The Detenidos Desaparecidos (Disappeared Detainees) of state terrorism in Argentina are victims of forced disappearance before, during, and after the last civic-military dictatorship in Argentina, the National Reorganization Process, from 1976 to 1983. Held in clandestine detention centers, they were subjected to torture and, in many cases, killed. The first disappearances and clandestine detention centers began in 1975 under the constitutional government of Isabel Perón and continued until 1984 during the constitutional government of Raúl AlfonsÃÂn.
Declassified U.S. government documents from 2006 reveal that a Chilean intelligence agent reported in a 1978 cable to his superiors that Argentine military personnel from Battalion 601 estimated they had killed or disappeared approximately 22,000 people between 1975 and mid-1978. Around the same time, according to these documents, the then-U.S. ambassador in Buenos Aires, Robert Hill, stated: "It is our estimate that at least several thousand were killed, and we doubt it will ever be possible to establish a more specific figure."
Human rights organizations, unions, and most left-wing political parties traditionally assert that the number of disappearances is approximately 30000. In a 2009 letter, , then , used this figure, citing variables such as the number of detention and extermination centers, the proportion of habeas corpus petitions filed, and statements from the military themselves. He stated that "the figure of 30000 is neither arbitrary nor capricious, although it is regrettable to reduce the dimension of the Argentine tragedy to an accounting issue," as "the massive, criminal, and abject nature is not measured by arithmetic results, at least for those of us who believe that killing one person is killing humanity."
Conversely, some claim the figure was exaggerated, citing former Montonero Luis Labraña, who claimed to have "invented" the 30,000 figure to secure international recognition of the dictatorship's repression as genocide.
The Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, signed in 1994, classifies forced disappearance as a crime against humanity that is imprescriptible and defines it as follows:
The from 1976 to 1983 pursued political persecution, kidnapping, torture, and murder in a secretive and systematic manner within the framework of state terrorism in Argentina. These practices were also employed in other Latin American dictatorships under Operation Condor in South America and Operation Charly in Central America.
The use of forced disappearance by a totalitarian state seeks impunity by obscuring evidence of the crime, instilling terror in victims and society through uncertainty about the fate of the disappeared, and hindering citizens' ability to act while fostering division. Disappearance renders the opponent a homo sacer, a person who can be killed with impunity.
The practice of disappearance fundamentally relies on producing unknownness. Consequently, uncovering what happened, recovering collective memory, and demanding truth became central demands of victims and human rights organizations. A key slogan chanted during protest marches against the military government was: "The disappeared, tell us where they are!".
Forced disappearance exacerbates the repression and pain, as families struggle to accept the death of loved ones without closure, prolonging the search for their remains and the truth about their fate.
The system of forced disappearance was first formalized by Nazism through Hitler's Night and Fog Decree of December 7, 1941, reconstructed by the Nuremberg Trials. Nazi ideologues argued that the decree introduced a "fundamental innovation" in state organization: the system of forced disappearances.
The core order of the Night and Fog Decree was:
According to Hitler, other opponents were to be detained during "the night and fog" and clandestinely taken to Germany without any further information beyond the fact of their detention.
The decree's rationale explained:
The reconstructed text further specified:
In Argentina, a truck driver who witnessed the testified that when he asked a military officer about the fate of the bodies he was transporting, the officer replied: "They go to the fog of nowhere."
The Night and Fog Decree is cited as a precedent for Argentina's forced disappearance policy in some judicial rulings. Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón referenced it in a November 2, 1999, ruling ordering the prosecution of 98 Argentine military officers for crimes against humanity:
It was also referenced in a 2006 ruling by the Oral Criminal Court No. 1 of La Plata in the "Etchecolatz" case:
Forced disappearance as a repressive method was introduced in Argentina by the so-called "French military school" from the late 1950s. France suffered a catastrophic military defeat in 1954 at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu against the Viet Minh, ending the First Indochina War and paving the way for Vietnam's independence. This defeat against a militarily inferior but popularly supported force shocked the French armed forces, trained in conventional warfare. From this context, French military officers developed the concept of "subversive warfare," later replaced by the "doctrine of revolutionary warfare" (DGR).
Shortly after the Indochina defeat, France faced another independence war led by the Algerian National Liberation Front, which, like in Vietnam, had strong popular support. In this context, French Colonel Charles Lacheroy published La campagne dâÂÂIndochine, ou une leçon de guerre révolutionnaire in 1954, outlining tactical and strategic concepts developed over the previous two years. Lacheroy described revolutionary warfare as a "new type of war," "unconventional," where psychological action is critical, and the rearguard becomes more important than the troops. As the enemy is embedded in the population, the fight is less about territory and more about the "hearts" and "minds" of the local population. Lacheroy admitted that such wars require methods "repugnant to human conscience."
The French Army adopted LacheroyâÂÂs ideas and applied them in Algeria when the decolonization war began in November 1954. Torture and forced disappearance were explicitly used as weapons and applied systematically. Death squads were created to kidnap, interrogate under torture, and disappear individuals.
Colonel Marcel Bigeard, head of paratroopers in Algeria, detailed the operation in an interview:
General Paul Aussaresses further described the modus operandi:
Several authors have noted the connection between Nazi atrocities, Vichy France, the wars to preserve colonialism in Indochina and Algeria, and their persistence in the French far-right.
From May 1958, DGR techniques were taught at BigeardâÂÂs initiative. The courses used Colonel Roger TrinquierâÂÂs manual La guerra moderna, which openly justified torture. Held at the Paris War School, they included a month of "practice" in Algeria. The first students were Argentines, including General , selected by the Argentine General Staff to learn what became known in Argentina as the "French doctrine."
These techniques were transmitted to Argentine military officers at the Superior War School in Argentina and later at the School of the Americas.
The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, established by the United States in July 1963 in the Panama Canal Zone, was a key center for promoting the establishment of totalitarian dictatorships and the use of subversive terrorism, state terrorism, and drug trafficking in Latin America. Over 60,000 military and police personnel from up to 23 Latin American countries were trained there, including ideological training in the U.S. during the Cold War, torture techniques, and media manipulation. Among them were several criminals active in Argentina, including dictators Jorge Rafael Videla, Eduardo Massera, Roberto Eduardo Viola, and Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri.
In 1996, the United States declassified documents containing instructional manuals on the use of torture, extortion, and summary execution, targeting members of unions who "distributed propaganda in favor of leftist extremist groups or their interests," "sympathized with demonstrations or strikes," or made "accusations about the government's failure to meet the basic needs of the people."
One of the most notorious torture manuals was KUBARK, which described the process of torture by electric shock. The manuals were declassified by the CIA in 1994.
Critics, including PanamaâÂÂs newspaper La Prensa, dubbed it the "School for Assassins." Panamanian President Jorge Illueca called it "the gringo base for destabilizing Latin America." In a 1993 open letter to the Columbus Ledger Enquirer, former instructor Commander Joseph Blair stated: "In my three years of service at the School, I never heard anything about lofty goals like promoting freedom, democracy, and human rights. Latin American military personnel came to Columbus solely for economic benefits, opportunities to buy quality goods exempt from their countriesâ import duties, and free transportation, paid for by U.S. taxpayers." According to Democratic Senator Martin Meehan (Massachusetts): "If the School of the Americas held an alumni reunion, it would bring together some of the most infamous and undesirable thugs and wrongdoers in the hemisphere."
In 1976, a U.S. Democratic Party parliamentary commission during Jimmy Carter's administration acknowledged the criminal practices taught and promoted at the School and forced its suspension. In 1977, under the Torrijos-Carter Treaties regarding the Panama Canal, the U.S. agreed to PanamaâÂÂs demand to relocate the School to Fort Benning, Georgia.
General Jorge Rafael Videla explained in an interview with journalist MarÃÂa Seoane:
On U.S. television on September 14, 1977, Videla stated:
On the last Sunday of October 1979, a month after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights visited Argentina, Pope John Paul II publicly addressed the issue of the disappeared and those detained without trial in Argentina at St. Peter's Square. On December 13, 1979, Videla held a press conference in Buenos Aires, where journalist José Ignacio López asked him about the PopeâÂÂs statements, prompting a lengthy response invoking his Christian view of human rights, including the following reflection, which became historic:
Detentions were typically carried out by heavily armed military or paramilitary groups of four or five individuals, who coordinated with security forces to clear the area of operation. Victims were seized on the street, in bars, cinemas, their homes, or wherever they were at the time.
Once detained, they were taken to a clandestine detention center (up to 610 are estimated to have operated) where they were interrogated under systematic torture. In most cases, they were ultimately killed, and their bodies were disappeared through , buried in mass graves, or marked as unidentified (N.N.).
In the early years, although the media did not provide direct information about what was happening, they occasionally reported on detentions or the discovery of bodies:
Detentions were carried out by military and police forces, sometimes with active collaboration from civilian officials or authorities of the companies, schools, or universities the victims were associated with. No agency provided information on the victimsâ whereabouts to their families. Judges did not process the habeas corpus petitions filed, and in many cases, the lawyers filing these petitions were themselves disappeared.
In 1978, Chilean secret agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel sent a report listing some of the dead and disappeared between 1975 and July 1978 in Argentina, stating that up to that date, 22000 had been recorded. The document partially reveals the existence of individualized records of the disappeared, which were never acknowledged or found by those responsible.
Another U.S. Embassy document in Argentina, signed by the human rights officer Allen Harris, recounts that on December 22, 1978, the first secretary of the Nunciature, Kevin Mullen, reported that a senior government official informed Nuncio Pio Laghi that they "had been forced to âÂÂdeal withâ 15000 people in their anti-subversive campaign."
The initial list from the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights recorded 5,566 cases, roughly aligning with the 5,580 complaints filed in 1979 with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP), established at the end of the dictatorship by Raúl AlfonsÃÂnâÂÂs government, was tasked with directly receiving complaints from victims and their relatives and forwarding them to the civil judiciary. Over eight months, it received reports of 7,380 disappearances. After its report, the book Nunca Más, was published, the Secretariat of Human Rights continued receiving complaints, raising the number of reported disappeared to 8,961.
By 2003, the Argentine Secretariat of Human Rights had recorded approximately 13,000 cases.
In 2009, the National Memory Archive (ANM) recorded 7,140 victims of forced disappearance, 1,336 murdered victims, and 2,793 released/survivors, totaling 7380 victims. According to the ANM, CONADEPâÂÂs original records included 544 individuals mistakenly listed as disappeared and 1,009 cases that were either duplicated or merged with other records.
Dictator Jorge Rafael Videla himself suggested in an interview that the number of disappearances could reach "up to 30,000":
Human rights organizations, the union movement, and most political parties traditionally estimate the number of disappearances at a round figure of 30000. In a 2009 letter, , then , defended this number based on variables such as the number of detention and extermination centers, the proportion of habeas corpus petitions filed, and military statements. He stated that "the figure of 30000 is neither arbitrary nor capricious, although it is regrettable to reduce the Argentine tragedy to an accounting issue," as "the massive, criminal, and abject nature is not measured by arithmetic results, at least for those who believe that killing one person is killing humanity."
Dictatorship officials consistently denied responsibility for disappearances during the National Reorganization Process, sometimes claiming that the disappeared had gone into hiding voluntarily, were still alive, or had been killed by guerrilla organizations. Since then, a denialist current in Argentina has sought to negate the facts or dispute estimates of the number of disappeared.
In 1997, former carapintada military officer and ex-national deputy Aldo Rico questioned the disappearances, stating publicly that "If the opposition wins, many of the 11,600 disappeared will reappear." In 2001, actress also denied the 30,000 figure, claiming there were only "2,400 disappeared."
In 2003, former dictator Reynaldo Bignone, interviewed by French journalist Marie-Monique Robin, denied the 30,000 figure, stating there were "only 8,000, of which 1,500 were under their government."
In November 2013, Buenos Aires newspaper Perfil published an article in which Luis Labraña, a former Montoneros militant, claimed the 30,000 figure was invented by him to secure a subsidy. Later, Labraña reaffirmed this on television, stating the figure was fabricated while Montonero leaders were in Europe seeking subsidies from NGOs. According to journalist and human rights lawyer Pablo Llonto, LabrañaâÂÂs claim is false, as there are no records of his participation in the 1979 trips to the Netherlands by Madres de Plaza de Mayo. Llonto also notes that the 30,000 figure predates these trips, citing a January 24, 1978, El PaÃÂs article that mentions it.
On January 25, 2016, Buenos Aires Culture Minister and Colón Theater director DarÃÂo Lopérfido, from the Radical Civic Union, stated regarding the number of dictatorship victims: "There were not 30,000 disappeared in Argentina; that number was agreed upon at a closed table to secure subsidies." The state only subsidized the families of 9,334 reported disappeared.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel responded to Lopérfido:
Months later, Falklands War veteran, Army Major, former carapintada, and then-Customs Director Juan Gómez Centurión questioned the number of dictatorship deaths, stating, "ItâÂÂs not the same to have 8,000 truths as 22,000 lies." He also opposed the notion that the dictatorship involved a systematic and centralized plan of disappearance:
Upon assuming the presidency on December 10, 1983, President Raúl AlfonsÃÂn (1927âÂÂ2009) signed decrees creating the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) to investigate human rights violations from 1976 to 1983. Its investigation, documented in the book Nunca Más, was delivered to AlfonsÃÂn on September 20, 1984.
The Radical government ordered the prosecution of the main perpetrators of state terrorism in the Trial of the Juntas, with significant participation from prosecutor Julio César Strassera. The verdict sentenced members of the military juntas to penalties for crimes against humanity, including life imprisonment for the main culprits. This was the first time such perpetrators were tried using only the law, by the same courts that try any citizen, applying the criminal code in force in Argentina since 1922. This unprecedented event set a global precedent, leading to the inclusion of forced disappearance in the Penal Code, adopted by several countries, and its designation as a crime against humanity by the UN.
However, yielding to pressure from military sectors (and some civilian sectors), the National Congress passed the Due Obedience and Full Stop Laws, proposed by AlfonsÃÂnâÂÂs government, which extinguished criminal actions against mid-level participants in state terrorism.
The convicted remained imprisoned until 1990, when Justicialist President Carlos Menem pardoned them, allowing the release of those not prosecuted for other crimes not covered by the pardon, such as the appropriation of children born in captivity.
On April 15, 1998, Law 24.952 repealed the Full Stop (No. 23.492) and Due Obedience (No. 23.521) Laws, which were later declared "irremediably null" (Article 1) by Law 25.779 on September 2, 2003. On June 14, 2005, the Supreme Court of Argentina declared these laws unconstitutional and upheld the nullity law. Appeals to revoke the 1990 pardons are currently ongoing.
As of 2017, relatives, some organized in Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, continue searching for grandchildrenâÂÂchildren of the disappearedâÂÂwho were stolen and raised by other families, in some cases by the same military personnel involved in their parentsâ disappearance.
On August 4, 2006, the first direct perpetrator of disappearances was convicted: former Argentine Federal Police non-commissioned officer Julio Simón, also known as "Turco Julián," was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Simón had been protected by the Due Obedience and Full Stop Laws, which prevented new trials against repressors.
For over 25 years, laws like Due Obedience and Full Stop prevented Argentina from prosecuting all those accused of kidnappings, forced disappearances, torture, and murders during the military dictatorship. As a result, human rights organizations and families of the disappeared sought justice abroad. Since 1985, trials were opened in Italy for Italian-origin citizens disappeared in Argentina. The first trial concluded in Rome on December 6, 2000, with life sentences for generals Guillermo Suárez Mason and Omar Riveros. The Rome court also sentenced Juan Carlos Gerardi, José Luis Porchetto, Alejandro Puertas, Héctor Oscar Maldonado, and Roberto Julio Rossin to 24 years for the murder of Martino Mastinu.
In France, a trial was held for the kidnapping and murder of two French nuns. Lieutenant Commander Alfredo Astiz, alias "Angel of Death," was sentenced to life imprisonment. Later, criminal complaints against Argentine dictatorship members were filed in Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden. In Spain, trials began in 1996, and on April 19, 2005, former frigate captain Adolfo Francisco Scilingo, who had described the in Argentina, was sentenced to life imprisonment.
On July 11, 2001, the Nuremberg Court issued international arrest warrants for General Carlos Guillermo Suárez Mason for his role in the May 1977 murder of German sociologist Elisabeth Käsemann in Buenos Aires. On December 21, 2001, the same court issued warrants for Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera, Colonel Pedro Alberto Durán Sáenz, and General for their roles in KäsemannâÂÂs murder. Extradition requests to Germany were rejected by the .
On November 28, 2003, at the request of the Nuremberg prosecutorâÂÂs office, the court issued warrants for former member Jorge Rafael Videla, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera, and General Guillermo Suárez Mason for their roles in the murders of German citizens Elisabeth Käsemann and in Argentina.
European trials played a significant role in pressuring ArgentinaâÂÂs judiciary and government, which, nearly 30 years after the coup, annulled the impunity laws to prosecute those accused of human rights crimes during the dictatorship in Argentina, avoiding extradition demands from Spain, Italy, France, and Germany.
Numerous artistic works have centered on forced disappearance in Argentina (for example, FilmAffinity lists 46 fictional films related to state terrorism and the disappeared). Below is a brief list of some notable works:
Other artistic works address forced disappearance elsewhere in the world: