Gabriela Águila is a historian at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario and CONICET specializing in the 1976-1983 dictatorshipWhen the armed forces overthrew María Estela Martínez de Perón’s government in the early hours of March 24, 1976, the event caused almost no surprise. The coup was just one of many that had marked Argentine political life throughout the 20th century. That brutal violence was carried out by the armed forces and security forces, combined with a sweeping offensive against workers and their organizations. It also included pervasive authoritarianism, censorship, and the suppression of civil rights — a global process of unprecedented scope and character. Yet this singularity should not place the last dictatorship in an “abnormal” dimension — as if it were a historical aberration, severed from the social, political, and structural processes that preceded it.

Source: Bueno Aires Herald March 24, 2026 16:14 UTC