The long night of the last dictatorship in Argentina

Abstract

On March 24, 1976, in the midst of a convulsed social and political climate, Argentine armed forces seized power. The immediately overthrew the constitutional mandate of Estela Martínez de Perón and imposed a de facto government led by a military junta. Commanded firstly by Jorge Rafael Videla, they established as main goal to reorganize the nation by using the methodology known as state terrorism. In other words, they pretended to use the state´s monopoly of violence to discipline and terrorize groups and social sectors considered subversive, that is to say, a threat to the social cohesion of the country. Censorship, violence and political persecution along with kidnappings and forced disappearance of persons were the main tools of the military to install a terror regime.