The left's narrative, today sold in convenient installments of paid militancy, omits that they themselves were the fuel for a fire that Peronism could not or did not want to extinguish.
The progressive myth tries to sell us that Jorge Rafael Videla fell from a spaceship to interrupt an idyllic democracy. It was Peronism itself, unable to manage the chaos of a guerrilla it had itself nurtured, that decided to outsource repression.
Videla was no stranger to Perón; they had a bond of professional respect. A Peronism that handed over institutions to save its own skin; a left that believed the rifle was the shortcut to a paradise that only existed in their feverish minds; and a society that, at that time, sighed with relief at the martial order.
Today, all we have left is a simulacrum. First, the Camporist spring opened the prisons for the "boys of the enlightened vanguard," those Marxist terrorists who played at revolution with Giap's manual under their arm and the state's wallet in their pocket.
Perón, a superior cynic, used them as "special formations" to wear down General Lanusse, and once on the balcony, he kicked them out of the Plaza for being "beardless." The transfer of power in March '76 was not a traumatic break for the political leadership of the time, but a negotiated handover. Peronism planned the coup out of exhaustion and fear. They handed the keys to the country to the Armed Forces so they could sweep the floor they had dirtied with the Triple A and the annihilation decrees.
The most picturesque, or most tragic, part is the subsequent transformation. But for those of us who choose study and data over "hippy-ing" in Villa Gesell, March 24th remains the photo of a political capitulation of which Peronism, no matter how it dresses in progressive silk, is the intellectual author.
Those in the '70s who demanded "fire and blood" and those in government who signed the repression orders became, decades later, the high priests of Human Rights.
The left, always orphaned of votes but brimming with coffee-shop arguments, insists on the "genocidal state" theory as if the state had operated in a galactic void. They forget Peronist anomie, the inability of a government that devoured itself, and a militancy that preferred to go underground rather than engage in democratic debate.
March 24th is the anniversary of a shared failure. To understand March 24, 1976, one must lift the veil of biolatry and enter the mud of real politics, the kind made with blood, files, and a hypocrisy that, if exportable, would get us out of default in an afternoon.
Let's get to the meat of the matter. The politics of memory as a business model. The institutional system did not commit suicide; it was assisted. The "General of Hope" knew perfectly well who was who in the military structure. But the damage was already done.
By Nicolás J. Portino González
Argentina is a country that suffers from selective amnesia, or worse, a memory managed by the marketing of tragedy. From '73 to '76, the "Glorious movement"—that "invertebrate giant" the Old Man spoke of—dedicated itself to the ambiguous task of raising its own executioners. Videla was a product of the "Order of Annihilation" signed by the interim government of Ítalo Luder and Mrs. Perón. A total lie.
