Argentina Time of Trial

Argentine President Raul Alfonsin appeared angry and fatigued when he addressed a national television audience from the presidential residence last week. His assertion was startling: his political enemies had tried to involve high-ranking military officers in planning a coup d'etat. Leaning across his desk, the President reassured his countrymen: "The situation is under control by the constitutional government." Alfonsin urged Argentines to rally "in defense of democracy," a call that was answered at week's end by an estimated 170,000 people gathered in Buenos Aires.

The President's critics dismissed the charges as an attempt to win public sympathy before announcing tough economic measures to curb the national inflation rate, now approaching 900%. Alfonsin's timing was troubling, even if the charges were untrue. They came on the eve of the opening of the civil trial of nine members of the military juntas that ruled the country from 1976 to 1982. The trial, in Buenos Aires' gothic Tribunales building, is expected to last for several months as six judges hear evidence of alleged human rights abuses against suspected subversives. An estimated 9,000 Argentines disappeared during that dark era. Many are believed to have been killed by death squads operating with official sanction.

Among the defendants charged with crimes including illegal arrests, torture and murder: ex-Presidents Jorge Rafael Videla, Roberto Viola and Leopold Galtieri, the architect of Argentina's disastrous war with Britain for control of the Falkland Islands, known in Argentina as the Malvinas. Last week, Alfonsin said the trial was "of such importance that in my view it will end 50 years of democratic frustration and national decadence."

The evidence against the officers originally was heard by a military court, which deliberated for nine months before declaring last October that it was unable to reach a verdict. Alfonsin, under pressure from human rights groups to keep a promise that he would make the military account for the crimes, handed the case to the civil courts. It was a decision criticized by the military, including Alfonsin's own first Chief of Staff, retired General Jorge Arguindegui, who declared that the trial would be "a Nuremberg in reverse" because the "victors" in the war against subversion would be judged by the "vanquished."

As the trial opened, a crowd of about 2,000 stood quietly behind police lines watching witnesses and lawyers enter the Tribunales building. As night fell, a procession, thousands strong, walked through the streets with placards whose messages demanded punishment for the nine accused. One particularly poignant message read simply, HELP ME FIND MY FATHER.