He General Rodrigo Alejandro Soloaga he used to say that the Army was his life; that there was no nobler word than “soldier”. However, Néstor Kirchner’s decision to remove the cadres of the dictators Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Benito Bignone from the Military College was a situation of force majeure for this man born and raised in the military ranks: He did not hesitate and asked for the voluntary retirement of the Army. as retired, returned during the management of Mauricio Macri and, during the era of the Frente de Todos, he ended up being removed for insulting what had made him leave the Army 19 years ago, Kirchnerism’s policy of Memory, Truth and Justice. General (re) Soloaga –whose name appears in at least two cases for crimes against humanity– became flag for the opposition in the last days.
By March 2004, Soloaga had been a brigadier general for a few months and was in charge of the Army Staff Headquarters (JI).. He had a good relationship with the head of the Army, Roberto Bendini, despite the fact that a series of episodes had caused him to set off alarm bells: in January 2004 the acts for the takeover of Azul in 1974 and for the takeover of La Tablada had been suspended of 1989, which the military family was looking forward to.
In January 2004, the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) had given the then Defense Minister, José Pampuro, some photographs that had reached the organization anonymously. It was impossible to discern if they were images taken in the clandestine detention centers of the dictatorship or if they were afterward. At the time, the government confirmed that the photos showed that the armed forces continued training in torture even in democracy. It was Soloaga – as the journalist Guido Braslavsky reconstructed in his book intimate enemies– who was in charge of the investigation of these facts. But the general also chewed anger when Bendini handed over the list of names of the officers involved in the torture camps.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was the announcement that the pictures of the Military College would be taken down. On the eve of March 24, 2004, he had a bitter argument with Bendini. Later, he wrote a note in which he asked for his voluntary withdrawal. “What is demanded of me does not respond to the superior interests that I have always defended”, complained the soldier who had never stood out for his rebellious character . “It runs counter to principles of conduct and life that I am not willing to negotiate, much less with the aim of endorsing behaviors that tend to devalue military life and, in some way, force the institution to abandon a line of conduct of full greatness and honor.”
After that gesture of courage, Soloaga had his recognition. Videla got his personal phone number and called him to thank him for the attitude, as published by Braslavsky. Nineteen years later, the retired general won back the hearts of those who defend the cause of the procession by showing solidarity in an official act with those detained for crimes against humanity and by highlighting the “stoicism” with which those who kidnapped bear the deprivation of liberty They tortured, raped, murdered, disappeared, and appropriated the children of their victims.
The speech was delivered on April 25 at the Remonta y Veterinaria property of the Argentine Army in the Palermo Polo Field. After this newspaper published the video with Soloaga’s proclamation, Defense Minister Jorge Taiana announced that he had decided to remove the soldier from the position of head of the Cavalry Weapons Commission, which he had presided over since he returned as a retired by force during the Cambiemos government. For Taiana, Soloaga’s statements were an apology for State terrorism.
The prehistory
Soloaga entered the Army in 1968, when he was about to turn 20. He was the son of a cavalry officer, Ismael Soloaga, who also served as a military attaché in Uruguay.
When Videla and company launched the coup, Soloaga was serving in the Palermo Horse Grenadier Regiment. That year, comrades remember, he was sidelined for a while after falling off his horse while training.
At the beginning of 1978, he was sent in commission to Campana as squad leader. Area 400 functioned as an area of repressive coordination between the Army and the Navy, especially sensitive because it concentrated a large number of manufacturing establishments. Since there were no Army units in the Zárate or Campana area, with the exception of the Toluene Military Factory, the personnel that operated in Area 400 came from different destinations. Such was the case of Soloaga, who was mobilized from Villaguay. This information has been in the possession of the federal justice of San Martín for some time.
In 1980, Soloaga went to the 10th Armored Cavalry Exploration Squadron of La Tablada. In the investigation on the First Army Corps, it appears that, by 1982, Soloaga was the second in command of that unit. As such he was mobilized to Malvinas, where he fought and was taken prisoner by the English. Upon returning to the country, he received a decoration for valor in combat.
In 1989, Soloaga was still at La Tablada. By January 23 of that year, when the All for the Homeland Movement (MTP) tried to take over the barracks, he was starting his vacation. He found out about the attack while he was shopping around Capital. He got in the car and drove to the scene. He was one of the officers in charge of the “recovery” of the regiment, a “recovery” that was carried out with the methods of the dictatorship: torture, summary executions and forced disappearances.
In April 1989, his father, Ismael Soloaga, presided over the act for the Day of the Cavalry in Campo de Mayo. From that dais, claimed responsibility for the actions of the Army in La Tablada, the “fight against subversion” and the Malvinas war. Soloaga father had been between August 1978 and January 1979 the comptroller of hurlingham bank, appointed by the National Commission for Patrimonial Responsibility (Conarepa). The Hurlingham Bank was a nest of “economic subversion” for the dictatorship, which ended up kidnapping 23 people associated with Grupo Chavanne and Industrias Siderúrgicas Grassi SA. For these facts, the Federal Oral Court (TOF) 5 acquitted by majority –with the dissent of Judge Adrián Grünberg– the former head of the National Securities Commission (CNV) Juan Alfredo Etchebarne. The issue is being reviewed by the Federal Criminal Cassation Chamber, which held a hearing this Thursday.
The defense
The opposition squared off in defense of Soloaga after Taiana ordered the removal of the retired general from the Cavalry Weapons Commission. Soloaga even worked as a pledge of unity within the PRO and more particularly among the tribes that are dedicated to security. Patricia Bullrich, Macri’s former Security Minister and current presidential candidate, closed ranks in defense of the general and said that the Constitution that enshrines freedom of speech must be respected. The current Buenos Aires Minister of Justice and Security, Eugenio Burzaco –Bullrich’s archenemy- used his Twitter account to denounce that the government created blacklists with those who think differently. In this way, Bullrich and Burzaco joined the campaign in which other members of Together for Change are also part, such as José Luis Espert, Miguel Pichetto and Ricardo López Murphy — who met Soloaga during his time as Defense Minister of the Alliance and sent him as military attache to Chile–.
Within the military sphere, the Retired Generals Forum, created in 1996 as a reaction to what was the “self-criticism” of the forces. As described by sociologist Paula Canelo, the Forum of Retired Generals was nourished by bastions of State terrorism. Among them was the “last de facto” Bignone, as he liked to call himself.
In addition, there were protests from Argentine Defense Forum, an entity chaired by Santiago Lucero Torres, which is a member of the Republican Union, one of the branches of the PRO. Unión Republicana refers to Francisco Sánchez, the deputy from Neuquén who requested the death penalty for Cristina Fernández de Kirchner before Fernando Sabag Montiel actually tried to assassinate her. The Republican Union is also linked to the Young Republicans, the small group that rose to fame with the placement of mortuary bags in Plaza de Mayo, which bore –among others– the name of Estela de Carlotto.
Justice and Concord, the association that defends those convicted and prosecuted for crimes against humanity, expressed its solidarity with Soloaga for his proclamation in favor of his clients. “His words from him reflect the harsh truth and challenge all good people, especially the comrades of those who are victims of hatred and revenge, to end the silence and indifference.” The organization did not deprive itself of qualifying Taiana and other officials of the Ministry of Defense who registered political militancy in the ’70s as a “gang of criminals”
