Catholic Church leads struggle against whitewashing of Argentinian dictatorship

SÃO PAULO, Brazil – In Argentina, the Catholic Church is one of the most active institutions resisting President Javier Milei’s policy of dismantling efforts to memorialise the military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983), according to a leading sociologist.

Over the past few months, the libertarian Milei has implemented several measures to reduce the social relevance of state institutions created since the 1980s to safeguard documents and historical items connected to the regime, which claimed at least 30,000 lives.

Even the number of victims of the military junta that seized control of the South American nation in 1976 has been continually challenged by Milei since his presidential campaign. He argues that fewer than a third of the traditionally estimated 30,000 victims were actually killed.

Milei’s administration’s attacks on the pillars of the policy of memory, truth, and justice are not only ideological – with a fierce denial of the crimes perpetrated by the regime – but also material.

Over the past few months, he has dismissed hundreds of state employees working in agencies connected to preserving the memory of the regime’s horrors, such as cultural centres and state archives.

In this process, nongovernmental organisations like the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo – groups that seek to locate the children of dictatorship victims who were given to adoptive families by the junta – have played an important role.

However, the Catholic Church has been the most influential institution in assuming such a stance.

“There is great social fragmentation in Argentinian society at this point. At the same time, this administration’s policy of cruelty is disconcerting. Many groups in the opposition can’t find adequate rhetoric now,” said Fortunato Mallimaci, an expert in religion and a professor at the University of Buenos Aires.

The Church, long accused of being close to the regime – with allegations that Catholics even assisted in stealing dissidents’ babies and giving them to other families – is now a major institution in the symbolic opposition to Milei, Mallimaci told Crux.

“The Church not only has a very significant social presence, but it also has a solid doctrine that provides the foundations for its criticism of Milei’s policies against human rights,” he added.

Since the beginning of Milei’s government, the Church has criticised his economic reforms, which have included cuts to relief programmes and pensions. The radical ideas promoted by him and his administration have also been condemned by Catholics on several occasions.

On January 3, after hundreds of workers in memory, truth, and justice agencies were dismissed, Father Lorenzo “Toto” de Vedia, a well-known slum priest in Buenos Aires, celebrated Mass at the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), a major illegal detention centre during the regime that now serves as a museum and site of memory.

The Mass was organised after a Catholic employee asked the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires to intervene. Father Toto confirmed this during the celebration.

“The bishops of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires have asked me to celebrate this Mass, showing clear concern for the dismissal of so many workers from the former ESMA. Thus, we are present, also representing the priests from working-class neighbourhoods and shantytowns throughout the country,” he told the participants, among them long-time human rights activists like Nobel Peace Prize recipient Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.

Father Toto also remarked that “memory is very necessary to stop making mistakes against the most disadvantaged in society.”

“The commitment to truth must compel us to fight against so many deceptions that our working people continue to suffer. May the mother of the Argentine people, the Virgin of Luján, protect us so that we can continue to accompany those who are falling and need to rise,” he added.

One of the groups present at the Mass was the Curas por la Opción por los Pobres (Priests for the Option for the Poor), which has been among the most vocal Catholic opponents of Milei.

Spanish-born Father Francisco “Paco” Olvera, one of its members, expressed fears about the risk of relevant documents and other items being destroyed or simply “lost” now that the government is promoting a wave of attacks on memory institutions.

“They are shutting down these entities now, and we cannot know what we will encounter when they are eventually reopened,” Father Paco told Crux.

He criticised the administration’s “denialist” stance regarding the “real genocide suffered by the Argentinian people during the civil-ecclesiastical-military dictatorship,” a view that goes beyond the “theory of two demons,” which attempts to equate the acts of violence perpetrated by dissidents with the repression by state agents.

“The Church has been involved in the struggle against this, as demonstrated by the January 3 Mass. But it would have been much stronger and more beautiful if the archbishop himself had presided over the celebration,” Father Paco said.

Mallimaci noted that Milei has repeatedly claimed that memory institutions are full of “Peronists” and “leftists” and that it is necessary to cleanse the state of such “progressives.” His attacks on the rights of women, social minorities, and the concept of social justice have yet to face coherent opposition from political parties, Mallimaci added.

“The most innovative element in Argentinian society now is that the Catholic Church has been playing the role of institutional opposition to the government,” he said.

Demonstrators hold portraits of people who disappeared during the military dictatorship (1976-1983) during a march to commemorate the 47th anniversary of the coup at Plaza de Mayo Square in Buenos Aires on March 24, 2023.  (Photo by LUIS ROBAYO/AFP via Getty Images.)

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