Starting Points: Argentina

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Dec 28, 2009

Argentina puts officials on trial over the abuses of the 'Dirty War'

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By Juan Forero
Washington post foreign service
Monday, December 28, 2009; A08

They are old and balding now, the 15 defendants standing trial before a three-judge panel near the Argentine capital's bustling port. But prosecutors say they were once the feared henchmen of a brutal military dictatorship.

Argentina has tried military men before. But this trial, of officers and policemen who ran clandestine torture centers known as the Athletic Club, the Bank and Olimpo, is one of a string of new proceedings that by next year will close some of the most emblematic cases of alleged state terrorism under Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship.

With former generals and admirals well into their 70s and the courts emboldened to hand down severe penalties, Argentina is finally close to delivering justice for the estimated 30,000 people killed by state security services during the "Dirty War," including some who were thrown from airplanes after being tortured and sedated.

"I think and I hope this is the beginning of the end of a long process that began in 1983 with the return of democracy," said Gastón Chillier, director of the Center for Legal and Social Studies, a Buenos Aires rights group. "Next year will be especially critical."

The trials in Argentina come as other South American countries grapple with delivering justice for the victims of dictatorships and government-linked death squads.

In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is proposing a commission to investigate allegations of torture by the military during that country's 1964-1985 dictatorship. In Peru, a former president, Alberto Fujimori, was convicted of murder in April for death-squad activities during his 10-year rule. And in Colombia, army generals and colonels accused of widespread human rights abuses are for the first time being investigated by civilian prosecutors.

Among the countries that have most aggressively sought to address past crimes is Chile, which has convicted 277 members of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's 16-year dictatorship of myriad rights abuses, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch.

But no country has gone after former state agents as sweepingly as Argentina.

Using ordinary penal law and the criminal courts, prosecutors have won about 60 convictions since 2005 against defendants accused of violating human rights. An additional 627 former military officers, policemen and officials have been charged. In all, 325 cases are open nationwide, most involving former members of the security services accused of kidnapping and killing leftists, according to the Center for Legal and Social Studies.

Achieving justice has not been easy. Barracks revolts in the 1980s led to a "full-stop" law that ended investigations and a "due obedience" law that absolved those who said they were following the orders of superiors, a defense rejected at the Nuremberg trials. In the 1990s, President Carlos Menem pardoned those who had been convicted.

But in 2005, Argentina's Supreme Court annulled the amnesties, and a revitalized judicial system began to prosecute. Convictions have been won against once-influential figures in Argentina's security forces, including Luciano Menéndez, a former regional army commander, and Miguel Etchecolatz, a former Buenos Aires provincial police commissioner.

Now, though, the men on the block include some of the dictatorship's most notorious figures.

Among them are former Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, who led the junta that governed after a 1976 coup, and Argentina's last dictator, Reynaldo Bignone. There is also Alfredo Astiz, nicknamed "Blond Angel of Death." Using his boyish good looks, prosecutors say, Astiz infiltrated a leading human rights group in 1977. That led to the abduction and murder of three of the group's founders, a journalist and two French nuns.

In a trial that began Dec. 11, Astiz and 18 others are accused of plying their trade at the Navy Mechanics School, which processed 5,000 prisoners, most of whom never came out alive. Next year, trials begin for those charged with participating in Operation Condor, in which dictatorships across much of South America cooperated in hunting down and killing leftists.

Estela de Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a rights group, said justice is being served.

"We are giving the predators the opportunity they never gave our children," said de Carlotto, whose daughter was abducted and never seen again. "We are giving them the opportunity to defend themselves in court, to speak out, to have a just process. But we are also asking for convictions."

The courts here have requested declassified U.S. cables that detail what the United States knew about Argentine military operations in the war against leftist guerrilla groups.

Carlos Osorio, who oversees the Argentina project for the National Security Archive, a Washington policy group that compiles government documents, said Argentine prosecutors may end up using several hundred of about 8,000 declassified State Department documents. Those papers show how U.S. Embassy officials compiled reports on such issues as the pursuit of suspected guerrillas outside Argentina's borders and details on the abductions by Argentine intelligence operatives. Osorio said Argentina's ambassador in Washington, Héctor Timerman, has been petitioning the CIA and other agencies to open their files on Argentina.

"The documents that have been declassified are very rich, but there are some holes, and they can be filled with the documents in the hands of the American intelligence agencies," Osorio said.

Delia Barrera, who was tortured in the Athletic Club detention center in 1977, is now among the witnesses for the prosecution. Speaking outside the courtroom on a recent day, she recalled how her husband told her to fight on for him after he was led away by military officers. She never saw him again.

"For me, this is a fight for justice, for memory, for truth -- it's a commitment for life," she said. "Everything I do and will continue to do, until the last day of my life, is a commitment with those words, which have stayed with me in my soul."

Aug 29, 2009

South American Leaders Assail U.S. Access to Colombian Military Bases - washingtonpost.com

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By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 29, 2009

BOGOTA, Colombia, Aug. 28 -- South American leaders meeting Friday at a special summit in Argentina lashed out at the United States and Colombia over an agreement that gives Washington access to seven military bases in this country.

The tension in the publicly televised meeting eased after the leaders unanimously agreed to a vague resolution that says no foreign military force should be allowed to threaten the sovereignty of a South American nation.

But the tone of the criticism and the apparent unease about U.S. American motives during the seven-hour meeting underscore the hurdles President Obama faces in trying to improve relations with countries that have distanced themselves from Washington in the past decade. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of regional power Brazil, said Obama should explain his administration's objectives, while the leaders of Ecuador and Venezuela warned that an expanded U.S. presence threatens their security.

"You are not going to be able to control the Americans," said Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa, locking eyes with Colombian President Álvaro Uribe. "This constitutes a grave danger for peace in Latin America."

Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin American program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said the agreement's scope and the secrecy of the negotiations between Washington and Bogota have generated controversy over what has always been a hot-button issue in Latin America: the deployment of U.S. troops.

"It's hurt the Obama administration's credibility in the region at a time when the administration was attempting to really set a different path in U.S.-Latin America relations that was multilateral, that involved working with allies," Arnson said, speaking from Washington by phone. U.S. relations with some countries in the region, particularly Venezuela, were in tatters by the end of President George W. Bush's term, she said.

"It's certainly the case that Chávez and his allies in the region have been the most vocal opponents," Arnson said, referring to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's hostility to the base access plan. "But it says a lot that countries like Brazil and Chile were also opposed to this."

Since some details of the defense cooperation agreement between Bogota and Washington became public last month, governments from Ecuador to Argentina have questioned why Uribe would permit the United States long-term access to three air bases, two army installations and two naval ports. Colombian officials have said that the United States has expressed particular interest in stationing surveillance planes at the German Olano de Palanquero air base, strategically located in Colombia's geographic heart.

Uribe told the presidents meeting in the Patagonian resort of Bariloche that the U.S. assistance was necessary to fight drug-trafficking and Marxist rebels but that the bases remained Colombian, not American. Colombian officials have also said that U.S. servicemen and planes have been operating in Colombia for years and that the agreement merely formalizes a string of old accords and cuts bureaucratic hurdles.

The Colombian leader, a stalwart caretaker of Washington's war on drugs, arrived in Argentina with the challenge of assuaging Chávez. All this month, Chávez has warned that the base plan could lead to war and prompt him to break diplomatic relations with Colombia. He has also said his country would curtail Colombian imports and start investigating Colombian companies operating in Venezuela.

Speaking to the other presidents on Friday, Chávez read a long document that he said demonstrated that the United States is planning a war on South America. "This is the global strategy of the United States," he said. "That's the reason for this. It's the reason why they're talking about those bases."

The document, which is public, is an unofficial, academic paper -- some 14,000 words long -- that explains the importance of more than 40 bases worldwide for U.S. air mobility.

The concerns of Colombia's neighbors have been heightened by Uribe's ties to the United States, which has historically been viewed with suspicion by leftist leaders on the continent. Ecuador has also repeatedly warned that Colombia is a threat to its sovereignty since March 2008, when Colombian planes bombed a Colombian rebel camp just inside Ecuador, killing two dozen guerrillas.

Referring to the document that Chávez read, Correa said the United States was treating the region like a colony and that its planes could be used "for intervention in other countries."

Uribe, though, described the agreement with the United States as irreversible, and Chávez was unable to muster support for his effort to have the pact officially condemned. Uribe also forcefully criticized Venezuela, both directly and indirectly.

He said that arms "from other countries" have been supplied to Marxist rebels here, and he accused Venezuela of giving refuge to two top guerrilla commanders, Luciano Marin Arango and Rodrigo Londoño. Uribe also noted that Chávez had publicly eulogized a guerrilla commander who was killed last year.

The Colombian leader stressed that, with U.S. support, his country had curtailed violence generated by the long, drug-fueled conflict that has plagued this country.

"We are not talking about a political game, we are talking about a threat that has spilled blood in Colombian society," Uribe said.

Aug 16, 2009

Doctored Data Cast Doubt on Argentina

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 16, 2009

BUENOS AIRES -- Workers at the government's National Institute of Statistics call it crass manipulation: Their agency, under pressure from above, altered socioeconomic data to reflect numbers palatable to the presidency. Inflation and poverty miraculously dropped, they said in interviews, and the economy boomed.

At least officially.

"They just erased the real numbers," said Luciano Belforte, an 18-year veteran at the institute. "Reality did not matter."

The alleged manipulation, which is under investigation by anti-corruption prosecutors, has angered Argentines. But in a globalized world, where a pensioner in Italy might be as likely to invest in Argentina as in Fiat, the suspected modifications are being felt far beyond this city.

In fact, an association of community college professors in New Jersey, a cattleman in Colorado and a Latino business group in California say they too are being shortchanged because they hold Argentine bonds. By underreporting inflation figures, economists say, Argentina is cheating investors of proper compensation on nearly $50 billion in debt benchmarked to inflation.

"The way these bonds work is that every month, or every six months, the principal adjusts for inflation," said Robert Shapiro, co-chair of the American Task Force Argentina, a Washington group lobbying for Argentina to pay its debt to American investors. "So if inflation is actually 30 percent, and they're only adjusting 10 percent, that's a huge loss."

Kathy Malachowski, president of the New Jersey professors group, said its pension plan invests in Argentine bonds. "We want to be able to retire and know that our money is going to be there," she said.

Officials at the Economy Ministry, the presidency and the INDEC, as the statistics institute is known, declined interview requests. A spokesman for the Economy Ministry, Sergio Poggi, said the new minister, Amado Boudou, is undertaking a review of INDEC methodology going back to 1999 and is creating a technical council of academics to advise the institute.

"This is the best way for all of us to be sure that things are being done correctly," President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said last month.

But credit-rating agencies and financial investment companies, among them Credit Suisse, say they are skeptical anything will change.

The problems at the INDEC, recounted in interviews with seven current workers and one former administrator, began in late 2006 during the presidency of Fernández de Kirchner's predecessor, her husband, Néstor Kirchner.

In accounts backed up by a 91-page complaint by prosecutors, institute employees recalled incessant phone calls from high-ranking government officials who wondered aloud whether there was a way to arrive at lower inflation numbers.

In early 2007, several statisticians, data-entry clerks and field workers who collect consumer prices were replaced, the prosecutors' investigation has shown. The institute then began to report lower inflation figures, which are used to calculate poverty rates, economic growth and other statistics, according to documents at the attorney general's office.

"It's a maneuver that brought economic consequences and a lack of credibility in the information produced by the Argentine state," said Manuel Garrido, the former anti-corruption prosecutor who brought the case.

Economists say the official inflation rate of 8.5 percent in 2007 was really about 25 percent. In the 12 months ended this June, the INDEC put the rate at 5.3 percent, but economists say it might be three times higher. Argentina's vaunted economic growth this decade might have been exaggerated, too. Credit Suisse said the 7 percent expansion the government reported last year is likely 2 to 3 percent lower.

Political analysts and economists say the allegations have hurt the country's credibility with investors and its ability to access foreign credit, a market closed to Argentina after its 2001 default on $95 billion.

"It's very difficult to analyze the country as a result of statistics that can't be believed," said Fergus McCormick, senior vice president at DBRS, a New York credit-rating agency that tracks Argentina.

The controversy at the INDEC has cast a spotlight on a vital, if little understood, practice of economic planning -- the collection of socioeconomic data. Authorities use the data to set salaries and direct social services. Companies use the information to make long-term plans.

Government critics say officials in Néstor Kirchner's administration began fiddling with the INDEC figures as his wife's campaign to succeed him gathered momentum ahead of the October 2007 election.

Even so, by the spring of 2008, months after taking office, Fernández de Kirchner's popularity had plummeted after the country's powerful agricultural sector revolted against her economic policies. Analysts here say that disbelief over the INDEC figures -- polls showed that only one in 10 Argentines trusted official inflation figures -- further tarnished her image. In June, her ruling coalition was trounced in midterm congressional elections.

Raúl Cabral, who helps run the 120-year-old Progreso food market, said skepticism about the government's data has generated antipathy toward the Kirchners. "The inflation takes away their credibility," Cabral said. "They talk of inflation of 4 percent, and a liter of milk goes from one to two pesos."

What prosecutors call the illegal and arbitrary recording of economic data is said to have first taken place in January 2007. That was when a team headed by Graciela Bevacqua, a mathematician who oversaw the collection of consumer prices, tabulated that month's inflation at nearly 2 percent. Officials, though, released a 1.1 percent rate, said Bevacqua, whose account was backed up by the prosecutors' complaint.

"It was mathematically impossible," said Bevacqua, who no longer works at the institute.

Statisticians, mathematicians and survey-takers who still work at the INDEC described how managers stopped surveying products that had recorded steep price hikes. "If something went up more than 15 percent, they'd take it off the list," said Marcela Almeida, a mathematician and one of several workers deposed by prosecutors.

Almeida said managers would obsess about certain products, such as bread, urging surveyors to come back to the INDEC office with prices that remained low. If they were not low enough, Almeida said, "the person who received their forms would change this price."

The controversy has raised questions about the government's official poverty figure. The INDEC's calculation is 15.3 percent; the Catholic Church says it is closer to 40 percent. After Pope Benedict XVI called poverty in Argentina a "scandal" this month, the government acknowledged that as many as 23 percent of Argentines might be poor.

But economists, among them Juan Bour, of the Latin American Foundation for Economic Investigations, said they expect no major changes in the INDEC's data-gathering. "It would be a recognition of significant failure," Bour said.