirchner was elected as the new president.
Boosting the neo-keynesian economic policies laid by Duhalde, Kirchner ended the economic crisis attaining significant fiscal and trade surpluses, and steep GDP growth. Under his administration Argentina restructured its defaulted debt with an unprecedented discount of about 70% on most bonds, paid off debts with the International Monetary Fund, purged the military of officers with doubtful human rights records,  nullified and voided the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws,ruled them as unconstitutional, and resumed legal prosecution of the Juntas' crimes. He did not run for reelection, promoting instead the candidacy of his wife, senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was elected in 2007 and reelected in 2011.
 1998–2002 Argentine great depression

The 1998–2002 Argentine Great Depression was an economic depression which began in the third quarter of 1998 and lasted until the second quarter of 2002.
The depression, which began due to the Russian and Brazilian financial crises, caused widespread unemployment, riots, the fall of the government, a default on the country's foreign debt, the rise of alternative currencies and the end of the peso's fixed exchange rate to the US dollar. The economy shrank by 20 percent from 1998 to 2002. In terms of income, over 50 percent of Argentines were poor and 25 percent, indigent; seven out of ten Argentine children were poor at the depth of the crisis in 2002.
By the first half of 2003 GDP growth had returned, surprising economists and the business media, and the economy began to grow at an average 9% per year. Argentina's GDP exceeded pre-crisis levels by 2005, and Argentine debt restructuring that year were resumed payments on most of its defaulted bonds; a second debt restructuring in 2010 brought the percentage of bonds out of default to 93%, though holdout lawsuits led by vulture funds remained ongoingBondholders who participated in the restructuring have been paid punctually and have seen the value of their bonds rise. Argentina repaid its IMF loans in full in 2006.
Origins
Argentina's many years of military dictatorship (alternating with weak, short-lived democratic governments) had already caused significant economic problems prior to the 2001 crisis, particularly during the self-styled National Reorganization Process in power from 1976 to 1983. A right-wing executive, José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, was appointed Economy Minister at the outset of the dictatorship, and a Neoliberal economic platform centered aroundanti-labor, monetarist policies of financial liberalization was introduced. Budget deficits jumped to 15% of GDP as the country went into debt for the state takeover of over $15 billion in private debts, for never-finished projects, higher defense spending, and the Falklands War. By the end of the military government in 1983 the foreign debt had ballooned from $8 billion to $45 billion, interest charges alone exceeded trade surpluses, industrial production had fallen by 20%, real wages had lost 36% of their purchasing power, and unemployment - calculated at 18% (though official figures claimed 5%) - was at its highest point since the Great Depression.
Democracy was restored in 1983 with the election of President Raúl Alfonsín. The new government intended to stabilize the economy and in 1985 introduced austerity measures and a new currency, the austral (the first of its kind without peso in its name). Fresh loans were required to service the $5 billion in annual interest charges, however, and when commodity prices collapsed in 1986 the state became unable to service this debt. During the Alfonsin administration, unemployment did not substantially increase, but real wages fell by almost half (to the lowest level in fifty years). Prices for state-run utilities, telephone service, and gas increased substantially. Confidence in the Austral Plan, however, collapsed in late 1987, and inflation, which already averaged 10% per month (220% a year) from 1975 to 1988, spiraled out of control. Inflation reached 200% for the month in July 1989, peaking at 5,000% for the year. Amid riots, President Alfonsín resigned five months before the end of his term and President-elect Carlos Menem took office in July.
1990s
After a second bout of hyperinflation, Domingo Cavallo was appointed Minister of the Economy in January 1991.[21][22] On April 1, he fixed the value of Argentine currency at ₳10,000 per US$. Australs could be freely converted to dollars at banks. To secure this "convertibility" the Central Bank of Argentina had to keep its U.S. dollar foreign exchange reserves at the same level as the cash in circulation. The initial aim of such measures was to ensure the acceptance of domestic currency because, after the 1989 and 1990 hyperinflation, Argentines had started to demand payment in U.S. dollars. This regime was later modified by a law (Ley de Convertibilidad) which restored the Argentine peso as the national currency.
The convertibility law reduced inflation sharply and thereafter preserved the value of the currency. This raised the quality of life for many citizens who could again afford to travel abroad, buy imported goods or ask for credit in dollars at traditional interest rates. The fixed exchange rate reduced the cost of imports, which produced a flight of dollars from the country, as well as the progressive loss of industrial infrastructure and employment.
Argentina, however, still had external public debt that it needed to roll over. Government spending remained too high and corruption was rampant. Argentina's public debt grew enormously during the 1990s without showing that it could service the debt. The IMF kept lending money to Argentina and extending its payment schedules. Massive tax evasion and money laundering contributed to the movement of funds toward offshore banks. A congressional committee started investigations in 2001 over accusations that Central Bank Governor Pedro Pou (a prominent advocate of dollarization) and members of the board of directors had overlooked money laundering within Argentina's financial system. Clearstream was accused of being instrumental in this process.
Other Latin American countries, including Mexico and Brazil (both important trade partners for Argentina), faced economic crises of their own, leading to mistrust of the regional economy. The influx of foreign currency provided by the privatisation of state companies had ended. After 1999, Argentine exports were harmed by the devaluation of the Brazilian real and the dollar. A considerable international revaluation of the dollar directly weakened the peso relative to Argentina's trading partners: Brazil (30% of total trade flows) and the Euro area (23% of total trade flows).
After having grown by over 50% from 1990 to 1998, Argentina's GDP declined by 3% in 1999 and the country entered what became a three-year long recession. President Fernando de la Rúa was elected in 1999 on a reform platform which nevertheless sought to maintain the peso's 1-to-1 convertibility to the dollar. He inherited a country with high unemployment (15%), lingering recession, and continued high levels of borrowing. In 1999, Economic stability became economic stagnation (even deflation at times) and the economic measures taken did nothing to avert it. The government continued its predecessor's economic policies. Devaluing the peso by abandoning the exchange peg was considered political suicide and a recipe for economic disaster. By the end of the century, complementary currencies had emerged.
While the provinces had always issued complementary currency in the form of bonds and drafts to manage shortages of cash, the scale of such borrowing reached unprecedented levels during this period. This led to their being called "quasi-currencies". The strongest of them was Buenos Aires's Patacón. The national government issued its own quasi-currency—the LECOP.
In a 2001 interview, journalist Peter Katel identified three factors, converging at "the worst possible time", to explain why the Argentine economy unraveled:
1.	The fixed exchange rate between Argentine peso and the US dollar (created at the start of the 1990s by the Economy Minister at the time, Domingo Cavallo).
2.	The large amounts of borrowing by former Argentine president, Carlos Menem.
3.	An increase in debt due to reduced tax revenues.
Rates, riots, resignations and default
When a short-lived boom in the early 1990s of portfolio investment from abroad ended in 1995, Argentina became reliant on the IMF to provide the country with low-interest access to credit and to guide its economic reforms. When the recession began, the national deficit widened to 2.5% of GDP in 1999 and its external debt surpassed 50% of GDP. Seeing these levels as excessive, the IMF advised the government to balance its budget by implementing austerity measures to sustain investor confidence. The De la Rúa administration implemented US$1.4 billion in cuts in its first weeks in office in late 1999. In June 2000, with unemployment at 14% and projections of 3.5% GDP growth for the year, austerity was furthered by US$938 million in spending cuts and US$2 billion in tax increases. Following vice president Carlos Álvarez' resignation in October 2000 over bribery suspicions in the Upper House, the crisis accelerated.
GDP growth projections proved to be overly optimistic (instead of growing, real GDP shrank 0.8%), and lagging tax receipts prompted the government to freeze spending and cut retirement benefits again in November 2000. In early November, Standard & Poor's placed Argentina on a credit watch, and a treasury bill auction required paying 16% interest (up from 9% in July); this was the second highest rate of any country in South America at the time.
Rising bond yields forced the country to turn to major international lenders, such as the IMF, World Bank and the U.S. Treasury, which would lend to the government at below-market rates, and to comply with the accompanying conditions. Several more rounds of belt-tightening followed. José Luis Machinea resigned as Minister of Economy in March 2001. He was replaced with Ricardo López Murphy, who lasted less than three weeks in office before being replaced with Cavallo.
Standard and Poor's cut the credit rating of the country's bonds to B– in July 2001. Cavallo reacted by offering bondholders a swap, whereby longer-term, higher-interest bonds would be exchanged for bonds coming due in 2010. The "mega-swap" (megacanje), as Cavallo referred to it, was accepted by most bondholders, and delayed up to $30 billion in payments that would have been due by 2005; but it also added $38 billion in interest payments in the out years, and of the $82 billion in bonds that eventually had to be restructured (triggering a wave of holdout lawsuits), 60% were issued during the 2001 megaswap.
Cavallo also attempted to curb the budget crisis by instituting an unpopular across-the-board pay cut in July of up to 13% to all civil servants and an equivalent cut to government pension benefits—De la Rúa's seventh austerity round—triggering nationwide strikes, and, starting in August, it paid salaries of the highest-paid employees in I.O.U.s instead of money. This further depressed the weakened economy. The unemployment rate rose to 16.4% in August 2001 up from a 14.7% a month earlier, and it reached 20% by December.
In October 2001, public discontent with the economic conditions was expressed in the nationwide election. President Fernando de la Rúa's alliance lost seats in both chambers of the Argentine National Congress, leaving it in the minority. Over 20% of voters chose to enter so-called "anger votes", returning blank or defaced ballots rather than indicate support of any candidate.
The crisis intensified when, on 5 December 2001, the IMF refused to release a US$1.3 billion tranche of its loan, citing the failure of the Argentine government to reach previously agreed-upon budget deficit targets, and demanded further budget cuts, amounting to 10% of the federal budget. On 4 December, Argentine bond yields stood at 34% over U.S. treasury bonds, and, by 11 December, the spread jumped to 42%.
By the end of November 2001, people began withdrawing large sums of dollars from their bank accounts, turning pesos into dollars and sending them abroad, causing a bank run. On 2 December 2001 the government enacted measures, informally known as the corralito, that effectively froze all bank accounts for twelve months, allowing for only minor sums of cash to be withdrawn, initially $250 a week.
December 2001 riots and political turmoil
The freeze enraged many Argentines who took to the streets of important cities, especially Buenos Aires. They engaged in protests that became known as cacerolazo (banging pots and pans). These protests occurred especially in 2001 and 2002. At first the cacerolazos were simply noisy demonstrations, but soon they included property destruction,often directed at banks, foreign-owned privatized companies, and especially big American and European companies.
Confrontations between the police and citizens became a common sight, and fires were set on Buenos Aires avenues. De la Rúa declared a state of emergency, but the situation worsened, precipitating the violent protests of 20 and 21 December 2001 in Plaza de Mayo, where clashes between demonstrators and the police ended up with several people dead, and precipitated the fall of the government. De la Rúa eventually fled the Casa Rosada in a helicopter on 21 December.
Following presidential succession procedures established in the Constitution, the Senate chairman was next in the line of succession in the absence of president and vice-president.[  Accordingly, Ramón Puerta took office as a caretaker head of state, and the Legislative Assembly (a body formed by merging both chambers of the Congress) was convened. By law, the candidates were the members of the Senate plus the Governors of the Provinces; Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, then governor of San Luis, was eventually appointed as the new interim president.
Debt default[
During the last week of 2001, the Rodriguez Saá administration defaulted on the larger part of the public debt, totalling US$132 billion. The amount approximately represented one seventh of all the money borrowed by the Third World.
Politically, the most heated debate involved the date of the following elections—proposals ranged from March 2002 to October 2003 (the end of De la Rúa's term).
Rodríguez Saá's economic team came up with a scheme designed to preserve the convertibility regime, dubbed the "Third Currency" Plan. It consisted of creating a new, non-convertible currency called Argentino coexisting with convertible pesos and U.S. dollars. It would only circulate as cash (checks, promissory notes or other instruments could be denominated in pesos or dollars but not in Argentinos) and would be partially guaranteed with federally managed land—to counterbalance inflationary tendencies.
Argentines having legal status would be used to redeem all complementary currency already in circulation—whose acceptance as a means of payment was quite uneven. It was hoped that convertibility would restore public confidence, while the non-convertible nature of this currency would allow for a measure of fiscal flexibility (unthinkable with pesos) that could ameliorate the crippling recession. Critics called this plan merely a "controlled devaluation"; its advocates countered that since controlling a devaluation is perhaps its thorniest issue, this criticism was a praise in disguise. The "Third Currency" plan had enthusiastic supporters among mainstream economists (the most well-known being perhaps Martín Redrado, a former central bank president) citing technical arguments. However, it was not implemented because the Rodríguez Saá government lacked the required political support.
Rodríguez Saá, lost the support of his own party and resigned before the end of the year. The Legislative Assembly convened again, appointing Peronist Senator Eduardo Duhalde of Buenos Aires Province in his place; Duhalde was the runner-up in the 1999 race for the presidency.
End of fixed exchange rate
After much deliberation, in January 2002 Duhalde abandoned the peso–dollar parity that had been in place for ten years. In a matter of days, the peso lost a large part of its value in the unregulated market. A provisional "official" exchange rate was set at 1.4 pesos per dollar.
In addition to the corralito, the Ministry of Economy dictated the pesificación, by which all bank accounts denominated in dollars would be converted to pesos at an official rate. This measure angered most savings holders and attempts were made to declare it unconstitutional.
After a few months, the exchange rate was left to float more or less freely. The peso further depreciated, which prompted increased inflation (since Argentina depended heavily on imports, and had no means to replace them locally at the time).
Inflation and unemployment worsened during 2002. By that time the exchange rate had reached nearly 4 pesos per dollar, while the accumulated inflation since the devaluation was about 80%; considerably less than predicted by most orthodox economists. The quality of life of the average Argentine was lowered proportionally; many businesses closed or went bankrupt, many imported products became virtually inaccessible, and salaries were left as they were before the crisis.
Since the supply of pesos did not meet the demand for cash (even after the devaluation) complementary currencies kept circulating alongside them. Fears of hyperinflation as a consequence of devaluation quickly eroded their attractiveness, originally stated in convertible pesos. Their acceptability now ultimately depended on the State's irregular willingness to take them as payment of taxes and other charges.
While the Patacón was frequently accepted at the same value as the peso, Entre Ríos's Federal was among the worst-faring, discounted by an average 30% as even the provincial government that had issued them was reluctant to accept them. There were also frequent rumors that the Government would simply banish complementary currency overnight (instead of redeeming them, even at disadvantageous rates), leaving their holders with useless printed paper.
Immediate effects
Aerolíneas Argentinas was one of the most affected Argentine companies, canceling all international flights for various days in 2002. The airline came close to bankruptcy, but survived.
Several thousand newly homeless and jobless Argentines found work as cartoneros, or cardboard collectors. An estimate in 2003 put the number of people scavenging the streets for cardboard to sell to recycling plants at 30,000 to 40,000 people. Such desperate measures were common given the unemployment rate of nearly 25%.
Argentine agricultural products were rejected in some international markets, for fear they might arrive damaged by the chaos. The United States Department of Agriculture put restrictions on Argentine food and drug exports.
Recovery
Duhalde eventually stabilised the situation to a certain extent, and called for elections. On 25 May 2003, Néstor Kirchner took office as the new president. Kirchner kept Duhalde's Minister of Economy, Roberto Lavagna, in his post. Lavagna, a respected economist with centrist views, showed a considerable aptitude at managing the crisis, with the help ofheterodox measures.
The economic outlook was completely different from that of the 1990s; the devalued peso made Argentine exports cheap and competitive abroad and discouraged imports. In addition, the high price of soy in the international market produced massive amounts of foreign currency (with China becoming a major buyer of Argentina's soy products).
The government encouraged import substitution and accessible credit for businesses, staged an aggressive plan to improve tax collection, and allocated large sums forsocial welfare, while controlling expenditure in other fields.
The peso slowly rose, reaching a 3-to-1 rate to the dollar. Agricultural exports grew and tourism returned. The huge trade surplus ultimately caused such an inflow of dollars that the government was forced to begin intervening to keep the peso from rising further, which would have adversely affected budget balances by limiting export tax revenues, and discourage further reindustrialisation. The central bank started rebuilding its dollar reserves.
By December 2005, foreign currency reserves had reached US$28 billion (they were later reduced by the payment of the full debt to the IMF in January 2006). The downside of this reserve accumulation strategy is that the dollars had to be bought with freshly issued pesos, which risked inflation. The Central Bank sterilized its purchases by selling Treasury letters. In this way the exchange rate stabilised near 3:1.
The currency exchange issue was complicated by two mutually opposing factors: a sharp increase in imports since 2004 (which raised the demand for dollars), and the return of foreign investment (which brought fresh currency from abroad) after the successful restructuring of about three quarters of the external debt. The government set up controls and restrictions aimed at keeping short-term speculative investment from destabilising financial markets.
Argentina's recovery suffered a minor setback in 2004 when rising industrial demand caused a short-lived energy crisis. Argentina continued to grow strongly, however: GDP jumped 8.8% in 2003, 9.0% in 2004, 9.2% in 2005, 8.5% in 2006 and 8.7% in 2007. Though wages averaged a 17% annual increase from 2002–2008 (jumping 25% in the year to May 2008), inflation ate away at these increases: 12.5% in 2005; 10% in 2006; nearly 15% in 2007 and over 20% during 2008. The government was accused of manipulating inflation statistics leading for example, The Economist magazine to turn to private sources instead. This prompted the government to increase export tariffs and to pressure retailers into one price freeze after another in a bid to stabilize prices, so far with little effect. Even using private inflation estimates, however, real wages rose by around 72% from their low point in 2003 to 2013. Argentina's domestic new auto market recovered especially quickly, growing from a low of 83,000 in 2002 (one fifth the levels of the late 1990s) to a record 964,000 in 2013.
While unemployment has been considerably reduced (it has hovered around 7% since 2011), Argentina has so far failed to reach an equitable distribution of income. Nevertheless, economic recovery after 2002 was accompanied by significant improvements in income distribution: in 2002, the richest 10% absorbed 40% of all income, compared to 1.1% for the poorest 10% (36 times); but by 2013, the former received 27.6% of income, and the latter, 2% (14 times)This level of inequality compares favorably to levels in most of Latin America, and in recent years the United States as well. The country faced a debt crisis in late July 2014 when a New York judge ordered Argentina to pay hedge funds the full interest on bonds they swapped at a discount rate during 2002. If the judgement proceeded, Argentina argued, it would render the country insolvent and cause a second debt default.
Cooperatives
During the economic collapse, many business owners and foreign investors sent their money overseas. As a result, many small and medium enterprises closed due to lack of capital, thereby exacerbating unemployment. Many workers at these enterprises, faced with a sudden loss of employment and no source of income, decided to reopen the closed facilities on their own, as self-managed cooperatives.
Worker managed cooperative businesses include ceramics factory Zanon (FaSinPat), to the four-star Hotel Bauen, to suit factory Brukman, to printing press Chilavert, and many others. In some cases, former owners sent police to remove workers from these workplaces; this was sometimes successful but in other cases workers defended occupied workplaces against the state, the police and the bosses.
A survey by an Buenos Aires newspaper found that around 1/3 of the population had participated in general assemblies. The assemblies used to take place in street corners and public spaces, and generally discussed ways of helping each other in the face of eviction, or organizing around issues such as health care, collective food buying, or food distribution programs. Some assemblies created new structures of health care and schooling. Neighborhood assemblies met once a week in a large assembly to discuss issues affecting the larger community.In 2004, a documentary covering these events was released.
Some businesses were legally purchased by the workers for nominal fees, while others remain occupied by workers who have no legal standing (and in some cases reject negotiations). The Argentine government is considering a Law of Expropriation that would transfer some occupied businesses to their worker-managers.
Effects on wealth distribution
Although GDP grew consistently and quickly after 2003, it only reached the levels of 1998 (the last year before the recession) in late 2004. Other macroeconomic indicators followed suit. A study by Equis, an independent counseling organization, found out that two measures of economic inequality, the Gini coefficient and the wealth gap between the 10% poorest and the 10% richest among the population, grew continuously since 2001, and decreased for the first time in March 2005.
Debt restructuring
When the default was declared in 2002, foreign investment stopped and capital flow ceased almost completely. The Argentine government faced severe challenges trying to refinance its debt.
The government reached an agreement in 2005 by which 76% of the defaulted bonds were exchanged for others, with a nominal value of 25–35% of the original and at longer terms. A second debt restructuring in 2010 brought the percentage of bonds out of default to 93%, though holdout lawsuits led by vulture funds remained ongoing. Foreign currency denominated debt thus fell as a percentage of GDFP from 150% in 2003 to 8.3% in 2013.
Criticism of the IMF
The International Monetary Fund accepted no discounts in its part of the Argentine debt. Some payments were refinanced or postponed on agreement. However, IMF authorities at times expressed harsh criticism of the discounts and actively lobbied for the private creditors.
In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly on 21 September 2004, President Kirchner said that "An urgent, tough, and structural redesign of the International Monetary Fund is needed, to prevent crises and help in [providing] solutions". Implicitly referencing the fact that the intent of the original Bretton Woods system was to encourage economic development, Kirchner warned that the IMF today must "change that direction, which took it from being a lender for development to a creditor demanding privileges".
During the weekend of 1–2 October 2004, at the annual meeting of the IMF/World Bank, leaders of the IMF, the European Union, the Group of Seven industrialised nations, and the Institute of International Finance (IIF), warned President Kirchner that Argentina had to come to an immediate debt-restructuring agreement with creditors, increase its primary budget surplus to slow debt increases, and impose structural reforms to prove to the world financial community that it deserved loans and investment.
In 2005, turned its primary surplus into an actual surplus, Argentina began paying the IMF on schedule, with the intention of regaining financial independence. On 15 December 2005, following a similar action by Brazil, President Kirchner suddenly announced that Argentina would pay the whole debt to the IMF. The debt payments, totaling 9.810 billion USD, were previously scheduled as installments until 2008. Argentina paid it with the central bank's foreign currency reserves. The payment was made on 6 January 2006.
In a June 2006 report, a group of independent experts hired by the IMF to revise the work of its Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) stated that the assessment of the Argentine case suffered from manipulation and lack of collaboration on the part of the IMF; the IEO is claimed to have unduly softened its conclusions to avoid criticizing the IMF's board of directors.
Random Facts about Argentina
•	National Flower:Ceibo
•	Argentina is the second largest country in South America and theeighth in the world.
•	The western part of Argentina is occupied by the Andes mountain range, the great mountain system of the South American continent. Here we find the  Aconcagua (6.959 m), the highest peak in the world outside those existing in the Himalaya.
•	Argentina has a low demographic density. It consists of around 36 millon people, mainly established in the urban centres. The 85% of the population is descendant of inmigrants from Europe. As opposed to most Latin American countries, in Argentina there are relatively few Indian half castes (people of mixed races: european and indian).
•	Spanish is the official language and is spoken by the great majority of Argentinians.
English, French and Italian are, in lesser or greater degree, widespread languages within the country.
•	Argentina’s cultural roots are mainly Europeans and that is clearly reflected in its arquitecture, music, literature and lifestyle.
•	The typical Argentine food is asado (barbecue: meat cooked over live coals), apart from empanadas (a sort of turnover meat pie or pastry that comes with a variety of other stuffing’s), tamales (a dish made of corn meal, chicken or meat wrapped in corn husks), humita (dish made of grated corn, sweet peppers and tomatoes wrapped in the green leaves of corn) and locro (dish made of meat, potato, pumpkin, corn and sweet pepper).
•	However, and due to the important migrating current that populated the country, there exists a quite varied international cuisine: Spanish, Italian, French, German, Scandinavian, Greek, English, Swedish, Hungarian, Dutch, Chilean, Mexican, Basque, Jewish, Russian, Ukranian, Chinese, Japanese, Thai lander and Arabian.
•	Our country characteristic drink is mate (infusion).
•	The quality of its wines and meats is worldly known and the new Argentine cuisine has reached an international level standing out due to its qualified chefs.
•	Even though several sports are practiced, football is the most outstanding one.
•Loves to dance