Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina [Paperback]

I have studied the Argentine Dirty War for over 20 years, and if I were to recommend one book to anyone to read on the subject it would be this one. There are two things that Lewis does which really set this book apart from the literature on the subject so far.

First, Lewis describes and makes sense out of all of the background starting with Peron that led up to the Dirty War. This really helps place the Dirty War in its proper context so the reader can comprehend why such terrible things occurred later. He then gives a full account of all the atrocities committed by the Argentine military. In this way he does not exonerate or excuse the Dirty War, but does make sense of why things happened the way they did.

Second, Lewis points out that there really was a war going on. The guerrillas were active, were powerful, were committing acts of terrorism and were seriously threatening to destabilize the Argentine state. A lot of anti-military sources try to portray the security threat posed by the guerrillas as a figment of the military's imagination. This was simply not true. There was a real war going on and Lewis shows that this was the case. Lewis does not excuse the ways the military chose to deal with the guerrilla threat, but does explain why rational and normal men would choose to commit such horrorific acts. In their mind they were in a desperate life and death struggle, and they acted accordingly. In retrospect they made some very bad choices, but Lewis helps explain how it all seemed rational and necessary at the time.

This book is balanced, honest and cuts through a lot of the cherished popular myths. It is fair to both sides of the conflict. Finally it is well written and flows well. I got through it in two days. This book will become a classic text on the Argentine Dirty War.

Guerrillas and Generals is probably one of the best English language descriptions of chaos that engulfed Argentina in the last half of the 20th century. Many of the descriptions of Argentina's dirty war under the military junta that lasted from 1976 to 1983 tend to focus those years alone and give scant attention to what took place before or after. The first half of this book deals with the years leading up to the junta's ascension to power. Thanks the class cleavages exacerbated by populist President Juan Peron and the influences of the cold war and leftist nationalism that swept through Latin America in the post-WWII period, Argentina was facing a serious terrorist revolutionary movement. The 1960s and 1970s experienced an explosion of college attendance in Argentina and campuses became hot beds of radicalism. By itself, that isn't shocking since it was true in many other countries but this occurred under authoritarian governments that, for whatever reason, made little or no effort reign in the faculty and administration that not only tolerated revolutionary radicalism but encouraged it.

The revolutionary groups, the Monteneros and ERP were not just idealistic young people fighting for the rights of the poor; they were committed leftists with a strong predilection for violence that a series of military and civilian governments had failed to quell. The hard ball tactics to crush the rebels did not begin with the military coup of March 24, 1976 that overthrew erratic President Isabel Peron (who assumed the Presidency when husband Juan died in 1974). Peron's government had given the military orders to "annihilate" the rebel groups, however, the harshness of tactics and the scope of those targeted greatly expanded after the coup.

Lewis is not sentimental about either side, and thus he presents an unbiased description of events. In the process, he takes down some of fashionable myths about the period. First, there is very little evidence the United States had much of anything to do with the junta. While the Administration of U.S. President Gerald Ford didn't raise many objections to the military's actions, the junta had a frosty relationship with Jimmy Carter. Certainly Ford's Secretary of State Henry Kissinger glossed over the junta's actions but the junta received neither help nor inspiration from the Americans. Rather, their guide was the French counterinsurgency strategies in Vietnam and Algeria, which is interesting, given they knew neither strategy was ultimately successful. Nor was the junta a promoter of neoliberal economic policies, as is sometimes suggested by the socialist left, as it carried on the interventionist policies of governments before it.

Another aspect that should surprise developed world readers accustomed to civilian control of the armed forces was the status of the military in Argentina. Apart from its tactics in the dirty war, it seemed to operate in its own fiefdom well before the 1970s and was frequently at war with itself. The book is replete with descriptions of units taking up arms against units of the same military. It may have been this sense of detachment from the society as a whole that allowed the military leaders to believe they could act with such impunity when they had control of the government.

This book is as good as any English language resource on Argentina's "Dirty War". Consice, broad-based and well balenced, it's most salient characteristic is that it is easy to read. As a basic narrative it will be in the bibliography of every college student who ever writes about the subject of Argentina from 1976-1983. With a marked absence of political baggage either for one side or for the other, the author begins the narrative with the socio-political setting that set the stage for the conflict. Without sparing either the leftist terrorists that plagued Argentina in the early to mid-1970s or the brutal Right-wing government that crushed the former, the author narrates the messy political violence that befell Argentina of the 1970s and 80s.

All told, this book is a must-read for anyone intersted in the subject matter addressed in the book's title.