Argentines push back against leaders revising history on anniversary of 1976 military coup
Thousands protested President Javier Milei's and Vice President Victoria Villarruel's remarks for challenging or downplaying the history of the dictatorship where about 30,000 were disappeared or killed.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — As Argentina on Sunday marked the most traumatic date in its modern history — the 1976 military coup that ushered in a brutal dictatorship — President Javier Milei posted a startling video that demanded justice. Not for those who suffered repression under the junta, but for those victims of leftist guerrillas before the putsch.
Milei posted the video as tens of thousands of protesters, raising banners vowing “Nunca Mas,” or never again, filled downtown Buenos Aires to commemorate the 48th anniversary of the coup and the seven years that followed when as many as 30,000 people were killed or forcibly disappeared in a systematic campaign that still haunts the country.
The video by the president, a far-right economist who took office in December, referred to “the other dead” before the coup, part of a contentious effort to change Argentina’s memory of its recent history.
Opponents see the cause as equating guerrilla violence with state terror, justifying the junta’s repression of anyone deemed subversive.
“FOR A COMPLETE MEMORY SO THAT THERE IS TRUTH AND JUSTICE,” Milei wrote on X Sunday with the video, which featured a cast of obscure figures — a woman whose father and sister were killed by guerrilla groups, a repentant leftist militant and a former intelligence official — all recounting the dictatorship’s repression in the context of a wider war.
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