[News] Argentina: Massive Demonstration Commemorates the 1976 Coup and Say No to Milei’s Rewriting of History

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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Argentina: Massive Demonstration Commemorates the 1976 Coup and Say No to
Milei’s Rewriting of History
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By Bill Hackwell on March 24, 2024 from Buenos Aires

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30,000 Alive in Truth! photo: Bill Hackwell

Hundreds of thousands are still in the streets here that lead to the Casa
Rosada, Argentina’s presidential palace. For the last 43 years March 24,
has been referred to as the National Day of Memory in Argentina marking the
beginning of the 1976 military coup that disappeared, tortured and murdered
at least 30,000 people.

This year it takes on new meaning. The right wing coup-denier Javier Milei
became president in December 2023 bringing with him a plan of neo liberal
austerity that has the blessings of the International Monetary Fund.

Milei has gone to great lengths to say that nearly 30,000 were not killed
and that in the 70’s there was a war where perhaps “there were a few
excesses”. Milei’s vice president Victoria Villarruel has gone even further
in the denial by reframing the dictatorship as “a war” between “terrorists”
and the armed forces.

In Milei’s circle an idea is now being floated to call for the release of
some of the imprisoned generals as if they, the perpetrators of the reign
of terror and torture that went from 1976 – 1983, were also victims. This
morning the government released videos of sympathetic interviews with the
families of the jailed generals attempting to preempt the focus of the
march and to start a new thread of fake news. Meanwhile Milei’s
Administration has nearly eliminated funding for the department established
to pursue crimes against humanity and the preservation of the collective
memory of that dark period.

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photo: Bill Hackwell

Suffering and the terror of the dictatorship, and its crimes against
humanity are real and continues in nearly every family you meet in
Argentina. The courageous Mothers of Plaza de Mayo started that trail of
searching for their sons and daughters, demonstrating every week in the
Plaza in front of the Casa Rosada even when public meetings were illegal.
And that struggle continues today in the militant organization H.I.J.O.S.,
the sons, daughters and now grandchildren who carry on the struggle for
accountability and to ensure it will never happen again.

Milei knows that. In an ominous sign of the acts that preceded the coup, he
is standing by without comment about a vicious organized attack on a young
woman of H.I.J.O.S. in her home last week. Perpetrators beat and sexually
assaulted her warning that they did not come to rob her but to kill her.
They left Milei slogans written on the wall.

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H.I.J.O.S, photo: Bill Hackwell

The real danger is that Milei’s denialism is transforming to a
justification for the dictatorship and the genocide that prevailed after
the coup. It is an attempt to wipe out the collective memory and replace it
with doubt. It is also a distraction from the serious problems many
Argentinians are facing at this moment. Even more than his
authoritarianism, are the results of Milei’s economic measures that have
impoverished the middle classes and pushed millions of poor people to
inhuman survival conditions. The most serious problem is that inflation has
doubled with this government, which has been particularly difficult in the
provinces and is destroying public health and education.

While Melei was hoping for a demoralized, distracted and smaller March 24
demonstration this year, it was not to  be, instead the turnout in Buenos
Aires today was large, broad across sectors and determined.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – US
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