Argentina


1976-1983:

Under USA's Ford administration Argentina's military dictatorship, involved in a wide ranging human rights abuses that are ignored by Washington, recieves in the order of $30 million a year in military aid. Congress and president Carter end military support in 1978. This is reversed by Reagan in 1981 and is ended again in 1982, after Argentina's generals invade the Falklands, a British colony. After the war and the consequential downfall of the military junta the US government obstruct efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice, using them later to train and mobilize the Honduras military and the contras - both groups implicated in gross abuses of human rights. The US government withholds extensive information relating to the fate of the disappeared until 2002. The Argentine junta murdered some 20-30,000 persons. [1]