Alianza Anticomunista Argentina

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The Alianza Anticomunista Argentina ( Spanish , abbreviated AAA or Triple A , German for example Anti-Communist Association of Argentina ) was a government- affiliated paramilitary , right-wing extremist and terrorist group within the Argentine Peronism in the 1970s. It was often referred to as a death squad and was responsible for numerous kidnappings, attacks, political murders and the violent " disappearances " of mostly left-wing political opponents of the government. After the Argentine military dictatorship took power in 1976 , the AAA's methods and goals were largely adopted by the military and covert , informal police units, rendering the organization virtually meaningless. However, the military junta continued to use it for some time as an excuse to present an external culprit for the enforced disappearance, torture and murder of opposition members systematically and clandestinely. In fact, some former AAA members, some of whom were military and police, took on central roles in the dictatorship's apparatus of repression.

In 2006 an Argentine court ruled that the acts of the Triple A were at least partially to be assessed as " crimes against humanity ". In Argentina these are not subject to the statute of limitations , which significantly increased the possibility of prosecuting crimes that were more than 30 years ago.

Political background and history

Argentina found itself in a social and political crisis at the end of the 1960s. Under the military dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía (1966–1970) and Roberto Levingston (1970–1971), there was a split between state power and the labor movement. The latter sympathized partly with violent organizations like the Montoneros , partly with Juan Perón, who was in exile, and partly with socialism . There were violent unrest and popular uprisings, the most violent being the so-called Cordobazo (1969) with 14–34 dead, 200–400 injured and 2,000 arrests. The regime saw democratization as the last resort. Former President Juan Perón, who was sometimes extremely popular among the people, came back to power in 1973 after several short-term presidents, having returned from exile, which led to a brief stabilization. However, he died a little later. After his death in July 1974, his wife, Isabel Perón ("Isabelita") became Vice President. Under her government, the economic and domestic political problems worsened. In the face of this unstable overall situation, the willingness to use violence increased on all sides, which was shown above all in bomb attacks, kidnappings and the murder of the respective political opponents.

history

José López Rega, Minister of Social Affairs under the government of Juan Domingo Peron , founded Triple A in 1973 as a paramilitary fighting and terror group against left-wing opponents. These often belonged to the Peronist party , of which Rega itself was a member.

Against this background, the AAA was founded by José López Rega at the end of 1973, before Juan Perón's return from exile and renewed presidency . Rega was Minister of Social Affairs in the Perón government and acted in concert with numerous other top Argentine politicians. The AAA was more or less officially charged with the kidnapping and murder of “ subversives ”. Terrorism intensified under Isabel Perón's government, who became president after her husband's death.

Goal setting and sacrifice

The target of the persecution was not only communists, as the name suggests, but also unpopular people within the Peronist ruling party Partido Justicialista . The Peronist movement was deeply divided into a conservative , business-friendly wing and a left-wing part that propagated a kind of socialism . The AAA's terror targets included the leaders of the Montoneros , a left-Peronist guerrilla movement , and the Peronist youth organization Juventud Peronista. The Marxist and psychoanalyst Marie Langer was forced to emigrate to Mexico City in 1974 by the AAA . But also non-political opponents of the regime, among them many artists and intellectuals , were secretly kidnapped, tortured and murdered. The people who "disappeared" in this way, mostly without a trace and permanently, became known as Desaparecidos , which means "The Disappeared" in Spanish. Even the actors of the successful feature film La Patagonia rebelde by Héctor Olivera (1974), in which a workers' uprising in 1920 is portrayed, were given death threats because the film was said to have an inciting and subversive effect that undermines state authority.

Because of the terror of the AAA, many cultural workers began to flee into exile under the Peronist government , which continued after the coup in 1976 under the military dictatorship with its so-called process of national reorganization , which was even harder against opponents of the regime .

Loss of importance and transformation under the military dictatorship from 1976

Since the military and informal and secret police units took over the exercise of domestic terror in 1976 , the AAA gradually lost its importance. However, the military junta continued to blame her for some time when it came to the (correct) suspicion that the government had kidnapped and murdered masses of left oppositionists. The Argentine journalist and writer Rodolfo Walsh wrote on the first anniversary of the underground dictatorship in 1977 in his now famous Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Junta :

“This also eliminates the fairy tale of any gangs of right-wing terrorism and alleged heirs of López Rega's“ Triple A ”, because how could they be the greatest without the knowledge of General Videla , Admiral Massera , Brigadier Agosti [probably a wrong translation of his rank as Brigadier General ] in military vehicles Passing the garrison of the country, covering the bottom of the Río de la Plata with dead people and throwing prisoners into the sea from transport machines of the 1st Brigade ? The "Triple A" - these are the three branches of the armed forces today , and the military junta that you lead is by no means the tip of the scales or the just mediator between "two fronts of terrorism", but the source of the terror itself, which is now everybody Has lost orientation and only knows the language of death. "

Shortly after taking power in 1976, General Luciano Benjamín Menéndez had announced large-scale "purges", including the deaths of innocent people, even by junta standards:

“We're going to have to kill 50,000 people. 25,000 subversives, 20,000 sympathizers and we will make 5,000 mistakes. "

By the end of the dictatorship in 1983 people were murdered by the military up to 30,000, of which a large part without a trace and permanently forcibly disappeared . Up until the end of 1983 and beyond, the dictatorship consistently denied that it had anything to do with the unexplained disappearance of all the people. These processes are a burden on Argentine society to this day, although an efficient legal appraisal of the mass murder of that time has now begun, see also Appraisal of the Argentine military dictatorship .

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Death from AAA. Der Spiegel, 45 / 1974.4. November 1974
  2. ↑ Esteban Cuya: More than just a tennis match . Latinamerikanachrichten.de, No. 381, March 2006
  3. ↑ a b c Manuel Justo Gaggero: El general en su laberinto. Pagina / 12, February 19, 2007
  4. ↑ Inga Kleinecke: The Cordobazo. November 23, 2009. Retrieved July 19, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Rodolfo Walsh : The Massacre of San Martín ( Memento from September 8, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Website about Walsh at Rotpunktverlag.
  6. ^ Paul H. Lewis: Guerrillas and generals: the "Dirty War" in Argentina . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, p. 147
  7. ↑ Rafael Videla Admits His Government Killed and Disappeared Thousands. Fox News Latino, April 16, 2012
  8. ↑ Werner Marti: Videla convicted of child robbery. Argentina's judiciary speaks of the systematic appropriation of babies by the military. Neue Zürcher Zeitung online, July 7, 2012
  9. ↑ Christiane Wolters: Ex-officer in court for "death flights". Deutsche Welle, January 14, 2005.