"Argentina, 1985"; prelude to my film review

I put this entry in the Drug War Journal section advisedly, for historical reasons

I’m currently in the middle of watching the harrowing Oscar-nominated film Argentina 1985, about the prosecution of the vile Argentine military regime and its henchmen in the aftermath of the fall of the dictatorship. I’ll have a full review when I’m finished watching the film; I’ve paused it partway through because it’s getting late for me tonight.

Anyway, even though I have yet to complete watching the film and offer a full review, I’m posting about it here in my Drug War section because I want to make note of a very important historical fact: the people behind the Argentine junta were part of a transnational neofascist alliance in the 1970s and 1980s that incidentally happened to include the first, largest, and most important cocaine cartel in the Western Hemisphere, La Corporacion. You’ve heard of the Medellin cartel and the Cali cartel, from Colombia? La Corporacion was the principal supplier to them both. Some of the same Argentine Army units and paramilitary squads who worked as kidnappers and torturers for the Argentine junta also helped overthrow the civilian government of Bolivia in 1980, and some of them helped to smuggle mass quantities of cocaine into the US and Europe in the 1980s.

My Drug War Syllabus of important books about the illicit drugs industry is up on another page in this Substack, and should be easy enough to access. Several of those books document that history. See below:

Hot Money and the Politics of Debt, by R. T. Naylor (1987; 2nd ed.1994)

Cocaine Politics, Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall (1991; 2nd. ed. 1998)

Rebellion In The Veins, by James Dunkerley (1984)

The Big White Lie, by Michael Levine (1993; 2nd edition 2012)

Smoke And Mirrors: The Paradox of the Drug Wars, by Jaime Malamud-Goti (1992)

[ The last author, Jaime Malamud-Goti, was the Argentine Solicitor General to the Supreme Court during the Alfonsin administration (12/1983-07/1989) that succeeded the Viola-Massera-Videla-Galtieri-Bignone junta (03/1976-12/1989.) Which is to say that he was the boss of Julio Cesar Strassera, the courageous prosecutor depicted in Argentina 1985. Senor Malamud-Goti deserves a share of credit for his own fortitude in that regard. Anyone who wants more biographical detail on any of the names I’ve mentioned can do their own keyword searches; the information is there to be found.

This interview with Jaime Malamud-Goti is 20 years old, but still somehow retains some topic relevance: Interview: Dr. Jaime Malamud-Goti ]

My research back in the 1990s led me a lot further into the ghastly details of the Argentine Dirty War than I ever espected to delve. I came away from my reseach a little bit shook. Watch the film: I’ve seen enough of it to guarantee that it’s both powerful and historically accurate, and despite my maintaining the imperative value of tax over visual media, this is a case where the emotional impact of cinematic art speaks in a way that simply reading the horrific details found in witness accounts like The Disappeared and works of academic deconstruction like Divine Violence cannot match.

I should have my own review of Argentina 1985 up by the end of the week. For those readers with access to Amazon Prime Video, the film in currently free on demand, and it airs without interruptions.