We cannot endorse guerrilla terrorism and we can never again endorse the force of the State against citizens,” emphasized the libertarian when he still believed his stance had a chance. Beyond the outcome, this episode reveals that beyond the government's view, there is a significant portion of politics that still retains antibodies to defend against a trivialization strategy that attempts to equate common crimes with state terrorism, as if the degrees of responsibility were symmetrical, or even worse, as if the latter were a consequence of the former. The Congress and memory for March 24, over time This sordid dispute over the meaning of the seventies in Argentina, which opened as never before with the Milei government, had been temporarily halted after the 2001 crisis. In August 2002, March 24 was consecrated as the “National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice” through Law 25.633, which established a day of collective reflection and criticism on the tragedy brought by the civic-military coup. Through that norm, it was ordered that all educational establishments include in their respective school calendars events alluding to the National Day, with the objective of “consolidating the collective memory of society, generating feelings opposed to any type of authoritarianism and fostering the permanent defense of the Rule of Law and the full validity of Human Rights.” Church and unionism against labor reform: the CTA and the Social Pastoral analyzed the country's situation In 2003, at the initiative of a project by the leftist deputy Patricia Walsh, which received the support of the Kirchner government, the Due Obedience and Final Point laws (“laws of pardon”) that the government of Raúl Alfonsín had promoted in 1986 in the midst of military coup threats were annulled. With that political decision, the impunity of the genocides ended and trials for crimes against humanity were reopened, while new ones began. The “hardliners” of unionism will resume next week a differentiated agenda from the CGT On March 20, 2006, the “National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice,” which had been declared in 2002, became a national immovable holiday through the approval of Law 26.085. In 2017, the Mauricio Macri government issued a decree declaring the mobility of the holiday but it was left without effect due to the resistance of the opposition. Buenos Aires, March 24 (NA) -- The session last Wednesday in the Senate laid bare the absurdity that not even in something as sinister as the horror that meant the last military dictatorship in Argentina was it possible to agree in the Congress on a political declaration that reflected a base of minimum consensus on the process inaugurated on March 24, 1976 by the civic-military coup. From 2003 onwards, with the arrival of Néstor Kirchner to power, an impregnable consensus was generalized regarding the “Never Again,” a pact of zero tolerance for any hint of justification of state terrorism and the rupture of the democratic order, the Rule of Law, and Human Rights, with a vision of the 70's that concentrated responsibility on the atrocities of the genocidal dictatorship. The narrative of the “Complete Memory,” which recovered the “theory of two demons” and placed the de facto military government as a necessary derivation to quell the previous violence radiated by guerrilla organizations, called “subversive” or “terrorist,” had been reduced to residual expressions of very marginal groups, without real penetration capacity in society. In the last decade, these marginal voices began to filter capillarily through the cracks of a broken society, morally bent by economic and social traumas, but only with the arrival of Javier Milei to the presidency and Victoria Villarruela to the vice-presidency, the vision of “Complete Memory” and the “theory of two demons” became the official policy of the Argentine State. Milei celebrated the growth of the economy and pointed against the “business-saurs” and “thief politicians” If any doubt persisted, the government ratified this position with the dissemination of the video recorded on the eve of March 24 of last year that had the off-screen voice of the president of the Faro Foundation, Agustín Laje, an ultraconservative figure linked to the libertarian ecosystem who is dedicated to fighting the “cultural battle” with million-dollar international contributions. Last Wednesday, La Libertad Avanza refused to accompany in the Congress the declaration proposed by the senator Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the coup, and even the head of the libertarian bloc, Patricia Bullrich, had her bloc rise with the sole purpose of leaving the session without a quorum and boycotting the vote. Seeing that none of the dialogist or allied forces followed the officialism in that maneuver, La Libertad Avanza had no choice but to sit back in the room and abstain, without being able to change the course of the vote, which was approved by an ample majority. The declaration proposed by the camporista, who is a son of the disappeared, highlighted “the value of the democratic consensus built by Argentine society from 1983, expressed in the principle of Never Again to state terrorism, in the continuity of the trials for crimes against humanity and in the unrestricted defense of the Rule of Law”. Unsuccessfully, Bullrich tried to modify the wording including the “condemnation of any type of violence embodied in the concept of Never Again,” with the implicit inclusion of the crimes committed by guerrilla organizations. Patricia Bullrich. (Photo: NA Archive)(Photo: NA Archive) Previously, the senator Joaquín Benegas Lynch had set the position of his bloc, claiming for the “complete historical truth of Argentina.” “There was a coup d'état as a consequence of terrorist acts by guerrilla groups that killed innocents and that is the complete truth and I think we have to agree that neither of the two things has to happen again.” That year there was also a massive march against the ruling that established the commutation of the sentence for genocides. As a result of that historical mobilization for its unprecedented massiveness, the Congress approved in the same day and in a matter of a few hours in both chambers a law that prohibits the application of “two for one” to crimes against humanity. During the government of the Front for All, several “anti-denialist” bills were presented, which aim to prevent and sanction the conduct and public discourses that deny, minimize, justify, legitimize or vindicate the crimes against humanity committed by state terrorism in Argentina and the genocides and crimes against humanity recognized by the Argentine State. They also propose mandatory training in human rights for officials and workers of the three branches of the State and sanctions for those who have institutional responsibilities and promote denialist discourses. Máximo Kirchner questioned a possible flexibilization of the Glaciers Law and pointed against the RIGI Some “anti-denialist” bills are not limited to the denial of crimes against humanity but also sanction the denial of Argentine sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands, and the existence of epidemics or pandemics that put public health at risk. In mid-2024, a controversy broke out within the Congress when it became known that a group of La Libertad deputies had visited in the Ezeiza penitentiary convicted repressors of the last civic-military dictatorship for crimes against humanity, among whom were Alfredo Astiz, Raúl Guglielminetti, Mario Marcote, Carlos Suárez Mason (h) and Adolfo Donda. The plan was promoted by the libertarian deputy Beltrán Benedit, and counted with the participation of María Fernanda Araujo, Guillermo Montenegro, Lourdes Arrieta, Alida Ferreyra and Rocío Bonacci (although the latter desisted from entering the penitentiary at the last moment).IP The visit, which was carried out with official vehicles of the Lower House, had been facilitated by the priest Javier Olivera Rabasi, and had as its objective to share with the genocides a project to mitigate their sentences. The public dissemination of a photo in the penitentiary of the libertarian deputies with the repressors caused strong questioning from the opposition, which tried without success to sanction the legislators, and also caused an unusual internal in the official bloc, which ended with the departure of Arrieta. #AgenciaNA
