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human rights advocates and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo con-
tinued protesting in order to reopen the judicial inquiries. During
his presidential campaign, Néstor Kirchner had said that he also
favored revisiting the crimes of the past. One incident just before he
took office gave him the opportunity.
Ex-president of the military junta Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri
died in January 2003. Convicted of gross mismanagement during
a time of war, he had been freed from prison in 1990 as a result of
the Menem pardon. At the time of his death, he was confined to
his home under house arrest, as the courts were investigating the
disappearance of 18 Montoneros held prisoner under his military
command in 1980. Moreover, he could not leave the country because
the Spanish human rights judge Baltasar Garzón had issued an inter-
national order for his arrest. He remained unrepentant to the end,
once telling a Spanish investigator, “In all wars innocent persons die,
as occurred with the bombardment over [Nazi] Germany” (Cibeira).
A victim of
escraches
(loud protests at his home) by human rights
groups and also Malvinas War veterans, General Galtieri took to
heavy drinking in his last days. His funeral brought out a large
contingent of active-duty military officers. The chief of the army,
General Ricardo Brinzoni, delivered the eulogy, praising Galtieri as a
“majestic general,” repeating a compliment that an aide to President
Ronald Reagan had once made about General Galtieri. “In an epic of
convulsion and struggles in Argentine society, he discharged his duty
and made decisions according to his convictions,” Brinzoni con-
cluded (Ginzberg 2003). President-elect Kirchner waited until after
his inauguration, then moved quickly. He fired General Brinzoni in
addition to 26 other generals, 13 admirals, and 12 brigadiers—75
percent of all army generals and 50 percent of naval and air force
general officers. The minister of war appointed by Duhalde, who
had defended Brinzoni and cautioned the new president against
dismissal, had to resign. Furthermore, the president followed up by
submitting to congress a bill to repeal the Due Obedience and Full
Stop laws. Congress dutifully passed the bill into law, which the
Supreme Court subsequently upheld.
Immediately, prosecutors and former victims of the Dirty War
brought charges against hundreds of
represores
(repressors). The
return of prosecution captured the popular imagination. At a cer-
emony dedicating the former Navy Mechanics School as a memorial
to the
desaparecidos
that
attracted thousands of spectators, President
Kirchner publicly apologized for the government's two decades of
