The Government of Argentina announced this Sunday its decision to declassify documentation found in military facilities related to the de facto government of Alejandro Agustín Lanusse (1971-1973).
The Ministry of Defense reported in a statement that the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, ordered the declassification of the meeting minutes of the board of commanders-in-chief in office between 1971 and 1973.
This documentation was found in the premises of the Argentine Air Force in May 2018 and contains information of “great historical and documentary value”, according to the Argentine authorities.
The first of these minutes is from March 23, 1971 and contains the confirmation of the Cabinet of Ministers by General Lanusse.
This series of minutes, the last of which dates from May 8, 1973, is sealed by the Government Planning and Action Secretariat.
According to official sources, although in the meetings documented in the minutes the participants could change from one session to another, the commanders-in-chief of each of the three armed forces and a secretary were present in all of them.
The assistance was completed with the presence of ministers and officials responsible for the areas about which the meeting discussed.
According to the statement, the search for various formulas to confront what they called “subversive actions” is slipping into the records, from a supposed legality, protected by its character as an armed apparatus of the State, to irregular actions and repression. “exemplary”.
For the Government of Alberto Fernández, the “best evidence of this procedure” is found in the crimes committed at the Almirante Zar Base, in the southern city of Trelew, on August 22, 1972, a massacre that will be 50 years old this Tuesday.
In August 1972, a total of 25 leftist insurgents fled from a prison and 19 of them were recaptured and placed in the Trelew base, some 1,500 kilometers south of Buenos Aires.
According to the Argentine authorities, 16 of them died when machine-gunned and 3 suffered serious injuries, in a massacre that has been declared a crime against humanity.
“On the 50th anniversary of the Trelew massacre, we present the publication in printed and digital format of these records that we have obtained thanks to the important work of the National Directorate of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law and its survey teams,” said the minister. of Defense, Jorge Taiana.
The declassification of these minutes, according to Taiana, seeks to “shed light on a shadowy past, with the firm commitment that the present and the future are only possible with more memory, truth and justice.”
