From judicial truth to historical knowledge: The disappearance of persons in Argentina

Abstract

The military dictatorship that began on 24 March 1976 brought two substantial changes to Argentina's intense history of military interventions and political violence in the twentieth century. First, the new regime instituted an unprecedented form of political crime - enforced disappearance - which condensed the State's will to exterminate. Second, by perpetrating the disappearances in covert actions it introduced a new practice of political killing. These characteristics also set Argentina's dictatorship apart from the other regimes that spread throughout Latin America's Southern Cone during that period.