An approach to the repressive plots in Cuyo: Mendoza and San Luis between 1973 and 1976

Abstract

In Argentina, between 1976 and 1983, there was the bloodiest military dictatorship in its history. In a context marked by a growing worsening of social protests and dictatorial processes in the Southern Cone, the Armed Forces (FF. AA.) took power and imposed an extermination plan that left 30,000 people missing, thousands of political prisoners and exiled, children illegally appropriated and deprived of their identity. However, the repressive violence began before March 24, 1976, and although there was a systematic genocidal plan decided in a centralized way, "from above", by the military leaders, its implementation at the local level implied certain specificities in the different regions of the country. In this paper we will make a first approach to the main characteristics of repression in the provinces of San Luis and Mendoza (Subzone 33) aiming to identify repressive devices and circuits as well as the profile of the victims before the coup d'état and during the first year of the dictatorship.