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30,000 REASONS: ARGENTINES UPHOLD MEMORY IN THE STREETS  
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Daniel Cholakian
March 28, 2024
NACLA Reports
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_ March 24 commemorates the victims of state terrorism in Argentina.
As President Javier Milei defends perpetrators of genocide,
remembering becomes a form of resisting far-right and denialist
policies. _

“SON 30,000” (THEY ARE 30,000). Demonstrators across Argentina
responded to the actions of the current right-wing government that
defends the military dictatorship. March 24, 2024. (Lucas Vallorani),

 

n March 24, hundreds of thousands of Argentines took to the streets
across the country under the banner of "Memory, Truth, Justice" for
the crimes committed by the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. This
year, marchers also protested against Javier Milei’s expressions of
support for the dictatorship.

During a presidential debate in late 2023, Milei said, "We are
absolutely against a one-eyed view of history.” He was responding to
his opponent Sergio Massa in a discussion about the military
dictatorship that began on March 24, 1976. He went on to say, "For us,
in the 1970s, there was a war and in that war, the state forces
carried out excesses." Milei denied that the military repression
left 30,000 people disappeared
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consensus among national and international organizations that
investigate systematic violations of human rights.

Argentina returned to democracy in 1983, and in 2002, March 24 was
declared an official day of remembrance. Every year people mobilize to
declare their refusal to forget the disappeared, and to proclaim that
they never want state terrorism to be repeated.

The current administration is sympathetic to the dictatorship. One of
the bloodiest illegal operations carried out by the military, known as
Operativo Independencia, involved the disappearance of entire families
and extrajudicial killings. The head of this operation was General
Antonio Domingo Bussi. In the 1990s, before the late Bussi was
sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, Milei
served as his advisor. Vice President Victoria Villarruel’s father
was an army officer in that same military operation. Villarruel is
also a member of organizations that call for the release of former
military officers charged with crimes against humanity.

[A group of demonstrators in Buenos Aires holds a banner with the
faces of the disappeared. (Daniel Cholakian)]

A group of demonstrators in Buenos Aires holds a banner with the faces
of the disappeared. (Daniel Cholakian)

Historically, the right and far right have attacked human rights
organizations, especially the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de
Mayo, by denying the number of victims and arguing that Argentina
experienced a war—as opposed to a systematic and illegal
extermination campaign targeting political activists, as court rulings
have affirmed since 1985. Phrases like "There weren’t 30,000
disappeared" and "There was a war" reflect the two strategies of
dictatorship defenders: denialism and the “theory of two evils.”
The latter argues that 1976-1983  was a period marked by a
confrontation between two equal sides that were similarly responsible
for damages against an innocent population. In reality,  the armed
forces took over the state and carried out illegal violence on anyone
who spoke out against the regime. These two ideas summarize a platform
that, for the first time since the return to democracy, the government
has assumed as official policy.

The National Commission on the Disappeared (CONADEP) estimated in its
1984 report that there were still 8,960 individuals
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remained  “victims of forced disappearance.” CONADEP also
acknowledged that this figure may not be accurate as “there are many
cases of disappearances that were not reported." Forty years later,
however, both the president and the vice president continue to claim
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people were disappeared.

A declassified 1979 U.S. State Department memo
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human rights in Latin America states that in Argentina as of January
1977: "Prisoners were subjected routinely to torture during
interrogation and general abuse during detention… throughout the
anti-subversive campaign an estimated 15,000 persons disappeared. Most
were probably summarily executed. The Government eventually
acknowledged the detention of over 3,000 persons. Many of these
persons had no connection to subversive movements. ” In 2006, newly
declassified U.S. documents revealed that Argentine military
officials acknowledged
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killed or disappeared 22,000 people between 1975 and mid-1978, as the
conservative newspaper _La Nación _reported at the time.

"In this time of denialism, we march to remember our beloved 30,000
disappeared detainees, because this government wants to disappear
their memory. It was a genocide. _Qué teoría de los dos
demonios!_ (what theory of two evils!)," said Taty Almeida, a
founding member of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, before marching
on March 24. "Here there is only one evil that killed our dear
mothers, our children; only one evil that raped imprisoned women
political activists, murdered them, and took their babies."

For Daniel Feierstein, a professor and expert in genocide studies:
"Denialism is a political construct that seeks to dispute collective
memory of the past in order to use it in the present. Many times it
does not totally deny the fact, but operates through forms of
minimization, relativization, or constructing false equivalences."

This collective memory was built by learning the truth about the
crimes perpetrated by the Armed Forces, such as torture, death
flights, child theft, and economic crimes. According to Alejandra
Oberti, professor and coordinator of the Archivo Oral de Memoria
Abierta [[link removed]], "Memories
are always plural because they represent the ways that collectives
represent themselves and give meaning to the past. And they are
subject to disputes and transformations, according to the contexts and
new experiences that societies are making." The conviction shared by
most of the population that these crimes happened and need to be
condemned is what the current right-wing government seeks to
dismantle.

["NUNCA MÁS. NI UN PASO ATRÁS" (NEVER AGAIN. NOT ONE STEP BACKWARDS.
Hundreds of thousands of Argentinians took to the streets for the day
of memory, truth, and justice. (Lucas Vallorani)]

"NUNCA MÁS. NI UN PASO ATRÁS" (NEVER AGAIN. NOT ONE STEP BACKWARDS.
Hundreds of thousands of Argentinians took to the streets for the day
of memory, truth, and justice. (Lucas Vallorani)

The Argentine state has stood out for having brought to justice
hundreds of people involved in crimes against humanity, which are not
subject to a statute of limitations. Pablo Llonto—an experienced
defense lawyer who has worked with victims of the dictatorship and
promoted cases against genocidaires—said: "The main significance of
sustaining judicial processes is to be able to say that there have
been 321 rulings [on crimes against humanity] throughout the country
[since 2006
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All of them state that in Argentina there was an extermination plan
and that they are crimes against humanity. And this has been done by
dozens of judges, in courts of all kinds and all over the country,
including the Supreme Court, all of them being officials of different
political stripes."

Threats, Violence, and a Denialist Advertisement

In the week leading up to March 24, several events raised alarm among
human rights organizations. In the early hours of March 18, a digital
attack
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carried out against Marea Editorial
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dozens of books on stories related to these crimes. Constanza Brunet,
director of Marea Editorial, said: "This attack is not a coincidence,
but organized and systematic. It is encouraged by hate speeches from
the highest authorities. They are completely anti-democratic messages
that support genocide."

There was also speculation as to whether there would be any government
action to provoke a reaction from the population in general, and from
human rights organizations in particular. There was mention of a
possible presidential pardon and speculation about judicial maneuvers
that would allow the release of those convicted and still in prison.
This speculation was reinforced by a meeting that Minister of Defense
Luis Petri held with a group of wives of convicted military personnel,
known for defending the dictatorship.

Regarding the possibility of the government intervening in legal
cases, lawyer Llonto said: "We know that some things are being
planned, because they have a kind of embrace toward the genocidaires
since before the election. We must be prepared for any kind of
maneuver that seeks to intervene to stop or divert the goal of the
trials. Obviously this would mean meddling with the judiciary, but
this is a government that does not respect anything in the
constitution."

[In the city of Buenos Aires, nearly half a million people came out to
march. (Daniel Cholakian)]

In the city of Buenos Aires, nearly half a million people came out to
march. (Daniel Cholakian)

On March 21, the group HIJOS, made up of children of disappeared
persons, denounced an attack against a woman in the organization. The
attackers, who were carrying firearms, illegally entered her home,
where they waited for her, and told her: "We know everything about
you, we know where you work, what you do, that you are with human
rights [organizations]... we did not come to rob you, we came to kill
you." That same day President Milei "liked" a publication on X that
insinuated that it had been a false attack "to use against the
government." No official has repudiated this statement.

Finally, it came to light that the government was preparing an
audiovisual ad to recount what they call the whole story. On March 24,
the Casa Rosada YouTube account published a 12-minute video called
"National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice. Complete." The video is
a low-quality audiovisual piece with two interviewees that maintain
the existence of a war, claim justice has been incomplete, and deny
that 30,000 were disappeared. The presenter, Juan Yofre, is a former
director of the intelligence services under the government of Carlos
Menem, who pardoned the heads of the Armed Forces who carried out the
1976 coup d'état.

To the Plaza: A Tradition of Resistance

In this political context, the March 24 demonstrations throughout the
country were amazingly massive. “_Ir a la plaza”_ or going to the
plaza, the central square of every city or town, is a way for
Argentines to protest and raise their demands to authorities. Since
March 23, Argentines  sent hundreds of thousands of messages saying
"See you in the plaza!" or "Are you going to the plaza?” The meaning
was clear; there was no need to specify which plaza or for what
reason.

In Buenos Aires, the events lasted about six hours and mobilized about
half a million people. In the major cities of Córdoba and Rosario,
participants reached 150,000
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There were contingents of organizations and political parties, as well
as tens of thousands of people on their own. There were posters,
dolls, and signs referring to the government's anti-memory policies.
One family pushed their less than month-old baby along in a stroller.
One man, who had great difficulty walking, was accompanied by his
daughter and granddaughter; he did not want to miss the demonstration
this year. One young person stood out from the crowd with a t-shirt
that said: "There are 30,000 and one of them is my grandfather."
Memory runs across generations.

Walking with his daughter, Andres Habegger, a filmmaker and son of a
Peronist militant kidnapped at the Rio de Janeiro airport as part of
the U.S.-backed Operation Condor, said: "This is the first march in a
conservative and fascist government that operates based on the idea of
denialism. In the face of this, what this march does is to reverse
that, to say 'this is our history, this happened and we carry it in
our bodies, in our voices, and we live with it.'"

As the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo’s contingent marched forward,
Guillermo Pérez Roisinblit, a grandson abducted during the
dictatorship who recovered his identity in 2004, said: " This 24th is
a gathering of people who reject this government that vindicates
crimes against humanity. It is different to be a denier than to be a
vindicator, and they go far beyond simply denying what happened."

The massive popular demonstration in hundreds of cities across the
country shows that the dispute for memory is, centrally, a dispute for
the present and the future in Argentina. Because after 40 years of
uninterrupted democracy, the longest period in the country’s
history, people perceive for the first time a brutal setback in
democratic and peaceful coexistence. The main culprit is Milei's
government, with denialism being a key ideological device. As genocide
expert Feierstein says, "legitimizing the violence of the past seeks
to legitimize the possible violence of the future."

_Leer este artículo en español._
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_DANIEL CHOLAKIAN is a sociologist and journalist specializing in
Latin America._

_The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) is an
independent, nonprofit organization founded in 1966 to examine and
critique U.S. imperialism and political, economic, and military
intervention in the Western hemisphere. In an evolving political and
media landscape, we continue to work toward a world in which the
nations and peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean are free from
oppression, injustice, and economic and political subordination._

* Argentina
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* Argentina's Dirty War
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* disappeared
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* Human Rights
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