2023-09-19 11:28:20
A year ago ‘Argentina, 1985’ premiered in Buenos Aires cinemas. The plot of the trial for crimes against humanity against the former commanders of the last military dictatorship (1976-83) returned to the screens with all its flesh. Much of the audience shuddered. But 12 months is a long time in a country going through multiple crises. The consensus on the nature of that repression that caused thousands of disappearances is now in danger of eroding if the polls are right and The far-right Javier Milei wins the presidential elections on October 22 in the first round. Her running mate, Victoria Villarruel wants to live up to its name and achieve what seemed impossible: the political triumph of a revisionist current that not only challenges what was done by the courts but also the verdict of history itself. If you reach the Government, Villarruel will manage the Defense area.
The Lawyer Villarruel He is 48 years old and She has been a deputy since December 2021. He speaks slowly, without gestures. However, scares many. Days ago, in the legislature of the city of Buenos Aires, he led a tribute to the victims of the guerrilla organizations that operated in Argentina in the seventies and that, before the coup d’état of March 24, 1976, were politically and militarily defeated. In that scenario, Villarruel described “to be despicable” to Estela Carlotto, the president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the organization that has recovered 133 children of disappeared people who had been appropriated.
Before joining the wave that surfs mercy Faced with the perplexity of part of society, Villarruel was an activist suffering from attention deficit disorder. She, points out ‘Crisis’ magazine, ““increased the scope of favorable speeches” al military regime. To this end – the publication adds – “he wrote two books, gave dozens of conferences, went to countless television programs, toured schools and carefully produced the content of his social networks.” And now he believes he is close to a “victory” that is personal and corporate.
military lineage
carries in the veins military blood. His father, an Army officer, participated at the time of his birth in what was known as Independence Operation in the northern province of Tucumán. It was more than a counterinsurgency action to repel a guerrilla focus: it was a laboratory of repression which reached a national scale after the overthrow of President Isabel Perón. He Lieutenant Colonel Eduardo Villarruel He received decorations and was never the subject of judicial investigations. He participated in the war with Great Britain for possession of the Malvinas Islands in 1982. The defeat in the Atlantic accelerated the military’s departure from power. His loyalty to the dictatorship was however put to the test in 1987 when, in the midst of a democratic transition, not only He refused to take the oath that obliges those in uniform to defend the National Constitution. He urged his subordinates to accompany him in that gesture that cost him his career.
The deputy’s uncle is intelligence officer Ernesto Villarruel. Eight years ago he was indicted for the role he played in the El Vesubio clandestine detention center. Judge Daniel Rafecas ordered his arrest and he fled. He was arrested in 2015 when he posed as a health inspector. A year later he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Rafecas removed him from the cause for which he would have been convicted.
The military ancestry also has its maternal branch. An admiral grandfather to whom the deputy thanks him for a formative role. It is in the name of that family album and the “values” that were transmitted to her that Victoria Villarruel has become from a very young age a spokesperson for the defenders of the country’s management during the most painful years.
Visit to former dictator Videla
When Argentina began to follow the institutional path, the difficult moment that is told in the Santiago Miter film in which he starred Ricardo Darin, there were organizations in this country that brought together former soldiers, wives, children and relatives of deceased soldiers and that made a closed-book defense of the repressive crusade. After the impunity laws that protected those responsible for atrocious acts were annulled, the request for a “full memory” about what happened in the seventies.
The candidate for vice president of La Libertad Avanza (LLA) He already played a crucial role in that turn. He did it first as a member of the Argentine Unity Association (Aunar), made up of former repressors. Later she was part of Jóvenes por la Verdad, a group that came to visit former dictator Jorge Videla. His last name was in turn discovered in a notebook kept by the police commissioner. Buenos Aires police Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz, one of the symbols of horrorwhile he was being judged.
Ultraconservative agenda
The author of ‘The Other Dead: The Civilian Victims of Guerrilla Terrorism of the 70s’, has claimed for many years that in Argentina there was a “guerra” symmetrical relationship between the State and the armed groups that, in their heyday, had just a few hundred followers. “In a context of war it is legal to kill the enemy,” he wrote in 2005. He now recognizes that crimes were committed violations of los human rights during the dictatorship, but they were not part of a systematic plan, as was proven in the 1985 trial. He therefore questions the legitimacy of the 319 trials with 1,146 sentences for repressors carried out for 17 years.
“They call me genocidal, they call me a fack, of denialism, the same ones that justify the crimes of communism throughout the world. Therefore, without caring about labels and without being afraid of nicknames: if stealing everything in the name of the poor is being on the left, I am on the right. If usurping lands from the State and the people is from the left, I am from the right. If defending the impunity of terrorism is from the left, gentlemen, I am from the right,” Villarruel proclaims. He not only wants to rewrite history, to reach the Government. He proposes promote the annulment of the law that has decriminalized abortion and the gender equality policies.
Villarruel has installed words in public language that had not been heard for decades. Until Patricia Bullrich, the former guerrilla which, after several transfigurations, became the presidential candidate of the right-wing coalition Together for Change, has been forced to make part of its language its own. Bullrich said that, if she wins the elections, she will promote a “fair exit” for the militants.
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