President reignites debate on junta era violence and seeks wider role for military
Argentine President Javier Milei’s government has rekindled debate over the country’s military dictatorship by questioning the number of its victims, while also seeking a greater role for the armed forces in tackling ongoing security issues.
This week, at an event with veterans of the Falklands war that Argentina lost to the United Kingdom in 1982, Milei lashed out at what he said was a policy under previous governments of “harassing and humiliating” the military.
“That time is over,” he said. “They will have the respect that has been long denied to them.”
But Milei, a political outsider who won the presidency in November, is facing resistance – both on the streets and from some of his own conservative allies, including his vice-president.
His comments came after his government recently released a short documentary questioning the number of the 30,000 victims that rights groups estimate disappeared under the 1976-83 junta, which employed brutal tactics to crack down on leftist dissent.
And in March Milei announced he was planning a legal reform that would allow the armed forces to intervene in domestic security operations. The measure is aimed at fighting what the government dubs “narcoterrorism” in Rosario, a city mired in drug violence 300km northwest of the capital.
“The country has to be able to leave its wounds behind and move towards the future. The armed forces today are an integral part of our democracy,” Security Minister Patricia Bullrich said.
The effort to give greater powers to the army has hit a sensitive nerve, and is rejected by large sectors of society across the political spectrum. Vice-President Victoria Villarruel, who comes from a military family and has close ties to the armed forces, has spoken against Milei’s plan, saying: “The role of the armed forces is not to fight civilians.”
Villarruel’s criticism comes even as she has also questioned the number of missing and backs the “two demons theory” which justifies the violence meted out by the military regime as having been necessary to combat leftist guerilla groups. Critics argue this theory minimises state violence from the junta era, such as torture, disappearances, extrajudicial killings and the theft of babies from pregnant prisoners.
Since 1991, the army has only been allowed to provide equipment and technical support to police, without intervening directly in domestic affairs.
“We have to ask ourselves if the level of drug violence in Rosario warrants the use of the armed forces. Here we are talking about drug traffickers in flip-flops,” said Jorge Luis Vidal, a specialist in public security management and the fight against drug trafficking.
Efforts to change the role of the armed forces coincide with a review of their actions during the dictatorship and its victims. Milei argues 8,753 people went missing under military rule, far less than the 30,000 estimated. His figure is closer to the 8,961 recorded in the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons report, published in 1984 and described as “an open list”.
Marcela Perelman, a researcher at the Centre for Legal and Social Studies, said the debate was not about uncovering the truth, but “accusing the victims of a lack of information that in any case is the state’s responsibility”.