![Jorge Rafael Videla and all the members of the military leadership that led the coup in 1976.](http://www.lr21.com.uy/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/jorge-rafael-videla-dictadura-argentina.jpg)
Almost 10 years after the death of the cruel and ruthless Argentine dictator, Jorge Rafael Videla, his passage through the country’s history continues to weigh heavily, and will continue to be an immeasurable burden that lies in the memory of the more than 30,000 disappeared people left behind by his dictatorship. and the other thousands of persecuted, tortured and murdered.
The former Argentine dictator died in his cell on May 17, 2013and since then the discussion for his legacy and the brutal dictatorship which he led during the 1970s, which began with the coup d’état on March 24, 1976 and remained active until 1983.
Although more than four decades have passed since his government, Argentine society continues to debate the scope of the repression, the crimes committed and the impact it had on the country’s history.
Videla, one of the darkest characters in recent Argentine history
Jorge Videla led one of the bloodiest dictatorships in Argentine historycharacterized by the systematic violation of human rights. Thousands of people were kidnapped, tortured and killed by political or ideological reasons. The repression was so brutal that some sectors of Argentine society came to speak of a “genocide” against the dissidents, but the term is still debated. Apart from this semantic discussion, the atrocious events led to Videla and other soldiers who ruled with an iron fist in those years, being sent to jail.
This process was brought to the big screen in the multi-award-winning film Argentina 1985, starring Ricardo Darín, Peter Lanzani and others. Marcelo Pozzi brings Videla to life with a verisimilitude that scares even the most sober.
Videla remained trapped in his “patriot” character until the last day
Despite the atrocities committed during his rule, Videla lived frozen in time. As if those “glorious” years of his military career, in which he illegitimately reached the national government, had never ended.. His country house, located in the province of Córdoba, seemed to have stopped in the 1970s. The furniture, the decoration and the personal objects were testimony of the luxurious life he led the dictator during his rule.
Even his way of dressing and combing his hair remained the same as forty years ago. While he was in prison, he was always seen groomed, combed and clean. He always wears wrinkle-free pants and a t-shirt and dress or boating shoes.
Videla’s death sparked speculation about the circumstances of his death. Some held that he died from disease, while others claimed that he may have been poisoned. But the official version indicates that he had basic heart problems in an advanced state, but what triggered his death was a fall he had on May 12 of that same year, which left him with fractures and internal bleeding.
I neither forget nor forgive. always justice
The dictatorship led by Videla left a legacy of pain and suffering in Argentine society. The fight for truth, justice and memory continues to be a pending task, until the last of the disappeared appears.
In jail, he explained his reasons why they had ordered so many disappearances: “In order not to generate protests inside and outside the country, the decision was reached on the march that these people disappear; each disappearance can certainly be understood as the masking, the dissimulation, of a death”.
“Our objective was to discipline an anarchic society; return it to its principles, to its natural channels. With respect to Peronism, getting out of a populist, demagogic vision that permeated vast sectors; in relation to the economy, go to a market economy, liberal”, launched as any explanation to the systematic plan carried out by the dictatorship.
But he also tried to distance himself from the greater responsibility, which always fell on him: “It was not that that decision about the fate of a person was made by a corporal. No: there were managers in each zone, subzone, area and subarea. But, above this, there was the responsibility of the commander-in-chief of the Army, taken in the absolute solitude of the command”.
Many families are still looking for their loved ones who disappeared during the dictatorship and hope that justice will be done for the crimes committed.