“I wouldn’t dare tell the story 25 times in reverse. As the Kirchner, that supported the military at the time. They were lawyers of the 1050 and one day champions of human rights appeared,” he said. Luis Majul in his television editorial for his La Nación+ program. The journalist took aim at the former Peronist presidents, remembering the leadership couple when they practiced their profession as lawyers, calling them “phonies.”
During the years of the last Argentine civil-military dictatorship, which began March 24, 1976 under the self-proclaimed “National Reorganization Process”the political trajectory of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner It developed in a scenario marked by state repression, the banning of political activity and the persecution of militants. In that context, both were young lawyers who graduated from the National University of La Plata and militants of the Peronist University Youth during the early years of the 1970s, the stage prior to the coup, in which they were linked to sectors of Peronism with a national and popular orientation.
After the military coup, which established a system of state terrorism responsible for thousands of forced disappearances, illegal detentions and clandestine detention centers, political activity was severely restricted. The Kirchners settled in the city of Río Gallegos, province of Santa Cruz, where they practiced law. Various historical investigations agree that during that period they did not hold relevant party positions or develop active public militancy, largely due to the repressive context that affected the entire Argentine political system.
In those years, both carried out their professional activity as lawyers in the province of Santa Cruz and participated in real estate and financial operations in an economic context marked by these regulations. Some authors maintain that they would have intervened in the purchase of properties or in the management of debts of third parties affected by 1050, although there is no full consensus or judicial documentation that establishes irregularities or criminal responsibilities derived from these activities. Even Kirchnerism itself has argued that these operations were part of common legal practices in a market distorted by the economic policy of the dictatorship, and that they did not imply a political or ideological link with the military regime or its financial decisions.
The military regime, initially led by Jorge Rafael Videla, It lasted until December 10, 1983, leaving thousands of people missing according to human rights organizations. The democratic transition that began with the assumption of Raúl Alfonsín promoted the historic Trial of the Juntas, whose sentence was handed down on December 9, 1985 after a process that began on April 22 of that same year. However, during the following years, the Punto Final (1986) and Due Obedience (1987) laws were passed, which limited judicial progress against those responsible for crimes against humanity.
It was only with the arrival of Néstor Kirchner to the presidency, on May 25, 2003, that a decisive turn occurred in human rights policy in Argentina. From the beginning of his mandate, Kirchner promoted an agenda oriented toward “memory, truth and justice,” which included concrete measures with a strong institutional and symbolic impact. In August 2003, the National Congress declared the nullity of the Punto Final and Due Obedience laws, which allowed the reopening of cases for crimes against humanity committed during the dictatorship. This decision was later validated by the Supreme Court of Justice in 2005, enabling the massive reopening of trials.
On March 24, 2004, 28 years after the coup, Kirchner led an event at the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), one of the main clandestine detention centers, where he apologized on behalf of the State for the omissions of previous decades and ordered the creation of the Space for Memory. That same day he ordered the removal of the portraits of the dictators Videla and Reynaldo Bignone from the Military College, in a gesture that sought to mark a break with the past of impunity.
After the annulment of the impunity laws, judicial processes were reactivated throughout the country. According to recent data, since 2006, more than 1,200 sentences have been handed down for crimes against humanity, with hundreds of repressors imprisoned. Among the emblematic cases are the sentences of former commissioner Miguel Etchecolatz (sentenced in 2006) and chaplain Christian Von Wernich (sentenced on October 9, 2007 to life imprisonment).
During the governments of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015), this policy was deepened and consolidated as State policy. Trials continued, investigations were expanded to new areas—such as civil and corporate complicity—and the role of human rights organizations was strengthened. The process that began in 2003 positioned Argentina as an international case of transitional justice, based on the prosecution of those responsible for state terrorism within the democratic institutional framework.
In this way, although during the dictatorship the political participation of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner was limited by the repressive conditions of the regime, their subsequent actions from the State implied a structural change in the relationship between the Argentine political system and the dictatorial past, establishing an active policy of prosecuting those responsible and building collective memory that lasts to the present day.
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