General Videla Part 3: God, Football, the Falklands AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Real Dictators

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Episode: General Videla Part 3: God, Football, the Falklands

Author: NOISER
Duration: 01:01:06

Episode Shownotes

The 1978 FIFA World Cup rolls into Argentina. A surreal fortnight ensues. Fans flock to revamped stadia, while just metres away prisoners cower - hidden in secret torture facilities. As foreign journalists begin to join the dots, Videla goes into statesman mode. With the tournament in the balance, the dictator

and a famous friend pay Argentina’s opponents a friendly visit. It will result in one of the most contentious games in history… A Noiser production, written by John Bartlett. Many thanks to Edward Brudney, Robert Cox, Marcela Mora y Araujo, Rhys Richards, Ernesto Semán. This is Part 3 of 4. Get every episode of Real Dictators a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Summary

In this episode of Real Dictators, the narrative revolves around the 1978 FIFA World Cup in Argentina, highlighting the stark contrasts between the celebration of football and the oppressive political climate under General Videla. While international attention focuses on the tournament, revealing Argentina's vibrant image, the grim reality of political repression unfolds in secretive detention centers. Videla employs the World Cup as a propaganda tool to bolster his regime's legitimacy amidst growing human rights abuses. The episode exemplifies the juxtaposition of national pride and state-sponsored violence, culminating in Argentina's victory while many remain imprisoned and forgotten.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (General Videla Part 3: God, Football, the Falklands) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_00
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00:00:37 Speaker_01
It's June the 21st, 1978, another bitter winter's afternoon in the city of Rosario, 200 miles northwest of Buenos Aires. A fine drizzle blows in of the Paraná River over the skeletal forest of masts and rusty cranes of the river port.

00:00:58 Speaker_01
Nearby, fans are gathering at the Estadio Gigante de Arrecita, Rosario Central's decrepit football ground. But we are down in the bowels of the stadium. in a stifling, cramped changing room.

00:01:18 Speaker_01
The players of Peru are preparing to face the hosts, Argentina. They wrap tape around their wrists, slide into their boots and pull on their shirts. It's the last game before the 1978 World Cup final.

00:01:38 Speaker_01
According to the tournament's unusual format, Peru are already eliminated. But Argentina, playing on home soil, can still make the final with victory by four clear goals. The Peruvians are focused as they go through their last preparations.

00:01:57 Speaker_01
But tension is growing. The atmosphere in the stadium is febrile. Suddenly the changing room door swings open, and a flustered aide scuttles in, murmuring something in the ear of coach Marcos Calderon, whose face contorts into a worried frown.

00:02:19 Speaker_01
Before the aide has finished his explanation, two more unannounced visitors stride in behind him. One is thin and bird-like. His angular frame supports a woollen suit like a hastily assembled scarecrow. His eyes dart nervously between the players.

00:02:38 Speaker_01
The other is portly and bespectacled, beaming around the room. They are General Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentina's dictator. and Henry Kissinger, a private citizen who has recently lost his job as the US Secretary of State.

00:02:59 Speaker_01
They've decided to pay Argentina's opponents a friendly visit. Silence falls. Studs scrape on the floor as the players straighten up and turn to face the pair.

00:03:16 Speaker_01
General Videla attempts a smile, his lips twisting uncomfortably beneath his scrubby moustache. They've come to wish them good luck, he announces. That's all. He addresses the stunned Peruvian team briefly, appealing to the Latin American Brotherhood

00:03:38 Speaker_01
The honourable thing for them to do, he suggests, would be to let Argentina win, so that a South American nation can have a shot at glory. He stops short of mentioning what might happen if they don't do as he suggests.

00:04:00 Speaker_01
From the Noiser Network, this is part three of the Videla story. And this is Real Dictators. By mid-1978, General Jorge Rafael Videla's regime is in a strong position domestically.

00:04:43 Speaker_01
Yes, there's some squabbling within the military junta, but that's nothing new. There is, however, one major issue facing him. His government's programme of state repression is causing a stir abroad.

00:04:57 Speaker_01
The international perception of his beloved country is that it's nadir. The US has imposed sanctions on Argentina, and Videla's relationship with President Jimmy Carter is frosty to say the least.

00:05:11 Speaker_01
France, Sweden and several other countries are frantically searching for information on citizens who have disappeared under Videla's watch. Meanwhile, over in Geneva, the United Nations is compiling long lists of these disappeared individuals.

00:05:31 Speaker_01
This is all part of an anti-Argentine campaign, a furious Videla declares.

00:05:37 Speaker_01
There are no concentration camps or political prisoners in Argentina, he tells German newspaper Die Welt, in a rare foreign press interview, ten days before the Football World Cup is due to begin.

00:05:51 Speaker_01
The campaign unleashed against Argentina, he spits, is the work of the international left. He goes on. The 3,200 detainees whose names the Interior Ministry has published are imprisoned for terrorism, corruption and criminality.

00:06:09 Speaker_01
The Argentine Armed Forces, threatened by 4,000 armed guerrillas, were obliged to defend the human rights of the majority. We haven't been given the understanding we deserve.

00:06:22 Speaker_01
In fact, the number of disappeared has swollen to more than 20,000, with many of those individuals subjected to incarceration, depraved torture and execution. General Videla and his government could do with changing the image of Argentina.

00:06:40 Speaker_01
Footballing success might be just the thing to wash away their guilt and reinvent themselves. Rhys Richards is a journalist and author of Blood on the Crossbar, a history of the 1978 World Cup.

00:06:58 Speaker_07
If Argentina is able to establish itself as a good football team, as a nation that's able to host football fans from around the world, then that's a huge pat on the back for the government, for the dictatorship, internationally as well as domestically.

00:07:18 Speaker_01
In a ceremony in London on July 6, 1966, five days before England would embark upon their only successful World Cup campaign, Argentina is selected as the host nation for the 1978 tournament.

00:07:34 Speaker_01
Just a week before this announcement, back in Buenos Aires, civilian President Arturo Illa is deposed by the fifth military coup of the 20th century. Handing the World Cup to such a tumultuous country raises eyebrows.

00:07:50 Speaker_01
But everything will be different in Argentina in 12 years' time, assures FIFA, football's governing body. In some ways, they're not wrong.

00:08:02 Speaker_07
It's a very different Argentina between 66 and 78. There were eight different people leading the country during that time. There was a huge push to stage the World Cup. I know Perón, in the early days, I think he wanted to host the 1950 World Cup.

00:08:17 Speaker_07
And then the policy of isolationism meant that they skipped a few. So by the time it came around in 66, it was very much overdue.

00:08:25 Speaker_01
It's difficult to overstate how all-consuming football can be in Argentina. Every detail of every game is analysed minutely. and the country grinds to a halt whenever the national team plays.

00:08:40 Speaker_01
Indeed, even amid the upheaval of Wydela's coup in May 1976, the only broadcast allowed to be shown, besides the obligatory military transmissions, was a friendly fixture against Poland.

00:08:54 Speaker_01
But despite their renown, the national team have a history of underperforming in major competitions. They are yet to win a World Cup. Four years earlier in West Germany, they were knocked out feebly, much to the chagrin of football-loving Argentines.

00:09:14 Speaker_01
Marcela Mora y Araujo is a football journalist born in Buenos Aires.

00:09:20 Speaker_04
The fact that Argentina had never quite shone internationally as a national squad, they played international games, they won a lot, big clubs from Europe would come here.

00:09:31 Speaker_04
And so the poor performance at World Cup or at international level was something that needed to be resolved. It was like a pending assignment.

00:09:41 Speaker_04
And there was widespread feeling that Argentina were the best in the world and this should be somehow acknowledged and proved beyond dispute. So it was like, do you?

00:09:55 Speaker_01
In August 1976, a few months after Videla's coup d'etat, a special committee is established. The World Cup Autarchic Entity, or EAM, is given the task of delivering the tournament the dictatorship wants. There are two men at its helm.

00:10:15 Speaker_01
General Omar Actis is named president. Actis is a tight-fisted military bureaucrat who is interested in delivering an attainable austere tournament within budget. His vice-president is Captain Carlos Lacoste,

00:10:32 Speaker_01
He is a confidant of the bloodthirsty, ambitious head of the Navy, Admiral Macera. Like almost everything else, the organisation of the tournament is causing squabbles within the Junta.

00:10:49 Speaker_01
Two days before he's due to lay out his plans for the World Cup at a press conference in Buenos Aires, Actiz is brutally gunned down.

00:10:59 Speaker_01
An official statement from the army explains that he had been intercepted by four subversive delinquents who fled the scene after the attack. The Montaneros guerrilla group are blamed.

00:11:13 Speaker_01
But almost immediately, fingers are pointed towards Massera, who wants his pal in charge of the World Cup committee. With Actis out of the way, La Costa is cleared to deliver the tournament which can launder Videla's declining international image.

00:11:31 Speaker_01
The purse strings are loosened and no expense is spared. Ambitious infrastructure plans are announced. A state television company is created to broadcast the games. The airport will be given a makeover and highways will be laid out.

00:11:48 Speaker_01
New stadia will be built in Córdoba, Mendoza and Mar del Plata, and three more will be renovated, among them River Plate's Estadio Monumental.

00:12:00 Speaker_01
Bulldozers displaced hundreds of thousands of people from the vicias, or shantytowns, to make way for the new infrastructure and hotels.

00:12:13 Speaker_04
In the end, that wasn't done quite fast enough for the World Cup, but for years in the build-up, you had massive cardboard kind of signposts along the motorway if you were driving from the international airport into the city, just literally hiding the rubbish dumps and the shanty towns so foreign visitors wouldn't see them.

00:12:36 Speaker_04
So literally covering everything that was awful or deemed as unsightly for foreign visitors.

00:12:45 Speaker_01
Holding the tournament will show the world that Argentina is a trustworthy country, capable of carrying out huge projects, boasts Admiral Massera. It will help push back against the criticism that is raining on us from around the world.

00:13:02 Speaker_01
But the criticism is well substantiated. Even as the final preparations are being put in place, five death flights are departing every day to dump bodies in the Atlantic Ocean. The victims of Macero's torture center, the ESMA.

00:13:20 Speaker_01
In the end, Argentina spends over $520 million, almost four times as much as Spain will spend as hosts four years later. Economy Minister Martínez de Oz is apoplectic. Argentina's public deficit is one of its greatest woes.

00:13:38 Speaker_01
This profligate spending is hardly helping.

00:13:46 Speaker_02
Hey, it's Emma Chamberlain. I designed these new glasses for Warby Parker, and I basically can't take them off. Like, I'm showering in them and sleeping in them. They're just that good. Go see them all at warbyparker.com. And you know what?

00:14:00 Speaker_02
Have a good day, too. OK? All right? Bye.

00:14:06 Speaker_01
Yet despite his lavish investment, General Videla doesn't much care for football himself. He showed no interest in the sport at the Colegio San Jose, the strict Catholic school he attended in Buenos Aires.

00:14:21 Speaker_01
While his football-mad classmates played scrappy games with a rubber ball in the school's central patio, he would lean back against the stone pillars, watching on ambivalently.

00:14:33 Speaker_01
Once he becomes president, Videla professes to be a fan of Independiente, a popular club from a southern suburb of the capital. But his schoolmates don't remember that being part of his childhood. Admiral Massera is the Junta's real football fanatic.

00:14:51 Speaker_07
Jorge Videla was not a football man. He'd never set foot on a football pitch prior to the World Cup. He was an arch pragmatist. He saw the value of this tournament in portraying Argentina in a positive light.

00:15:06 Speaker_07
The person who was crucial to the World Cup, a football man, was Massera, Emilio Massera, the leader of the Navy.

00:15:13 Speaker_07
And I think the staging of the World Cup and the way that it happened, establishing Carlos Lacoste as the organizer, the close links with FIFA, these were more down to Massera rather than Videla.

00:15:29 Speaker_01
On the eve of the World Cup, Videla's dirty war is well known abroad, and rumblings of dissent grow louder. Amnesty International launches a protest movement under the slogan, Yes to Soccer, No to Torture.

00:15:46 Speaker_07
There was a large movement to boycott the tournament, and the epicenter of that was France.

00:15:54 Speaker_07
So in Paris, there was a group of exiles and Parisians who worked together to produce a magazine named COBA, the Committee to Boycott the World Cup in Argentina, who produced magazines and a lot of literature to tell the story of what was happening.

00:16:11 Speaker_07
They tried their best to re-emphasize the proximity of the detention centers to the games. So their message was no football should take place in a concentration camp or no football should take place near to concentration camps.

00:16:24 Speaker_01
The Netherlands, favourites to win the tournament, join calls for a boycott. The West German government also threatens to withdraw. But in the end, both teams do travel to Argentina.

00:16:41 Speaker_01
Just one man, curly-haired West German midfielder Paul Breitner, refuses to play for political reasons. Even the Montoneros, Videla's staunchest enemies say that the World Cup should go ahead.

00:16:57 Speaker_01
They would rather people come to the General's Argentina to see the truth for themselves. Videla is incensed by the lack of credit and amount of criticism that he's receiving.

00:17:13 Speaker_01
So, in secret, he hires the services of Burson Masteler, a US advertising agency. He asks them to come up with a pithy slogan to alter Argentina's image in the international press. The line they settle on is Los Argentinos somos derechos y humanos.

00:17:35 Speaker_01
We Argentines are righteous and humane. It's printed on 250,000 bumper stickers and distributed to motorists throughout Buenos Aires to create the appearance of spontaneous support.

00:17:50 Speaker_01
To further combat negative international perceptions of Videla, the government even take out full-page adverts in major newspapers around the world. Professor Ernesto Semán.

00:18:02 Speaker_05
I think that the idea of him as a person was developed as a PR strategy once he was in power. You know, from TV programs to covers in magazines to very generous interviews.

00:18:16 Speaker_05
all the way leading to the World Cup in which he was making a lot of effort in order to become sort of a sympathetic figure.

00:18:30 Speaker_01
By June 1978, the Junta's strength is at its height. It has a World Cup to distract attention and project an alternative message around the world. Let the games begin. June the 1st.

00:18:55 Speaker_01
80,000 supporters, wrapped up warm against the bitter winter, are packed into River Plate's revamped stadium in Belgrano, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the capital. Their breath rises in clouds above them.

00:19:11 Speaker_01
Their hands are stuffed deep into their pockets. The dictatorship's tournament is about to get underway. Despite the refurbishments, the pitch in front of them is bumpy and tattered.

00:19:25 Speaker_01
The original grass withered after being irrigated with seawater and had to be hastily relayed in the weeks before kick-off. Up in the director's box, General Videla looms into view on the big screen. Polite applause fills the stadium.

00:19:44 Speaker_01
He steps up to a microphone in a pin-striped grey suit flanked by cronies who remove their hats deferentially and listen closely.

00:19:54 Speaker_01
Videla speaks slowly and deliberately, his voice echoing back to him from speakers around the stadium as he asks God for the tournament to contribute to peace among all men. The crowd responds with a mixture of applause and whistles.

00:20:12 Speaker_01
As he barks out his message, Videla sounds like he's addressing a military rally. The general only knows one way. As a crude metaphor to accompany his message of peace, a cot of greyish doves are released, fluttering into the air.

00:20:28 Speaker_07
He was not somebody, in truth, you would see much of. However, when the World Cup landed, He went into statesman mode. He presented the opening ceremony.

00:20:44 Speaker_07
He made a great speech about the importance of the World Cup and the opportunity to unite the people. He's forever in the background looking awkward, shuffling into shot. There are photos of him everywhere.

00:20:56 Speaker_07
I would imagine there's more photos of him during this month period than at any other point in his history. This is when he was most visible. as the Commander-in-Chief, most visible as the President, the de facto President of the Argentinian Republic.

00:21:13 Speaker_01
The opening game gets underway. Italy are taking on France, moments after General Videla's remarks.

00:21:22 Speaker_01
But literally a few hundred meters from where Argentina's dictator addressed the crowd, thousands of the disappeared are cowering in the ESMA, hidden in plain sight.

00:21:38 Speaker_01
Down a long basement corridor, one prisoner leans against the wall in her tube, the standing cell she's been kept in for nearly two months. Every inch of the wall in front of her is etched with the final words of the tube's previous occupants.

00:21:56 Speaker_01
She's been here so long she knows each aching phrase and dedication by heart. Over at the River Plate Stadium, the crowd erupts. She hears the cheering clearly through a grate high above her head.

00:22:13 Speaker_01
She imagines her football-mad brother leaping up from his seat in celebration. He can have no idea how close she is. For all he knows, she's been dead for months.

00:22:29 Speaker_01
Throughout the tournament, the prisoners of the Esma hear the sounds of the matches, the fans' groans of anguish and screams of triumph.

00:22:39 Speaker_01
Some inmates are even brought out of their cells to watch the games with their guards, only to return to their torture after the final whistle has been blown. Rydela's World Cup is truly modern.

00:22:56 Speaker_01
Deals are signed with Adidas, Coca-Cola and McDonald's, their logos plastered around each stadium. Ticker tape rains down from the stands, accumulating in piles around the edges of the pitches.

00:23:12 Speaker_01
And all this commercialism and vibrancy is captured by the cameras in its full glory, because this World Cup is being broadcast across the globe in colour. Well, for most people it is.

00:23:27 Speaker_04
It was colour TV, but only for the countries that were consuming it. Outside Argentina, we still had to watch black and white, which I still can't believe we did, actually.

00:23:37 Speaker_04
I sometimes see footage and I think, well, in my memory, those matches are in colour, but they weren't. They were grainy black and white.

00:23:47 Speaker_01
Football-mad Argentines like Marcela were left squinting at fuzzy, monochromatic images on their screens. The neighbourhoods around the stadia are even subject to power blackouts during some games.

00:24:01 Speaker_01
All to ensure that Videla's curated image of Argentina is beamed out internationally. L'Equipe, the French sports paper, ironically labels the televisual spectacle, Videla Color. The German press run with, Fussball Macht Frei.

00:24:22 Speaker_01
a grim allusion to the sign above the entrance to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. In Argentina, the Montoneros managed to briefly hijack the radio commentary to tell listeners about the numbers have disappeared, but few people hear it.

00:24:40 Speaker_01
The only hint of protest in the stadia are the curious black bands painted diligently around the base of the goal frames.

00:24:49 Speaker_01
After considering other forms of protest, the ground staff decided that if the players could not sport black armbands in memory of the disappeared, then the posts would have to do it for them.

00:25:04 Speaker_01
César Menotti, Argentina's celebrated coach, is an interesting figure to hold the key to the Junta's chances of victory. There was no doubt that he is the best man for the job,

00:25:16 Speaker_01
But the 39-year-old is also a chain-smoking socialist, who was even a member of Argentina's Communist Party in his youth, and he's hardly afraid of voicing his opinions. But Videla would rather win with a rebel at the helm than lose with a stooge.

00:25:34 Speaker_01
So strong is the current squad that a 17-year-old Diego Maradona, one of Argentina's two greatest ever players, is left out by Menotti. Even as Videla attempts to show off the best of Argentina, the World Cup also has another effect.

00:25:59 Speaker_01
It increases scrutiny on the regime. Of course, no photographer, reporter or visiting player is ever let inside the gates of the ESMA.

00:26:10 Speaker_01
But, ignored by the Argentine press and ridiculed as madwomen by the Junta, the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo are interviewed by a Dutch television journalist.

00:26:22 Speaker_01
Their testimony, seeking answers and justice for disappeared loved ones, causes a furore around the world.

00:26:34 Speaker_01
Robert Cox was the editor of the Buenos Aires Herald when the World Cup rolled into Argentina, bringing foreign journalists within touching distance of Fidel's regime.

00:26:46 Speaker_03
Well, anything that got published abroad was tremendous because there was a complete denial in Argentina because they managed to close down pretty well all the normal sources that people had of news.

00:26:59 Speaker_03
What happened was that people who came here to report soccer wanted to report something else because they realized that what was happening was appalling.

00:27:11 Speaker_01
Up in the stands, Videla is present at every Argentina game. But results are mixed. Having finished second in their group, Argentina end up playing their last group match against Peru in Rosario.

00:27:26 Speaker_01
The tournament's particular format means no quarter or semi-finals. The two best teams from across the group stages will automatically go into the World Cup final. Argentina still have a chance of making it, but the odds are stacked against them.

00:27:45 Speaker_01
Cue Videla and Kissinger's impromptu visit to the Peruvian dressing room to address the players and remind them of the benefits of South American solidarity. What follows is one of the most contentious games in World Cup history.

00:28:05 Speaker_07
Argentina needed to win 4-0 and they actually won 6-0. You've got the presence of Jorge Videla in the Peruvian changing room prior to the game where he's speaking about the importance of Latin brotherhood.

00:28:18 Speaker_07
Now, obviously this would have a hugely intimidating effect on the Peruvians.

00:28:25 Speaker_01
Peru starts strongly enough. But their capitulation, allowing Argentina to score six goals without reply, sparks rumour and suspicion. Peru's goalkeeper was actually born in Argentina. He becomes the centre of the speculation.

00:28:44 Speaker_01
Could the Peruvians really have lost on purpose?

00:28:48 Speaker_07
It's been said that the Peruvians were offered $20,000 each to throw the game. There are accusations that they were transfer of political prisoners. which would have been fairly commonplace between dictatorships at the time.

00:29:02 Speaker_07
There are accusations of grain shipments between the countries, and there are numerous accusations. I will say, on record, I don't think it was fixed.

00:29:11 Speaker_07
I think they did everything they could to make it as difficult as possible for everyone they played, but I think it stops short of being fixed.

00:29:21 Speaker_04
I don't know anyone that has any conclusive evidence. And the most recent thorough look, probe into the 78 World Cup, which is Matias Bausa's oral history, he also says, I interviewed hundreds of people for hundreds of hours.

00:29:37 Speaker_04
I have no conclusive evidence. People talk of a cargo of maize to cereals to Peru. But that apparently was actually something that was broken a long time before, and Argentina had withheld some of it.

00:29:53 Speaker_04
The Peruvian goalkeeper, whom I've interviewed several times, was like a man with no money. So he was like, wouldn't I be richer if I'd thrown that game?

00:30:04 Speaker_04
None of the players on the pitch, Argentinian or Peruvian, acknowledge or confess or recognize the accusation that the match was fixed.

00:30:14 Speaker_01
Whether honestly or not, Argentina have made the final. They will face a strong Dutch side in a bid to win their first ever World Cup. But before the showpiece, another scandal surfaces.

00:30:31 Speaker_01
A bizarre letter appears in El Grafico, Argentina's biggest football magazine. It appears to have been written in English by Dutch captain Rudolf Krol to his three-year-old daughter.

00:30:45 Speaker_01
Mum said the other day you cried a lot because some little friends of yours told you some ugly things that happened in Argentina, it reads. It's a childish lie. Daddy is fine.

00:30:58 Speaker_01
He has your doll and a battalion of soldiers to look after him, and their rifles shoot flowers. Tell your friends the truth. Argentina is a land of love. In actual fact, it's been written by journalist Enrique Romero.

00:31:16 Speaker_01
Krol's signature had been lifted from an information pack distributed to journalists covering the tournament. Incensed, Krol immediately goes before the press to rubbish the letter.

00:31:29 Speaker_01
Even if he had written it, he says, why would he write to his three-year-old daughter in English? The Dutch team threatens to pull out of the tournament.

00:31:38 Speaker_07
I think the Dutch team in general were furious with their treatment. They felt like they'd been used. They felt like they were used as puppets.

00:31:55 Speaker_01
Argentina's shot at glory comes on June 25th 1978. With Videla watching on from the stands, coach Cesar Menotti tells his players to win not for the junta, but for the metal workers, the butchers, the bakers and taxi drivers who fill the stadium.

00:32:14 Speaker_01
We play in blue and white, not the green of the military, he says. Just before the break, Mario Kempis fires Argentina ahead and the roof comes off the place. But the Dutch come back strongly in the second half and equalize.

00:32:34 Speaker_01
The game goes to extra time. Waves of sickening nerves wash through the spectators. But nerves turn to joy as Argentina score twice more. The stadium is in raptures. Argentina have done it. They become the fifth host nation to win the World Cup.

00:33:05 Speaker_01
The Dutch have lost a second successive final. Videla gets his moment in the spotlight. He can scarcely believe it. The tournament could not have gone better. On a low stage erected on the turf, he hands Argentina's captain the trophy.

00:33:23 Speaker_01
The photograph is plastered across the papers the next morning. This triumph goes beyond the realm of sport, crows the football agnostic dictator. This was the confirmation of the never-in-doubt victory of Argentina as a country.

00:33:40 Speaker_01
Our country has lived a genuine festive climate that has surprised many visitors who can now testify to the reality of our motherland, deformed by a perverse international campaign.

00:33:55 Speaker_01
The scenes inside the ground are euphoric, but they're nothing compared to what is unfolding on the crowded streets outside. Argentina is jubilant. Crowds throng the street in every direction, awash with pale blue and white as far as the eye can see.

00:34:14 Speaker_01
The whole city is out tonight. Horns blare, fireworks pop, and songs and chants fill the air. People have climbed atop bus shelters and onto trees to witness the moment. Everybody has a flag to wave.

00:34:31 Speaker_01
A few blocks from El Monumental Stadium, a Peugeot 504 crawls through the crowds. Nobody is in a hurry to get out of its way. Gradually it creeps forward as the driver sounds the horn, along with the euphoric chanting.

00:34:50 Speaker_01
In the back of the car is Graciela Delleo, a young woman who was kidnapped from her home four months ago. She has disappeared and has been sleeping in the basement of the ESMA with a hood tied over her head, held captive and tortured by the Navy.

00:35:08 Speaker_01
Her family have no idea whether she is alive or dead. Overcome with joy at the footballing triumph, her torturers have decided to take her out of the ESMA on a macabre field trip.

00:35:22 Speaker_01
They want to show her that they have won and Argentina has forgotten her. Tears well in her eyes as she stands up on the backseat of the car, her torso out of the sunroof. All around, people whoop and cheer and nobody notices her.

00:35:43 Speaker_01
She knows she cannot cry out. D'Aleo is then taken to a fancy downtown restaurant to toast Argentina's victory with her torturers.

00:35:58 Speaker_01
So lost is she in this unfamiliar world from which she's been isolated that she actually wants to go back to the basement of the ESMA. It won't be long before the cycle of torture and interrogation resumes. Many years later,

00:36:18 Speaker_01
Marcella met Graciela de Leo and spoke to her about that day. Their experiences couldn't have been more different.

00:36:27 Speaker_04
I often wonder, and in fact I said to her, I mean, maybe we were on that same stretch of road and I'm one of those people that couldn't hear you, which is sort of unbearable in a way.

00:36:38 Speaker_04
It's unthinkable to kind of be swept up in a frenzy such that you become completely insensitized to the horror that's going up like immediately next to you. The 78 victory was a little bit marred and tainted with all the context.

00:36:56 Speaker_04
Football happens in a context always, and it can reflect or not the reality in which it exists. However joyful and wonderful that month was, there's no possible version of it that isn't next door to a torture center where people were being tortured.

00:37:14 Speaker_04
So, you know, you have to hold those two truths together. I'm a big believer that football doesn't actually alter realities. It just suspends them for 90 minutes. And then you go back to what was there before.

00:37:34 Speaker_01
A day later, a group has gathered in the Plaza de Marcial. They're chanting for their president to come out onto the balcony of the Casa Rosada. General Videla, for perhaps the only time in his life, feels like the hero. He's basking in his glory.

00:37:53 Speaker_01
He even comes down to the square to embrace several of the congregation. For the four weeks that the tournament has lasted, repression and joy have lived literally side by side. Differences have been put aside, albeit briefly,

00:38:11 Speaker_01
Argentines are able to enjoy the tournament while abhorring the regime that is disappearing their compatriots. Ernesto Semán was 11 years old in 1978.

00:38:24 Speaker_01
His father, Elias, co-founded Vanguardia Comunista, a Maoist political party, in 1965, and was in and out of hiding under the Vedela regime.

00:38:39 Speaker_05
I remember jumping with him in the streets, jumping in the streets and supporting Argentina exactly like everybody else.

00:38:49 Speaker_01
Three weeks later, Ernesto is at home in Buenos Aires when there's a knock at the door.

00:38:55 Speaker_05
He was kidnapped in a cafe. He requested to pass by our house before going to the concentration camp, and they agreed. For whatever reason, they came to our place. I opened the door.

00:39:09 Speaker_05
and he was with the two kidnappers and i didn't realize that there was anything wrong i i think i asked him who they were and he said doesn't matter go playing and i call you in a few and uh it might have sounded believable enough that i went actually to my friend's house in a different apartment and came back a few minutes later and then they took him

00:39:33 Speaker_05
They took him to El Vesuvio, another extremely famous concentration camp in the Buenos Aires province. We stayed in the same house for many years, and not without conflict, we resumed our routines.

00:39:51 Speaker_05
I went to school the following day, which now I think is unbelievable. I remember I went the following day to get ham and cheese and bread. from the grocery store around the corner. How do we do that? And nothing happened to us while we were doing that.

00:40:12 Speaker_05
It's a very surreal experience.

00:40:15 Speaker_01
Elias Saman was last seen at El Vesubio Torture Center, not long after he was kidnapped. He is still disappeared. His remains have never been found.

00:40:38 Speaker_01
A week after the final, on August 1st 1978, Jorge Rafael Videla steps aside as the commander-in-chief of the army. He is replaced by his second-in-command, Roberto Viola. Videla, however, remains in the office of president.

00:40:57 Speaker_01
At a Casa Rosada press conference, he makes one of his most notorious public statements. When asked about human rights violations in Argentina,

00:41:08 Speaker_01
The emboldened Videla declares, we Argentines should not be ashamed, because what happened was a defense of human rights, threatened by terrorism. The disappeared are an incognita. As long as they remain disappeared, they can't have special treatment.

00:41:26 Speaker_01
They've no entity. They're neither dead nor alive. They're disappeared. We can't do anything about it.

00:41:36 Speaker_03
I think now when I look back, it's because he believed he was a complete military man. And he didn't really feel happy or comfortable when he talked about anything else.

00:41:46 Speaker_03
When he tried to explain what it was for somebody to be disappeared, he essentially was just annoyed by it all. He said to me, I wish I could go home. I wish I could get out of this. I wish I could.

00:41:58 Speaker_03
But if I left, a general would come with a sword, and the country would be a bath of blood. That's exactly what he said. I wrote it down, and that's what he said. A pathetic figure, a pathetic figure, who all he had was his uniform.

00:42:14 Speaker_03
And so he continued his military life through the whole of his life, probably from the moment he went into the army right the way through. And so he was totally inadequate to deal with the situation like that.

00:42:27 Speaker_03
And he doesn't really fit that of a dictator in that he was the kind of general who only gave orders that he knew would be obeyed. If he thought there was any doubt of it, he wouldn't give the order.

00:42:43 Speaker_01
In September 1979, a delegation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights visits Argentina. They swiftly denounce Fidela's government, citing the disappearances, torture and unlawful detention of tens of thousands of people.

00:43:02 Speaker_01
When they visit the ESMA, it's been made over to look like a hospital. Most of the prisoners have been moved out and housed on a small island owned by the Catholic Church up in the Tigre Delta. But the Commission isn't fooled.

00:43:20 Speaker_01
Its blistering assessment is published in April 1980, documenting the testimonies of over five and a half thousand family members, victims and organizations. The report is banned in Argentina.

00:43:36 Speaker_01
Videla is interviewed on television shortly after the report's release. He concedes that his war has left a number of dead, prisoners and disappeared, and that was painful. But he feels proud that the armed forces have won.

00:43:53 Speaker_01
because today the country enjoys peace, freedom and respect. It came at a high cost, he says, but the people agreed that we had to do it in order to achieve peace.

00:44:13 Speaker_01
But now, without the war against subversion to focus on, the dictatorship has lost its purpose. Historian Ed Brutney.

00:44:25 Speaker_06
The members of the dictatorship don't agree on much. And so as long as they're fighting this, quote unquote, war against subversion, they're able to more or less continue getting along.

00:44:36 Speaker_06
It's when the repression really starts to decline after the World Cup in 1978 that the cracks within the dictatorship become increasingly visible, increasingly public and boil over.

00:44:47 Speaker_06
And that's when things really start to break apart as the end of 1978 and into 1979. It doesn't mean that violence ended after 1978, but that it dropped off dramatically. I mean, again, another 7 or 8,000 people killed is still a massive amount.

00:45:03 Speaker_06
But as compared to the intensity of the repression over those first two years, it is less so.

00:45:09 Speaker_06
The World Cup can be seen as a turning point in the sense that it brought an international spotlight to this country that the dictatorship hoped that it would

00:45:17 Speaker_06
show Argentina in a positive light as a developed and modern country capable of hosting this grand world event.

00:45:23 Speaker_06
And it succeeded somewhat, but at the same time it gave a platform for critics of Argentina to have their own positions amplified and spread further.

00:45:35 Speaker_01
As the violence ebbs, President Videla turns his attention back to the dysfunctional economy. The war is over, he declares. Now we must win the peace. But by 1981, the free market policies of Economy Minister Martínez de Oz have imploded spectacularly.

00:45:56 Speaker_01
He's been unable to curb annual inflation, which remains high at 80%, and the overvaluation of the Argentine peso has ravaged the country. For a time, Argentines are able to take their overvalued pesos abroad and bring back stacks of foreign goods.

00:46:16 Speaker_01
They earn the nickname de me dos, give me two, for their lavish spending habits. But those days are short-lived. Public debt has leapt from more than $9 billion left behind by Isabel Perón's government to $43 billion.

00:46:34 Speaker_01
The regime's popularity is plummeting. And it's around this time that Videla finally decides to relinquish power. In March 1981, the presidency passes to Roberto Viola, who had previously replaced Videla as army commander-in-chief.

00:46:54 Speaker_01
The military dictatorship continues, just with a new man at its head. But Viola's tenure at the top is extremely short-lived.

00:47:05 Speaker_06
But Viola's not able to hold this whole together. I mean, in some sense, he's inheriting a much less stable situation. He doesn't have that initial boost from more or less popular consent that Padella enjoyed in March of 1976.

00:47:21 Speaker_06
And the conditions are just worse. from a pragmatic standpoint, he's not able to use repression in the way that the Bedela government was.

00:47:29 Speaker_06
And so he almost immediately is undermined by the other members of the junta, by the other members of the armed forces, and his presidency only lasts, I think it lasts less than a year in total.

00:47:47 Speaker_01
Public pressure ratchets up further. Viola was soon maneuvered out of the picture by the belligerent and impulsive General Leopoldo Galtieri, a man whose constant consumption of fine whiskey has his advisors particularly worried.

00:48:06 Speaker_06
So when Viola is effectively ousted at the end of 1981, beginning of 1982, the presidency changes hands a few times among interim de facto presidents before it lands with this guy, Leopoldo Galtieri, who is a general in the army.

00:48:21 Speaker_06
He doesn't have the charisma or the ambition of Masera, but he's also not a kind of wooden stick in the mud like Videla. He's actually like a raging alcoholic.

00:48:32 Speaker_01
Then, in the first few months of 1982, just as Galtieri takes power, the trade unions take up the fight after years of being outlawed and repressed.

00:48:42 Speaker_06
Basically, as the regime's authority is breaking down, we see a dramatic uptick in popular mobilizations.

00:48:50 Speaker_06
Even if there has always been unrest and opposition, there is a shift in terms of how these mass demonstrations across industries involving multiple sectors start to increase, start to gain momentum, especially in the early 1980s.

00:49:04 Speaker_06
March 30th, 1982, a mass mobilization of labor

00:49:13 Speaker_05
One of the first rallies that I went, I was 13 at that time.

00:49:17 Speaker_05
You can imagine the frustration of the military regime that after everything they have done, by far in sheer numbers, the most violent dictatorship in South America and all the power they have acquired, they hadn't been able to control inflation, being radical enough with the liberalization of economic relations.

00:49:40 Speaker_05
get rid of Peronism and contain social demands from below. So I think there were many elements suggesting that the dictatorship was coming to a dead end sooner rather than later.

00:49:55 Speaker_01
In the Plaza de Macho, unarmed protesters clash furiously with police. Hundreds are injured and arrested in the capital. One protester is killed in Mendoza.

00:50:08 Speaker_01
So choked are the streets of Rosario with police officers that the protesters never even make it to their planned meeting place. The regime is hanging by a thread. It's early evening on April 2nd, 1982.

00:50:34 Speaker_01
Just three days after the Plaza de Macha was filled with fury, the atmosphere has changed completely. Earlier this afternoon, a joyous cry echoed out between the tower blocks in Buenos Aires.

00:50:49 Speaker_01
General Leopoldo Galtieri took to the radio to announce the invasion of the Islas Malvinas, known in the UK and elsewhere as the Falkland Islands, seized by the British in 1833 and still fervently claimed by Argentina.

00:51:07 Speaker_01
The British marines at the naval base on the island were overcome, and Argentina's blue and white flag has been raised over Port Stanley. The Argentine Navy has taken a staggering gamble. But it appears to have paid off. The people are back on side.

00:51:28 Speaker_01
Spontaneously, a crowd has flocked to the Plaza de Mayo. But this time, it's in jubilation and support for the Junta, rather than anger and resentment. Suddenly, General Galtieri appears on the balcony in full military regalia.

00:51:46 Speaker_01
A bank of microphones is waiting for him, and the pink shutters of the Casa Rosada glow behind him in the evening sun. The gold studs on his shoulders catch the light and gleam. If they want to come, let them come.

00:52:02 Speaker_01
We will give them a battle, he cries, stabbing an index finger into the air. A sea of flags stretches before him in the square, a blanket of blue and white punctured only by palm trees and statues. The crowd roars its approval.

00:52:22 Speaker_01
Within three days, General Galtieri has gone from villain to hero. Argentina's defense of the islands shall follow. In the next episode… The Falklands War casts a long shadow over Argentina as the Junta teeters on the verge of collapse.

00:52:59 Speaker_01
Eventually, after years of dictatorship, the country will return to democracy. But that won't be the end of Videla's time in the spotlight. As a heroic legal case is brought against the general, justice for his victims finally seems within reach.

00:53:18 Speaker_01
And we'll meet a man who sat mere feet away from Videla in the courtroom. A young prosecutor with the hopes of a nation resting on his shoulders. That's next time, in the final part of the Videla story.