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- [00:01]
Narrator
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game, shifting a little money here, a little there, and hoping it all works out well? With the Name youe Price Tool from Progressive, you can be a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill, too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll help you find options within your budget. Try it today@progressive.com progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states. It's just after midnight on July 13, 1976. A bitter winter's night in Buenos Aires, Argentina's capital. Icy winds whip in off the River Plate and funnel through empty streets. Nobody dares go out after dark these days. In La Floresta, a quiet neighborhood in the west of the city, is an old mechanic's garage. Inside, on the small back patio, an officer leans against the wall. He strikes a match and quickly cups a trembling hand around the glowing tip of a cigarette. Around him, the wind tears at the bed linen and boiler suits strung up on washing lines. They crisscross the patio, casting eerie shadows. His sweater is streaked with grease and blood. Inside the workshop, a radio is turned up so loud that the pounding music is damaging the speaker. Machinery whirs and gears grind. Occasionally an anguished scream pierces the din and the officer flinches. This is Automotores Oleti. Until recently it was a working garage. Now it's a makeshift torture centre run by plain clothes operatives from the Argentine Secret Service, the State Intelligence Secretariat, or cd. Aiding them is a ragtag band of common criminals and anti communists. Anibal Gordon, the chief thug, has a picture of Adolf Hitler, no less, pinned on the wall. In the dirty upstairs room he uses as an office, a radio crackles into life. A new prisoner has arrived. The officer finishes his cigarette with a long final drag. He then makes his way to the front of the garage, weaving between his colleagues, barely conscious victims, their hair and clothes matted with blood, oil and dirt, chassis and car parts are strewn across the floor. The officer raises the shutter to let in a bottle green Ford Falcon. A man is bound and blindfolded on the back seat. Their next victim, Argentina, is racked by guerrilla warfare and extremist political violence. Until recently, bombings and assassinations were frequent. The officer tells himself. Torture and interrogation are necessary if order is to be restored and subversives rooted out. This is the country on the brink of civil war and in general Jorge Rafael Videla's Argentina, dissent must be crushed across five years of terror and bloody repression. Fidela, a hawkish, gaunt military man, ruled Argentina with unprecedented brutality. A brutality which earned him the moniker the Hitler of the Pampa. But Videla was not your conventional personalistic dictator. His awkward bearing and discomfort in the limelight belied his capacity for cruelty. In a relatively short time, he oversaw the bloodiest of South America's 20th century dictatorships. Having executed a coup d'and assumed the de facto presidency of Argentina in March 1976, Videla put his self proclaimed national reorganization process into action. Following decades of unrest, he would stop at nothing to install order. As many as 30,000 men, women and children were murdered or disappeared by his regime, around 10 times greater than those killed during Pinochet's dictatorship in neighboring Chile. In these episodes, we'll reveal how an unassuming young soldier turned into a tyrant, how the World cup of 1978 was used to mask Fidelis atrocities, and hear from individuals directly affected by his regiment. Argentina, whose history is scarred by regular military interventions, is still reckoning with the horror of what is sometimes referred to grimly as its latest dictatorship from the Neuser network. This is part one of the Wedela story. And this is real dictators. Argentina is the eighth largest country in the world. A vast and varied tract of land at the bottom of South America. In the north, salt flats and desert plains stretch towards Bolivia and tropical jungles run up to Brazil and Paraguay. The wide windswept pampas reach down to Tierra del Fuego at the southernmost tip of the continent. The Andes, South America's jagged backbone, rise up to the west, separating Argentina from Chile and the Pacific Ocean. It is a land of plenty and potential, which for many remains largely unfulfilled. Edward Brudney is an assistant professor of history at the University of Tennessee where he studies labor movements in late 20th century Argentina.
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Edward Brudney
So there is a quote from a Nobel Laureate in economics from, I think the late 70s. The gist of it is that there are four kinds of countries in the world. Countries where things work, countries where things don't work. Japan and Argentina. And his argument was Japan was a country where things worked and no one understood why. Argentina was a country where things didn't work and no one understood why.
- [07:42]
Narrator
It's the turn of the 20th century in Buenos Aires, Argentina's frenetic, mesmerizing capital. The city is already an immense metropolis at the mouth of the River Plate. It's the cultural heart of the Spanish speaking world. Parisian facades ring shaded squares alive at tango and boleros. The wealthy reside in tall apartment buildings reminiscent of Belle epoque Europe, which stand on wide boulevard lined with cherry blossom in the spring. European architects and designers are flocking to the city to leave their mark, bestowing it with a dizzying mix of styles. Even Gustave Eiffel, whose tower now looms over the French capital, has instructed his workshop to cast girders for a new build in Buenos Aires. Near the city's port is the large open square known as the Plaza da Macgio. There the evening sun shines on the Casa Rosada, Argentina's presidential palace. The building bathes passersby in a warm glow. Allegedly, it owes its soft pink hue to animals blood mixed into the plaster during a 19th century renovation. Close by, the Teatro Colon is the finest theater in South America. They say its acoustics are among the best in the world.
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Edward Brudney
There's symphonies, there's arts, there's museums. It is a very wealthy city, very wealthy developed city. It is, depending on what source you read, the seventh or eighth or tenth richest country in the world. That it's above France, that it's above Canada, that it has this incredibly bright future ahead of it, that it is on the point of becoming essentially the United States of South America. Why it doesn't come to fruition is the great question of Argentine history.
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Narrator
Argentina had been seen as a backwater in early Spanish colonial times, Overlooked as a barren expanse largely devoid of gold or silver. Swathes of land were left untouched by colonizers. But after independence From Spain in 1816, the country began to flourish. The Pampa, Argentina's fertile temperate grasslands, were ideal for agriculture. Soon they were crossed by British built railroads that sent goods to Buenos Aires for export to fuel the industrial revolution. Within 50 years, Argentina had accrued astonishing wealth. Now, in the early 1900s, it's the world's leading exporter of refrigerated meat and one of the most important producers of maize, oats, linseed, wheat and flour. It's become the 11th largest exporting nation overall, with a modern, vibrant economy. It even has more cars per inhabitant than Great Britain. Ernesto Seman is a historian of 20th century Argentina at the University of Bergen in Norway.
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Ernesto Seman
Under specific ways, specific numbers, you can say that was one of the most prosperous countries in the world. Agricultural products, mostly beef and wheat, turned the Argentine pampas into sort of a global resource.
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Narrator
This surge is also driven by large scale immigration, mostly from Italy, Spain and Central Europe. Railroad and dock workers, as well as employees at the meatpacking plants and slaughterhouses form collectives and unions flourish. The country has achieved parity with the United States in terms of per capita income, and by 1913 is at the same level as Western Europe. Argentina, it seems, can do no wrong. It's early August, 1925, a bitter winter's day in Mercedes, a small town 100 kilometers west of the capital. Local army official Rafael Eugenio Vedela and his wife, Maria Olga Redondo, are expecting their third child, and yet they're alone in the house. Their first borns, twins, Jorge and raphael, arrived in 1922 to the devoted, pious couple. They weren't yet a year old when they both succumbed to a measles epidemic which swept the plains. Holding her stomach, Maria shifts onto a low chair in the corner of the downstairs living room. Her husband watches her nervously. A cold wind rattles the window panes in their narrow townhouse. Their third son is born on August 2, 1925. They call him Jorge Rafael, the names of the twin brothers he never met.
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Edward Brudney
Bedella is born in 1925, and he kind of comes into an Argentina that is sort of in flux. The immigration has dramatically changed the makeup of the national character. There are these fears about what it means to be Argentine, about the loss of a specifically Argentine identity. And Bedell is born into a military family, and the military, from the end of the 19th century, are one of the key political players.
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Narrator
The Vidala family are Catholic and conservative. They're prominent in the central San Luis area of Argentina. Jorge Rafael's grandfather was a provincial governor there at the end of the 19th century, and several relatives have held positions in national politics. Raphael, his father, is austere and correct. He joined the national military academy in 1910, and it's said that he rarely takes off his uniform, even at the dinner table. His mother, Olga, was orphaned at an early age and is devoutly religious. After the tragic death of their twins, the couple keep a watchful eye over Jorge Rafael. Run a restaurant, and you learn pretty quick. The sound of a crisp fry starts way before the first bite, as delivery in to go keeps business booming. Order for pickup. The cane. Sure Crisp fries keep orders crispy. A delivery after the trip, the crispiness comes through. Mmm. McKeen. Sure crisp fries go the distance. See how far our fries can take your business@surecrisp.com Delivery did you know that the team behind this show has other podcasts, too? Listen@noiser.com or wherever you get your podcasts. 5,000 miles away, a sudden shockwave emanates from Wall Street. The 1929 crash of New York's Stock exchange reverberates across the globe, hitting hard in numerous countries, including Argentina. As a nation that had grown wealthy on the bounty of its national resources and post war demand for its goods, Argentina now has deep economic ties to much of the world. And even before this seismic economic shock, the country's finances had started to nosedive.
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Edward Brudney
The depression is already looming and by some measures has already started in Latin America. So the post World War I commodities boom that helps drive a lot of this foreign investment and a lot of this early industrial development has ended by 1925. And so there is a kind of looming crisis. We often associate the depression with 1929 because that's when the stock market crashes in New York. But for a lot of people in Europe, in the Americas, the depression has already begun by the mid-1920s.
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Narrator
At this point, Argentina is governed by a strain of politics known as radicalism, espoused by President Hippolito Irigoshin. Hidigoin is a complex figure who champions the working classes and fights for the expansion of suffrage, beliefs that make him unpopular with the more traditional in the country. As Argentina veers away from its prosperous path, the armed forces are itching to intervene and reimpose more conservative values across the country. On September 6, 1930, Lieutenant Rafael Videla, Jorge Rafael's father, leads his Mercedes 6th infantry into Buenos Aires. It's one of several companies that play a key role in Argentina's first coup d'etat of the 20th century. They march into the Plaza de Marcho and take the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace, where they're mobbed by cheering crowds. The military outlaw political parties, annul local elections and suspend the Constitution. Jorge Rafael Videla is just five years old. When his father plays his part in overthrowing the elected government.
- [17:52]
Ernesto Seman
He grows in an authoritarian moment, a nationalist view of Argentina as a global superpower that should compete with the US for the control, for the geopolitical control of the region and for the control of natural resources.
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Narrator
Against the backdrop of domestic instability, young Wiedela quietly gets on with his education. After completing his primary schooling in Mercedes, he enrolls in the Colegio San Jose in buenos Aires in 1937, where the Basque friars have a reputation for strictness and discipline. All of the men on Vidiella's mother's side are alumni. The boys sleep in long dormitories, supervised by a priest at each end, and are up at 6am attending a half hour mass before classes begin. Videra's classmates call him El Flaco, the skinny one. He's timid hard working and introverted. Schoolmasters say he's good across the board, with a fastidiousness for following the rules, qualities that would be well suited to the military. Wiry and shy, Videla takes the bus home at weekends, where he hangs out around the swimming pool at the town's male only country club. He isn't prone to making close friends, crossing paths with his contemporaries only when traversing the town square after mass on Sunday mornings. Face is already central to his worldview. Fidela's family push him towards a medical career, but nothing will dissuade the young Jorge Rafael from joining the army. He enrolls in the national military college in March 1942 at the age of 16. So fixated is he on military discipline that he receives another nickname, the cadet. Wedela's is a world of routine and order. But beyond the high walls of his school, things couldn't be more different. Ever since the military took power in 1930, Argentina has lurched into a rollercoaster of electoral fraud, corruption and turmoil. The country teeters on the brink of civil war. More than once it's known as the infamous decade. Between the coup of 1930 and the summer of 1943, the presidency passes no fewer than four times. With civilian rule in turmoil again and desperate to reassert order, on June 4, 1943, the military seizes power once more. Among the officers now in charge is one key figure. A man whose influence on Argentine politics lingers to this day. A man of charisma and contradictions. His name is Colonel Juan Domingo Peron. Historian Marguerite Feitlowitz is the author of A Lexicon of Terror.
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Marguerite Feitlowitz
Peron was totally contradictory, right? He was a populist, he was a strong man. Unions thrived under Peron, but so too did far right wing union leaders. So you have sort of everything and its opposite under Peron.
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Narrator
Peron is appointed Labour Minister under the new military government. It's supposed to be a relatively minor position, but it doesn't work out that way. As part of his military training, Peron spends some time with the northern Italian regiments and even Hitler's Wehrmacht. And he speaks glowingly of fascism's ability to mobilize the masses. He has a talent for oration and connects with the working classes, garnering huge support on visits around the country. With his message of total social justice, it's all too much. For his colleagues, Peron's popularity becomes feared and in 1945 he is arrested and sent up the River Plate to Martin Garcia Island, a dank prison in the middle of the estuary. But a movement has already formed and the tide cannot be turned.
- [22:25]
Edward Brudney
The working class population of Argentina rallies to his cause. They march on the Plaza de Mayo where the House of Government is. They occupy the plaza and they demand his release. And the government gets spooked and essentially bends to these demands, accedes to these demands. And so Peron is freed. And he comes out on the evening of October 17th, 18th that night and gives this very famous speech from the balcony of the Casa Rosada to his supporters who have flooded the Plaza de Mayo. And that's the point where Peronism in retrospect became a movement.
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Narrator
In 1946, Peron is elected president. With huge support from working and lower middle class citizens. Peronism becomes the all encompassing defining force of Argentina's new political era. He is able to draw upon support from the armed forces, labour unions and the Catholic Church. Peron brings the political poles together at his rallies. What follows is an unprecedented populist redistribution of income and wealth.
- [23:38]
Ernesto Seman
Illiterate workers from remote provinces in the interior went over a period of three or four months from cutting sugarcane in Tucuman to representing the country in the Argentine Embassy in Paris. You know, the most prestigious and elitist part of the government, the foreign, suddenly invaded by these people. So it's a process of power and wealth redistribution as seen before in history.
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Narrator
Industry and agriculture begin to provide for Argentina rather than the export markets. 80% of the cattle and grain produced is now consumed domestically. A series of nationalizations and price and rent fixing follow, increasing the government's role in the economy. Workers are given new rights and guarantees.
- [24:33]
Ernesto Seman
Suddenly, instead of having to negotiate in a very unequal position, your vacations with your employer have a right for 20 days of vacations. And suddenly you have the resources to do something in those 20 days. And suddenly you have a hotel paid by the government, which you can use that time and that money. He grasps the power of government for transforming people's lives and is able to express that in a relatable way.
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Narrator
Argentina is cleaved in two, with Peronists and anti Peronists either side of a fierce divide. But amidst the polarization, Jorge Rafael Videla stays non committal. At the start of 1948, he graduates from the military academy and gains the rank of captain. And it seems he is quite happy to remain detached from the debate around the latest president. I never considered myself anti Peronist, he says later, but I wasn't one of those whose hair stood on end with Peronism either. Nor Did I consider them enemies? Besides, For Fidela, now 22 years old, there are more important things to focus on than politics. He takes a summer holiday to the mountain resort of El Trapice. It's here that he meets a young woman called Alicia Raquel Hartridge. Her Anglo Argentine father is ambassador to Turkey. On April 7, 1948, they marry. They will have seven children, two of whom will go on to join the army themselves. Not long after his wedding, Fidela returns to the military academy at El Palomar, this time as an instructor. In just four years, he rises to become head of the college. But he's still known as the cadet. Such is his steadfast, almost juvenile commitment to martial values. When his father dies suddenly in 1952, Wedela fills the void by becoming even further entrenched in the two institutions that have guided his life so far, the Catholic Church and the Armed forces. Also in 1952, Peron is duly re elected by a margin of more than 30%. But by now, political favoritism and the mass detention of his opponents is generating mistrust and unrest. His second wife, Maria Eveduarte, better known simply as Evita, is his secret weapon. Charismatic and poised, Evita is adored and reviled in equal measure. Although she never holds a formal position in her husband's government, she works extensively with the poorest Argentines. Through her foundation, she's also a champion of women's rights. And with her vociferous support, universal suffrage in Argentina is achieved during Peron's first term. And so, when Evita succumbs to cancer in July 1952, the country is rocked. Her absence is keenly felt and the Peronist movement is left in the lurch. As Peron becomes increasingly authoritarian and without his wife by his side, his popularity plummets. Rampant inflation and economic instability take hold. Agricultural productivity declines and droughts cause Argentina to lose harvests. All the while, Peron is trying to enforce the separation of church and state, a controversial move which incurs the ire of influential Catholic leaders. The president is weakened. And yet again, rebellion is in the air. On June 16, 1955, Navy warplanes saw over Buenos Aires wailing through the air, showering the crowded city center with bombs. It's step one of the army's so called liberating revolution. Infantry divisions are soon on the ground, marching on the presidential palace, clashing with loyalist troops. Peron's supporters rally, taking up arms for their under siege president. With huge numbers now gathering in and around the Plaza de Majo, the warplanes soar overhead again, bombing and strafing the crowds. Following this bloody day, 308 bodies are identified. The majority are civilians. Six are children. Peron survives the attack, but the writing is on the war. And just two months later, in September 1955, the army successfully seizes power and forces the President into exile. Peronism is swiftly banned and Argentina once more is left shaken and unstable. In 1955, journalist Robert Cox arrives in Argentina on the Highland Monarch, a steamer built by the dockyards which had launched the Titanic. He takes a junior position at English language newspaper, the Buenos Aires Herald, arriving into a country at a crossroads.
- [30:35]
Robert Cox
Arriving there, Argentina, you could sense that things were not going as well as certainly the newspaper hoped. They sent me a wonderful letter explaining that they were very hopeful that finally they were out of Peronism, which was a popular dictatorship, and they thought that things would move ahead and Argentina would become a democracy.
- [30:59]
Narrator
But Peron's exile has a rather different effect. Political instability is rife and social uprisings accompany the formation of guerrilla groups. The Montoneros, a Peronist guerrilla group, issue a call to arms. They demand Peron's return to Argentina.
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Robert Cox
Almost immediately that I arrived, I found myself covering revolutions or coups or attempted revolutions. The mountaineers tried to build an army. They had little arms factories hidden in the basement of ordinary houses. They stole arms when they could and they were terribly maligned by the military in their propaganda, so that people believed that they were inhuman people. And that made it very easy to decide to make them disappear if they could, and created this appalling situation in Argentina.
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Narrator
The People's Revolutionary army, the erp, springs out of the far left of Argentine politics. They carry out their own wanton terror program, independent of the Monteneros. Right wing groups emerge from Peronism too, just as willing to employ intimidation and violence. Peron is in exile in Spain, watched over by his host, Francisco Franco. From there, Peron is doing all he can to make Argentina ungovernable. In his absence, giving and then withdrawing is backing for each faction in turn. He is the puppet master, fueling the fires of chaos. Fidela, meanwhile, continues to keep himself largely removed from the disorder that grips his country. In 1956, he is sent to the US as an attache at the Inter American Defense Board, a security organization promoting cooperation between the countries of the Americas. He even gets to observe a nuclear test out in the Nevada desert, a sign of the Cold War tensions pervading Washington. After 18 months, Fidela returns to Argentina with anti communist ideas entrenched he is promoted to the rank of major. With leftist insurgencies springing up in different parts of South America, the US takes a keen interest. They cannot afford to let communist ideas flourish in the continent and they need allies on the ground.
- [33:40]
Marguerite Feitlowitz
McNamara. Robert McNamara, who was the Minister of Defense, is very clear. He says, we need friends. We need to educate those friends. We need to pick from amongst the best and brightest in the military academies, and we need to train them. We need them to see things our way.
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Narrator
Fidela is one such friend. Handpicked by the US in 1964 to attend the infamous School of the Americas, it supplies counterinsurgency training to those put forward for its programs. Francesca Lesser is an academic at University College, London and the author of the Condor Trials.
- [34:24]
Marguerite Feitlowitz
The National Security Doctrine. That was the doctrine guiding the actions of the US in the context of the Cold War. So the confrontation with the Soviet Union and that was spread across the rest of the Americas, that was the backyard, or the US at least considered it to be its backyard. And so that was the doctrine that they were spreading across the region also through the training of, I think, potentially 60,000 military and police officers from Latin American countries that received training at the School of the Americas, receiving training in the national security Doctrine, but also in what they euphemistically called counterinsurgency doctrine and counterinsurgency interrogations, which was effectively torture.
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Narrator
With this training under his belt, Widela is promoted to brigadier general in 1971. Meanwhile, the armed forces step back from government, chastened and unpopular after yet another period of military rule. Elections are called for. March 1973. Peron begins scheming. He will return to Argentina under a loyal stand in who will then resign in order for him to take back power. He anoints Ectocampora as his interim choice for the presidency, who duly wins with some 49% of the vote. The stage is set for Peron's triumphant homecoming. It's June 20, 1973, and crowds are gathering at Eseza International Airport on the edge of Buenos Aires. They're saying three and a half million people are on their way. They've crossed rivers, traipsed over fields and marched from the city center, all converging for the one moment they've been waiting for. It's cold on the Runway, but excitement warms the growing congregation. On every wall, stanchion and pillar along the tarmac, the initials PV have been sprayed, scratched or painted. They stand for Peron Vuelve. Peron returns somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, the homecoming hero is aboard a jet accompanied by President Campora and an assortment of loyalists. After 18 years in exile, he's finally nearing Argentine shores. Back at the airport, the enormous crowd seems to just keep growing. Banners ripple in the wind and joyous chanting fills the air. And then, quite suddenly, there's a flurry of strange sounds. Bangs, pings and zips from a raised platform. Camouflaged snipers of open fire. Their bullets skid off the tarmac, crashing into roadside barriers. Others meet flesh with a sickening thud. Bewildered shouts fill the air as bodies hit the ground. The right wing of the Peronist movement has opened fire on the crowd. It's an ambush. The left wing Peronist youth and the Montaneros have been targeted and trapped. People run for what little cover they can find. The two sides of the movement have been exposed. Peronism and Argentina is at war with itself.
- [38:23]
Marguerite Feitlowitz
Nobody knows how many people were killed. Estimates are between 200 and 500. Really nobody knows. But I know people who were there who saw bodies hanging from trees. It was a very bloody and terrible homecoming for those who had been awaiting Peron.
- [38:40]
Narrator
Despite the chaos, Campora steps aside as agreed, and Juan Peron completes his return to the presidency. When he's sworn in on October 12, 1973, his third wife, Maria Estella Martinez de Peron, becomes his vice president. She had worked as a nightclub dancer in the early 1950s, adopting the name Isabel. Now she's known affectionately as Isabellita little Isabelle. On May 1, 1974, the Peronists converge on the Plaza di Macho for the Workers Day celebrations. The atmosphere is febrile as Peron launches into one of his passionate monologues. The Monteneros guerrilla groups stage a protest. They are furious that their leader has seemingly abandoned the left of the party. The president loses his cool and during.
- [39:39]
Edward Brudney
This speech, the Montoneros, in a coordinated action, turn their backs on Peron. So they turn their flags around. They turn their backs on him in a gesture of disapproval of his proximity to the right wing faction, or what they see as the right wing faction, in a gesture of disapproval to their perception that he has betrayed the revolutionary impulses of Peronism that they have been reading into the movement for the last five to 10 years. Peron, very angry at this disrespect, insults them, calls them children, tells them to grow up and effectively expels them from this big tent of Peronism.
- [40:18]
Narrator
Not for the first time, Argentina is in turmoil. The Monteneros are forced underground. Guerrilla battles and civilian violence erupt. Peron responds with A crackdown on the agitators. But just as he's getting along with his latest restructuring of the movement, everything is stopped in its tracks. In the middle of 1974, Juan Peron suffers a series of heart attacks and dies quite suddenly. The most powerful man in Argentina, a man whose personality has shaped the country for 30 years, is gone.
- [41:01]
Robert Cox
The people who had never liked Peron or anything had detested him. Tears poured out. There was a kind of unconscious realization that something important had happened in that way. The future not certain at all. When Peron died, the chief union guy of the printers came to me and said, well, your paper has to have nothing but news about Peron. I said, well, the weather forecast. No, not even the weather forecast. That was the feeling. I mean, there was so much bound up in him.
- [41:38]
Narrator
The presidency is left to his wife and Vice president Isabelita. Largely lacking in political experience, she is wholly unprepared for the role. The situation quickly becomes untenable.
- [41:54]
Marguerite Feitlowitz
Isabelita takes over. She's calamitous in every way. Inflation was rising at 30% a month. Export imports were down 25%. In 1974, it had a deficit of $1 billion. I mean, today, a billion here, a billion there. It doesn't seem like that much money. But then it was really staggering. There hadn't been such inflation since Weimar.
- [42:19]
Narrator
Meanwhile, Isabella struck up a deeply unpopular relationship with a dark and mysterious occultist named Jose Lopez Reaga. He is a retired policeman and one time aspiring singer. Rhaegar was meandering through life in the 1960s. As he filled his afternoons with card games in smoke filled clubs. He would lecture anyone who'd listen about the occult. But his luck changed when he met Isabelito at a secret event for spiritualists supporting Peron. She took a liking to him and he traveled to Spain in 1965 to live with the couple as their spiritual guide. Now Isabelita is president. Lopez Reaga is appointed Minister for Social Welfare. He sets up his desk in the hallway leading to her office, where he is the gatekeeper to power.
- [43:16]
Edward Brudney
He's known as El Brujo, the witch. He develops this relationship with Isabelle, who is apparently susceptible to or interested in the occult. And so the two of them build this relationship that is based around dark magic, for lack of a better term. Fortune telling omens. A lot of interesting ideas about how the world works and about how to manipulate the world around them. And he becomes a very influential figure. He wields a tremendous amount of influence.
- [43:48]
Marguerite Feitlowitz
Over Isabel Lopez Rhega. He was power mad. He's been likened to Rasputin. I think that Isabelito was both his opportunity, his shield, and because she was so incompetent, it left him a lot of room to maneuver.
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Narrator
With leftist guerrilla groups carrying out assassinations and attacks, Lopez Rega assembles a paramilitary death squad. It is dubbed the Argentine Anti Communist alliance, or aaa. This group of criminals and ideologues employ brutal extralegal violence to eliminate what they identify as the internal enemy that has infiltrated Peronism. They carry out 503 political murders in the first year of Isabelita's presidency, embarking on a mission for purification. With the situation deteriorating further still, rumours abound in the barracks and mess halls that the military is ready to step in once again. Surely they cannot allow the country to be run in this way by Isabelita and her occultist crony.
- [45:07]
Marguerite Feitlowitz
This gave the military a kind of a perfect foil. He was mystical, he was volatile, he was theatrical, he was weird, right? And so they would be gentlemanly, they would be rational, they would be logical.
- [45:22]
Robert Cox
Sooner or later a general would take over. And there was a saying in Argentine that every officer in the army has the presidential baton in his rucksack. They're bound to come in.
- [45:36]
Narrator
In Buenos Aires, urban warfare rages and terror is indiscriminate. Cinema queues are targeted and busy shopping centers are bombed by the ERP in the Montaneros, fear has trickled into every facet of Argentine society and nobody feels safe. The paramilitary Triple A has taken to displaying the bodies of its victims in public. Corpses riddled with bullet holes are strewn in the streets and left wing activists appear in parking lots bound with wire or burned in their cars. They likely claim more than 1,000 victims, all orchestrated by Lopez Reagar. Meanwhile, guerrilla groups forced underground by the split in Peronism, embark on violent campaigns of their own. Between 1975 and 1976, 293 servicemen and policemen are killed in left wing terrorist incidents.
- [46:39]
Robert Cox
That period was awful, absolutely awful, with terrorism rising. And people got very afraid. And so you have the element of fear coming into Argentina. And the fear is very, very strong. Fear of a communist takeover. Yes, there was a fear of that. And that made life very difficult at one point.
- [47:00]
Narrator
In March 1975, 25 murders are carried out across 48 hours. The victims are from both the left and the right. But the situation spiraling out of her control, Isabelita turns to the armed forces. And it's here that Wedela finally comes to the fore. On September 3, 1975, Isabelita takes a decisive step she appoints Fidela commander in chief of the army. True to form, the general is seemingly the voice of calm and moderation within the military. The officers around him are clamoring for the armed forces to put an end to Isabelita's inept Peronist government. But Fidela first urges caution. The armed forces do not want to intervene until there is no alternative. For whatever reason, he declares, it won't be long before those conditions are met.
- [48:10]
Marguerite Feitlowitz
Isabelita. She issues two decrees in October of 1975, one which calls for, and I'll quote, eradication of subversive elements. So that's pretty clear, right? And then the other authorizes the military to exercise functions of a non military character, such as psychological operations, such as fill in the blank, right, and the country is essentially under siege. The country is organized. Each part of the country comes under the control of a particular army corps. The country is essentially under occupation, if you will.
- [48:56]
Narrator
One of the decrees specifically targets the northern province of Tucuman, where the ERP guerrilla group has established a breakaway zone in the jungle. They hoped to found a separate state which could be recognized internationally. In their makeshift camps, they pose for photos in front of the ERP's flag, fist raised cloth caps perched on their heads. They now control about a third of the entire province. They've managed to pull together hundreds of sympathizers from among the plantation workers.
- [49:32]
Edward Brudney
So Tucuman, which is in the Argentine northwest, is a province that is heavily agricultural and has a big sugar industry. And in the early 1970s, there is a growing movement among sugar workers in defense of better rights, better wages, better working conditions, against the kind of exploitative labor practices that have for centuries defined sugar production. There is increasing unrest. There are strikes, there are demonstrations, there are clashes with police. And this happens to be going on right at the same moment that the earth is trying to expand its footprint in the mountainous region of Tukuman.
- [50:13]
Narrator
The responsibility for restoring order in this region falls on General Videla. These terrorists cannot be allowed to grow any stronger in the jungle. The army's trucks bounce down mud tracks. Helicopters rattle overhead, searchlights stalking the forest canopy. Operation Independence, as the mission to reclaim Tucuman is known, is in full swing. This is the first time that General Vedela has exercised his supreme authority over the army. Success here would be a big statement, a big victory for the new commander in chief. In reality, the leftist guerillas here are now small in number and poorly equipped. While Velas sent thousands of heavily armed soldiers to command, he is about to use A very large sledgehammer to crush a rather small nut.
- [51:16]
Marguerite Feitlowitz
By 1975, the guerrilla threat in Argentina had essentially been liquidated. At its height, the guerrilla movements had 2,000 people, of whom 400 had access to arms. It wasn't a war, it was asymmetrical in the extreme. The Argentine military had generally unleashed itself on an unarmed, self defined enemy.
- [51:42]
Narrator
The armed forces act in conjunction with the police and AAA to brutally suppress the uprising in Tucuman. Different arms of state power acting as one. The fighters are tortured, sexually assaulted and then murdered en masse. It's a bloody foreshadowing of what's to come. Isabelita's decrees have effectively militarized Argentina, putting the country on a war footing. But in trying to shore up her authority, she has in fact paved the way for yet another coup d'etat. General Wedela has taken his first step towards eradicating so called subversive elements. Bolstered by this early success and recognizing the chaotic leadership of Isabelita and her spiritualist right hand man, he starts making moves. In May 1975, Wedela covertly begins to organize a group of officials to seize power. Isabelita, feeling the pressure, requests a leave of absence. She isn't seen for a month. The leader of the Senate is put in interim control. But it's General Videla and the heads of the Air Force and the Navy who are really in charge.
- [53:01]
Marguerite Feitlowitz
People under Isabelita were praying for a coup. Okay, life was unlivable, it was dangerous. It was impossible in every kinds of ways.
- [53:11]
Narrator
On July 11, a vast demonstration sees Lopez Reiga, her closest ally, resign and flee the country. One by one. Isabelita's ministers are following him into exile too. Everybody knows that her days in office are numbered. It's all anyone can talk about. Congress is all but empty. Advisors are staying clear of the Casa Rosada and desks have been cleared by now. General Videla plus the heads of the Navy and the air force have been working on their plan to seize power for almost a year. If the Argentine situation demands it. Vidala declares at a military conference in Uruguay, all necessary persons must die to achieve the security of the country. He'll be as good as his word. Five days later, he signs a secret decree which confirms the division of the country into four military zones and creates a nationwide intelligence network with military personnel at the very top. Every detail of Operation Ares is in place. General Videla is ready to lead Argentina's sixth military takeover of the 20th century. It's just before midnight on March 23, 1976 President Isabel Perron sits nervously on the edge of a plush sofa in her lavish quarters in the Casa Rosada. A shrill bell startles her. She hurries over to the phone to answer the call. Tonight is the night. She nods quickly and then drops the receiver. Frantic and wide eyed, she gathers her belongings from cabinets and dressing tables, leaving behind strings of pearls dangling from drawers and wardrobes half open. Hastily, she makes her way up a staircase to the roof of the Presidential Palace. A helicopter is waiting, just as agreed. Its blades begin to thud and whirl. She runs over and ducks into the passenger seat. She will be taken to the haven of the Olivos presidential residence, a short way north of the Casa Rosado. They take to the skies and the twinkling lights of the city below rush past faster and faster. The pilot makes Isabelita jump with a crackled message. She clamps her headphones tightly over her ears and stares at him in horror. There is a minor fault with the helicopter, he explains. They won't be landing at the residence after all. They they're going to an airfield, which is a little closer. When the helicopter lands, representatives of the army, navy and air force are waiting for her. They arrest her, then make a brief call through to their superiors. The Casa Rosata is empty. They can make their move. The armed forces take the palace in a bloodless couple. No resistance is offered. Two hours later, regular transmissions are cut and replaced by a military march. Flanked by a huddle of stern faced men in uniform, Fidela sits before a bank of microphones to announce the beginning of a national reorganization process. His face is gaunt and his cheeks hollow. People are advised that as of today the country is under the operational control of the Generalkommanders Junta of the Armed Forces, he says calmly. We recommend strict compliance with the provisions and directives emanating from the military, security or police authorities, and to be extremely careful to avoid individual or group actions and attitudes that may require drastic intervention from the operating personnel. The transmission cuts. After half a century of perpetual crisis, Wedela wants to convey that order will finally be restored, but in reality the horrors of his regime will outdo anything that has come before. In the next episode, Videla's dirty war begins. So called subversives are rooted out. Torture centers are established across the land, including one known as the Argentine Auschwitz. Education, music, even children's books and haircuts are subjected to new regulations. And as the junta garners international attention, Fideli will employ elaborate means to gloss over the atrocities. That's next time, after investing billions to light up our network. T Mobile is America's largest 5G network. Plus right now you can switch keep your phone and we'll pay it off up to $800. See how you can save on every plan versus Verizon and at and t@t mobile.com keep and switch which up to four lines via virtual prepaid card allow 15 days qualifying unlock device credit service ported 90 plus days with device ineligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months.