Operativo Independencia

This volume examines Argentina's military history during the 1970s, focusing on the insurgency, government operations, and the Dirty War.

Following the death of Juan Domingo Perón in 1974, the presidency of Argentina was assumed by his widow Isabel Martínez de Perón. Far from ceasing their opposition to the government, the People's Revolutionary Army (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo/ERP) and Montoneros stepped up their armed campaign to overthrow the government and replace it with a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist regime. Despite authorising Operativo Independencia (Operation Independence) Isabel Perón would ultimately be deposed by her own generals and the anti-guerilla campaign would descend into the so-called Dirty War.

The campaign against anti-government and revolutionary groups in Argentina during the 1970s has become infamous for the notorious methods employed by government forces to ruthlessly suppress any form of opposition, and terms such as ‘dirty war’ and ‘disappeared’ have been added to the global lexicon as a result. Volume 2 of Operativo Independencia offers a military history of this insurgency and the campaign to suppress it, the telling of which to date has been highly politicised. Far from being only a movement of radical students and intellectuals, the opposition to Argentina’s government included armed organisations that engaged in a bloody, if ineffective and ultimately futile, campaign of murder to achieve its aims. While Isabel Martínez de Perón authorised the launch of Operativo Independencia to suppress the armed insurgency, failure to take firm control of Argentina would lead to her overthrow by her own generals who would go on to establish a series of military juntas to rule Argentina until the return of democracy in the aftermath of the Falklands/Malvinas War of 1982.

Operativo Independencia Volume 2 examines the military history of events between Isabel Martínez de Perón’s assumption of the presidency of Argentina and the conclusion of the Dirty War. This volume details the motivation, operations and methods of government and opposition forces in this violent period of the history of Argentina.

Operativo Independencia Volume 2: Guerilla War, the 1976 Coup D’état, and The Dirty War in Argentina is illustrated throughout with over 300 original photographs of the events in Argentina during the 1970s, along with specially commissioned maps and colour artworks.