The Military Junta in Argentina
8
plain
2017-06-14T17:06:21-07:00
On March 24, 1976 in Argentina there was a military coup d’état led by General Jorge Videla to overthrow President Isabel Martínez de Perón and establish a right-wing dictatorship that would last until the election of President Raúl Alfonsín in 1983. Throughout the duration of this junta, a dictatorship headed by multiple members of the military rather than one governmental figurehead, an estimated 30,000 people were disappeared (the adjective “disappeared” is used in this context to highlight that they were taken by the government, not of their own volition). Most of these people were held captive in detention centers throughout Greater Buenos Aires, where they were tortured and eventually killed, either by firing squad execution or through “death flights,” where they were drugged, undressed, and then taken in airplanes or helicopters to be pushed into the Atlantic Ocean or the Río de la Plata where they would drown. During the military junta, people lived under a cloud of fear that they could be disappeared or lose members of their family.
