Retired military personnel gather to call for the release of former servicemen accused of human rights violations during the last dictatorship, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, November 29, 2025
FORMER military officers who served in Argentina’s brutal dictatorship and their families staged a rare rally at the weekend to push for the release of colleagues imprisoned for human rights abuses committed during the junta’s 1976-83 rule.
Saturday’s demonstration was seen as a provocation in the country of “nunca mas,” the slogan that represents Argentina’s commitment to “never again” return to authoritarianism.
Further raising tensions, the officers gathered in Plaza de Mayo, the historic site of protests by women searching for children who had been abducted, detained and “disappeared” by the junta. Circling the plaza in silent protest every Thursday for decades, the women became known as the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.
To the army officers’ critics, including dozens of counterprotesters who also flocked to Plaza de Mayo in central Buenos Aires on Saturday, the brazen rally marks a worrying sign that cracks are starting to appear in Argentina’s national consensus on the bloody legacy of the dictatorship.
In a dramatic shift from past administrations, far-right President Javier Milei has frequently sought to justify the dictatorship’s state terrorism as a messy war against left-wing guerillas.
Vice-President Victoria Villarruel has spent years advocating for Argentinians killed by left-wing guerillas, who she calls the “other victims” of terrorism.
The government is accused of attempting to legitimise the military’s systematic extrajudicial killing of as many as 30,000 civilians.
Alejandro Perez, whose uncle was disappeared by the dictatorship, said it terrified him to see veterans who participated in the deadly state repression “here in front of the government house, protected by police, protected by fences, being able to hold an event to demand the release of the few imprisoned genocidal criminals.”
Police cordoned off the ex-military officers’ demonstration, keeping them at a safe distance from angry counterprotesters who shouted insults and held signs bearing slogans such as “never again” and “the 30,000 are present.”
