timeline

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1975 – 1976 – 1977 – 1978 – 1979 – 1980 – 1981 – 1982 – 1983

events for 1976

Jan 16, 1976	Herald reports that 2 disfigured bodies in Córdoba province have been identified — one a Socialist Workers Party delegate and the other a steel foreman who had been taken away by men in police uniforms. The paper reports that an additional 20 people have “disappeared” in the province in the last 10 days.
Jan 28, 1976	Hector Minetti killed by guerrillas.
Jan 29, 1976	Albano Harguindeguy, credited by the government with successful repression of the recent Montonero attack in Monte Chingolo, is appointed chief of the federal police, replacing Omar Pinto.
Feb 4, 1976	Economy mininster Antonio Cafiero is replaced by Emilio Mondelli.
Feb 11, 1976	Colonel Reyes killed by guerrillas.
Feb 13, 1976	Executive branch closes La Opinión for 10 days calling the newspaper’s editorial policy “a serious abuse of freedom of the press.”
Feb 27, 1976	Herald reports that 32 people have “disappeared” in kidnappings since January 8.
Mar 5, 1976	At annual ceremony commemorating the death of admiral William Brown, the executive branch Defense Minister is hissed, whiled the Armed forces are cheered.
Mar 6, 1976	Economic Minister Mondelli announces “emergency plan,” increasing salaries 12% and raising public services prices 80% and combustibles 60%. Massive discontent ensues.
Mar 11, 1976	President Isabel Perón announces reforms to the Mondelli plan, increasing salaries 20% instead of 12%. The same day, it is announced that the cost of living increased 19.3% in February alone.
Mar 15, 1976	A bomb planted by Montoneros at the Army headquarters building, intended for Army head Videla, explodes at 7:45 a.m., killing one and injuring 29. Videla is not injured.
Mar 22, 1976	Herald reports that 40 died in political violence during the previous week, including a man gunned down in his hospital bed where he was recovering from injuries he received while evading a kidnapping attempt.
Mar 24, 1976	Union leader Lorenzo Miguel arrested. Arrest is secret until rumors appear in papers on March 30. Miguel is held on a Navy transport ship.
Mar 24, 1976	Casildo Herreras, former Secretary General of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), “disappears” in Montevideo. Unofficial sources quoted in the Herald on March 28 suggest that he was arrested and speculate about the involvement of an Argentine commando group.
Mar 24, 1976	Military junta seizes power in an bloodless coup. The junta consists of Army commander general Jorge Rafael Videla — who is also to serve as president, Navy commander admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera, and the Air Force commander Orlando Ramón Agosti. Congress is dissolved. Unionist Atilio Santillan is assassinated. Lorenzo Miguel, Secretary General of the Peronis “62 organizations,” imprisoned.
Mar 26, 1976	Writer Tilo Wenner “disappears” after walking into a police station. Not made public until February 16, 1977, when Judge Sarmiento is contacted about the matter.
Mar 27, 1976	Police commissioner Guillermo Pavón killed by presumed leftwing guerrillas.
Mar 27, 1976	IMF awards $127 million loan to Argentina, which had previously been delayed.
Mar 28, 1976	The Alejandro Posadas medical clinic in Villa Sarmiento is taken over the by military, who put Colonel Agatino dei Benedetto in charges as interventor. More than 40 people associated with the clinic are seizezd, att least 11 of which never return.
Mar 28, 1976	Commander of the Fifth Army Garrison in Bahía Blanca announces the creation of War Councils to try detainees suspected of involvement in “subversion.”
Mar 29, 1976	Army chief Jorge Rafael Videla sworn in as president.
Mar 29, 1976	In law 21275, military government cancels all applications by executive branch prisoners to request exile instead of imprisonment.
Mar 30, 1976	Fearing for their safety, 28 people seek asylum in the Mexican embassy.
Mar 31, 1976	3510 bank accounts frozen, including those of Miguel Bonasso, Carlos Ruckauf, López Rega, Héctor Cámpora, and Lorenzo Miguel.
Apr 1, 1976	Police commissioner Anselmo Linardii and corporal Hugo Merlo killed.
Apr 2, 1976	President Videla meets with the heads of many private Argentine newspaper and radio companies.
Apr 3, 1976	First Special Council of War convened to judge trade union heads accused “of presumed possession and undue transport of arms.”
Apr 5, 1976	Herald reports 26 people were killed in political violence over the preceeding weekend.
Apr 7, 1976	9 burned bodies found, presumably victims of rightwing death squads.
Apr 7, 1976	Government closes Crónica for 2 days after the paper violates rules forbidding the printing of foreign cables. The Crónica closure is in addition to at least 5 temporary closings of provincial papers since the coup for publication of material offensive to the military government.
Apr 8, 1976	La Opinión reporters Molina and Vedia abducted along with 2 roomates.
Apr 9, 1976	Retired General Ibérico Saint Jean named Buenos Aires provincial governor.
Apr 10, 1976	Richard Whitecross returns home to Britain after 138 days in prison and no trial.
Apr 11, 1976	Herald reports that 101 have died in political violence since the coup.
Apr 15, 1976	Swiss journalist Luc Bandaret arrested. He is exiled, leaving the country April 30, and the government later suggests that he had “subversive ties.”
Apr 17, 1976	Rumors circulate in newsrooms of 8 bodies — presumed victims of death squads — found on this day, in addition to 6 the previous day. Reports not published by any paper until after April 20, when the government issues a release denying the existence of the bodies.
Apr 22, 1976	Government bans all news concerning terrorist activity, subversion, abductions and the discovery of bodies unless publically announced by the government.
May 7, 1976	Herald, in the first clear defiance of the new government censorship policy, publishes report of leftwing novelist Haroldo Conti’s “disappearance” on page one.
May 8, 1976	Mendoza police department announces that ID cards will no longer be issue to people with beards.
May 14, 1976	Monica Mignone, daughter of Dr. Emilio Fermin Mignone — former under-secretary of education — abducted.
May 18, 1976	Former Uruguayan legislators Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz abducted by armed men in Ford Falcons. Their bullet-riddled bodies are found on May 22.
May 21, 1976	A mutilated body — one of several to have washed up on the Uruguayan shores across from Buenos Aires — is found to belong to an Argentine who was recently abducted by a heavily armed group. Details of the bodies — which washed up naked, hacked with axes, and showing signs of sexual torture — had been published, since it had been believed that the mechanics of currents would have prevented the bodies from coming from Argentina.
May 26, 1976	Government announces that university students who participate in student activism will be suspended for 1-5 years.
May 26, 1976	The New York Times, in editorial, suggests that Argentina’s new military government may be following in the bloody footsteps of the Pinochet regime in Chile. The Times had initially written favorably of the military government.
May 27, 1976	Herald cover story features two Uruguayan children — María Victoria and Gabriela Schroeder — who “disappeared” along with their parents on May 13. Their parents were found murdered on May 21st but there was no sign of the children. After the Herald features the story, it is mentioned by some other papers.
May 29, 1976	Missing children María Victoria, Gabriela and Maximo Schroeder — featured in a Herald cover story on May 27 — are found deserted outside a clinic in Florida.
May 30, 1976	Colonel Juan Alberto Pita, the military government’s “interventor” managing the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), kidnapped at 6:40 pm by presumed leftwing guerrillas.
Jun 1, 1976	Former Bolivian president General Juan José Torres is abducted sometime after 8:30 a.m. Later found murdered.
Jun 2, 1976	In the first major public declaration of the existence of what will become known as the “anti-Argentine campaign,” Interior Minister Harguindeguy tells reporters that “there is a plot to defame the country.” He suggests that the recent abduction of former Bolivian president Torres is part of this campaign. Harguindeguy says that the Argentine military government totally repudiates violence of any extreme ideology.
Jun 4, 1976	Military government bans 48 political and union groups.
Jun 7, 1976	“La masacre de las palomitas” — the massacre of the little doves. Elevin prisoners from Villa ls Rosas prison are killed while being transported in supposed “confrontation” in which no military men are injured.
Jun 9, 1976	Armed men break into the offices of the Argentine Catholic Immigration Commission, stealing UN records on refugees.
Jun 11, 1976	La Opinión publishes letter from Jewish doctor Max Kcrawczyk detailing how his sick wife was violently abducted by an armed group that left antisemitic expressions written on the walls of his house.
Jun 11, 1976	Twenty-four Chilean and Uruguayan refugees under protection of the UN High Commission for Refugee Protection, abducted from 2 hotels — both within 2 blocks of the 11th precinct polic office — by 40 gunmen. They are hooded, beaten, and told they will be killed if they don’t leave the country, then released. Herald reports the following day that the abductors “went inside shouting ‘Police.’”
Jun 14, 1976	Herald reports that about 300 people have died in political violence since the military coup, and 500 since the year’s beginning.
Jun 18, 1976	Buenos Aires police chief General Cesareo Angel Cardozo killed by bomb planted under his bed by his daughter’s “best friend,” Ana María González, who was actually a member of the ERP.
Jun 24, 1976	Junta establishes “Act of Institutional Responsibility” taking away political rights of former president Isabel Perón and 35 others associated with her government, including Lorenzo Miguel, Carlos Ruckauf, former president Cámpora, and Carlos Menem.
Jun 25, 1976	Junta imposes death penalty for killing of member of security forces. Announced by new police chief General Arturo Amador Corbetta on national TV.
Jul 1, 1976	La Opinión reprints Herald piece accusing police of vengeance murders. Press man at the Casa Rosada wants to close both paper in wake of the article’s appearance, but Harguindeguy vetoes measure.
Jul 2, 1976	Bomb in Buenos Aires police headquarters at Moreno 1417 explodes at 1:20 pm, killing 21 and wounding 63.
Jul 4, 1976	Security forces excecute a young prisoner against the giant obelisk in the center of Buenos Aires. The Herald, citing Noticias Argentinas reports, describes the event the following day (although not of course mentioning security forces involvement): “Gagged and with his hands tied he was forced against the obelisk where he was left murdered as if by a firing squad. The killers then left the scene in the car they had used to bring their victim to the spot. …policemen from the first precinct found the body at 5.45am.”
Jul 4, 1976	Three Irish priests and 2 seminarians shot in building adjacent to their church in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Belgrano. The Herald and the newspaper of the Irish community — the Southern Cross — are the only 2 to mention the event. The Herald puts the news on the cover and describes the scene of the killings, saying “On the inside of a door of one of the bedrooms another inscription (later rubbed out although it was still legible to read) [read]: ‘For our dynamited police comrades.’”
Jul 5, 1976	Herald reports that 50 people have been killed in political violence in the preceding four days.
Jul 6, 1976	Police Commissioner Arturo Corbetta steps down. He had advocated a forceful but lawful response to the police headquarters bombing and was subsequently shunned by officers at the wake for the dead officers. Corbetta is replaced by General Edmundo Ojeda.
Jul 15, 1976	Herald reports that 537 have died in political violence since the coup, and 701 since January 1st.
Jul 15, 1976	Death penalty comes into force for guerrillas charged with killing members of the security forces.
Jul 17, 1976	Enrique “Jarito” Walker killed.
Jul 19, 1976	Armed forces report killing ERP leader Roberto Mario Santucho.
Jul 25, 1976	“La Noche del Apagón” — the night of the blackout. Several “disappearances” take place during a power outage in the towns of Calilegua and Libertador San Martín, in the province of Jujuy.
Aug 7, 1976	Over 600 people bid farewell to Bishop Enrique Angelelli, said to have died “in an accident.”
Aug 11, 1976	La Prensa is the only paper to report the brief kidnapping of Mariano Grondona, whom the Herald calls Argentina’s leading political columnist. Grondona had been detained on August 9 for a few hours by what he reported was a rightwing terror squad.
Aug 13, 1976	Herald reports 60-70 people commonly lining up at 8 a.m. outside the Plaza de Mayo office that claims to offer information on “disappeared” relatives. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo eventually arise from this group.
Aug 17, 1976	Former Radical Party senator Hipolito Solari Yrigoyen and former Radical Party deputy Mario Amaya kidnapped.
Aug 18, 1976	Herald publishes plea of Uruguayan grandmother Mrs. Fermina Haydee Cantoni de Anzalone for the return of her grandson, who “disappeared” after the arrest of his mother in Argentina. Her child is returned to her shortly after the Herald publishes her plea.
Aug 19, 1976	Retired General Omar Actis, newly named president of the 1978 World Cup committee, killed shortly before he was to give his first press conference discussing the World Cup.
Aug 20, 1976	Thirty bodies, limbs bound and dismembered by explosives, found in wasteland near Pilar. The following day, the Herald writes that it suspects a rightwing death squad and reports that this brings the total dead from political violence to 689 since the coup, and 853 in 1976.
Aug 30, 1976	Hipolito Solari Yrigoyen and Mario Amayo thrown from pickup truck and immediately detained by acknowleged police officers.
Aug 31, 1976	23-month-old David Kraiselburd, son of El Día editor whose father had been murdered by leftwing guerrillas in 1974, abducted.
Aug 31, 1976	Presidential decree bans activity of Jehovah’s Witnesses, including dissemination of literature.
Sep 3, 1976	Herald reports that 780 refugees who had previously been sheltered in Argentina have left the country in the past 3 months.
Sep 9, 1976	El Día editor Raúl Rossi, assistant editor Antonio Fiorotto, and former editor José Elias Morelli arrested.
Sep 16, 1976	“La Noche de las Lapices” — “The Night of Pencils.” (Twelve) students arrested in La Plata, apparently for advocating changes in bus fares. (Six) never return. Another of their compatriots is abducted, never to return, on September 21.
Sep 21, 1976	Air commodore Nestor Manuel Palazuelo injured in bomb attack. Herald reports that 749 have died in political violence since January 1st.
Sep 21, 1976	Herald political columnist Andrew Graham-Yooll, the recipient of many threats, leaves Argentina for exile in Britain.
Sep 23, 1976	Heriberto Kahn, La Opinión writer who exposed ther former Peronist government’s links with the Triple-A, dies of tubercular meningitis.
Sep 24, 1976	Four-day, combined Argentine-Uruguayan covert operation, part of Operation Condor, begins against suspected members of Uruguayan terrorist organization OPR-33. The operation results in the “disappearance” of a large number of Uruguayans living in Argentina. In 1979, the Herald reports at least 110 were kidnapped around this time, 89 of whom didn’t return.
Sep 29, 1976	“Combate de la calle carro” (corro?) — In clash, the Army kills all members of the national secretariat of Montoneros: Alberto “Tito” Molina, María Victoria “Hilda” Walsh, Ismael “Turco” Salame, Eduarto “Tucu” Coronel, José “Carlitos” Beltrán.
Sep 29, 1976	Argentine papers report that Argentine lawyers Gustavo Roca and Lucio Garzon Maceda have recommended to the US House of Representatives that economic sanctions be imposed on Argentina for human rights violations.
Sep 30, 1976	Economy minister Martínez de Hoz announces that the IMF has extended Argentina a 1.3 billion dollar credit.
Oct 2, 1976	Rodolfo Walsh’s daughter María Victoria Walsh is killed in a confrontation. She had handled press for Frente Sindical Fabril.
Oct 2, 1976	Bomb in reviewing stands at the Campo de Mayo goes off moments after Videla leaves the stands. Not officially announced until October 4.
Oct 4, 1976	La Opinión publishes interview with Argentine Foreign Minister Cesar Augusto Guzzetti in New York. Guzzetti denies the existence of rightwing terror, calling rightwing groups “antibodies” that have arisen naturally to combat the “germ” of leftwing terrorism. Guzzetti later is forced to condemn both leftwing and rightwing terrorism.
Oct 6, 1976	Electricians’ Union (SEGBA) workers go on strike to protest the dismissal of 260 SEGBA employees including Oscar Smith. The government states that strikes are illegal and punishable by firing and prison time.
Oct 16, 1976	Bomb in the Military Circle at the Plaza San Martín goes off just before midnight during film screening, injuring 50.
Oct 20, 1976	Former Radical Party Deputy Mario del Amaya is reported to have died in jail of a heart attack. He had been detained along with former senator Hipolito Solari Yrigoyen August 17.
Oct 27, 1976	Government extends suspension of the right of executive branch detainees to choose exile over imprisonment.
Nov 3, 1976	Jimmy Carter elected US president over incumbent Ford.
Nov 4, 1976	Clarín, La Nación and La Razón buy stock in La Prensa.
Nov 4, 1976	Antonio Plazo named Capellón General of the Buenos Aires Provincial police under Colonel Ramón Camps.
Nov 18, 1976	Former president Isabel Perón charged with embezzlement.
Nov 25, 1976	General Domingo Bossi, Governor of Tucumán, is quoted as saying that subversion is eradicated from his province and soon will disappear from the whole country.
Nov 29, 1976	Law 21461 creates “war councils” to try crimes related to subversions throughout Argentina.
Dec 3, 1976	Montonero leader Norma Esther Arrostito, the only woman involved in the killing of former president Aramburu on June 2, 1970, is reportedly killed by security forces.
Dec 13, 1976	The military reports that an Army convoy was ambushed by extremists near Margarita Belén, and that at least five guerrillas were killed in the ensuing clash. It later turns out that military officials charged with transporting prisoners had instead executed 22 of them in what becomes know as the Margarita Belén Massacre.
Dec 15, 1976	Defense planning department bombed by Montoneros, killing 14.
Dec 31, 1976	Armed forcers report killing 26 suspected extremists in various engagements on this day. As is typical in such reports, there are no reports of security force casualties, but 2 unnamed non-commissioned officers are said to have been wounded.

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