Disappeared detainees of the Dirty War

The Detenidos Desaparecidos (Disappeared Detainees) of state terrorism in Argentina are victims of forced disappearance before, during, and after the last civic-military dictatorship in Argentina, the National Reorganization Process, from 1976 to 1983. Held in clandestine detention centers, they were subjected to torture and, in many cases, killed. The first disappearances and clandestine detention centers began in 1975 under the constitutional government of Isabel Perón and continued until 1984 during the constitutional government of Raúl Alfonsín.

Declassified U.S. government documents from 2006 reveal that a Chilean intelligence agent reported in a 1978 cable to his superiors that Argentine military personnel from Battalion 601 estimated they had killed or disappeared approximately 22,000 people between 1975 and mid-1978. Around the same time, according to these documents, the then-U.S. ambassador in Buenos Aires, Robert Hill, stated: "It is our estimate that at least several thousand were killed, and we doubt it will ever be possible to establish a more specific figure."

Human rights organizations, unions, and most left-wing political parties traditionally assert that the number of disappearances is approximately 30000. In a 2009 letter, Eduardo Luis Duhalde, then Secretary of Human Rights of Argentina, used this figure, citing variables such as the number of detention and extermination centers, the proportion of habeas corpus petitions filed, and statements from the military themselves. He stated that "the figure of 30000 is neither arbitrary nor capricious, although it is regrettable to reduce the dimension of the Argentine tragedy to an accounting issue," as "the massive, criminal, and abject nature is not measured by arithmetic results, at least for those of us who believe that killing one person is killing humanity."

Conversely, some claim the figure was exaggerated, citing former Montonero Luis Labraña, who claimed to have "invented" the 30,000 figure to secure international recognition of the dictatorship's repression as genocide.