Jorge Rafael Videla

Jorge Rafael Videla (born August 2, 1925, Mercedes, Argentina—died May 17, 2013, Buenos Aires) was a career military officer who was president of Argentina from 1976 to 1981. His government was responsible for human rights abuses during Argentina’s “Dirty War,” which began as an attempt to suppress terrorism but resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians.

The son of an army colonel, Videla graduated from the National Military College in 1944 and was commissioned in the Argentine army. He rose steadily through the ranks, becoming a brigadier general by 1971. Videla was appointed chief of the Army General Staff in 1973, and in 1975 Pres. Isabel Perón, under pressure from the military establishment, appointed him commander in chief. From this position he began a reorganization of the military leadership, removing officers sympathetic to Peronism. In 1975 he led an army campaign against the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP) in Tucumán province, which resulted in the death of hundreds of Marxist guerrillas. After leading the military coup that deposed Isabel Perón on March 24, 1976, Videla became president of Argentina as head of a three-man (later a five-man) military junta including Gen. Orlando Ramón Agosti and Adm. Eduardo Emilio Massera.

As Argentina’s new president, Videla faced a government riddled by corruption, a collapsing economy racked by soaring inflation, and a society under armed assault from both left-wing guerrillas such as the ERP and right-wing Peronist groups. Videla suspended Congress and vested legislative powers in a nine-man military commission; halted the functioning of the courts, political parties, and labour unions; and filled all key government posts with military personnel. Hundreds of persons suspected of being left-wing guerrillas were arrested by the military and its right-wing allies in the last week of March 1976 alone, and thousands more “disappeared” over the next few years, apparently murdered.

Videla also took measures to restore economic growth, reversing Peronism in favour of a free-market economy. His economic measures were moderately successful, but his continued campaign against the left elicited strong international criticism, particularly after he broadened the scope of political arrests and executions to include journalists, educators, and intellectuals. The official estimate of those killed was 9,000, but other sources estimate that between 15,000 and 30,000 people were killed by the military and right-wing death squads during Videla’s presidency, and many others suffered torture and imprisonment.

Videla retired in 1981 and was succeeded by Gen. Roberto Viola. After Argentina returned to civilian rule in December 1983, charges were brought against various former junta leaders for the human rights abuses committed by the military during the Dirty War. Videla was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1985, but in 1990 he was pardoned by Pres. Carlos Saúl Menem. In 1998, however, a federal judge determined that this pardon did not apply to charges that had surfaced after 1990. Among those charges were allegations that, during the Dirty War, Videla had facilitated the kidnapping of babies born to prisoners and then adopted by couples with military connections. Videla was formally charged with abduction and placed under house arrest in 1998. In 2007 an Argentine court overturned the pardon granted to him in 1990—a decision that reinstated his 1985 life sentence. Videla remained under house arrest until 2008, when he was transferred to prison. A trial in which the elderly Videla faced additional murder charges opened in 2010. Later that year he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. In 2012 Videla was found guilty of overseeing the systematic abduction of babies born to political prisoners, and he received a 50-year sentence.