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Over the past eighteen years, the combined forces of grassroots
activism and science have helped locate and identify dozens of Argentina's
kidnapped children. Many of whom have been reunited with their biological
grandparents.
HISTORY
The Military Coup
On March 24, 1976, a military coup toppled President Maria Estela
"Isabel" Martinez de Peron. Her government was the fifth
civilian government overthrown by the armed forces since 1930. During
her abbreviated two-year term, Isabel Peron had waged a gloves-off
campaign against two highly-organized urban guerilla movements,
the Montoneros and the Trotskyist Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo.
According to one newspaper, during the last month of Isabel Peron's
tenure, there was a bomb attack every three hours and a political
killing every five.
In an effort to break the back of the guerilla insurgencies, the
police and right-wing groups organized themselves into private armies.
Buenos Aires became a city prowled by goons in unmarked cars, usually
Ford Falcons with their license plates covered or missing. Inside,
men with no fear of governmental reprisal, searched the streets
for real and imagined subversives. By the end of 1975, they had
eliminated as many as fifteen hundred people.
The
day after the March 1976 coup, a three-man junta placed army general
Jorge Rafael Videla in the presidency. They also made it a crime,
punishable with up to ten years in jail, for anyone to divulge news,
communiqués, or views with the purpose of disrupting, prejudicing,
or lessening the prestige of the armed forces. The junta announced
that it would calmly and methodically create a whole new society:
Christian, moral, antisubversive, secure, with a restructured economy
and education system designed "to meet the nation's needs."
They called their plan "The Process of National Reorganization,"
or El Proceso.
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