Jorge Rafael Videla

Jorge Rafael Videla (August 2nd, 1925 - May 17th, 2013) was an Argentine military officer and dictator of Argentina from his coup de'tat in 1976 to 1981. His dictatorship was one of the many military dictatorships in South America established by Operation Condor during the Cold War.

Background

Videla first came to power after deposing President Isabel Perón in a successful military coup on March 24, 1976.

The chaotic rule of the Videla regime was known as the Dirty War. Like many other South American dictators like (such as Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Hugo Banzer in Bolivia) Videla had thousands arrested, killed, tortured  or kidnapped. He also had babies of mothers born in detention centers adopted by supporters of the regime. Particularly targeted by Videla's regime were leftist politicians or anyone who was believed to have left-wing sympathies. A death squad called the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance was formed specially to eliminate them.

Argentine Jews also served as prime targets of the Videla regime; between 1,900 and as high as 3,000 Jews were among the 30,000 who were targeted by the Argentine military junta. It is a disproportionate number, as Jews comprised between 5–12% of those targeted but only 1% of the population. Though the official reason given by the government (and some historians) was that there were many Jews that were members of the Leftist and Marxist rebel groups that opposed the dictatorship, but it has been widely accepted that the real reason was because of Anti-Semitism. Many torture victims were said to have seen pictures of Adolf Hitler  and swastikas on walls of torture chambers and interrogators uttering anti-Semitic epithets.

During a human rights investigation in September 1979, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights denounced Videla's government, citing many disappearances and instances of abuse. In response, the junta hired the Burson-Marsteller ad agency to formulate a pithy comeback: Los argentinos somos derechos y humanos (Literally, "We the Argentines are righteous and humane"). The slogan was printed on 250,000 bumper stickers and distributed to motorists throughout Buenos Aires to create the appearance of a spontaneous support of pro-junta sentiment, at a cost of approximately $16,117.