45 years ago today, the US-supported a coup in Argentina, which installed a right-wing military junta. The junta received a “green light” from Henry Kissinger to conduct its dirty war, unleashing death squads, torture, and disappearing or killing around 30,000.
The junta began a massive campaign of state violence as part of the CIA’s Operation Condor. The campaign disappeared 13,000 socialists, students, unionists, journalists & average citizens. Many of those involved in the junta have been charged with crimes against humanity.
Argentine human rights groups have called the campaign a “genocide” against political dissidents. The junta used electric shock, severe beatings, simulated drowning, mock execution, and other psychological abuse to torture political prisoners.
The junta even operated “death flights” where political prisoners were loaded onto planes then thrown out as the plane flew over the Atlantic Ocean. The flights took place “every Wednesday for two years (1977 and 1978)”, 1,500 to 2,000 people were killed that way.
Hebe de Bonafini, director of the group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo said, “The military first threw our children into the river alive, their feet trapped inside a bucket of cement. But the corpses began to wash ashore, so they decided to start dumping them in the open ocean.”
Henry Kissinger & high-ranking US officials gave full support to the Argentine military junta, urging them to hurry up and finish their brutal campaign of terror before US congress cut their military aid. Declassified US files expose 1970s backing for junta.
The US sent hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid and continued to train Argentine military officers as the junta as it was conducting its ruthless atrocities.