Word: junta
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Faced with the nagging question of what really happened to at least 6,000 people who mysteriously disappeared in the government's 1970s crackdown, the junta finally went public with an answer. In a masterwork of avoidance, the military claimed that from 1973 to 1979,2,050 civilians were killed. But it said nothing of how, when or where the victims died. The report denied the contention of government critics that many of the missing were still in detention. Anyone not known to be in exile or hiding, declared the report, is now "for judicial purpose considered dead." Conceding...
...Most of Argentina's 28 million people are of European ancestry, many of them from Italy, and among the missing are some 400 people of Italian citizenship or descent, 35 Spaniards and 15 French, including two nuns. Italy's President Sandro Pertini took the lead, denouncing the junta's "chilling cynicism." The Vatican was no less outspoken, rejecting the report as incomprehensible and full of "agonizing questions." At his weekly audience, Pope John Paul II declared that "the insistent problem of the disappeared ones has always been, and now is more than ever, in my soul...
...Center for Legal and Social Studies, expressed a widespread fear that until the military considers itself subject to "law and morality," voters can never be sure it will not mistreat them again. While Argentine law courts are clogged with 6,000 suits seeking information on the disappeared, the junta has long sought to avoid the issue altogether. The discovery of more than 1,500 unmarked graves last October made that silence especially difficult. Pressure also mounted from civilian politicians, along with the resolute "Mothers of Plaza de Mayo," who for years have demonstrated every Thursday in Buenos Aires' central...
...Leopoldo Galtieri, who masterminded the foiled invasion and then left office in disgrace three days after his country's surrender, has finally lifted that veil of secrecy. His candid account of military incompetence and official bungling stunned not only his countrymen but members of the ruling three-man junta and his successor, President Reynaldo Bignone. Last week the government charged Galtieri with violating military regulations that bar officers from discussing political matters without permission. They sentenced him to 45 days in prison...
...Argentina's current military rulers have overreacted to Galtieri's outspokenness, it is because they too bear responsibility for the Falklands fiasco. Buenos Aires is rife with speculation that Galtieri's arrest is only the first step in a campaign by the junta to saddle him with the Falklands failure, allowing the rest of the military establishment to escape blame. The generals, in any event, are on their way out. In a further move toward a promised return to civilian rule by early next year, the junta last week restored the political rights of 19 party...