Galtieri committed more that 2300 political executions ( typical leftist totalitarian authority figure, my way or else) made of 10,000 political arrests, and and is reposible the disappearance of 20,000 to 30,000 people. He was such a savy dictator, he caused inflation to run at 900%, I bet everyone was really dancing in the streets in those good ol' days...
He resigned in shame after the humiliating defeat and surrender during the Falkland war.
In the presidential election of Oct. 1983, Raúl Alfonsín, leader of the Radical Civic Union, handed the Peronist Party its first defeat since its founding. Growing unemployment and quadruple-digit inflation, however, led to a Peronist victory in the elections of May 1989. Alfonsín resigned a month later in the wake of riots over high food prices, in favor of the new Peronist president, Carlos Menem. In 1991, Menem promoted economic austerity measures that deregulated businesses and privatized state-owned industries. But beginning in Sept. 1998, eight years into Menem's two-term presidency, Argentina entered its worst recession in a decade. Menem's economic policies, tolerance of corruption, and pardoning of military leaders involved in the dirty war eventually lost him the support of the poor and the working class who had elected him.
In Dec. 1999 Fernando de la Rua became president. Despite the introduction of several tough economic austerity plans, by 2001 the recession slid into its third year. The IMF gave Argentina $13.7 billion in emergency aid in Jan. 2001 and $8 billion in Aug. 2001. The international help was not enough, however, and by the end of 2001, Argentina verged on economic collapse. Rioters protesting government austerity measures forced de la Rua to resign in Dec. 2001. Argentina then defaulted on its $155 billion foreign debt payments, the largest such default in history.
After more instability, Congress named Eduardo Duhalde president on Jan. 1, 2002. Duhalde soon announced an economic plan devaluing the Argentine peso, which had been pegged to the dollar for a decade. The devaluation plunged the banking industry into crisis and wiped out much of the savings of the middle class, plunging millions of Argentinians into poverty.
In July 2002, former junta leader Galtieri and 42 other military officers were arrested and charged with the torture and execution of 22 leftist guerrillas during Argentina's 7-year military dictatorship. In recent years, judges have found legal loopholes allowing them to circumvent the blanket amnesty laws passed in 1986 and 1987, which have allowed many accused of atrocities during the dirty war to walk free. In June 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that these amnesty laws were unconstitutional.
Peronist Néstor Kirchner, the former governor of Santa Cruz, became Argentina's president in May 2003, after former president Carlos Menem abandoned the race. Kirchner has vowed to aggressively reform the courts, police, and armed services and to prosecute perpetrators of the dirty war. Argentina's economy has been rebounding since its near collapse in 2001, with an impressive growth rate of about 8% since President Kirchner took office. In March 2005, Kirchner announced that the country's debt had been successfully restructured.
Yea Clemenza, the place just keeps getting better and better all the time.
But, it's all Bush's fault now. If at first you fail, then fail again and again, despite being bailed out time and time again by Americans, BLAME Americans. Yes, thats the ticket...
Nuke the crap hole.
Galtieri was an anticommunist hero. He was NOT A PERONIST! The Junta who governed Argentina were ALLIES OF THE UNITED STATES. They KILLED COMMUNISTS, something the Brits never had the balls to do in Rhodesia and Kenya.
I wish I could slap you across the head for calling the Argentine junta "leftists." THEY WERE ONE OF THREE COUNTRIES IN THE HEMISPHERE WHO ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING ABOUT THE COMMUNISTS!
The leftist governments that succeeded the Junta were a disgrace.
The Malvinas issues is NOT a left/right issue. Both the Argentine right (the Junta) AND left (every government since 1983) saw/see it as an issue of national sovereignty, nothing more nothing less.