Tens of thousands of people descended on Plaza de Mayo under clear Buenos Aires skies on Tuesday to mark 50 years since the 1976 military coup that triggered seven years of brutal dictatorship.
Between 1976 and the restoration of democracy in 1983, human rights groups estimate that 30,000 people were killed. Leftists, students and trade unionists were tortured, bound and thrown from helicopters into the Atlantic Ocean, pregnant women were imprisoned until they gave birth and then executed, and their children were kidnapped by military families.
Thousands of people are still missing. Thousands of families continue to search for missing people, combing through the dust of cemeteries in the hope that bone fragments might lead to identifications that could bring peace.
doubt one’s memory
Every March 24, thousands of people – politicians, human rights groups and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, a charity dedicated to identifying children torn from their mothers’ arms – march in remembrance.
In the 21st century, amid the turbulent return to democracy and the back and forth between amnesty laws and prosecutions, it has been guaranteed to some extent to commemorate the victims of the coup and the dirty war that followed, and to respect the memory system and the activities of human rights organizations.
The election of the liberal Javier Miliei as president in 2023 challenged this consensus. Miliei has been trying to undermine the Nunca Más report documenting the military junta’s crimes. He ridiculed human rights groups and cut their funding. He described the dictatorship as a “war” between equal camps.
On Tuesday, Milei followed tradition and posted a video on her social media accounts to commemorate the anniversary. In 2024 and 2025, his videos disputed the death toll from the Dirty War. This year’s 75-minute film encouraged Argentines to seek out “full memories” to “fight against the biased and vindictive views” of their left-wing predecessors, while accusing them of using “biased memories” as a “tool of manipulation.”
politicized memory
Milei’s video politicizes memory and used the 50th anniversary as an opportunity to slam her opponents, including former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is under house arrest on corruption charges.
More than a dozen separate marches that gathered in the Plaza de Mayo also ensured that commemoration took root in contemporary politics. Many people held posters and banners reading ‘Never Again’ and ‘Where are the disappeared people?’ and held placards calling for Kirchner’s release. One of the largest parades marched past the balcony where Kirchner regularly appeared. Video released Tuesday showed Kirchner waving to the crowd and shouting for freedom.
In the afternoon, representatives of various human rights organizations took the stage as each parade arrived at the square. A spokesperson for Argentine newspaper La Nación was quoted as saying: “The imprisonment and political ban imposed on former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner after an attempt was made to threaten her life in a trial marred by serious irregularities deserves our attention and condemnation.”
Other speakers linked the dictatorship’s atrocities to the current government. Mayra Mendoza, the left-wing mayor of Quilmes, told the crowd that Milei and the military leaders “must be linked together” because they are both loyal to neoliberal economic policies.
Peronist Buenos Aires governor Axel Kicilloff made similar accusations: “Fifty years after the coup, squares across the country are more crowded than ever. This is a response to a government that pursues the same economic policies that the military dictatorship imposed through state-sponsored terrorism.”
Tuesday’s commemoration was more than just an act of remembrance. With both sides using the day to strike at the other and advance their own political agendas, the extent of Argentina’s divisions became one of the day’s biggest lessons, somewhat overshadowing the moving memorial services and the pain of those still searching for answers 50 years later.
Featured image: People marching through the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1976 military coup.
Image Credit: Axel Kicillof via X
