State terrorism in Córdoba
The implementation of illegal repression in Córdoba began before the coup d'état of 24th March, 1976, through a police coup that overthrew the constitutional government of the province, known as the Navarrazo.
Following the coup d'état of 24th March, 1976, the extermination process was perfected and deepened in line with what was happening at the national level.
Planning State Terrorism
In the mid-1970s, new and refined methods began to be tested, ultimately creating an organised apparatus of power for the extermination of political opposition. While coups d'état are a constant throughout 20th-century Argentine history, the last military dictatorship had unique characteristics. It implemented a terrorist state unprecedented in our national history, incorporating clandestine repressive systems. This repressive model was consolidated in Latin America through the so-called "Condor Plan."
SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS
Between 1950 and 1975, more than 600 officers of the Argentine Armed Forces participated in specialised counterinsurgency courses taught at the School of the Americas, located at the Panama Canal, a subsidiary of the United States Armed Forces. Disseminating this doctrine to preserve the benefits of a completely unequal relationship with Latin American countries was the objective of the United States with the creation of the School of the Americas. There, French counterinsurgency theories were perfected and later applied in Vietnam and other conflicts that affected the interests of imperialist countries such as France, England, and the United States. A clear example of the military personnel trained at the School of the Americas is Carlos Delía Larocca, a defendant in the "La Perla" mega-case trial. Since 1974, Larocca served as military attaché at the Argentine Embassy in the United States and as a delegate to the Inter-American Defense Board (responsible for providing technicaland educational advice on military and defense matters). From March to September 1975, he was Commander of the Third Army Corps, when Menéndez, previously Second Commander, took over. Another example is Rosario Elpidio Tejeda (alias Texas), remembered in the testimonies of survivors of the La Perla CCDTyE for her "specialty" in conducting endless torture and interrogation sessions.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE “ENEMY”
Beyond the multiple theoretical and ideological sources that served as the basis for the genocide, it is necessary to highlight at least two antecedents: the doctrine and methodology used by Nazism, and French counterinsurgency doctrine.
Since the mid-1950s, the counterinsurgency theory designed by the French, applied to suppress the uprisings for independence in the French colonies of Algeria and Indochina, began to have a strong influence on the Argentine armed forces. This theory placed fundamental importance on military “intelligence” activities, which posited the need to divide the territory into groups for greater control and the creation of “death squads” specialized in kidnapping and torture. Furthermore, it placed special emphasis on the development of psychological actions against the population to generate the perception of a climate of insecurity, instability, and terror, based on the conception of an enemy, hidden among the civilian population. On the other hand, the so-called "NATIONAL SECURITY DOCTRINE" spread widely in many Latin American countries within the historical and political context of the Cold War, which divided the world into two blocs led by two powers: one capitalist and the other socialist, and in response to the emergence of emancipatory movements. This doctrine established that new conflict scenarios arose from the presence of an internal enemy: "subversive elements," "agents of international communism" who violated security by infiltrating all spheres of social life and who needed to be "neutralized." Thus, the Armed Forces were to direct their actions not only towards defense against an external aggressor but also towards the population itself. This vague and imprecise definition potentially encompassed anyone who dissented from the dominant sectors and justified a widespread attack on the entire civilian population. All of these doctrines supported the interference of forces assigned to defense—the Army, Navy, and Air Force—in matters of security. Based on these doctrines, the machinery of horror in our country was progressively developed.