RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: President Cuts Short Crisis Among Army Brass

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jun 12 1999 (IPS) - Argentine President Carlos Menem put an end to a crisis among the military brass by backing the army chief’s decision to relieve of his command a general who defended the repression waged by the 1976-83 military dictatorship, which ‘disappeared’ 10,000 to 30,000 people.

Menem signed a decree Monday ordering Gen. Eduardo Cabanillas into retirement, after Cabanillas refused to abandon his post on the General Staff, even though army chief Gen. Martin Balza asked him over the weekend to voluntarily retire.

Shortly before Menem issued the decree Monday, Cabanillas said that as head of the second army corps, which has troops in six provinces, he would only retire if asked by the president, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

“My functions have been designated by a government decree, and thus I must be relieved of my command” by the president, said the general.

He admitted that Balza had asked him to retire on Saturday, and that he had refused – although he denied that his refusal constituted insubordination.

The crisis first broke out in early April, when Argentine poet Juan Gelman accused Cabanillas of holding a post in the state secretariat of intelligence during the de facto regime, and of operating in a clandestine detention and torture centre.

Gelman’s son and daughter-in-law were abducted in 1976, and disappeared from the notorious detention centre known as “Automotores Orletti”. Although the remains of the writer’s son were found in 1989, his son’s wife and the baby to whom she gave birth in captivity are still missing.

In an open letter published by a leading local daily, Gelman challenged Balza to ask Cabanillas – who he said had worked in “Automotores Orletti” – if he knew where his (Gelman’s) grandson was.

Balza responded that Cabanillas denied working in that centre.

But the non-governmental Permanent Assembly for Human Rights accused the general of falsifying his records in order to obtain Senate approval of his promotion, and maintained that he had indeed taken part in the repression.

The Permanent Assembly asked that the general, a possible successor to Balza as of December, be tried by a military court of honour.

Two weeks ago, Cabanillas was tried by a court of honour. But before the ruling was handed down, a new scandal came to light – that Cabanillas had handed out copies of a book justifying the repression against supposed subversives during the dictatorship.

The general admitted that he had distributed, among officers of the second army corps, the book “Subversion: the Forgotten History”, which contains a version of events that runs counter to the army’s current human rights policy.

That policy is based on a historic “self-critique” issued by Balza in 1995 for the institution’s actions during the de facto regime. The army chief admitted that the institution had committed “excesses,” and established that it was not legal “to obey an illegal order.”