I would like to make clear that the posting of this and other pieces about
Galtieri isa not aimed at attacking the esteemed Nestor, but at providing a
basis fpor a discussion of the issues in question, a discussion to which Nestor
can certainly make valuable contibutions. I would also like to seize the
opportunity to point to the fact that the political tendency I adhere to (the
COFI with the LRP-USA at the center was among the small numbers of leftwing
groups in the USA to support Argentine during the Malvinas war.
A. Holberg
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: WSWS: Argentina Miliarty Establishment Stood by Galtieri
>
> Argentine military commander eulogizes ex-dictator
> By Bill Vann
> 16 January 2003
>
> <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jan2003/arg-j16_prn.shtml>
>
> A eulogy by Argentina's top army general describing the country's
> former dictator Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri as a "disciplined
> soldier" who "acted according to his convictions" has sparked
> widespread protests and demands for the officer's dismissal.
>
> General Ricardo Brinzoni, chief of the Argentine army, delivered the
> remarks at the January 13 funeral of Galtieri, the third of four
> generals who headed the dictatorship that ruled the country from
> 1976 to 1983.
>
> Galtieri led Argentina into the disastrous 1982 attempt to seize the
> Malvinas Islands, a British colony off of Argentina's coast. Within
> his own country he was reviled for the role he played in the
> dictatorship's so-called "dirty war," which claimed the lives of
> some 30,000 people who were summarily executed or "disappeared."
> Before he died from pancreatic cancer earlier this week, Galtieri
> was under house arrest in connection with an ongoing judicial
> investigation into his role in the torture and murder of opponents
> of the military junta.
>
> Flanked by an honor guard from the Patricios Regiment, General
> Brinzoni began his brief eulogy by announcing that "the Army bids
> farewell today to one of its commanders-in-chief." He
> continued: "During a period of convulsions and disagreements within
> Argentine society, he acted and decided according to his
> convictions."
>
> Brinzoni concluded, "In these last years, he confronted the
> difficulties with integrity and obeyed like a disciplined soldier
> all the orders and the institutional policies dictated by the Army."
>
> The "difficulties" Brinzoni referred to included the renewal of
> prosecutions against Galtieri and other top officers from the former
> dictatorship. They were specifically charged in the killing of
> members of the Montoneros, the left-wing Peronist guerrilla group.
> Some of these victims of the dictatorship were kidnapped in Brazil
> and forcibly returned to Argentina.
>
> Galtieri refused to testify in the proceedings, and human rights
> activists lamented the fact that he had gone to his grave without
> ever revealing the fate of those who disappeared after falling into
> his hands. The military has strongly opposed the new legal
> proceedings, initiated by a judge who ruled that laws passed in 1987
> and 1990 granting a blanket amnesty to the former dictators and
> other military personnel were unconstitutional.
>
> Even before being placed under house arrest, Galtieri was unable to
> leave the country for fear of being extradited to Spain or Italy,
> both of which had charged him in connection with the murder or
> disappearance in Argentina of their citizens during the years of
> military rule.
>
> Human rights organizations and some legislators responded to the
> funeral oration with a demand for General Brinzoni's
> ouster. "Brinzoni's statements clearly show the current army chief's
> institutional vindication of the violations of human rights
> committed by the last military dictatorship," declared a document
> issued by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and a number of other
> human rights groups.
>
> Accusing Brinzoni of leading an effort in the military to block any
> investigation into the junta's crimes, the document added that his
> statements and actions "constitute a retreat in the subordination of
> the Army to the rules of democracy and the observance of human
> rights."
>
> Galtieri began his rise within the Argentine military after
> attending the US Army's School of the Americas, then headquartered
> in Panama. Dubbed the "school for assassins," the institution
> trained an entire generation of Latin American officers who were
> responsible for a wave of US-backed military coups and the
> dictatorships that ruled most of the continent in the 1970s.
>
> After the 1976 coup that brought the military to power in Argentina,
> Galtieri headed the Army's Second Corps, based in Rosario,
> Argentina's second largest city. There he supervised the creation of
> more than a dozen detention centers and the extra-legal imprisonment
> and murder of thousands of militant workers, students and other
> opponents of the dictatorship. In the nightmarish repression, many
> prisoners were tortured until nearly dead and then thrown alive from
> helicopters into rivers or into the ocean.
>
> During recent court proceedings against the ex-dictator in Spain,
> where Galtieri was charged with torture and genocide, Madrid's
> former consul in Rosario testified about his meeting with the
> general to inquire into the fate of missing Spanish citizens. "In
> every war innocents die," Galtieri told him. "It's like what
> happened with the bombardment of Germany."
>
> In 1981, Galtieri succeeded General Jorge Videla as head of the
> military junta. Faced with a severe economic crisis and mounting
> popular opposition, culminating in strikes and mass demonstrations
> the following year, Galtieri attempted to rescue the junta by
> launching a military adventure. Asserting Argentina's historic claim
> to the Malvinas (called the Falklands by Britain), Galtieri
> dispatched an ill-equipped and poorly trained force of conscripts on
> April 2, 1982 to occupy the islands some 350 miles east of Argentina.
>
> In a speech marked by whisky-fueled bluster, Galtieri challenged the
> Thatcher government in Britain: "If they want to come, let them
> come. We will give them battle." At the time, it was joked that
> Galtieri was acting on the advice of an influential US adviser—
> Johnny Walker.
>
> The dictator later revealed he had believed the British would
> acquiesce to Argentina's fait accompli. He also placed ill-founded
> hopes in the Reagan administration siding with the Argentine junta
> in recognition of the assistance it had rendered in training the CIA-
> backed "contra" army waging war on Nicaragua.
>
> Both estimations proved disastrously mistaken. While Washington
> backed the Argentine junta in its "dirty war" on its own people and
> valued its collaboration in Central America, it, like Britain,
> viewed the Malvinas incursion as an unacceptable challenge to
> imperialist interests that had to be crushed.
>
> The maneuver did succeed in the short term in diverting the junta's
> opposition, with the Peronist politicians and labor leaders as well
> as substantial elements of the radical left lining up behind the
> dictatorship. The humiliating defeat of Argentina—316 soldiers were
> massacred by the British on the Malvinas, while 323 sailors perished
> in the torpedo attack on the cruiser General Belgrano —led to
> Galtieri's downfall and the collapse of the junta shortly thereafter.
>
> A military court found Galtieri guilty of gross incompetence and
> recommended that he be stripped of his rank and put before a firing
> squad. The penalty was reduced to 12 years imprisonment, however. In
> 1990 he was released along with other former junta members as part
> of a pardon issued by then-president Carlos Menem, a Peronist.
> Unlike the other former leaders of the dictatorship, Galtieri was
> allowed to keep his rank, and he regularly participated in the Army
> Day parades and other activities of the military.
>
> The military's embrace of Galtieri and its opposition to recent
> attempts to prosecute him demonstrate that for the high command, the
> debacle in the Malvinas was a secondary matter. The ex-dictator's
> main contribution was seen as his leadership in a war of murder and
> torture against the Argentine working class.
>
> General Brinzoni's funeral oration serves as a stark warning. Under
> conditions of a crippling crisis of the Argentine economy, the
> destitution of masses of working people and growing social
> upheavals, the military is prepared once again to unleash savage
> repression to defend the interests of the country's financial elite
> and the multinational banks and corporations.
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