Remarkable Argentina - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 338

al and conservative factions of the Peronistas pushed the military to intervene. In 1976 the
military once again took control of the country.
AFTER PERON: WHAT MADNESS? WHAT CRUELTY?
Determined to expunge from public life radicals, socialists, labor union leaders, and all
those demanding populist reforms, the military now began the “dirty war” to hunt down,
imprison, torture, and kill those susceptible to left-wing politics. University students and
their professors were high on the list of the suspected. As many as 30,000 people were
“killed or disappeared…from 1976 to 1983, part of a policy to wipe out opposition to milit-
ary dictatorship. Many were tortured, drugged and thrown from aircraft into the River Plate
or the Atlantic Ocean, or buried in mass graves.” [290] The cruelty of the regime and the un-
certainty of life during the years of the generals come vividly to life on the movie screen in
Missing; Death and the Maiden; and House of the Spirits. In these films, Hollywood spoke
of more than Argentina. The films are also an indictment of other South American military
regimes of those times, especially Chile and Brazil. Those other military regimes shared
with Argentina murder and torture, but surely the nadir of Argentine military depravity was
the practice of invading hospitals (and sometimes murdering new mothers) to steal babies
to be given to wives of childless military officers.
Mute remembrance of those terrible times takes place once a week outside the Pres-
idential Palace in the Plaza de Mayo as mothers and grandmothers of the “missing” stand
silently on the pavement, holding photographs of their long-lost children. As the years go
by, their ranks grow smaller. Soon there will be none left to mourn.
HOW DID THE MILITARY LOSE POWER?
Using patriotic distraction to damp down rising opposition (shades of Machiavelli!), the
military invaded in 1982 the British-held Falkland Islands, long claimed by Argentina.
And when the Falkland War collapsed in defeat, the generals and admirals moved aside.
The leader of the Peronistas , Carlos Menem, was elected President. And Argentina moved
again into democracy's ranks. The tango rhythms of Argentine politics and economics had
returned.
Like other South American countries, Argentina rides the roller coaster of a boom-and-
bust economy. In some countries, boom and bust has been a consequence of reliance on
the world prices for commodities (rubber and coffee in Brazil, nitrates and copper in Chile,
and nitrates in Peru). Argentina has suffered for its historic reliance on wheat and beef ex-
ports. Its economy has also been whipsawed by Argentina's laundry-list of long-standing
political problems: dictatorial strong men taking money in exchange for business favors,
politicians and their followers who profit from the cycle of nationalizing and privatizing
railroads, banks, and public utilities, and a decentralized federal system in which the gov-