From: Carlos Gonzalia (gonzalia@cs.chalmers.se)
Date: Sun Jul 22 2001 - 14:44:03 MDT
>From: CurtAdams@aol.com
>gonzalia@cs.chalmers.se writes:
>
>> In Argentina,
>> there is still a sad kind of institutional thinking inside security forces
>> that originates on the doctrines and methods of the last dictatorship.
>
>That's odd. Usually the collapse of dictatorial
>regimes for democratic ones leaves regimes which
>are hyper-touchy about authoritarian methods. I
>would think the methods of the Argentinian facist
>regime of 76-83 would be thoroughly discredited,
>between the Disappeared and the Falklands War.
I think the explanation is to be found in the political strength the
army accumulated during the 50 years that they kept taking over the
government once and again, every time they didn't like the way
the democratic governments were acting. In spite of the discredit,
they managed to leave government in 83 with a big part of that strenght
intact (the backing up of the local landlords and their oligopolies
never weakened, as for them all the killings were all right). This
can be seen in the final destiny of the legal prosecution of Process
members for human right violations: after some covert threats and
numerous overt rebellions by army officers, the trials were silently
swept under the carpet and an amnesty law declared. Once that was
safe and sound, the army's political strength was emptied by the
natural retirement of the old dinosaurs, and the shift of the
landlords/oligopolies to use financial pressure with deadly effects
to get their points across in a cleaner way. The institutional culture,
however, has very much remained in place in the security forces. The
participation of high officers of the army and the federal police
in the bombing of jewish institutions in Buenos Aires is proof enough,
I think.
C.
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