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At first, patriotic Argentines were stunned by the news, then angered.
They suddenly realized that the armed forces had been efficient in
disappearing citizens, covering up their own corruption and human
rights abuses, keeping the Peronists from power, intimidating the intel-
ligentsia, taking the largest share of the national budget, and wasting
the proceeds of sizable international loans, but could not accomplish
their constitutional mission of defending the nation.
A caretaker military government realized it could no longer govern.
The middle-class parties finally developed enough backbone to follow
up the earlier protests of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and of the
workers. The military attempted to exonerate itself with a last-minute
amnesty for crimes committed by officers of the Process for National
Reorganization. In December 1982, Nobel laureate Adolfo Pérez
Esquivel led a huge demonstration of 100,000 people condemning the
military for the “Dirty War.” The generals then announced presidential
elections for October 1983, fully expecting a Peronist victory. Instead,
presidential candidate Raúl Alfonsín rallied the many factions of the
Radical Party, refused to forgive the military of its crimes, accused
the Peronists of making amnesty deals with the generals, and swept
to victory with 52 percent of the vote. Even the notorious doubter of
democracy, Argentina's greatest living literary figure, Jorge Luis Borges,
had to concede that Alfonsín's election represented the best hope for a
beleaguered and defeated nation.
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