Preliminary Results Of Videla´s Autopsy Revealed

[ajoknoblauch]

Nope, not really "too late" in the game. Three possible reasons for someone to have killed him now.

1. "Bragging rights" in saying I killed Videla. Maybe another prisoner did him in.
2. Personal vendetta. Maybe a guard (or another prisoner) had a friend/family member that disappeared during Videla's term and this was revenge.
3. (My favorite) Videla was getting ready to tell everything he knew about America's involvement in the terror during the Dirty War and American operatives did him in (or contracted the job).

Felt paranoid lately?

 

[sergio]

As guilty as he was, the blame for what happened can not be pinned on one person. Many were complicit directly and indirecty including the father of a certain European queen who consented to serve a vicious military regime knowing full well what he was involved in.

 

[Gringoboy]

I agree Sergio.
Much as the same way we vilify Hitler.

 

[Yogur griego]

I agree Sergio.
Much as the same way we vilify Hitler.

Well, Hitler was more of a real strongman, Videla was just a straw man.

 

[PaulZ]

As guilty as he was, the blame for what happened can not be pinned on one person. Many were complicit directly and indirecty including the father of a certain European queen who consented to serve a vicious military regime knowing full well what he was involved in.

I think that if a regime like Videla's "asks" you to be part of their regime you don't really have a choice. (Unless you think it is a choice between being part of the government or disappear....) He wasn't part of the regime from the beginning and he resigned after about 2 yrs in the function. He claims he didn't know about a lot of things which have happened. I don't know if that is true or not, but I do know that if you have to make a choice between "surviving" and (most likely) end up dead, the choice is easy (for most people!)... (I am not defending him, I just state that I can understand him, not necessarily agree with him...)

I discussed this with a very close friend of mine in BsAs... He said something which is true too... If people in the government are held accountable, which is in principle correct, at which level does it stop? Is the cop at the corner of the street also guilty if a group of police officers are involved? Or does the accountability stop at a certain (management) level? Or is it all a personal issue... I think that every person should be judged on his/her actions... The cop at the corner is not responsible, nor accountable, for what another cop is doing a few blocks away... As a whole organisation the cops can be held accountable though..
Same for the Videla regime. There were people who were the most important "bad guys", but there were also people involved in the government who are innocent of the crimes committed. However as a whole government they were accountable. (So in that way anyone involved in that government should not be allowed to be in a public function ever again...)

Yes, I know that this is maybe something people will not agree with...

 

[Yogur griego]

I still think that most of the actual torturers are more guilty than people like Videla. That doesn't mean I like Videla, but the worst perpetrators always manage to escape justice.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

I still think that most of the actual torturers are more guilty than people like Videla. That doesn't mean I like Videla, but the worst perpetrators always manage to escape justice.

Videla may not himself have stuck a cattle prod into somebody's balls, but that doesn't make him any less guilty.

 

[Yogur griego]

Videla may not himself have stuck a cattle prod into somebody's balls, but that doesn't make him any less guilty.

Less guilty no, but I often wonder where the ideas of torture actually have come from. I am still trying to find out to what extent Videla was actually the mastermind of the whole structure, or just a weak and easily impressionable figure like Cristina Kirchner. In the case of Stroessner and Pinochet, I am more sure of their sadism.

From Stroessner's wikipedia page CONTENT MAY BE SHOCKING:

Pastor Coronel was the chief of the pyragüés (hairy-footed in Guaraní) or secret police. He would interview people in a pileta, a bath of human excrement or ram electric cattle prods up their rectums. The Secretary of the Paraguayan Communist Party was dismembered alive with a chainsaw while Stroessner listened on the phone.

I am often interested in the hardcore criminals that flourish under dictatorships, not only the famous dictators themselves.

 

[Yogur griego]

http://www.perfil.com/contenidos/2013/05/17/noticia_0053.html

 

[ajoknoblauch]

I think there's consensus that, at the top level, Massera was the most sadistic and vicious of the bunch.