delanceyplace.com 2/27/08 - bloody argentina

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In today's excerpt - Argentina in the 1970s: coups, terrorism and a bomb explosion every three hours:

"The passions surrounding Juan Peron's decade in power and his overthrow by a military coup in 1955 had produced a political stalemate. The country was divided into two, incompatible, halves -- the larger one made up of Peron's supporters. The army's solution was to proscribe Peronism and exercise tutelary power over the republic. This produced only instability -- between 1955 and 1973, Argentina had eight presidents -- ...  and eventually political violence on a scale not seen for a century or more. ...

"Out of this milieu would come Latin America's most powerful urban guerilla movement, the Montoneros (founded in 1968) along with a slew of violent grupusculos. ... The Montoneros drew together 'radical Catholicism, nationalism and Peronism into a populist expression of socialism.' ... At first, the Montoneros concentrated on spectacular acts of 'armed propaganda' against a military dictatorship reeling from the Cordobazo -- two days of rioting in 1969 by striking workers in the industrial city of Cordoba, which ended with 14 killed in the army. Three years of low-level warfare left ... the army commanders to conclude that only Peron's return could pacify the country ... [so he was] restored to office ... [at] age 78 ... with 60 percent of the vote in 1973. ... The Montoneros and their allies began to kill 'corrupt' trade union leaders and managers at businesses suffering strikes, as well as policemen and army officers. Peron and, after his death, his third wife and successor, Maria Estela 'Isabelita' Martinez, a former nightclub dancer, unleashed against the Montoneros the indiscriminate violence of the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance or Triple A, a death squad made up mainly of policemen. ...

"The country was suffering galloping inflation, a political killing every five hours and a bomb explosion every three hours. ... By 1975, the Montoneros comprised some 5,000 people under arms ... and had extorted $60 million by kidnapping a leading businessman. ... [They] began to flirt with terrorism -- a bomb in an army cinema wounded sixty. ... [To counter the Montoneros] the armed forces proceeded to institutionalize the methods of the Triple A. Victims included not just guerilla suspects, but their relatives and friends, peaceful dissidents and innocent bystanders. The methodology involved abduction, 'disappearance', lengthy and unrestrained torture, and murder. ... Military installations were turned into clandestine concentration camps. ... At least 8,960 people had disappeared in this war -- almost three times the number killed by the Pinochet regime in Chile. Human-rights groups estimated the total figure killed at up to 30,000."