Alianza Anticomunista Argentina
Encyclopedia
The Argentine Anticommunist Alliance was a right-wing death squad
Death squad
A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...

 active in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 during the mid-1970s, particularly active under Isabel Perón's rule (1974–1976). Initially associated with the Peronist right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...

, the organisation was bitterly in conflict with the Peronist left
Far left
Far left, also known as the revolutionary left, radical left and extreme left are terms which refer to the highest degree of leftist positions among left-wing politics...

 and other left organizations. Many of its members later became linked to the military junta
National Reorganization Process
The National Reorganization Process was the name used by its leaders for the military government that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. In Argentina it is often known simply as la última junta militar or la última dictadura , because several of them existed throughout its history.The Argentine...

 led by Jorge Rafael Videla
Jorge Rafael Videla
Jorge Rafael Videla Redondo is a former senior commander in the Argentine Army who was the de facto President of Argentina from 1976 to 1981. He came to power in a coup d'état that deposed Isabel Martínez de Perón...

 (1976–1983) and played a prominent role in the "Dirty War
Dirty War
The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...

". Despite its name, the AAA acted against a wide range of government opponents, not just communists.

According to a 1983 New York Times article, at the time of the group's founding, Argentina saw a growing number of guerilla attacks by left-wing
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...

 groups, and harsh repression
Political repression
Political repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take political life of society....

 of political dissidents on the part of the military
Military of Argentina
The Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic, in Spanish Fuerzas Armadas de la República Argentina, are controlled by the Commander-in-Chief and a civilian Minister of Defense...

, paramilitary
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....

 and police forces. However, according to the 1985 Juicio a las Juntas trial, by 1976 both the ERP
People's Revolutionary Army (Argentina)
The Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo was the military branch of the communist Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores in Argentina...

 and the Montoneros
Montoneros
Montoneros was an Argentine Peronist urban guerrilla group, active during the 1960s and 1970s. The name is an allusion to 19th century Argentinian history. After Juan Perón's return from 18 years of exile and the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, which marked the definitive split between left and right-wing...

 had been dismantled, and so there was no real insurgency
Insurgency
An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents...

 to legitimize the so-called "Dirty War."

Led by José López Rega
José López Rega
José López Rega was Argentina's Minister of Social Welfare during the Peronist government started in 1973 by Juan Perón and continued after Perón's death in 1974 by his third wife and vice-president, Isabel Martínez de Perón , until the coup d'etat of 1976 that initiated the so-called National...

, Minister of Social Welfare and personal secretary of Juan Perón
Juan Perón
Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer, and politician. Perón was three times elected as President of Argentina though he only managed to serve one full term, after serving in several government positions, including the Secretary of Labor and the Vice Presidency...

, it enforced the repression against the Peronist left-wing. Rodolfo Almirón
Rodolfo Almirón
Rodolfo Almirón Sena was a former Argentine police officer and a leader of an extreme right-wing death squad known as the Triple A, operating in Argentina during the mid-1970s...

, arrested in Spain in 2006, was also an important figure of the Triple A, in charge of López Rega and Isabel Perón's personal security. He died in jail in June 2009. SIDE
Side
Side was an ancient Greek city in Anatolia, in the region of Pamphylia, in what is now Antalya province, on the southern Mediterranean coast of Turkey...

 agent Anibal Gordon
Anibal Gordon
Anibal Gordon was an Argentine suspected of being a leader of the Triple A death squad, active during the "Dirty War" in the 1970s. He was also a member of the SIDE intelligence agency between 1968 and 1984....

 was another important member of the Triple A, although he always denied it. He was put on trial and convicted in October 1986. Gordon died in prison of lung cancer
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...

 the next year.

In 2007, the judge Norberto Oyarbide declared the Triple A caused "crimes against humanity" so its crimes are exempt from statutes of limitations and can be brought to trial.

Creation

The Triple A was first believed to have been organized by José López Rega and Alberto Villar, deputy chief of the Argentine federal police, during the brief interim presidency of Raúl Lastiri in 1973. Villar was killed along his wife in 1974, when a bomb was planted on his cabin cruiser
Cabin cruiser
A cabin cruiser is a type of power boat that provides accommodation for its crew and passengers inside the structure of the craft.A cabin cruiser usually ranges in size from in length, with larger pleasure craft usually considered yachts. Many cabin cruisers can be recovered and towed with a...

 in Tigre
Tigre, Buenos Aires
Tigre is a town in the Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, situated in the north of Greater Buenos Aires, north of Buenos Aires city. Tigre lies on the Paraná Delta and is an important tourist and weekend attraction, easily reached by bus and train services, including the scenic Tren de la Costa...

 by members of the organization Montoneros
Montoneros
Montoneros was an Argentine Peronist urban guerrilla group, active during the 1960s and 1970s. The name is an allusion to 19th century Argentinian history. After Juan Perón's return from 18 years of exile and the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, which marked the definitive split between left and right-wing...

. The foundational act of the movement is alleged to be an important Peronist meeting on October 1, 1973, attended by President Raúl Lastiri, Interior Minister Benito Llambí, Social Welfare Minister José López Rega
José López Rega
José López Rega was Argentina's Minister of Social Welfare during the Peronist government started in 1973 by Juan Perón and continued after Perón's death in 1974 by his third wife and vice-president, Isabel Martínez de Perón , until the coup d'etat of 1976 that initiated the so-called National...

, general secretary of the Presidency José Humberto Martiarena and various provincial governors.

It is now considered state terrorism which functioned under the governments of Lastiri, Perón and Isabel Perón.

López Rega, a devotee of occultism and self-styled divinator
Divination
Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic standardized process or ritual...

, became a powerful force in the Peronist movement, exerting great influence over Perón
Juan Perón
Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer, and politician. Perón was three times elected as President of Argentina though he only managed to serve one full term, after serving in several government positions, including the Secretary of Labor and the Vice Presidency...

 at the time, and his wife Isabel Martínez de Perón, who assumed the presidency upon Perón's sudden death on 1 July 1974. To support the group, López Rega drew on funds from the Ministry of Social Welfare, which he controlled. Some of the members of the Triple A had taken part in the Peronist 1973 Ezeiza massacre
1973 Ezeiza massacre
The Ezeiza massacre took place on June 20, 1973 near the Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Peronist masses, including many young people, had gathered there to acclaim Juan Perón's definitive return from an 18-year exile in Spain. The police counted three and a half million...

, when snipers shot on left-wing Peronists on the day Perón came back from exile, thus leading to the definitive separation between left and right-wing Peronists.

Judge Baltazar Garzón's investigations demonstrated that Italian neofascist Stefano Delle Chiaie
Stefano Delle Chiaie
Stefano Delle Chiaie is a neofascist Italian activist . He went on to become a wanted man worldwide, suspect to be involved in Italy's strategy of tension, but was acquitted. He was a friend of Licio Gelli, grandmaster of P2 masonic lodge...

 had also worked with the Triple A, and was present on the day of Peron's return to Argentina. Delle Chiaie also worked with the Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

an DINA and for Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

n dictator
Dictator
A dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...

 Hugo Banzer
Hugo Banzer
Hugo Banzer Suárez was a politician, military general, dictator and President of Bolivia. He held the Bolivian presidency twice: from August 22, 1971 to July 21, 1978, as a dictator; and then again from August 6, 1997 to August 7, 2001, as constitutional President.-Military and ideological...

.

Victims

The group first came to national attention on 21 November 1973 when it unsuccessfully tried to murder Argentine Senator
Argentine Senate
The Argentine Senate is the upper house of the Argentine National Congress. It has 72 senators: three for each province and three for the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires...

 Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen by means of a car bomb
Car bomb
A car bomb, or truck bomb also known as a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device , is an improvised explosive device placed in a car or other vehicle and then detonated. It is commonly used as a weapon of assassination, terrorism, or guerrilla warfare, to kill the occupants of the vehicle,...

. The AAA went on to kill 1,122 people, according to an appendix to the 1983 CONADEP report, including suspected Montoneros and ERP
People's Revolutionary Army (Argentina)
The Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo was the military branch of the communist Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores in Argentina...

 leftist guerrillas
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...

 and their sympathizers, as well as judge
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...

s, police chiefs, and social activists. In total, it is suspected of having killed more than 1500 people.

The group is strongly suspected in the 1974 assassination of Jesuit Carlos Mugica
Carlos Mugica
Carlos Mugica was an Argentine Roman Catholic priest and activist.-Early life:Carlos Francisco Sergio Mugica was born in Buenos Aires, in 1930, into a privileged background...

, a friend of Mario Firmenich, Montoneros's founder. Other people murdered by the organisation include Silvio Frondizi
Silvio Frondizi
Silvio Frondizi was an Argentine intellectual and lawyer, brother of President Arturo Frondizi and of the philosopher Risieri Frondizi....

, brother of former president Arturo Frondizi
Arturo Frondizi
Arturo Frondizi Ercoli was the President of Argentina between May 1, 1958, and March 29, 1962, for the Intransigent Radical Civic Union.-Early life:Frondizi was born in Paso de los Libres, Corrientes Province...

, former-vice director of the police Julio Troxler, defender of political prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....

s Alfredo Curutchet, and a key union leader of Córdoba, Hipólito Atilio López. The CONADEP commission on human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

 violations has proven the Triple A's execution of 19 homicides in 1973, 50 in 1974 and 359 in 1975, while its involvement in several hundred others is also suspected.

One of the most often cited estimates counts 220 terrorist attacks from July to September 1974, which killed 60 and heavily injured 44, as well as 20 kidnappings Federal judge Norberto Oyarbide, who signed the extradition
Extradition
Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...

 demand against former leader of the AAA Rodolfo Almirón
Rodolfo Almirón
Rodolfo Almirón Sena was a former Argentine police officer and a leader of an extreme right-wing death squad known as the Triple A, operating in Argentina during the mid-1970s...

, qualified in December 2006 the Triple A's crimes as human rights violations and the "beginning of the systematic process directed by the state apparatus" during the dictatorship
Dictatorship
A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator. It has three possible meanings:...

.

Death threat
Death threat
A death threat is a threat of death, often made anonymously, by one person or a group of people to kill another person or groups of people. These threats are usually designed to intimidate victims in order to manipulate their behavior, thus a death threat is a form of coercion...

s caused many people to leave Argentina. Amongst many well-known and respected people who left are mathematician Manuel Sadosky
Manuel Sadosky
Manuel Sadosky was an Argentine mathematician, born in Buenos Aires to Jewish Russian immigrants fleeing the pogroms. He is widely considered the father of computer science studies in Argentina....

, artists Héctor Alterio, Luis Brandoni
Luis Brandoni
Luis Brandoni is an Argentine film and television actor. Politically active in the centrist Radical Civic Union , he was elected to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies in 1993, where he served until, 2001...

 and Nacha Guevara
Nacha Guevara
Nacha Guevara is an Argentine singer and actress from Mar de Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina.Trained as a dancer and actress, she discovered by chance a career as a singer becoming a symbol in the song of protest movement around 1968 in the avant-garde Instituto Di Tella in Buenos Aires, the...

, politicians José Ber Gelbard
José Ber Gelbard
José Ber Gelbard was an Argentine activist and politician.-Career:Gelbard was born in Radomsko, Poland, in 1917. In 1930 Gelbard emigrated to Argentina with his parents and siblings. They settled in Tucumán, north of Buenos Aires. Those were tough times and Gelbard had to make a living as a...

, lawyer and politician Héctor Sandler, and actor Norman Briski
Norman Briski
Norman Briski is a well-known Argentine theatre actor, director and playwright, as well as a noted cinema and television actor.-Life and work:Naum Normando Briski was born in Santa Fe, Argentina, in 1938...

.

The AAA was known to have strong backing from the military and Army Commander-in-Chief
Commander-in-Chief
A commander-in-chief is the commander of a nation's military forces or significant element of those forces. In the latter case, the force element may be defined as those forces within a particular region or those forces which are associated by function. As a practical term it refers to the military...

 Jorge Rafael Videla
Jorge Rafael Videla
Jorge Rafael Videla Redondo is a former senior commander in the Argentine Army who was the de facto President of Argentina from 1976 to 1981. He came to power in a coup d'état that deposed Isabel Martínez de Perón...

, who came to power as President following the 1976 coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...

.
  • Murder of Rodolfo David Ortega Peña on July 31, 1974
  • Murder of Raúl Laguzzidel on September 5, 1974
  • Murder of Alfredo Alberto Pérez Curutchet on September 10, 1974
  • Kidnapping of Daniel Banfi, Luis Latrónica and Guillermo Jabif on September 12, 1974
  • Murder of Julio Tomás Troxler on September 20, 1974
  • Murder of Domingo Devincenti on November 6, 1974
  • Murder of Luis Ángel Mendiburu and Silvio Frondizi
    Silvio Frondizi
    Silvio Frondizi was an Argentine intellectual and lawyer, brother of President Arturo Frondizi and of the philosopher Risieri Frondizi....

     on September 27, 1974
  • Murder of Carlos Ernensto Laham and Pedro Leopoldo Barraza on October 13, 1974.
  • Murder of Ramon Samaniego on April 12, 1974

Others

Fifteen former AAA members (including Rodolfo Almirón
Rodolfo Almirón
Rodolfo Almirón Sena was a former Argentine police officer and a leader of an extreme right-wing death squad known as the Triple A, operating in Argentina during the mid-1970s...

, who later became Manuel Fraga's chief of personal security) participated in the Montejurra 1976 shooting of two left-wing Carlist members in Spain, along with Italian neofascist Stefano Delle Chiaie and Jean Pierre Cherid
Jean Pierre Cherid
Jean-Pierre Cherid was a far right French activist and later mercenary of Moroccan descent. A former French paratrooper, he first became a member of the Organisation de l'armée secrète during the Algerian War .Afterwards, Cherid appeared in Spain in 1976...

, former member of the OAS and then of the GAL
Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación
Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación were death squads established illegally by officials of the Spanish government to fight ETA, the principal Basque separatist militant group. They were active from 1983 until 1987, under Spanish Socialist Workers Party -led governments...

 death squad. Former Triple A member José María Boccardo also participated with Jean Pierre Cherid and others in the 1978 assassination of Argala, the etarra
ETA
ETA , an acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna is an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization. The group was founded in 1959 and has since evolved from a group promoting traditional Basque culture to a paramilitary group with the goal of gaining independence for the Greater Basque Country...

who had participated in the 1973 assassination of Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...

's Prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco
Luis Carrero Blanco
Don Luis Carrero Blanco, 1st Duke of Carrero Blanco, Grandee of Spain was a Spanish admiral and long-time confidant of dictator Francisco Franco.- Biography :...

.

See also

  • José López Rega
    José López Rega
    José López Rega was Argentina's Minister of Social Welfare during the Peronist government started in 1973 by Juan Perón and continued after Perón's death in 1974 by his third wife and vice-president, Isabel Martínez de Perón , until the coup d'etat of 1976 that initiated the so-called National...

  • 601 Intelligence Battalion
    Batallón de Inteligencia 601
    The Batallón de Inteligencia 601 was a special military intelligence service of the Argentine Army whose structure was set up in the late 1970s, active in the Dirty War and Operation Condor, and disbanded in 2000...

  • Dirty War
    Dirty War
    The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...

  • Montejurra Incidents
  • Manuel Sadosky
    Manuel Sadosky
    Manuel Sadosky was an Argentine mathematician, born in Buenos Aires to Jewish Russian immigrants fleeing the pogroms. He is widely considered the father of computer science studies in Argentina....

     and Héctor Alterio both were threatened by the AAA.
  • Rodolfo Almirón
    Rodolfo Almirón
    Rodolfo Almirón Sena was a former Argentine police officer and a leader of an extreme right-wing death squad known as the Triple A, operating in Argentina during the mid-1970s...

    , leader of the group wanted for various murders (arrested in 2006)

External links

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