Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Luciano Menéndez, in order to pass along the presidency of the junta
to another moderate. Despite the mounting evidence of gross viola-
tions of human rights, the military's grip on power did not relax until
1980, when the economy contracted severely and inflation again shot
upward.
In addition to the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, industrial workers
also initiated serious opposition to the military regime. Rank-and-file
workers launched a series of wildcat strikes in 1976 and 1977, even
as the
patotas
were decimating union leadership. A new generation
of militant leaders called a general strike for April 1979. Subsequent
strikes of railway and auto workers resulted in wage increases rather
than harsh repression from military authorities. Labor leaders were
among the first to demand a return to democracy. “[O]nly by way of
a government elected by the people,” they announced, can the nation
achieve “the anxiously awaited national unity” (Cox 1995, 82). The
sharp contraction of the economy continued into 1981, provoking
another shake-up in the junta and more questions about human rights
abuses. In a second general strike, union leaders declared that “The
Argentine people and the institutions that express the people's will have
definitely lost their confidence in the process inaugurated in March of
1976” (Cox 1995, 95).
At this low ebb, General Leopoldo Galtieri took over as president
of the junta and seized upon a dangerous opportunity to redeem the
Argentine military. What ultimately dislodged the generals from power
was neither their abuse of human rights, the labor agitation, nor the
growing debt and rising inflation. It was the disastrous war with Great
Britain over the Malvinas Islands.
War in the Malvinas
In April 1982, General Galtieri ordered the navy and army to invade the
Islas Malvinas, known in the English-speaking world as the Falkland
Islands. The small British garrison on these windswept South Atlantic
islands fell quickly. Thousands of Argentines filled the streets in reac-
tion, not to protest the military government but to hail it. The sparsely
inhabited Malvinas had been captured by the British navy as a coaling
station in 1833 and held ever since. The advent of diesel-fueled war-
ships rendered obsolete this imperial outpost, but 2,000 British citizens
still lived in the Falklands. The United Nations had passed resolutions
pressing for the return of the islands to Argentina, but negotiations
between the two countries consistently broke down over the question of
