Word: videla
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Every Thursday the women stand in silent protest by the president's palace in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They don't do much--just hold up photos of missing family members and, looking pleadingly at the pink building, weep. Occasionally the military police of dictator General Jorge Rafael Videla drag the women away to join the ranks of their relatives--the Desaparecidos--the disappeared ones, who are either jailed or killed by the government. But usually the police just watch the women mockingly. "They're crazy," one said. "Everyone knows that...
Since seizing power in 1976, Videla's regime has abducted over 15,000 persons, according to Amnesty International. Other human rights groups estimate that 30,000 have been missing since 1970. Their crime? "Agitating" against the government. Some of these victims have actually organized against Videla--have actually bombed government buildings, killed diplomats and government officials, and openly criticized the regime. But according to one member of the disbanded "Montoneros" urban guerrilla group, only a small percent of those persecuted by the government now have direct connections with the terrorist left. "At our heyday in 1975, we numbered only several...
...secret door in their closet where they hid such "subversive" material as banned Argentine Julio Cortazar's novels, Marx's complete works, and New York Times articles about Argentine repression. Although they vocally criticized the government in their apartment, in public cafes with friends they hyperbolically praised Videla's political policies. "You can't trust anyone," they explained...
Under pressure from the UN and the Carter Administration, Videla accounted for onethird of the 15,000 Desaparecidos last year. But it generally does not assume responsibility for the unidentified, mutilated corpses washed up on the banks of the Plata River, or for the unmarked mass graves found outside the capitol...
Relatives of Desaparecidos interviewed seemed to agree that although Isabel Peron's 1973-76 regime paralleled Videla's brutal extermination of students, leftists, and intellectuals, its death-squad was more straightforward about its deeds. "At least they wore uniforms, at least they phoned the newspapers to tell them what they did," one woman said. "But now you get the feeling there's evil lurking under the surface that's not being admitted...