Dirty War

They were adopted by a wealthy media family at the height of Argentina's so-called dirty war. Now the two 34-year-olds find themselves, much against their will, at the center of a national obsession as their country awaits the results of court-ordered DNA tests. The question: Are they among the 400 children of victims of the military dictatorship who still remain unaccounted for? The intense emotions surrounding the case show that Argentina is still struggling to recover from the trauma of the internal conflict from 1976 to 1983, when 10,000 to 30,000 people disappeared and are presumed to have been killed by the military junta.

They were adopted by a wealthy media family at the height of Argentina's so-called dirty war. Now the two 34-year-olds find themselves, much against their will, at the center of a national obsession as their country awaits the results of court-ordered DNA tests. The question: Are they among the 400 children of victims of the military dictatorship who still remain unaccounted for? The intense emotions surrounding the case show that Argentina is still struggling to recover from the trauma of the internal conflict from 1976 to 1983, when 10,000 to 30,000 people disappeared and are presumed to have been killed by the military junta.

Nations raise monuments and preserve relics to celebrate great victories and heroic defeats. These are lessons of history. So why does Argentine President Carlos Menem want to destroy his navy's School of Mechanics building and replace it with a monument to national reconciliation that does not exist? Argentines have not reconciled the awful truths of the 1976-1983 "dirty war," a genocidal attempt by military regimes to stamp out political opposition.

Cancun would rather be known for powdery beaches and Windex-blue waters, but on Wednesday it was the scene of an explosive corruption scandal: Did its mayor secretly work on behalf of two of Mexico's most bloodthirsty drug-trafficking organizations? The charges against Mayor Gregorio Sanchez, who is on leave to run for governor of the state of Quintana Roo, add new force to worries that organized crime groups have infiltrated Mexican politics at all levels and are undermining the country's fragile moves toward a real democracy.

A Spanish court convicted a former Argentine naval officer of crimes against humanity Tuesday and sentenced him to 640 years in prison for throwing 30 prisoners from planes during his country's "dirty war" more than two decades ago. Argentines who lost loved ones in the campaign against dissent hugged each other and cried after the landmark ruling against 58-year-old Adolfo Scilingo.

In Buenos Aires this week, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright heard a powerful plea from the abuelas, the grandmothers, Argentine women whose daughters and grandchildren and other relatives were swept up and disappeared in Argentina's notorious "dirty war" of the late 1970s and early 1980s. No stain more certainly marks the horrors of that time. The grandmothers called on Albright to declassify U.S. documents detailing the crimes of Argentina's military against the nation's citizens.

In late January, Argentinian photojournalist Jose Luis Cabezas, who had been covering a party of political bigwigs for his magazine Noticias, was slain--handcuffed and shot in the head, then burned in his torched car. The violence horrified Argentines, who are no strangers to political killings. Ever since the day of Cabezas' murder, thousands of Argentines have taken to the streets demanding to know who killed him and why.

A federal judge declared unconstitutional a presidential decree that pardoned several high-ranking military officers accused of human rights abuses during Argentina's "dirty war." The ruling could pave the way for the officers to be tried in connection with atrocities committed during the 1976-83 military dictatorship, said an aide to the judge. The case will go to the Supreme Court. Many military officers, imprisoned in 1985 on charges of abduction, torture and execution, were pardoned in

An Argentine judge has ordered the arrest of six more military officers on charges of kidnapping the children of dissidents during Argentina's "dirty war" of 1976-1983. Nine were already being held. The latest action takes human rights groups and the families of the victims closer to establishing what happened to prison-born infants and bringing to justice the leaders of the military junta. Only the truth will permit the Argentines to clear up their past and rebuild their society.

Argentina's political life has been disrupted with regularity by its restive military since the 1930s. Only in the last few years have civilian leaders tried to assert authority over the generals, so it's disappointing that President Carlos Saul Menem began the 1990s with a step backwards. Last weekend, Menem pardoned several top officers who led the military juntas that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

A Chilean judge ordered the arrests of 129 former security officers in the disappearance of leftists and the slaying of the Communist Party leadership during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. It was among the largest numbers of arrests ever ordered in an investigation of human rights abuses during the "dirty war" waged during Gen. Pinochet's 1973-'90 regime. Judge Victor Montiglio said the 129 were members of the army, air force and uniformed police who worked for the DINA secret police agency, which has been accused of many of the political killings and other rights violations of the Pinochet era.

Shortly after taking office in December 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon mobilized the military to fight a war against drug cartels widely believed to have infiltrated the country's police forces. Since then, 45,000 troops have been deployed to at least seven states, placing some of the most violent areas, such as Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, under a virtual state of siege.

Former Argentine President Raul Alfonsin, who was given credit for restoring democracy to his country after years of coups, dictators and "dirty war," died of lung cancer Tuesday at his home in Buenos Aires. He was 82. A human rights attorney before entering politics, Alfonsin took a courageous stand by criticizing the junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. In the so-called dirty war against dissidents, military officers ordered the torture and murder of thousands.

A pair of octogenarian ex-generals who served during Argentina's "dirty war" against internal dissent were sentenced to life in prison Thursday after defiantly declaring they were innocent of the murder charges on which they were convicted. "I am being pursued politically by those defeated in yesterday's war," white-haired ex-Gen. Antonio Domingo Bussi, 82, testified before being sentenced in the northern province of Tucuman. Also sentenced by the same three-judge panel was Bussi's former boss, former Gen. Luciano Benjamin Menendez, 81, who testified that he had done what was necessary to confront "international communism."

An Argentine human rights activist whose disappearance prompted an intense government manhunt said in Buenos Aires that he was released by two gunmen after being tied up and beaten. Juan Evaristo Puthod, a survivor of clandestine prisons where thousands of political dissidents were tortured and killed during Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship, said, "It brought back all my memory. . . . My only fear was that they would kill me." Puthod, who lost vision in one eye while being tortured years ago, has been an important witness in several human rights cases as the current government tries to hold former police and military figures accountable for their roles in the "dirty war."

A retired Argentine army officer, called to testify about the fate of twins born to a political prisoner, has been found dead of a gunshot to the head, police said Tuesday. The body of retired Lt. Col. Paul Alberto Navone was found Monday with a handgun near his side in a park near his home outside the central city of Cordoba, authorities said.

Could an Argentine executive running Mexico's private vehicle registry be a former naval officer accused by a Spanish judge of torture and murder during Argentina's "dirty war" against dissidents? Reforma, Mexico's premier daily newspaper, reported Thursday that it had compiled evidence suggesting that Ricardo Miguel Cavallo is really Miguel Angel Cavallo, one of 98 former officers from Argentina charged with crimes against Spanish citizens during the South American nation's last dictatorship.

President Carlos Saul Menem, saying he wanted to heal lingering wounds, announced pardons Saturday for 39 military and police commanders charged in the killings of thousands of civilians in Argentina's "dirty war" against left-wing subversion in the 1970s and early 1980s. Menem also pardoned 64 guerrillas accused of taking part in violence that led to a military coup in 1976 and then years of brutal repression of government foes.

Hector Febres was the man who knew too much. And, like a character in a spy novel damned with an excess of secrets, Febres met an untimely and grisly end: He was poisoned last month in his cell. That is the conclusion of Argentine officials investigating the death of the former coast guard officer, who was awaiting a verdict on charges of torture. The case arose from Febres' service under a military dictatorship decades earlier at the country's most notorious clandestine detention center.

BUENOS AIRES -- Thousands of dissidents silenced under Argentina's military dictatorship -- tortured, executed and made to "disappear" in the so-called Dirty War against dissent -- are gaining new voice through poetry. A new book, "Poesia Diaria" (Everyday Poetry), tells the victims' story through the memories and verse of families who lost sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives.