“It makes me very happy that people miss the old days,” Isabel Perón, 95, told Argentina’s Clarin newspaper as she left a hair salon in Madrid on Sunday.
“What do you say to Argentines 50 years after the 1976 military coup?” Clarin’s reporter said the coup, which human rights groups say has led to the deaths and disappearances of up to 30,000 people, came days before thousands across Argentina marked the anniversary of the coup.
Peron, who assumed the presidency in 1974 after the death of her husband, President Juan Peron, remained in power for about two years until the military took complete control in 1976, then went into hiding in the Spanish capital, rarely returning to Argentina and rarely participating in politics.
dictatorship perfume
In 2007, she was arrested in Spain for the disappearance of a left-wing activist before her extradition to Argentina was aborted. Peron was accused of having close ties to and presiding over the Argentine Anti-Communist League (Triple A), a military assassination squad that systematically assassinated about 600 citizens, according to a Nunca Más report.
As president, Peron tapped into the electoral base that brought her husband to power in the 1940s: the working class, trade unionists, and the left. Triple A led a brutal campaign against left-wing activities, while Peron’s government censored the press, academia and television and suspended constitutional rights.
Peron’s comments to Clarin about the families of the missing make a mockery of their suffering, while the current government of Javier Millais is cutting funding to human rights groups and the military is refusing to disclose the locations of mass graves.
Argentina is divided
Memories of the Argentine dictatorship and its subsequent atrocities remain a source of conflict in Argentine society.
“Peron’s comments come against the backdrop of a real struggle over the meaning of the past in Argentina, which is deeply divided by economic crisis and political polarization,” said Micaela Iturralde of the Institute for Economic and Social Development (IDES). Latin America Report.
Iturralde said the purpose behind Perón’s intervention was “unclear” but consistent with the discourse promoted by Milei that “oscillates between denialism and historical relativism.”
Milei and his administration have repeatedly questioned the official figures presented in the Nunca Más report and further ridiculed data from human rights groups.
While not outright condemning the report, Milei repeatedly undermines and seeks to discredit the report and its findings. Millais also characterized the dictatorship as an egalitarian “war” that negated state repression. This is the discourse that Peron and her successors adopted 50 years ago.
“The government has been attacking the democratic consensus based on the Nunca Más movement since the presidential election campaign,” says Iturralde.
Victoria Villarruel, Milei’s vice president, became acquainted with Perón and invited her to Argentina in 2024 to unveil a bust of her late husband. Villarruel shared a close-up image of them holding hands with Perón, thanking him for his loyalty.
Professor Javiera Arce Riffo of Valparaiso University says Millay’s revisionism forms part of a generational shift in attitudes.
“The far right in Argentina, Chile and Brazil has exacerbated a security agenda that creates a false sense of nostalgia for the dictatorship era, especially among young people,” Lippo says. Latin America Report.
Similar sentiments to Peron’s intervention in Argentina show Riffo that “we have failed as a progressive group, as an inclusive society.”
Peron’s nostalgia for the dictatorship has sparked debate on social media, and the debate is likely to continue as Argentina marks Tuesday the 50th anniversary since the 1976 coup.
Featured image: President Isabel Peron addressing the crowd (left), portrait of President Isabel Peron (right))
Featured image sources: Wikimedia Commons (left) and Archivo General de la Nación (right)
