Guerrillas and Generals: The "Dirty War" in Argentina [Hardcover]

Paul H. Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2001 | ISBN-10: 027597359X | ISBN-13: 978-0275973599

In this comprehensive, balanced examination of Argentina's Dirty War, Lewis analyzes the causes, describes the ideologies that motivated both sides, and explores the consequences of all-or-nothing politics. The military and guerrillas may seem marginal today, but Lewis questions whether the Dirty War is really over.

Lewis traces the Dirty War's origins back to military interventions in the 1930s and 1940s, and the rise of General Juan Peron's populist regime, which resulted in the polarization of Argentine society. Peron's overthrow by the military in 1955 only heightened social conflict by producing a resistance movement out of which several guerrilla organizations would soon emerge. The ideologies, terrorist tactics, and internal dynamics of those underground groups are examined in detail, as well as their links to other movements in Argentina and abroad. The guerrillas reached the height of their influence when the military withdrew from power in 1973 and turned over the government to Peron's puppet president, Hector Campora. They quickly found themselves in opposition again after Peron returned from exile, and as Peronism dissolved into factions after Peron's death, the military prepared to take power again, inspired by a new National Security Doctrine. The origins of this ideology in U.S. Cold War doctrine and in French revolutionary war doctrine are fully explored because the Argentine military's Dirty War strategy and tactics grew directly out of these ideas. The arrests, the treatment of prisoners, and the mindset of the interrogators are treated in detail. Special attention is given to the anti-guerrilla war in Tucuman's jungles, the strange history of David Graiver (the guerrillas' banker) and the Timerman case. In the concluding section of the book, Lewis describes the intrigues that undermined the military regime, its retreat from power, and the human rights trials that were held under the new democratic government. Those trials eventually were stopped by military revolts. Presidential pardons followed and have left Argentina divided once more. This is an important survey for scholars and students of Latin American politics, contemporary history, and civil-military relations.

Editorial Reviews

Review

?In this chilling account of the conflict between leftist guerrilla organizations and the military regime that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983, Lewis meticulously analyzes the origins of the "Dirty War" that resulted in thousands of "disappeared" people, abducted by paramilitary forces operating with the military government's knowledge... Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.?-CHOICE

About the Author

PAUL H. LEWIS is Professor of Political Science at Tulane University. An authority on Latin American political history, Professor Lewis has published six earlier books, including Paraguay Under Stroessner, The Crisis of Argentine Capitalism, and Political Parties and Generations in Paraguay's Liberal Era.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Praeger (October 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 027597359X
• ISBN-13: 978-0275973599
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,532,854 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The one book you should read about the Dirty War, January 6, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina (Paperback)

I have studied the Argentine Dirty War for over 20 years, and if I were to recommend one book to anyone to read on the subject it would be this one. There are two things that Lewis does which really set this book apart from the literature on the subject so far.

First, Lewis describes and makes sense out of all of the background starting with Peron that led up to the Dirty War. This really helps place the Dirty War in its proper context so the reader can comprehend why such terrible things occurred later. He then gives a full account of all the atrocities committed by the Argentine military. In this way he does not exonerate or excuse the Dirty War, but does make sense of why things happened the way they did.

Second, Lewis points out that there really was a war going on. The guerrillas were active, were powerful, were committing acts of terrorism and were seriously threatening to destabilize the Argentine state. A lot of anti-military sources try to portray the security threat posed by the guerrillas as a figment of the military's imagination. This was simply not true. There was a real war going on and Lewis shows that this was the case. Lewis does not excuse the ways the military chose to deal with the guerrilla threat, but does explain why rational and normal men would choose to commit such horrorific acts. In their mind they were in a desperate life and death struggle, and they acted accordingly. In retrospect they made some very bad choices, but Lewis helps explain how it all seemed rational and necessary at the time.

This book is balanced, honest and cuts through a lot of the cherished popular myths. It is fair to both sides of the conflict. Finally it is well written and flows well. I got through it in two days. This book will become a classic text on the Argentine Dirty War.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thorough and informative, November 28, 2009

By 

ConsDemo - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina (Paperback)

Guerrillas and Generals is probably one of the best English language descriptions of chaos that engulfed Argentina in the last half of the 20th century. Many of the descriptions of Argentina's dirty war under the military junta that lasted from 1976 to 1983 tend to focus those years alone and give scant attention to what took place before or after. The first half of this book deals with the years leading up to the junta's ascension to power. Thanks the class cleavages exacerbated by populist President Juan Peron and the influences of the cold war and leftist nationalism that swept through Latin America in the post-WWII period, Argentina was facing a serious terrorist revolutionary movement. The 1960s and 1970s experienced an explosion of college attendance in Argentina and campuses became hot beds of radicalism. By itself, that isn't shocking since it was true in many other countries but this occurred under authoritarian governments that, for whatever reason, made little or no effort reign in the faculty and administration that not only tolerated revolutionary radicalism but encouraged it.

The revolutionary groups, the Monteneros and ERP were not just idealistic young people fighting for the rights of the poor; they were committed leftists with a strong predilection for violence that a series of military and civilian governments had failed to quell. The hard ball tactics to crush the rebels did not begin with the military coup of March 24, 1976 that overthrew erratic President Isabel Peron (who assumed the Presidency when husband Juan died in 1974). Peron's government had given the military orders to "annihilate" the rebel groups, however, the harshness of tactics and the scope of those targeted greatly expanded after the coup.

Lewis is not sentimental about either side, and thus he presents an unbiased description of events. In the process, he takes down some of fashionable myths about the period. First, there is very little evidence the United States had much of anything to do with the junta. While the Administration of U.S. President Gerald Ford didn't raise many objections to the military's actions, the junta had a frosty relationship with Jimmy Carter. Certainly Ford's Secretary of State Henry Kissinger glossed over the junta's actions but the junta received neither help nor inspiration from the Americans. Rather, their guide was the French counterinsurgency strategies in Vietnam and Algeria, which is interesting, given they knew neither strategy was ultimately successful. Nor was the junta a promoter of neoliberal economic policies, as is sometimes suggested by the socialist left, as it carried on the interventionist policies of governments before it.

Another aspect that should surprise developed world readers accustomed to civilian control of the armed forces was the status of the military in Argentina. Apart from its tactics in the dirty war, it seemed to operate in its own fiefdom well before the 1970s and was frequently at war with itself. The book is replete with descriptions of units taking up arms against units of the same military. It may have been this sense of detachment from the society as a whole that allowed the military leaders to believe they could act with such impunity when they had control of the government.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As good as it gets in English., December 3, 2010

By 

Tom Babajanian (Fort Collins, CO) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina (Paperback)

This book is as good as any English language resource on Argentina's "Dirty War". Consice, broad-based and well balenced, it's most salient characteristic is that it is easy to read. As a basic narrative it will be in the bibliography of every college student who ever writes about the subject of Argentina from 1976-1983. With a marked absence of political baggage either for one side or for the other, the author begins the narrative with the socio-political setting that set the stage for the conflict. Without sparing either the leftist terrorists that plagued Argentina in the early to mid-1970s or the brutal Right-wing government that crushed the former, the author narrates the messy political violence that befell Argentina of the 1970s and 80s.

All told, this book is a must-read for anyone intersted in the subject matter addressed in the book's title.