BigSoccer Tyrant Draft Selection Thread

If they do a movie about Peter the Great, the role of Peter the Great should be played by Peter Crouch.

 

Obviously I was not paying attention when I did this...Everybody after HertaBerwyn should be moved up a day. IOW, I draft on 4/13, not 4/14.

 

My favorite part about the tyrant in him...he would play "live" war games with his house staff. In one game, something like 21 people were killed.

 

So when is it my turn again?

 

Ok, I'll go ahead and Pick



JORGE RAFAEL VIDELA
ARGENTINA

You'll have to indulge me with this one. I'm going to follow it up with a long writeup, because I lived through it during my childhood and high school years.

Write up coming up.

 

Shenanigans. That was going to be my pick, but unfortunately, none of the people in front of me picked yet.

 

No shit. It's bad enough that people are legitimately taking my planned picks, but now I have to put up with people going Maradona on me as well?

 

VIDELA AND THE DIRTY WAR

Although the rule of the military junta in Argentina can be considered a team effort, there is no doubt that Videla is the main figure responsible for the usurpation of power and the dirty war that followed.

The ‘dirty war’ against leftist insurgents is estimated to have resulted in anywhere from 9000 to 30000 ‘dissappeared’, and many more illegal detentions and tortures. The regime is also responsible for the poorly planned invasion of the Malvinas which led to war against England, and also came close to a war with Pinochet’s Chile.

1) VIDELA DURING THE PRESIDENCY OF ISABEL PERON

Videla was appointed commander in Chief of the Army shortly after the death of Juan Domingo Peron, and at first he was an ally of President Isabel Peron, who was Peron’s wife and vice president and so became the new president.

During that time, leftist terrorists, primarily from an organization called E.R.P. with ties to Cuba and the Soviet Union were trying to create chaos in the country in the hope of achieving a Marxist revolution. They were responsible for bombings, kidnappings and murders.

The peronist party was divided. Some leftist extremists within the party formed the terrorist group ‘Montoneros’, which was somewhat allied to ERP, but Lopez Rega, a right winger close to Peron, controlled death squads called ‘La Triple A’, which targeted ERP and Montoneros members.

In the chaos that ensued after the death of Peron, Lopez Rega became the dominant figure, as he was able to control Isabel Peron completely. (He was a witch doctor with deep knowledge of the occult and Isabel was very superstitious). Isabel and Lopez Rega became very unpopular.

At first Videla supported Isabel and Lopez Rega, and when a group of rogue generals attempted to stage a coup and install him as president, he stood by Isabel.

During that time, Videla, under orders of Lopez Rega, organized a military campaign against the ERP, which had set up a terrorist camp in the northern province of Tucuman. Hundreds and possibly thousands were killed in that campaign.

But by 1976 as Isabel’s presidency became more inefficient and the country seemed to descend into anarchy, Videla deemed the time was ripe for usurping power.

2) USURPING POWER

Videla staged a military coup on March 24 1976. Isabel Peron was removed from power, congress was closed, the Supreme court also was relieved of its power, and a Junta formed by Videla, head of the army, Admiral Emilio Massera, head of the Navy, and Brigadier General Orlando Agosti, head of the air force, assumed complete control of the country. Videla was clearly the dominant figure in the triunvirate.

I remember it like it was yesterday . We were at school one morning, and suddenly over the loud speakers they started playing military marches. In between military marches, a number of announces were made, instructing the citizens how they should proceed. Basically a curfew was installed and all people were instructed to go home and await futher instructions. Those who did not followed the rules…’seran sentenciados a muerte’. (would be sentenced to death.) Of course we all went home and missed school for about a week. The messages kept playing over and over in every radio station and TV station from Argentina. Radio stations from neighboring Uruguay were silenced by playing loud noises on the same frequencies.

The situation had become so unstable during the last months of Isabel’s presidency, that at first most Argentines, while not supporting the junta, were not too upset at the events. Some even argued that the country needed ‘una mano dura’.

Videla justified his takeover by arguing that the coup was necessary to end ‘misrule, corruption and the scourge of subversion.’ He outlined a plan to wage what he called a counterrevolutionary war against the leftist subversives in order to bring the country back under control and restore stability. Given the state of the nation, most people gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Even the leftists, (and I know because I had an older friend who was involved in a leftist cell, who later fled the country and I never heard from him again), were pleased by the coup. They felt it would be easier to stage the Marxist revolution once the peronists were out of power. However they strongly underestimated Videla.

3) THE DIRTY WAR

Videla had planned ahead, and he quickly proceeded with what he called ‘El Proceso de Reorganizacion Nacional’ (process of National reorganization). The Junta and the military forces, with assistance from French veterans from the Algerian war, waged a brutal campaign against the subversives and everybody who opposed their rule. They closed all political parties, all civil courts, dissolved the labor unions, assumed tight control of all the media, and basically ruled by decree.

With support from the Catholic church and strong financial interests, as well as from the United States, they basically had a blank check. They began to systematically arrest all suspected of subversion.

At first people, tired of the chaos, approved. When rumors of disappearances began, people would say, ‘they probably deserve it, they are murderers and bomb throwers’. But slowly it began to dawn on people that a subversive was not just a terrorist, but anybody who had what Videla considered to be ‘dangerous ideas.

As stories of arrests, illegal detentions, tortures and disappearances began to spread, Videla and the junta became hugely unpopular. Also the media could not hide the fact that the regime was very unpopular abroad. At first the US, and Kissinger in particular, had supported Videla and given him legitimacy. But when Carter became president, he strongly denounced the human right abuses, and so did the Europeans. Videla denied the excesses, while the Argentine media argued against ‘an international campaign to discredit Argentina’, but people were not buying it anymore.

4) THE AFTERMATH OF THE DIRTY WAR

By 1979, the war against the subversives was basically over, thousands had been killed, and stories of the most horrible tortures were being spread, as well as rumors of people being thrown out of airplanes into the ocean. The leftist attacks had completely ceased, and there really was no justification for the continued repression, and yet Videla did not loosen his grip on power. They established strict moral guidelines and censured everything, from music to sexual content to political ideas. Powerful people connected to the government benefited from corrupt practices. Common practices including appropriating the businesses and assets of people who had disappeared, and also taking their children and giving them up for adoption to families connected to the government.

Yet an underground movement began to swell to oppose the government. Underground newspapers flourished, and rock bands spread the message to young people. A group of mothers began gathering at Plaza de Mayo in front of the government house, and as people began to defy the government. By this time most Argentines knew at least one person who had disappeared. My family knew of a couple. As people became more and more outraged, Videla’s grip on power began to wane.

5) THE JUNTA AFTER VIDELA

By 1981 Videla was so unpopular that he decided to resign. He was replaced by General Viola, who belonged to a faction of the military that was more moderate (in relative terms).

Viola tried to reach out to the Argentine people, and he loosened many of the restrictions and allowed more freedoms. But as the military wasn’t willing to give up power, and they continued to justify the dirty war and deny the atrocities. The loosening of restriction was enough for the United States (now led by Ronald Reagan) to solidify its support of the Junta, but the people of Argentina were not buying it. Viola was largely inefficient in his modest attempt at reconciliation, and in less than a year, General Leopoldo Galtieri, a hard liner allied to Videla, staged a coup and removed Viola.

Galtieri is believed by many to have been a puppet and a drunk, but under his regime the Junta tightened again the controls that Viola had loosened. In response, people took to the streets and marched against the Junta, and we were willing to risk death and torture to achieve our goal. But the Junta by then was toothless. Risking loss of support by the Church and the international community, they were unwilling to resort to the types of brutal measures of their earlier days. By March of 1982, It certainly looked to us like the Junta was on its last legs.

But Galtieri and the Junta had one last card to play. On April 2nd 1982 Argentina invaded the Islas Malvinas, which had been held by England since 1833 but always strongly claimed by Argentina. For a short time, nationalistic feeling won over the outrage and people rallied for the country and against what Argentines consider to be the British colonialist presence in the South Atlantic.

But after the humiliating defeat, the game was over for the Junta. Democracy was restored in 1983.

6) VIDELA'S LATER FATE AND THE HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISION FINDINGS

General Videla was arrested by the new democratic government of Alfonsin, and sentenced to prision. A commission called ‘nunca mas’ (never again) was established to investigate the disappearances. It documented 8960 cases, and later another approximately 3000 cases were documented. So officially there are approximately 12000 people documented as disappeared. But many more cases are believed to exist, as many cases were not documented, and it’s believed lots of families just didn’t want to go through the process as it was too painful.

I quote an article about the findings of the commission ‘nunca mas”

In 1985 Videla and other military leaders were tried. Videla was convictes of multiple cases of homicide, aggravated false arrest, torture, torture resulting in death, and robbery. He was sentenced to life in prision.

However, the military still had great power, and under pressure and threats of violence, all sentences were reduced. Videla only served four years.

In 1990 president Menem, under a plan of reconciliation, granted pardons to all the members of the military junta, as well as military officers and leftist insurgents who were in jail at the time. Videla was one of those officers pardoned.

In 1998, Videla was arrested in a case brought by the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo for allowing and concealing the abduction of five babies born to women held in secret detention centers during the dirty war. In a technicality, it was ruled that these crimes were not covered by the pardon, and he was arrested and jailed. Later due to poor health he was placed under house arrest, where he remains to this day.

Since then, the Argentine congress has reversed the pardons of members of the Argentine Junta, and the Supreme Court has ruled that the pardons were unconstitutional. Many officers have been rearrested and Videla was once again inducted for his crimes

 

Take him if you want, I just wanted to do the writeup, since I lived through it.