(This is the first in a series of articles planned for this year that will explore possible links between Chile and Operativo Independencia.)
By Maxine Lowy
Fifty years after the introduction of the first systematic plan of extermination in Argentina, from February 5-17, organizations dedicated to keeping memory alive in the province of Tucumán are holding a series of tributes to the first victims of forced disappearance and other crimes against humanity in Argentine territory.
On February 5, 1975, with her signature and presidential seal, María Estela (Isabel) Martínez de Perón signed Decree No. 261/75 to authorize the Argentine Army and Air Force to launch what they called Operation Independence, with the express objective of “neutralizing and/or annihilating the actions of subversive elements operating in the province of Tucumán,” a province in the northwest of the country with a history of popular and combative movements.
Some 14 months prior to the civil-military coup of March 24, 1976, practices already institutionalized in Chile were implemented in that province before being imposed throughout the country.
Four days after receiving the presidential green light, 1,500 soldiers landed in Tucumán under the command of Colonel Acdel Vilas. The pretext was to dismantle the Compañía del Monte Ramón Rosa Jiménez, a rural guerrilla group established by the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT) in the thickly forested hills that form the backbone of the province. But soon police raids spread beyond the jungle, affecting the impoverished villages dependent on the sugar industry, urban centers, universities, other social groups and people. And just as would become common from 1976 onwards in the rest of the country, anyone could be accused of subversiveness.
In Chile, after the coup d’état of September 11, 1973, state policies of repression had been refined. The initial mass arrests in public places such as sports stadiums gave way to stealthy, covert practices with unacknowledged detentions in clandestine detention sites. Because of such practices Chile began to be isolated in the international arena, after the approval in November 1974 of the first condemnatory resolution of the United Nations, which demanded that it restore respect for fundamental human rights.
However, similar practices were set in motion on the other side of the Andes, in the province of Tucumán, during much of 1975 and three months before the military took power in March 1976.
The year 1975 was critical for both Argentina and Chile. While genocidal practices began to take hold of Argentina, these were consolidated in Chile. The year also brought the consolidation of trans-Andean military collaboration. In February 1975, President Isabel Perón awarded Augusto Pinochet the Orden de Mayo de Mérito Militar. In anticipation of Plan Condor, Argentina had already collaborated in September 1974 to facilitate the assassination of former Chilean Army commander Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert, exiled in Buenos Aires. In anticipation of Plan Condor, in July 1975, Operation Colombo (List of the 119).
The national Nunca Más report, published in 1984 after the restoration of democracy to document the systematic human rights violations committed in dictatorship, states that Argentina’s first clandestine detention center was opened in February 1975 in the Tucumán town of Famaillá. Known as “la Escuelita,” it was the first of 80 clandestine detention centers established in the province of Tucumán. Between February and December 1975, more than
1,500 people passed through its gates and classrooms converted into prison cells.
Photo by Kremer Hernandez – Escuelita de Famaillá, site of the first clandestine detention camp, transformed into a space of memory.
The Fundación Memorias e Identidades del Tucumán (MIT) and the Centro de Estudios sobre Genocide (CEG, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero) have built a database on the genocide in Tucumán, updated until January 2025. According to their records, 825 people were kidnapped within the framework of Operation Independence. Of these people, 64% were eventually released, 40 were executed, and 258 remain missing.
For a long time, it was complicated and politically unsettling to recognize that people were kidnapped, tortured, and made to disappear in Argentina during the constitutionally elected Peronist government prior to the military coup. The lists of those who were forcibly disappeared began on March 24, 1975. 1976, rendering invisible those who were kidnapped in Tucumán during the repressive Operativo Independencia.
Some of the names and surnames of those detained and forcibly disappeared during that period are: Alicia Burdissi, Julio Campopiano, Diana Irene Oesterheld, Domingo Palavecino, Juan Carlos Pastori, María Isabel Jiménez de Soldatti, Amalia Clotilde Moavro and her partner Héctor Mario Patiño. Also missing since November 19, 1975 is cardiologist Máximo Eduardo Jaroslavsky, a direct cousin of the author of this article.
The demands and the fight for truth and justice are still very much in force in Tucumán. The Foundation and the CEG indicate that 49% of the cases of human rights violations committed during Operation Independence were only reported after 2003 when the judicial proceedings were reopened. In Tucumán, two oral and public trials on Operation Independence were held, leading to the investigation of 270 cases, and prison sentences for 18 military, police and other officials. This coming February 17, a trial will open concerning the crimes committed at “La Fronterita,” another clandestine detention center in Famaillá. Additionally, in 2004, the Interdisciplinary Group of Archaeology and Anthropology of Tucumán (GIAAT) discovered the first skeletal remains of 149 people whose bodies had been hurled into the Pozo de Vargas, making the 40-meter deep pit the largest mass grave of Argentina’s dictatorship.
On February 5, nearly a thousand people came to the Escuelita de Famaillá to participate in guided tours, view photo exhibitions, see a performance alluding to the events, and listen to the words of survivors. In August 2012, the Escuelita de Famaillá was designated a space of memory and in December 2015 it was declared a national historic site.
These events counterbalance a previously unthinkable boldness of retired military and conscripts who on February 8 and 9 marched through the town of Yerba Buena, site of two former clandestine detention centers, to publicly vindicate Operation Independence in which they participated 50 years ago. It was not the first time they did so, but this year they did so more brazenly thanks to the growing historical revisionism and negationism that prevails in the current government. Encouraged by the discourse and the policies of President Javier Milei and his Vice President Victoria Villarruel, who uphold the military dictatorship, closing sites of memory and the National Archive of Memory, they refashioned themselves as heroes.
For the psychologist Luisa Vivanco, rooted in Tucumán with more than six decades of living in the province, these recent events have prompted her to reflect on the persistence of memory. 1
She not only accompanies witnesses who testify in court about painful acts committed by the dictatorship, but she herself saw the face of terror up close. In this regard, she says: “Do you remember Tucumán Arde? The passion and commitment we have felt these days in Tucumán brought back memories of that collective resistance by young artists who supported the struggles of the Tucumán people, lifting the spirits of this hard-hit population. This province -such a small dot on the map- creatively and enthusiastically once again affirms that fiery Tucumán will always defend and lovingly nurture memory, truth and justice. Here we are.”
Photo by A. Jemio – Commemorations of February 5, 2025 at the former Escuelita de Famaillá.
For more information:
Artese, M. y Roffinelli, G., Responsabilidad civil y genocidio. Tucumán en los años del “Operativo Independencia”, Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2005.
Jemio, A. S., Tras las Huellas del Terror: El Operativo Independencia y el comienzo del genocidio en Argentina, Buenos Aires, Prometeo Libros, 2021.
1 Conversation with Luisa Vivanco, February 12, 2025.
