BUENOS AIRES (CN) — It was 10 years ago that Serena Ferro, now 18, heard about the last Argentine dictatorship for the first time. Her parents took her to the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory, built in one of the over 50 places that the military junta used to carry out their crimes, known as “clandestine centers.”
“I decided, at that time, that I would try my best to talk about what had happened, and to demand justice,” she said. “So that no one would ever question its relevance or undermine its seriousness.”
On Monday, Argentina’s National Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice, Ferro and her friends were among hundreds of thousands who marched to the central square Plaza de Mayo.
The march — organized all across the country by human rights organizations, center and leftist political parties, unions and unaffiliated groups every March 24 — commemorates the anniversary of the last military coup, which began in 1976 and lasted until December 1983.
This year, the march happened amid tensions with the federal government, which questions the legitimacy of the claims and has defunded, if not shut down, several programs to keep the process known as “memory, truth, and justice” alive — the motto that the organizations have used from the beginning of their quest.
The so-called “National Reorganization Process,” as military junta labeled it, was part of a broader wave of authoritarian regimes in Latin America that sought to suppress the rise of leftist movements by systematically persecuting, kidnapping and eliminating their activists.
In Argentina, the military junta abducted, tortured and murdered at least tens of thousands. To this day, over 30,000 remain desaparecidos — disappeared — meaning their families never learned their fate.
The dictatorship also participated in Operation Condor, a coordinated effort with other South American regimes — and with logistical and intelligence support from the United States — to track, abduct and eliminate political dissidents across borders.
Although many have undergone trials and received sentences, the junta members and other dictatorship officials never disclosed the fate of their victims.
Back in the early stages of the dictatorship, and at a high cost to them, several organizations emerged, including the world-renowned Madres de Plaza de Mayo and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, the first to demand information about their children and, later, justice.
Additionally, more than 100 out of an estimated 500 babies born in captivity — most of whom were illegally taken from their imprisoned mothers and raised by military families — were identified through DNA testing in a publicly funded genetic database and had their true identities restored. Last December, two more individuals recovered their identities, despite the recent defunding of some of the most central searching units.
Juan Quintana, 58, is an organizer for a group of survivors and relatives of those taken to clandestine centers in the Campo de Mayo area, a military garrison outside of Buenos Aires. They created an association in 2019, 36 years after the restoration of democracy, to push for research and truth about what happened in the area, from which very few survived. Many were thrown into a river during what was later labeled as “the death flights,” one of the most atrocious crimes of that era, their bodies leaving no trace.
He and his group marched Monday with a large flag bearing dozens of portraits of the Campo de Mayo victims. “We just won’t stop demanding justice,” he said. “We’ll find our ways, here, all together, out on the streets.”
Until 2023, the prevailing consensus on the events of the 1970s and 1980s remained largely uncontested.
However, that same year, far-right libertarian economist Javier Milei won the presidency and took office on December 10 — coincidentally, the 40th anniversary of Argentina’s return to democracy.
Throughout his campaign, Milei repeatedly questioned the established historical narrative, casting doubt on the dictatorship’s responsibility and the number of victims. During a 2023 presidential debate, he stated: “We are absolutely against a one-sided view of history. There was a war in the ’70s, where the military committed excesses.”
Early on Monday, the government published a 20-minute long video starring Agustín Laje, the leader of a local far-right think tank, contesting the number of victims and responsibilities during the dictatorship era.
According to Laje, the human rights organizations obscured the truth about what happened — and that the guerrillas had trained in Cuba to push their coup d’etat before the military rule.
He also said that there are no documents to support that there were 30,000 disappeared people in Argentina and that it was “positioned as an unquestionable dogma.”
But to Quintana, “It was all just too much, too big,” he said. “But this doesn’t make us a country that denies its history, no, not at all,” he said.
Ramiro Manduca, a history professor from the University of Buenos Aires, said that the video published by the government seeks to blame just one side — and omits the actions carried out by the armed forces in the 70s.
“These historical perspectives ultimately allows states to legitimize their crimes, which is the most dangerous part,” Manduca said.
This perspective — framing the dictatorship’s actions as part of a symmetrical conflict rather than state terrorism — had long been dismissed by historians and human rights groups. While leftist guerrilla groups did exist, the junta wielded vastly disproportionate power, controlling the state apparatus, military and intelligence networks, argued Manduca.
Milei’s rhetoric alarmed survivors, relatives of the disappeared and human rights organizations, who feared that his administration would dismantle the policies established after 1983 to preserve historical memory, seek justice for dictatorship-era crimes and prevent future human rights violations.
Marcela Perelman, head of research at the Center for Legal and Social Studies — one of Argentina’s most prominent human rights watchdogs—believes these concerns were well-founded.
“Milei’s aggressive speech directly impacted memory policies,” she told Courthouse News in an interview. According to her, his administration’s dismissal of search units as corrupt undermined their credibility and hindered the mechanisms that produce crucial evidence in ongoing human rights trials.
Budget cuts under Milei’s government have been severe. According to Chequeado, in 2024, Argentina’s Human Rights Secretariat saw a 53.7% reduction in its primary program, which aims to “promote and defend” human rights. The budget for monitoring and supporting dictatorship-era trials plummeted by 88.3%.
Funding for memory sites — former clandestine detention and torture centers converted into museums and educational spaces — was cut by 92.2% between 2023 and 2024.
Nearly 1,000 human rights-related workers have been laid off since Milei took office.
“[All of this] affected the functioning of the memory sites, the opening hours, the availability of guides within each space,” said Perelman. “This puts at risk the preservation of their buildings, which are not just cultural centers but also serve as crucial evidence in legal trials.”
During the march on Monday, a group of human rights organizations read a joint document reaffirming their demands.
“We’re standing on this square alongside the survivors, and the children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters of those who remain missing, to say to Milei that memory is our tool,” the document said.
Despite mentions of the government, the streets were quiet and somewhat cheerful. There was an underlying optimism sparked by the presence of several generations and a variety of groups like unions, parties, groups of colleagues, school and university students, migrant organizations, LGBTQ+ collectives, under a single claim: nunca más — never again.
Franco, 37, a librarian who asked not to use his last name, carried the photo of one of the disappeared as he walked. It was Franca Jarach, who was kidnapped when she was 18 years old after joining a union when she finished school. Her fate is, to this day, unknown. The sign, bearing a black and white photo of her taken during the ‘70s, was painted with colors.
A meter away Serena Ferro held her banner that read “there can’t be freedom without memory.”
Franco said he found hope in young people like those out on the streets marching, and his own students.
“I see them carrying the torch, getting creative, ready to ask what happened during those years,” he said. “It’s moving — to see so much humanity.”