On a muggy November evening in the Argentine heartland city of Córdoba, a crowd gathered at the site of a former torture and detention facility, where scores of dissidents were assassinated during Argentina’s military dictatorship. It was, technically, a celebratory occasion. A human rights group had recently identified two men who had been snatched as babies by military officials during the junta’s rule from 1976 to 1983, when children born to political prisoners were often stolen and given to other families. The men were on hand to participate in a tree lighting ceremony that customarily takes place when once-kidnapped children are found to “inspire hope.” But the mood was tense, with activists and speakers underscoring that it was time to “play defense” and warning against “letting our guard down.”
On a muggy November evening in the Argentine heartland city of Córdoba, a crowd gathered at the site of a former torture and detention facility, where scores of dissidents were assassinated during Argentina’s military dictatorship. It was, technically, a celebratory occasion. A human rights group had recently identified two men who had been snatched as babies by military officials during the junta’s rule from 1976 to 1983, when children born to political prisoners were often stolen and given to other families. The men were on hand to participate in a tree lighting ceremony that customarily takes place when once-kidnapped children are found to “inspire hope.” But the mood was tense, with activists and speakers underscoring that it was time to “play defense” and warning against “letting our guard down.”
Daniel Santucho Navajas, one of the two guests of honor, said he felt “immense joy” when he was reunited with his family in July thanks to the tireless work of activists at the nongovernmental organization Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, known as Abuelas. “We have to continue this fight,” he said.
The elephant in the room at the Córdoba gathering was the stunning rise of far-right political outsider Javier Milei, who clinched the Argentine presidency on Nov. 19 despite challenging a decades-long public consensus on the dictatorship’s brutality. To those impacted by the regime’s human rights abuses, Milei’s victory was an outrage. And nowhere did his candidacy resonate more than in Córdoba province, where the Libertarian Party leader dominated with 74 percent of the vote—a higher tally than he received anywhere else in the country.
“There have always been people who denied or revindicated what happened during the dictatorship. But for most of our history, you couldn’t make those positions public. Any politician that could be linked to the dictatorship or that defended the dictatorship would have been quickly left out of the running in the political space,” said Nazareno Bravo, a sociologist and researcher. “Norms that were established over a long time are now in crisis.”
The figure in Milei’s camp most associated with dictatorship negacionismo, or denialism, is his polarizing vice president, the ultra-conservative Victoria Villarruel. Villarruel, who comes from a military family, acknowledged in an interview shortly before the election that the far-right movement is “succeeding in broaching lots of ideas that were unthinkable, untouchable.”
Since democracy’s return, Argentina has emerged as an international human rights standard-bearer, holding military leadership accountable in its justice system and pursuing policies that center historical remembrance. That made Buenos Aires somewhat of a regional outlier: Nearby Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay were also shaken by repressive military rule, but those countries’ reckonings with the past have been much more limited.
In Argentina, a civilian court swiftly convicted and sentenced top leaders of the ruling military junta. That judicial process, which proved pivotal in securing Argentina’s democratic future, was the subject of Argentina, 1985, a film that notched an Oscar nomination this year.
“Argentina is a model because it foregrounds justice in the construction of its democracy. It’s the first layer, the foundation upon which this democratic reality was built,” said Florencia Larralde Armas, a political scientist and historian. Trials have kept apace, with more than 1,200 convictions so far. (Fifteen judicial processes are currently in progress.)
Outside the courtroom, the government has identified roughly 800 “memory sites,” including dozens of dictature-era detention centers. Among them is a former Buenos Aires naval training academy used during the dictatorship to jail and torture thousands of so-called subversives. Now a museum, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site this fall. Meanwhile, human rights organizations such as Abuelas have continued to search for so-called “recovered grandchildren” like Santucho Navajas. (He is the 133rd to be identified.)
The outgoing left-wing Peronist coalition aligned closely with human rights groups while in office, turning many of their demands into policy while speeding up investigations and trials of people accused of human rights violations. Advocates welcomed this development—but it also set the stage for a right-wing backlash that turned human rights into fodder for a growing culture war. The country is hyperpolarized, and “[e]verything related to policies around human rights is now viewed through the framing” of right versus left, Larralde Armas said.
On the campaign trail, Milei vowed to ax Argentina’s Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, which would make his the first post-dictatorship government to function without the agency. He also dismissed the dictatorship’s atrocities as “excesses” and used his time on the debate stage to argue about the number of individuals who were killed or disappeared. (Although there is room for debate, human rights organizations have estimated the total number for both to be around 30,000.)
Milei has also described the events of the 1970s as a “war” between radical leftist groups and the military, a characterization that experts whom Foreign Policy spoke to reject because they say it creates a false equivalence between smaller-scale attacks by the extreme left and the junta’s state-sponsored terrorism.
Villarruel has long been associated with this so-called theory of the “two devils.” She rose to prominence defending military officials accused of dictatorship-era human rights violations and says she seeks justice for the victims of former left-wing guerrillas. This election season, she suggested that there might be a better use for the land occupied by the UNESCO-recognized memory museum and promised to revise a program that awards monetary compensation to people impacted by dictatorship-era state violence.
According to Cristian Palmisciano, a sociologist who studies how the Argentine right-wing has grappled with the dictatorship’s legacy, politicians of Milei and Villarruel’s prominence have never propagated rhetoric this extreme. “We’re in uncharted territory,” he said.
Milei and Villarruel’s ascent to power shows that political leaders “can now revindicate repression and not lose any votes,” Bravo added. During a milestone year for Argentine democracy, that created some tension on the ground.
In Buenos Aires, it was not uncommon to see elevated billboards celebrating the 40th anniversary of democracy’s return while, on street level, posters warned that voting for Milei made one an accomplice to the dictatorship or reiterated that the number of killed or disappeared was 30,000. Days before the election, when Milei attended a show at a famed Buenos Aires theater, a crowd received him chanting, “You’re the dictatorship,” and “Never again.” The daughter of a woman kidnapped and tortured by state forces took to the capital’s subway to tell her family story.
“There’s pain over here,” said Juan Pablo Moyano, a spokesperson for Abuelas. “But we have to pool together, and we have to keep going. … We have to keep talking about this issue. We have to keep alive the memory. We have to keep demanding justice. We have to keep looking for grandchildren.” He added: “I’m a human rights advocate now, and I’m going to die a human rights advocate.”
In particular, Moyano wants to intensify his organization’s youth outreach. Young people are credited with helping Milei’s rise from fringe political figure to Argentina’s presidential palace. Though young people supported Milei first and foremost because of the country’s economic tailspin, experts say a fading memory of the junta’s repression might have made it easier for younger generations to find Milei palatable. According to recent polling, younger Argentines are the most skeptical of democracy’s benefits.
Young people “got to grow up and develop their political and civic awareness at a time when many of these issues seemed to have been resolved. Many trials, for instance, had already taken place,” Bravo said. “To them, it feels like they don’t need to keep worrying about that topic when they have so many other pressing worries, from crime to unemployment. Sometimes it seems like it’s a luxury or a privilege to worry about things that happened 40 or 50 years ago.”
At the Córdoba gathering, Santucho Navajas said he hoped that young people would continue to seek out memory sites and ask questions. Near the back of the crowd hearing him speak was Augustina Benitez, 24. She tattooed a white handkerchief—the emblem of Abuelas—on her forearm, alongside the phrase “la lucha es para siempre”—“the fight is forever.”
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