The decision by President Javier Milei to name the head of Argentina’s Army, Lieutenant General Carlos Alberto Presti, as the nation’s new defence minister, replacing Luis Petri, was disclosed in the same week a call was made for a new march to demand the release of those sentenced for crimes against humanity committed during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship’s time in power.
Since Milei took office in December 2023, there have been executive decisions, public expressions and gestures which have it made it very clear – at the very least – that within La Libertad Avanza, the crimes committed during by the military junta can be explained by the so-called “two demons” theory, which equates state terrorism with the violence committed by armed guerrilla groups during that era.
The question now is, how deep the ruling party intends to go in this direction. And what implications it will have for the state policy of “Memory, Truth and Justice” in the short, medium and long term.
The appointment of Lieutenant General Presti generates various debates. On the one hand, it is the first time since the return to democracy that a military man has taken the helm at the Defence Ministry. On the other hand, several parties have noted that the Army chief’s father, Roque Carlos Presti, was also a military man, one accused of committing crimes against humanity during the dictatorship, when Presti Snr was the commander of the Seventh Infantry Regiment in La Plata. Despite being accused, he never stood trial, having passed away before proceedings could begin.
Lieutenant General Presti has not commented publicly on his father’s actions during the period. No-one can be held responsible for the acts committed by their parents, but the future minister never publicly repudiated state terrorism. Last week, Presti had a brief exchange with the press at Casa Rosada and revealed he planned to “continue with military hierarchy” and not to retire from the force. He made no other comment.
Call for march
Human rights bodies were also alerted this week to another development: a group of retired military officers and pro-Milei activists called for a demonstration to demand the release of those sentenced for crimes against humanity.
Among its organisers, as disclosed by the ElDiarioAR website, are: Orlando ‘Hormiga’ González, a convicted officer who served at the ex-ESMA Navy Mechanics School and is now serving a life sentence under arrest; Asunción Benedit, a member of the pro-dictatorship Pañuelos Negros (‘Black Scarves’) group and the sister of La Libertad Avanza deputy Beltrán Benedit, one of the legislators who organised the visit to see convicted criminal Alfredo Astiz last year at Ezeiza prison; Guillermo Sottovia, the son of a member of an Air Force officer; and Alfredo Manzur, ex Malvinas war veteran accused of torturing recruits who is an attorney in the Tucumán Judiciary.
The demonstration has not been without obstacles. National Security Minister Patricia Bullrich suggested to its organisers that they move their planned march from the central Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, which is associated with the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo human rights group, to Plaza San Martín in Recoleta. The goal is for demonstrators not to cross paths with members of the group, or left-wingers who planned to rally in support of Palestine, avoiding rioting and clashes.
Memory, truth and justice
These are not the only inklings of the libertarian crusade against the state policy of Memory, Truth and Justice. Acquittals and delays in trials investigating crimes against humanity dating back to the dictatorship era are also racking up. Dismissals and lay-offs have been made at key human rights bodies, increasing concerns among a sector of society over a possible setback in the democratic consensus enjoyed since the fall of the military junta.
Despite the fears, trials probing crimes against humanity are still progressing; there are currently 13 oral proceedings ongoing in five provinces.
Fernando Tebele is one of the founders of La Retaguardia, a publication that streams such trials live onto the Internet. His channel is about to finish the year with nearly one million views, but in an interview, he expressed concern about the growing number of acquittals for individuals accused of crimes against humanity in recent weeks.
On November 2, a Federal Oral Court in Rosario delivered 17 acquittals in the case known as “El Villazo,” a trial probing the illegal repression of a strike of metal workers carried out as part of Operation Serpiente Roja del Paraná in 1975. It was a historically relevant process, since it happened before the coup and it had two former executives from the Acindar firm in the dock, charged for their collaboration with the operations and for providing spaces that were used for kidnappings, tortures and murders.
Just a few weeks earlier, on October 24, the Mar del Plata Federal Oral Court handed eight convictions and 27 acquittals in the “La Huerta” case for illegal arrests, tortures, disappearances and other crimes against humanity carried out on premises in the vicinity of the Tandil Military Air Base.
‘Very high’
“If you add up the number, you have a total of 44 acquittals in a matter of weeks – a very high number compared with the acquittal rate since the trials returned,” reflected Tebele.
It is an objective piece of information. According to the Office of Crimes against Humanity (PCCH in Spanish), since 2006 there have been 1,195 convictions in 332 sentences and a total of 196 acquittals.
“Even though we cannot call it a trend yet, I think it’s something that wouldn’t have happened at other times,” said Tebele.
For Tebele, the decision by Federal Judge Alejo Ramos Padilla in August to acquit two former policemen on cover-up and malfeasance charges is both wrong and concerning. He warned it would “open the door for other judges to feel empowered.
Pablo Llonto is a human rights lawyer and one of the leading professionals for trials probing crimes against humanity. In an interview, he talked about the growing “boldness” of military sectors and the ruling party after the October elections, though he claimed that to date “there are no clear indicators to link acquittals with the government’s election victory.”
According to Llonto, the “climate of the times” can be noted in the fact that “a lot of judges have decided to postpone trials over crimes against humanity – It’s obvious that in the past two years, as they are not a priority for the Executive Branch, many judges have put these cases at the bottom of their pile of their files.”
But the need for urgency is objectively true. Many of the accused and survivors are elderly and if trials do not progress, impunity is perpetuated. “On the other hand, in the ‘Cuadernos’ [corruption notebooks] case, judges smell or know of the interest the political power has and deliver an absurd ruling to hurry up the court,” Llonto argued.
Earlier this week, a group of lawyers dealing with crimes against humanity submitted a note to the Federal Cassation Court to request a meeting and call for the same standards to be applied in these matters as with high-profile corruption cases.
Llonto emphasised another matter outside the media’s radar: for four years now there has not been a single meeting of the inter-branch commission created in order to expedite trials. It is a space which must be summoned by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, where representatives from federal courts and the Executive Branch must sit and work together.
Milei’s assault on memory
In early November, Human Rights Undersecretary Alberto Baños, appeared before a committee against torture at the United Nations and questioned the estimate put forward by rights group that some 30,000 people were disappeared by the dictatorship during its hold on power.
Even though many La Libertad Avanza party officials and government officials – the President included – insist on this argument, never before had such a claim been stated by a public official at an international organisation.
Since his appointment, Baños has not formed ties with rights groups, which learned second-hand of the Milei’s government’s intent to demote the Human Rights Secretariat to a sub-secretariat. Hand-in-hand with that decision, the classic chainsaw has again reared its head, highlighting the dismantling of programmes and dismissal of key staff.
“Since Milei took office, there have been measures to thwart trials without aid – for example, everything concerning investigations or documents or with the dismissal of lawyers who were dealing with the cases,” Llonto underlined.
In May, the ex-ESMA Memory Site Museum’s hierarchy was reorganised, together with the National Memory Archive. Both now fall under the orbit of the International Centre for the Promotion of Human Rights (CIPDH, in Spanish), a body created under the auspices of UNESCO currently headed by Ana Belén Mármora, a lawyer with a fierce pro-life activism on social media.
The libertarian crusade against memory, truth and justice has been coupled with positions against “gender ideology.” In October, one official at the museum, Fernando Vedoya, decided to alter language at a permanent exhibition exposing sexual violence against women at the clandestine detention centre during the military era, removing gender-neutral language.
La Retaguardia reported in October that Vedoya had also added Manuel Larrabure to his team as an advisor. He is the grandson of Colonel Argentino del Valle Larrabure, who was kidnapped and murdered by the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP in Spanish) in 1974, and is seen as a symbol for organisations who claim they are leading a “fight against subversion.”
Manuel Larrabure, in fact, belongs to the Centre for Legal Studies on Terrorism and its Victims (CELTYV in Spanish), the controversial organisation founded by Vice-President Victoria Villarruel,.
All of these gestures – those that make headlines in the media and those that do not spark repercussions – can be added to a long list of episodes which started the day Milei, in the 2023 presidential debate, called the crimes committed by the dictatorship “excesses.”
During his presidency, a group of La Libertad Avanza deputies visited military officers convicted of crimes against humanity, including rape, torture and murder, at Ezeiza prison. Last March 24, remembrance day for the coup that brought the military to power, Milei’s ideological ally Agustín Laje starred in a controversial video published by the Casa Rosada entitled “Day of Full Memory.”
We will have to wait to know whether this line of the “cultural battle” echoes across civil society or whether those involved are the only ones who will defend the violent acts committed by the State in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
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