‘Justification of dictatorship’: outcry as Milei rewrites Argentina’s history

Human rights groups in Argentina have raised the alarm over President Javier Milei’s attempts to rewrite history on the eve of the annual day of remembrance for the thousands of victims of the country’s brutal 1976-1983 dictatorship.

Thousands of protesters will take to the streets on Sunday to mark the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice in Argentina, a holiday commemorating the 30,000 victims of the dictatorship, called “desaparecidos”. The date usually sees Argentina’s largest demonstrations of the year, with millions of citizens flooding the country’s streets to declare: “Nunca más” (never again).

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However, this 24 March is set to be different as it will be the first under Milei, a far-right libertarian who has consistently denied Argentinians’ long-standing consensus over the dictatorship’s crimes.

“There were no 30,000,” Milei said provocatively during a presidential debate ahead of his election triumph last November. “For us, during the 70s, there was a war where excesses were committed.”

Numerous Argentinian media outlets have reported that the government plans to release a video with its “official version” of what happened during the dictatorship ahead of the 24 March mobilizations. The video will allegedly include an interview with Luis Labraña, a former member of the Montoneros Peronist organization, who has claimed he “made up” the 30,000 number. Some journalists have also claimed that the government plans to pardon incarcerated regime officials, although both Milei and his vice-president, Victoria Villarruel, have denied this.

Lucía García Itzigsohn, the daughter of two desaparecidos, said: “We are very worried. Beyond our political positioning and the fact that history crosses us personally, this implies breaking the democratic pact.”

“President Javier Milei and the highest authorities of the country repeat forms of denialism and relativism of state terrorism,” the Center of Legal and Social Studies (CELS), a human rights organization founded in 1979, said in a statement.

Villarruel has been even more outspoken in her defense of Argentina’s former military rulers. She is the niece of Ernesto Guillermo Villarruel, who was in charge of the Vesubio clandestine detention center during the dictatorship. Like Milei, she has said that the dictatorship was “a war” between “terrorists” and the armed forces.

Ezequiel Adamovsky said such ideas were fringe in the 1990s, when only small far-right groups put the crimes of the guerrillas on the same level as those committed by the military regime, but became somewhat normalized under president Mauricio Macri. But he warned that the Argentinian right wing has further radicalized its discourse regarding the dictatorship. “What we are talking about now is no longer denialism, it is directly a justification of the dictatorship,” Adamovsky said.

Analysts and human rights groups warn that this discourse has consequences: CELS said tributes were now being paid in military barracks to regime officials convicted of crimes against humanity with the endorsement of the political authorities.

On Wednesday, the organization HIJOS – which was founded by the children of desaparecidos – reported that one of its activists was tied, beaten, and sexually assaulted in her home, in what they called a “politically motivated attack”.

The attackers painted “VLLC” on one of the walls, the acronym for Milei’s catchphrase “Viva la libertad, carajo” (“Long live freedom, dammit”). “We are here to kill you,” they reportedly told her.

“Hate speech is the breeding ground for violent actions and crimes,” tweeted the campaign group Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, which was created in 1977 by grandmothers seeking their grandchildren, born in captivity and kidnapped by the dictatorship, and often raised within military families.

García Itzigsohn, a member of HIJOS, said Milei had not called the victim or the organization to condemn the attack. Nor has he done so publicly.

Moreover, Milei’s head digital strategist during his presidential campaign, Fernando Cerimedo, claimed on X that the attack was a fabrication. “People want the truth,” Cerimedo said in an interview. “And [the fact that there were] 30,000 is a lie.”

Adamvosky said questioning the number was “an act of bad faith”. “The number is an estimation that was made with the very little information available at that moment,” he said, adding that military documents that were declassified in 2006 revealed that the military had disappeared or killed close to 22,000 people between 1975 and 1978, a whole five years before the end of the dictatorship.

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Due to the illegal nature of the repression and the fact that there was a pact of silence in the military, the exact number cannot be attained, Adamvosky said. “The right wing exploits the seeming gap between the reported cases and the symbolic number to imply human rights groups are lying,” he added.

This week Milei’s defense minister, Luis Petri, appeared in a photograph with the wives of imprisoned dictatorship officials, who are demanding their husbands be freed. Argentina held its first trial against such criminals in 1985, and they are still taking place to this day. A spokesperson for the minister claimed Petri appeared in the picture “by chance” and had spoken with them for “less than two seconds”.

García Itzigsohn said that Argentinians would not back down despite the government’s provocations. “There are 40 years of democratic tradition in our country that cannot be thrown away only because these people have a provocative style,” she said. “There are regulations, there are laws, and there will also be a people marching on 24 March who will make it very clear to them.”