After the historic visit to Cuba Barack Obama together with his family went further South.
Voyage to Argentina looked quite ordinary diplomatic event — a regular working trip of the head of one state to another, recently elected. However, Obama should have performed a more serious mission — to restore the relationship, badly damaged in 12 years of rule by the Kirchners couple. But the American President went further and did something no one expected: he apologized to Argentina for past U.S. policy in the country.
Of course, during the visit great attention was paid to the negotiations on cooperation in the economic and political spheres. Now on the way of rapprochement between Washington and Buenos Aires obstacles have been removed, because the new head of Argentina Mauricio Macri unlike its predecessor Pro-America.
The fact that the US President has arrived in Argentina namely 24 March 2016 is no accident. On this day, only forty years ago, in 1976 the Argentine military overthrew Maria Estela Martinez de Peron, known as Isabel, and took power into their own hands.
Until 1981 the junta was headed by Jorge Rafael videla. He is replaced by Roberto viola, Carlos Lacoste, Leopoldo Galtieri, Alfredo Saint-Jean and Reynaldo Bignone. They carried out mass repression against opponents of the junta and intellectuals. All who were suspected of leftist, the military seized and tortured, and many killed. About 12 thousand people without charge or trial were held in 340 secret concentration camps scattered throughout the country. It was called desaparecidos, because people simply disappeared without a trace.
Methods of action of the junta said captain Adolfo Scilingo, publicly confessed to involvement in the Dirty war. “We behaved worse than the Nazis,” admitted Selingo who is currently in prison in Spain on charges of crimes against humanity.
Arrests, torture and killings mainly engaged in death squads and other paramilitary organizations created by the military and security forces, but formally regarded as independent.
In 2003, the national Commission for mass disappearances, has published official data on the disappeared (died). The victims of the Dirty war were 13 thousand people. Human rights advocates believe these figures to be understated and determine the number of victims in 30 thousand people.
Barack Obama apologized for American policies during the Dirty war, the coup which they themselves called Process of national reorganization, and promised to pass on the Argentine side of archival documents, which tell about the mass violations of human rights.
During the coup the US President was Gerald Ford (1974-77). From these documents it follows that high-ranking officials in the White house knew about the impending coup, but did nothing to prevent it. This, of course, in Washington prefer not to speak, but the reason for this omission, as many suspect, may lie in the fact that the Americans staged a coup through the CIA or, at least, had the plotters a wide range of assistance.
Two months before the coup, in December 1975, the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina Robert hill sent to the state Department a telegram in which he reported that the exact date of the military is not yet determined and that it will probably happen in March. February 28, 1976 in the state Department another telegram came from Buenos Aires. Hill wrote that the vast majority of Argentine politicians do not realize that America is “muddying the waters” in their country.
The meeting at the state Department on 26 March 1976 the then Secretary of state Henry Kissinger said he wants to support the military leadership of Argentina.
Speaking in Buenos Aires, Obama noted that although America was at first supported the junta, American diplomats, human rights activists and journalists have played an important role in documenting the violations that occurred in Argentina after the coup. Previously the US has already revealed more than 4 thousand documents written by American diplomats. The Argentines used them for criminal prosecution of the perpetrators of the Dirty war. In total, at different times been sentenced nearly 300 people.
On Thursday, the American leader together with Argentinean counterpart laid a wreath at the monument to thousands of victims of this undeclared war. In the middle of the river La Plata, on the banks of which is a memorial Park memory stands a sculpture of a man. It symbolizes the “flights of death”. The military often dumped from planes and helicopters into the river and the ocean still alive opponents of the regime.
The main sculpture of the memorial is a Monument to the victims of state terror, a long wall with the names of about 20 thousand victims. 10 thousand empty plates. These victims of the military junta are still not identified.
“A lot of talk about contradictory policies of the United States during those dark days, said Barack Obama in the Park memory.- We are determined to help Argentina to heal the wounds and move forward as one nation. I hope that this gesture will help to rebuild trust between our countries”.
