The 1976 Junta

On March 24, 1976, a military junta led by Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla took control of Argentina, eliminating all due process laws. Videla was one of a triumvirate that represented the various branches of the Argentine armed forces. (Encyclopaedia, 57) This ruling group did not gain its power so much though individual charisma, rather it ruled by pure military authority. (Liebowitz, 63) There was no clear leader of the junta, instead there were many leaders who each believed different things and put their ideas into action differently.

By the time the junta took power, most organized resistance to the military had been crushed. (Simpson, 14) However, the junta wanted to ensure that such resistance would never again reemerge in Argentina. One slogan of the junta was "Occidental y Cristianos", meaning "Western and Christian". (Alicia) The Argentine military believed that they represented the true embodiment of Western (e.g. European) and Christian thought. However, this was not modern European thought. Admiral Emilio Massera, one of the leaders of the original junta expressed his ideology as follows:

"The ills of Western Society could be traced to three intellectuals: Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. Marx, the Admiral said, was guilty of questioning conventional attitudes about private property, Freud of 'attacking the sacred internal being of the human person,' and Einstein of challenging existing ideas about space and time. He did not mention the fact that all three were Jews." (Andersen, 196)

The junta was anti-semitic, racist, and very conservative, and believed that the United States had become weak and infected with liberalism. Thus, the junta sought to purge all elements of the leftist "cancer" from the population. (Alicia) The following quote, attributed to an intelligence officer, indicates that controlling the minds of individuals was thought to be equally important to achieving military superiority:

"In reality, the only total, integral warfare is cultural warfare. We do not confront an opponent who fights to defend a flag, a nation or its borders. What we create in the individual is his mind. The fight isn't one to conquer terrain, physically, but to conquer minds. Not to take advantageous physical positions but to mold mental structures in his favor." (Andersen, 195)

There were some people who supported the junta. They believed that the junta was merely trying to achieve a better state, establishing a conservative government that would control the country and protect it from leftist corruption. However, most people were against the junta because of the horrible tactics it used during its attempt to destroy leftist thought.

The junta sought to rid Argentina of any and all leftist activities, and it was willing to use any means to reach its desired end. It wanted to destroy all remains of Peronism and the guerrilla groups of the previous regime. (Rock, 366) The junta did so by embarking upon a systematic campaign of terror upon its own people, which has come to be known as the "Dirty War". Anyone associated with labor movements was automatically suspect. Furthermore, many in the military felt that universities and schools were breeding grounds for leftist activism. Therefore, much of the terror spawned by the junta was also aimed at educators and well educated people. (Andersen, 194) A well-known saying at the time was: "To catch all the fish, you must drain the ocean." The military knowingly terrorized Argentina's population to achieve its ends. (Alicia)