The United States, Argentina, and the Cold War

FROM COUNTERINSURGENCY TO HUMAN RIGHTS: THE UNITED STATES, ARGENTINA, AND THE COLD WAR A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by William Michael Schmidli February 2010 © 2010 William Michael Schmidli FROM COUNTERINSURGENCY TO HUMAN RIGHTS: THE UNITED STATES, ARGENTINA, AND THE COLD WAR William Michael Schmidli, Ph. D. Cornell University 2010 This study demonstrates how U.S. support for the 1976 Argentine military coup exemplified a defining feature of U.S. policy toward Latin America during the Cold War, namely, the maintenance of strong links with politically ambitious, anticommunist Latin American militaries to protect U.S. national security. By integrating Argentina into the larger pattern of imperial U.S. policy toward the region, this study reveals how U.S. military assistance and training programs in the 1960s and early 1970s undermined Argentina’s democratic institutions and contributed to the formation of a distinctly Argentine national security doctrine—the blueprint for the military’s extraordinarily brutal counterinsurgency campaign following the 1976 coup d’état. Second, this study illuminates how the effort to curtail state-sanctioned violence in Argentina served as a defining test-case for the blossoming human rights movement in the United States. Comprised of a disparate mix of grassroots human rights organizers, Washington-based lobbyists, and sympathetic members of Congress, human rights advocates consciously embodied a counter-movement to the maintenance of close U.S. ties to staunchly anti-communist, right-wing military regimes. Finally, this study asserts that Argentina served as a defining test-case for Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy. Entering the White House at the height of state- sanctioned violence in Argentina, Carter aimed to dramatically shift United States policy from subtle support for the military’s dirty war to public condemnation of human rights violations. With strong ties to the non-governmental human rights community and sympathetic legislators on Capitol Hill, the newly-formed Department of State Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs was particularly active in the struggle to promote human rights in U.S.-Argentine relations. The results were mixed; on the one hand, by late 1978, the Carter Administration had achieved significant success in eliciting human rights improvements from the military junta, particularly by orchestrating a formal visit by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. On the other hand, as the Administration grappled with rising Cold War tension, revolutionary ferment in the Developing World, and a flagging U.S. economy over the course of 1979 and 1980, human rights moved increasingly to the background as a U.S. policy priority, a trend particularly evident in U.S.-Argentine relations. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH William Michael Schmidli was raised on a potato farm in southern Oregon. He graduated from Whittier College in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Before coming to Cornell, Schmidli lived in Spain, taught at a bilingual high school in Honduras, and volunteered with grassroots development organizations in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Mexico. iii “... he knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of final victory. It could be only the record of what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts, despite their personal afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers.” —Albert Camus, The Plague iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank my academic advisor, Fredrik Logevall. I owe Fred an enormous intellectual debt, and his encouragement, patience, and constant engagement in my research have been invaluable. I also thank Raymond Craib for his close attention to my academic progress, for deepening my interest in Latin American history and for pushing me to seek a balance between “the view from the North” and local narratives south of the U.S. border. I am also grateful to Elizabeth Sanders, whose ability to move between the fields of U.S. foreign relations history and political science proved very useful throughout my research and writing. Additionally, I would like to thank Walter LaFeber, Derek Chang, Edward Baptist, Jon Parmenter, and Aaron Sachs for their suggestions and guidance. I am also grateful to the participants in the American History Colloquium at Cornell University and the readers of a related article forthcoming in Diplomatic History. I particularly thank the individuals who agreed to participate in oral history interviews for this project, notably F. A. “Tex” Harris, who, in addition to discussing his own experiences in the Foreign Service, offered invaluable assistance by sharing his vast list of contacts connected to the issue of human rights in U.S.-Argentine relations. I also thank Patricia Derian and Roberta Cohen for generously allowing me to examine their personal papers. Additionally, I am grateful to the archivists at the John F. Kennedy Library, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, and the Jimmy Carter Library, as well as the National Archives in Washington, D. C., along with the archivists at numerous universities, particularly Boston College, Dartmouth University, and the University of Texas at Austin. This research could not have been completed without generous financial research support from Cornell University’s American Studies Program, Latin American Studies Program, Peace Studies Program, v and the Society for the Humanities, as well as the John F. Kennedy Library and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library. Finally, I would like to thank the members of my family for their lifelong encouragement and inspiration: my mother and father, who first kindled my love of history and instilled in me the imagination to conceive of lofty goals and the work ethic to achieve them, and my sister, whose sound advice, intellectual insight, and abiding friendship I value immensely. For her steadfast support throughout my graduate school experience I owe special thanks to Elisa Da Via’. Enduring almost daily conversations on U.S.-Argentine relations, human rights, and Jimmy Carter, Elisa not only exhibited remarkable patience, but has made me a better scholar in the process. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch……………………………………………................................. iii Dedication……………………………………………................................................ iv Acknowledgments …………………………………………….................................... v Table of Contents…………………………………………….................................... vii List of Abbreviations……………………………………………............................. viii Introduction……………………………………………………………………….…. 1 Chapter 1: From Counterinsurgency to State-Sanctioned Terror: Waging the Cold War in Latin America…………………………………………... ………………... 8 Chapter 2: The “Third World War” and U.S.-Argentine Relations………………… 44 Chapter 3: “Human Rights is Suddenly Chic”: The Rise of The Movement, 1970- 1976………………………………………………………………..………... 94 Chapter 4: “Total Immersion in All the Horrors of the World”: the Carter Administration and Human Rights, 1977-1978…………………………… 146 Chapter 5: On the Offensive: Human Rights in U.S.-Argentine Relations, 1978- 1979………………………………………………………………………... 210 Chapter 6: “Tilting Against Gray-Flannel Windmills”: U.S.-Argentine Relations, 1979-1980…………………………………………………………………. 273 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………… 320 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………….. 339 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AAA Alianza Anticomunista Argentina (Argentina Anticommunist Alliance) ACLU American Civil Liberties Union ADP Argentina Declassification Project (1975-1984) AID Agency for International Development ARA Bureau of Inter-American Affairs Archives II National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD BM Burson-Marsteller CF Country Files CADHU Comisión Argentina por Derechos Humanos (Argentine Human Rights Commission) COA Council of the Americas COHA Council on Hemispheric Affairs CONADEP Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (National Commission on the Disappeared) DCM Deputy Chief of Mission DDRS Declassified Documents Reference System EA Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs ESMA Escuela Mecánica de la Armada (Naval Mechanics School) ERP Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People’s Revolutionary Army) viii Exim Export-Import Bank FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States GRDS General Records of the Department of State HA Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs IADB Inter-American Defense Board IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development IAHRC Inter-American Human Rights Commission IDB International Development Bank IFI International Finance Institution ILHR International League for Human Rights IMET International Military Education and Training IMF International Monetary Fund INR Bureau of Intelligence and Research JFKL John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, MA LBJL Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, TX MAAG Military Assistance Advisory Groups MAP Military Assistance Program MDB Multilateral Development Bank NACLA North American Congress on Latin America NSA National Security Archive NSC National Security Council NSF National Security Files OAS Organization of American States ODS Office of the Deputy Secretary ix OPLMC Office of Public Liaison, Margaret (Midge) Costanza OPS Overseas Private Investment Corporation

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