Pro-Government Militias

Pro-Government Militia Website

Documentation for Triple A (Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance)

May 27, 1981
The Globe and Mail (Canada)

(...) close associate of Jose Lopez Rega, the man who played Rasputin to Isabel Peron's regime in Argentina and organized the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance, a right-wing death squad, as an irregular branch of his ministry of social welfare.

April 24, 1983
The New York Times

The articles were based on statements by a former Argentine police official, Rodolfo Fernandez, and by various Argentine exiles. Cambio 16 said Mr. Almiron had headed the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance, an ultrarightist group that was said to have operated under the presidency of Isabel Martinez de Peron and was believed responsible for many assassinations, kidnappings and political executions. Among its victims were said to be journalists and political figures of the left and center.

Nov. 16, 1983
The New York Times

Triple A was founded in 1973 under an elected Peronist Government by a Social Welfare Minister, Jose Lopez Rega, to combat growing leftist terrorism at the time. Its members were mostly retired military and police officers.

Aug. 4, 1984
The Guardian (London)

The list included seven of 13 officers nominated by President Alfonsin for promotion to general and several officers already serving in high government positions.
One full colonel, portrayed as a hero during the Falklands conflict two years ago, was identified as the alleged link between the army and the Triple A paramilitary death squads which emerged under the former elected president.

May 6, 1985
Newsweek

The military, however, was clearly responsible for much of the chaos that it claimed to be com-bating. NEWSWEEK has learned that in early or mid-1975, military intelligence services estab-lished operational control over the previously autonomous Argentine Anticommunist Alli-ance death squads. The military sought such coordination, according to one former AAA gun-man, because the right-wing terrorists "could take out targets that legally the armed forces couldn't." Those targets included many victims of the subsequent dirty war: journalists, profes-sors and labor leaders, as well as leftist terrorists and their sympathizers. Sometimes members of the armed forces committed illegal acts on their own, dressing up the crimes as the work of the far left. Then, as the public's fear of left-wing violence increased, it became easier for the military to find a pretext for seizing control.

June 2, 1985
The Washington Post

The government of President Raul Alfonsin has uncovered a network of heavily armed, right-wing terrorists that is believed to have carried out bombings and abductions in an effort to destabilize the country's 18-month-old democracy, officials here said. (...) Although most of the alleged members of the terrorist group remain at large, several Argentine commentators said the most important aspect of the case had been the evident willingness of the police to crack down on paramilitary activities for the first time.

The new evidence of rightist violence supported assertions by human rights groups and some government officials that paramilitary groups dating from the era of the military's rule and bloody "dirty war" against leftists continue to operate on a significant scale in Argentina.
"Terrorism of the right has had access to all the resources, and only now are we beginning to apply justice to it," Interior Minister Antonio Troccoli testified before Congress. "We have been able to identify two right-wing cells, and they represent the tip of the iceberg."(...)
Interior Ministry Undersecretary Raul Galvan said the band was made up of former agents from military security and intelligence services and that several members also were linked to a notorious terrorist organization of the 1970s -- the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance.
The accused leader of the band, Raul Antonio Guglialminetti, is a former security and intelligence agent attached to the government palace who continued in official service even during the first three months of Alfonsin's government, officials said. (...) "These groups acted under military authoritarianism," Galvan said. "They did not spontaneously come into existence and their activities are directly linked to the trial of the military juntas."

Sept. 23, 1987
The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Revelations in 1981 about the super-secret Propaganda Due Masonic Lodge, of which Mr. Gelli was grand master, sparked one of the worst political scandals in postwar Italy and resulted in the fall of the government of premier Arnaldo Forlani.
The neo-fascist organization was also active in Argentina, where several P-2 members have been either indicted or convicted on charges of corruption, organizing death squads or bearing responsibility for mass murder. (...)
Two months before the appearance of the right-wing death squads known as the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance, or AAA, Mr. Gelli suggested in a letter to Mr. Lopez Rega that special units be created to combat leftist guerrillas and others who opposed the government.

June 15, 1989
The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Those were years of insanity, during which armed left-wingers and right-wingers - all pledging allegiance to the Peronist ideal - plotted and schemed and not infrequently killed one another. Mr. Lopez'
contribution apparently was to organize the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance at the urging of Italian financier Licio Gelli, grand master of the secret Propaganda Due (P-2) Masonic lodge. Mr. Lopez was a P-2 member and arranged for Mr. Gelli to be appointed Argentine commercial attache in Italy, giving him diplomatic immunity. More than 2,000 unofficial executions were attributed to the AAA.

Jan. 9, 2007
Inter Press Service

Three decades after the crimes committed by the ultra right-wing Triple A paramilitary group in Argentina, two of the group's heads have been arrested. The media played an active role in tracking down the fugitives from justice. (…)

The Triple A was created in 1973 by then-Minister of Social Welfare José López Rega, who had a tremendous influence over President Isabel Martínez de Perón (1974-1976).(...)

The aim of the Triple A was to eliminate leftist dissidents -- those who belonged to the left wing of the ruling Peronist party as well as activists from other groups. To that end, López Rega recruited former federal police officers who had been fired for providing protection to an organized crime group.

Jan. 13, 2007
The Independent (London)

Mrs Peron, 75, was driven to the National Court in Madrid last night which ordered her conditional release, pending approval of the request for extradition to Argentina.
The detention has convulsed her former homeland, recalling years of terror when state-sanctioned hit squads, the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance or "Triple A", roamed the country in grey-green Ford Falcons and snatched suspected subversives off busy streets in broad daylight. Human rights groups say some 2,000 people - including politicians, intellectuals, artists and students - were abducted or murdered during her chaotic two-year rule.(…)
Famed for her rigid hairdo, flyaway eyebrows and screeching voice, the former nightclub dancer who caught Juan Peron's eye after the death of Evita in the 1950s, succeeded him as President when he died in July 1974. She formed a sinister alliance with her social welfare minister. Jose Lopez Rega (said to have been the pianist at the same night club) founded the Triple A in 1973 and was renowned for his interest in the occult. Argentines contemptuously dubbed the pair " la puta y la bruja" - the tart and the wizard.

Feb. 19, 2007
El País

En este contexto, y luego de la renuncia del presidente Héctor Cámpora, comienza a operar la Alianza Anticomunista Argentina, que cuenta con el apoyo de un sector importante del oficialismo y de las conducciones sindicales burocráticas. El acta fundacional, según algunos investigadores, se firma el 1º de octubre de 1973 en una reunión en la que se encuentran presentes el presidente en ejercicio Raúl Lastiri; los ministros del Interior, Benito Llambí, y de Bienestar Social, José López Rega; el secretario general de la Presidencia, José Humberto Martiarena, y varios gobernadores. En la misma se reitera que la función de esta organización era combatir a los enemigos del gobierno, reprimiendo el “entrismo de izquierda” y a los marxistas que “pretendían convertir a la Argentina en una nueva Cuba”.

May 8, 2010
The New Zealand Herald

Much of this took place under a military dictatorship (which chillingly described itself as engaged in a "process of national reorganisation") but Campanella, 51, wanted to remind his compatriots that the process began under the democratically elected Peronist government that was in power until 1976.
It was in that era that the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance (known as the Triple A), a shadowy paramilitary group dedicated to suppressing all (not just communist) political dissent, was formed. The Triple A was later a major tool of the military junta and the so-called "Dirty War".