History of Censorship in Argentina

DESCRIPTION: Large and comparatively prosperous South American nation.

SIGNIFICANCE: Argentina once had a tradition of an independent press, but government news censorship became a critical issue during two difficult periods in the late twentieth century.

Argentina has long been a nation of many paradoxes. With its prosperous grain and cattle industries, extensive public education system, and traditionally strong and independent press, its cultural and social life compared favorably with that of the United States during the early decades of the twentieth century. During the 1940s and afterward, however, Argentina experienced periods of political stress in which the government restricted freedom of expression in newspapers and news magazines in ways that exceeded even the Red Scare excesses occurring in the United States. The apparent paradox of a nation of literate, cultured people caught up in spasms of press censorship and political repression cast an ominous shadow over the history of mass communications and representative government in South America.

The Perón Era

The regime of Juan Perón (1946–1955) and the military government that preceded it were sensitive to criticism in newspapers and news magazines. The military government established a Subsecretariat of Information and Press as a watchdog agency for the national and regional press. In 1943 the Tucumán newspaper La Unión and four newspapers in the province of Mendoza closed under pressure from the national government. The Perón administration also challenged its critics in the national and international arena. Time magazine in 1947 featured a cover story of Eva Perón, the president’s wife and a formidable political figure in her own right. Objecting to Time’s story, Perón blocked the magazine’s importation and sale in Argentina through the remainder of his tenure in office.

Perón also faced criticism in the pages of La Prensa, a venerable conservative newspaper that had been published in Buenos Aires since 1869. The government attempted to intimidate this newspaper and its owner, Alberto Gainza Paz, by mounting public demonstrations against it, organizing a strike by unionized newspaper distributors, and by limiting its vital supply of newsprint. Finally, in 1951 the Argentine legislature voted to expropriate La Prensa and then turned it over to the Perón labor unions (it was returned to Gainza Paz after Perón’s overthrow in 1955). All these censorship episodes had a chilling effect on journalists throughout Argentina.

The Dirty War

Censorship of the press returned to Argentina during the period of state repression known as the Dirty War. Political violence intensified in Argentina during the early 1970s, expanded under Isabel Perón’s government, and became systematic state repression after the military coup of March 24, 1976. Inflated prices and a declining economy continued unabated. Leftists formed urban guerrilla bands, such as the Montoneros, and campaigned to undermine the established order through a variety of techniques, including kidnapping of business and political leaders for ransom. Argentine police and the military responded with repressive measures that often resulted in the seizure, interrogation, and, in many cases, the “disappearance” of young leftists, many of whom had little or no involvement in the guerrilla movements. As many as eight to thirty thousand Argentines disappeared in this period. Argentine forensic teams and victims’ families continued efforts to identify people who disappeared during the dictatorship. The Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A), a far-right paramilitary group linked to state security circles, conducted attacks against suspected leftists in addition to the government’s campaign.

Because the Montoneros and other leftist guerrillas used propaganda to build support for their movements, the Argentine military and police forces came to believe that any means of mass communication contained the potential to gain recruits for the radicals. These perceived challenges to political stability and national security led military and law enforcement officials to conclude that censorship of newspapers, news magazines, radio, television, and motion pictures was vital for the government’s survival. Convinced that their nation was involved in an Armageddon-like conflict with communists, Argentine law enforcement and military officials cracked down on newspapers and magazines that provided news coverage of, or editorial commentary on, insurgent activity. In the heated atmosphere of escalating political violence and state repression, government intimidation and censorship of the press acquired a draconian character.

The military government used the conservative press to explain its repressive policies. In 1980 and 1981, General Ramón Camps, the military’s specialist on anticommunist strategy and tactics, published a series of articles in La Prensa expressing an official interpretation of how Moscow orchestrated the spread of international communism from Cuba in 1959 to the continent in the 1960s and 1970s. Camps claimed that the government’s campaign attempted to strike at the radical menace before it developed a large enough following to stage a massive rebellion. This campaign included the leftist press. Journalists and media workers faced intimidation, detention, censorship, exile, and, in some cases, forced disappearance. Sudden seizures by individuals who did not identify themselves generated intense fear among journalists.

The most notorious case of repressive censorship during that period involved Jacobo Timerman, the editor of the newspaper La Opinión from 1971 until his imprisonment in April 1977. Timerman wanted to report on the fate of the leftists who simply disappeared after being arrested. Right-wing elements within the Argentine military kidnapped Timerman, confined him to a prison cell, and subjected him to brutal interrogations, while physically torturing him. Released in 1979, Timerman was one of the few to return from military incarceration during these years. He described his experience in a book that compared Argentina’s repressive tactics to conditions in Nazi Germany. In 2023, UNESCO designated the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory, a former detention center used during the dictatorship, as a World Heritage Site.

The Buenos Aires Herald, an English-language newspaper that began publication in 1876, also fell victim to government intimidation. The Herald covered the urban guerrillas in depth and kept a large file of their literature. In both 1975 and 1977 its managing editor, Andrew Graham-Yooll, and its director, Robert Cox, had their offices raided by police. In the first raid, the police detained and questioned Graham-Yooll without formal charges. In 1977, police arrested Cox and ransacked his office. He faced interrogation about his connections with the guerrillas and, although he was not brutalized as Timerman was, his arrest and Graham-Yooll’s detention served as ominous reminders that press freedom was severely limited.

Conclusions

These episodes of repressive political censorship reveal the fragility of a free press, even in nations with high literacy rates and traditions of free expression of ideological diversity. Although analysts have disagreed on the causes of Argentina’s political instability, social divisiveness, and economic distress, it is clear that pressures arising from these conditions contributed to an environment in which the press faced severe challenges to its normal role as a source of information and opinion for the general public.

After the return to democratic government, Argentina established stronger legal protections for press freedom, although debates over political influence and media independence continued. This ranking took quite some time, though. In 2016, Argentina enacted Law No. 27,275, which guarantees public access to government information. Law No. 27,275 grants citizens the right to access public information without the need for justification. However, Decree 780/2024 modified regulations governing requests for public information and drew criticism from transparency advocates because it required individuals requesting information to verify their identities. Critics argued that the decree could discourage requests for public information by requiring individuals to identify themselves.

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