The military were traditionally viewed as the state’s instrument for defending sovereignty and maintaining domestic order. After World War II this view changed, in complex ways. According to some authors the Argentine military hoped to become a continental or even a world power and aspired to rule the Antarctic and South Atlantic. Books written by civilians promoted the idea of the “manifest destiny of the Argentine people” – the country’s influence stretching beyond its boundaries – which supported the military’s world view.22 Yet the military had few opportunities for war and there was little threat from other nations. Despite continuing border disputes with Chile, war against either Chile or Brazil, past and potential enemies, was highly unlikely for geographic and political reasons.23 Other neighbors were friendly or weak or both. Lacking opportunities for self-defense or conquest, the army sought a new rationale for its existence in fighting against revolution, defending the nation and Christian civilization against communism.
The political instability, turmoil, and terrorism in Argentina (to which the military substantially contributed) greatly threatened the military’s view of itself as protector of the nation’s traditions, well-being, and public order. The military came to see it as their primary role to protect the state from subversion by alien forces and ideas, preserve essential Argentine values, and maintain internal purity.
The military attacked all who might possibly, even in the remotest way, be or become the enemy. This overgeneralization in the selection of victims occurred partly because of their view that all the forces that might change traditional values and the status quo were subversive, partly because of the nature of the terrorist activity. In one instance, for example, the house of General Cardozo, the chief of the Federal Police, was blown up by a bomb left under his bed by a school friend of his daughter while she was a guest in the house.24 It seemed that anyone might be a terrorist.
Edwardo Crawley offers a view of the Argentine military consistent with my perspective on the psychology of perpetrators. In his view, when the police proved unable to control terrorism and the military took up the task, its self-respect demanded that the guerrillas’ status should be enhanced.
So the guerrilas became demonized. The few thousand armed fighters began to be portrayed as merely the tip of the iceberg, which consisted not only of the “surface” organizations of the left, but of a vast subversive conspiracy which, according to the military, had already taken hold of every aspect of life in Argentina. There was the “ideological subversion” that pervaded the universities, the press, the arts, some professions like psychiatry and sociology; there was the “economic subversion” detectable in the adoption of policies aimed at destroying the national economy; there was the infiltration of the state apparatus, and an orchestrated campaign to destroy the family and morals, to falsify history and corrode all traditional values.25
A 1980 government publication on Terrorism in Argentina provides insight into the mind of the military. Behind the terrorism the military saw foreign Marxist influence. Argentina had been targeted for destruction by its enemies, the communists, whose “ideology of death” had come to dominate all domains of national life: education, the economy, justice, culture, and labor. In different appendixes, the infiltration in each realm is described in detail. For example, the following refers to preelementary and elementary schools.
Subversive operations were carried out by biased teachers who, because of their pupils’ age, easily influenced their minds’ sensibility. The instruction was direct, using informal talks and readings of prejudiced books published to that effect. Using children’s literature, terrorism tried to convey the kind of message which would stimulate children, and make room for self-education, based on freedom and the search for “alternatives.”26
The schools, instead of instructing children in their parents’ values, inculcated “self-development” and rebelliousness in an attempt to destroy the family.
These views are similar, in their image of an enemy threatening both essential identity and survival, to the ideologies guiding the perpetrators in other genocides and mass killings. In the Argentine case, enhancing the enemy made difficult life conditions and social upheavals more understandable. The military blamed civilian politicians for all failures of society, but given its dominance in Argentine society, it required additional psychological maneuvers to avoid feeling responsible. It was the pervasiveness of the enemy that explained the failure of the military as the nation’s guardian.
Crawley’s analysis also highlights the fact that for the first time in many years, the military felt needed in the fight against a real enemy – “someone who made sense of the long years of training, the military mystique, the long sacrificial years of barrack boredom; someone who enabled the professional soldier to test his own mettle, his skills, his self abnegation and patriotism.”27
Following the example of its Brazilian counterpart, the Argentine military adopted a
sweeping doctrine of national security.. In its essentials, the national security doctrine regards domestic political struggles as an expression of a basic East-West conflict and sees Marxist penetration and insurgency as an all-prevading presence of a new type of enemy fighting a new type of war. Civilians are also warriors, ideas a different form of weapon.28
The ideology was directly expressed in many statements by military leaders. For example, as reported in April 29, 1976, in the newspaper La Razon, the head of the Fourteenth Regiment of the Airborne Infantry, Lieutenant Colonel Jorge Eduardo Gorleri, had this to say to journalists who were invited as witnesses to the public burning of books by Marxist authors or by those with a similar philosophy: [We] “are going to burn ‘pernicious literature which affects our intellect and our Christian way of being...and ultimately our most traditional ideals, encapsulated in the words God, Country and Home.’”29
In sum, the officers’ fascist inclinations, their preference for centralized bureaucratic rule, their elevation of the nation over the individual, their loyalty to religious traditions, their nationalism, militarism, and
