Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla (centre) being escorted by federal police in San Martin, Buenos Aires province, Argentina on July 17, 2012.
BUENOS AIRES: Jorge Rafael Videla, an austere former army commander who led Argentina during the bloodiest period of a “dirty war” dictatorship and was unrepentant about kidnappings and murders ordered by the state, died yesterday at age 87.
Videla was the first president to head the military junta that “disappeared” thousands of suspected leftists from 1976 to 1983, and he spent his final years behind bars for human rights crimes, including the systematic theft of babies born to political prisoners in secret torture centres.
He died of natural causes in his jail cell in a prison outside the capital, Buenos Aires, a government spokesman said.
“He spent his life doing great damage, which left a mark on the life of the country,” Argentine human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel told Reuters. “His death ended his physical presence but not what he did to the country.”
Rights groups say up to 30,000 people were “disappeared” — a euphemism for kidnapped and murdered — during the dictatorship, which began in March 1976 when Videla and two other military leaders staged a coup against President Maria Estela Martinez de Peron, the widow of former leader Juan Domingo Peron.
Videla was born in the town of Mercedes to a middle-class family in 1925. He followed in the footsteps of his father, an army colonel, enlisting in the military academy where he was well-respected.
Following the coup of 1976, the mustachioed Videla headed a three-man military junta and he led the country until 1981.
The junta pledged to end left-wing subversion, put the economy in order and respect human rights. Videla said several times that the aim of his government was to return Argentina to democracy.
However, he conditioned that on the “Process of National Reorganisation,” in which the military planned to foster sweeping reforms to reduce the state’s role in the economy and rid Argentina of the influence of former strongman Peron.
He quickly suspended the normal functions of Congress, local government and the Supreme Court, and oversaw the worst excesses against those suspected of left-wing activities.
It was also the government of “sweet money” when Argentines briefly enjoyed the benefits of the monetarist policies of Economy Minister Jose Martinez de Hoz. He did away with import tariffs and revalued the peso against the US dollar, helping Argentina build up a $50bn foreign debt.
Reuters
