-Caveat Lector-
November 12, 1999
Juan Peron & ‘Cocaine Politics’
Editor’s Note:
The following story looks at a dark chapter of South America’s
history: the rise of right-wing military dictatorships in the 1970s and
their enduring ties to the cocaine trade and international
neo-fascists.
Because of the CIA’s dealings with many of these drug-tainted
figures, this history largely has been kept from the American
people. Indeed, while shielding CIA assets from criticism, the U.S.
government has shifted the cocaine blame to leftist
"narco-terrorists."
This pattern is repeating itself today in Colombia as the Clinton
administration embarks on a major counterinsurgency campaign
against "drug-financed Marxist guerrillas."
Like his predecessors, President Clinton is gluing black hats on
one side and white hats on the other, when the truth is far more
complicated.
By Robert Reed
On June 20, 1973, South America teetered between its
past and its future. Former Argentine Gen. Juan Peron,
one of the region's legendary strongmen, was returning
from a 17-year exile.
Peron's arrival was welcomed by millions of Argentines from
the political left as well as the right, by Argentines who
remembered his populist social programs -- and those who
shared his darker fascination with European fascism. To greet
Peron, an estimated two million Argentines surged hopefully to
Ezeiza airport outside Buenos Aires.
Some of the celebrants were young Monteneros, leftists who
admired Peron's pro-labor policies and his nationalistic
resistance to the United States. The crowd also contained
Argentines tired of social unrest and yearning for more
traditional order. Others simply were caught up in the political
excitement, knowing Peron mostly as the charismatic leader
who married the glamorous Eva Peron, the legendary "Evita."
But the aging Peron's personal allegiance now stood with a
strange band of bodyguards who flanked him on the dais at
Ezeiza airport. Jose Lopez Rega, Peron's Rasputin-like
personal assistant known as "El Brujo" or "The Wizard," had
picked this multinational team of gunmen from a collection of
ultra-right paramilitary forces.
The security detail included Cuban-Americans from Alpha 66,
gunmen from Italy's Ordine Nuovo, Croatian fascist Ustashi
thugs and several Corsican gangsters who were involved in
the infamous French Connection heroin ring.
At the head of this international odd squad was Ciro Ahumada,
an ex-leader of the ultra-right French Secret Army
Organization [OAS], which in the early 1960s had engaged in
terrorism to block President Charles deGaulle's plans to grant
independence to Algeria.
Another commander was Lt. Col. Jorge Osinde, Peron's
intelligence chief from the 1950s and a close ally of Lopez
Rega. In preparation for Peron's return, Lopez Rega had been
named head of the Ministry of Social Welfare, the euphemistic
name for the secret police. Osinde had become Lopez Rega's
top deputy.
At Ezeiza, some Argentine idealists, who had hoped for a new
golden age glittering with Peron's charm and charisma, were
stunned by the scene of these black-shirted thugs surrounding
Peron on the dais. Some leftist demonstrators began jeering at
the overt fascist presence. The celebration quickly turned
ugly.
Amid the commotion, Peron's security force opened fire on the
crowd. Panic swept Ezeiza airport. Bullets tore through leftist
protesters and bystanders alike. Scores of screaming people
fell to the ground while others pushed and shoved their way to
safety.
The number of dead and wounded reached into the hundreds.
Like a sudden slap in the face, the massacre ended the
utopian dream of Peron as Argentina's savior.
But the airport incident was only a mild foretaste of the reign of
state terror to come. Though many Argentines might not have
understood the full picture in 1973, the reality was that Juan
Peron had survived his 17-year exile in large part by becoming
a political ward of Europe's neo-fascist elite.
In the months ahead, Peron’s patrons would use the frail
leader as a cover for their infiltration of neo-fascist operatives
and drug-tainted gangsters into South America.
The appearance of the gunmen on the dais at Ezeiza airport
was the debut of a new international paramilitary force that
would become the backbone of the Argentine Anti-communist
Alliance, the prototype of the modern Latin American "death
squad."
Over the next decade, the "Triple A" and its allies in Argentine
intelligence would spread their gruesome brand of repression
throughout Latin America, drawing the tacit -- and often overt
-- support of the CIA.
The strategy also went beyond killing leftists and their
perceived sympathizers. The Argentine neo-fascists and
like-minded Latin American military leaders merged their
politics with the region's fledgling cocaine cartels, a marriage
of money, power and violence that survives to this day.
The weird story of Juan Peron's return from exile is a tale, too,
of sex, politics and the occult.
Juan Peron was a singular figure on the world's political stage
of the mid-20th Century.
Born in 1895, he began his public career as an Argentine
military officer. But he quickly gained a reputation for
controversy and intrigue.
Assigned to Chile in 1936 as a military attache, Peron was
expelled for espionage. There also were rumors about
improper conduct with teen-age acquaintances of both sexes.
In early 1939, Peron got another foreign posting: to Italy where
Benito Mussolini had pioneered many of the concepts of
modern fascism, an ideology that blended authoritarianism
with a near-mystical regard for charismatic leadership. Peron
served with the northern Italian Army's alpine mountaineers
until the spring of 1940.
After that stint, Peron traveled through Europe where the Axis
forces of Adolf Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy were on
the march. Hitler's army already had conquered Poland and
was moving to occupy Denmark, Norway and the Low
Countries of Europe, before routing the larger armies of Great
Britain and France.
Peron was impressed by what he saw. He developed a lasting
admiration for both Mussolini's brand of fascism and Hitler's
Nazism.
Upon Peron's return to Argentina, he put into practice much of
what he had observed. Peron joined a secret right-wing
military lodge, called the GOU, which claimed as members
about 60 percent of the Argentine officer corps. It reportedly
maintained a liaison to Nazi Germany through Hans Mahler of
the German high command.
Peron participated in the GOU's destabilization of the sitting
Argentine government, a challenge that culminated in a
military coup in 1943. Peron held several key cabinet posts in
the new government and soon emerged as the "conductor" of
Argentine politics.
A magnetic leader who could improvise and act ruthlessly,
Peron mixed the common-touch folksiness of Ronald Reagan,
the athletic virility of John Kennedy and the populist revivalism
of Huey Long.
Though an energetic anti-communist, Peron also was a
pragmatist with no overriding ideological consistency. He used
his position as secretary of labor and social welfare to promote
pro-labor reform programs. That gained him broad support
from Argentina's working class and alliances with labor unions.
Many Argentines also applauded his assertive nationalistic
stances.
A widower, Peron saw his political stardom reach new heights
with his courtship of Argentine show business personality Eva
Duarte. The attractive couple married in 1945, forming a
legendary political partnership that excited a mass political
following especially among common people, whom Eva Peron
called her "decamisados" or "shirtless ones."
When the Axis Powers collapsed in 1945, Peron lost his
Argentine government posts. But he soon recovered his
political balance in Argentina’s military-dominated politics. He
gained the presidency in 1946, and Eva became the
government's advocate for labor.
While superficially a populist, Peron built a corporate state that
favored wealthy investors, industrialists and technicians. Peron
showed loyalty, too, to his old fascist comrades. He opened
Argentina's doors as a safe haven for Nazi exiles, especially
those with scientific skills.
In return, the Nazis apparently rewarded the Perons --
primarily Eva -- by handing over control of millions of dollars in
hidden Nazi assets. The money reportedly helped the Perons
solidify their political power in Argentina through the late 1940s
and into the 1950s. [See iF Magazine, Jan.-Feb. 1999.]
Behind the scenes, however, the Perons drifted into
increasingly bizarre personal behavior. They acknowledged an
interest in occult phenomena, particularly spirit worship and
seances. A U.S. embassy official told the story of Peron
believing that he had made contact with the ghost of San
Martin, the historic liberator of Argentina. President Peron's
dabbling in the occult upset the potent Catholic Church
hierarchy.
Peron's political grip loosened further when Eva was stricken
with cancer and died in 1952. As a widower again, Peron
began spending time at an athletic academy for teen-age girls.
He developed a particular attraction for a 14-year-old named
Nelly Rivas, who soon became his mistress and later his
common-law wife.
The Nelly Rivas affair scandalized the cultural conservatives of
Argentina. For years, rumors about Peron's orgies with
teen-agers had circulated through government circles. But his
liaison with Nelly Rivas was an undisputed fact. Conservative
Catholic leaders openly condemned the relationship.
Peron responded to their outrage with scorn. He openly
challenged the church's authority with a package of reforms
that demanded legalized divorce, legalized prostitution and full
civil rights for children born out of wedlock. He also hosted the
services of an American Protestant faith-healer called "Brother
Tommy," the Rev. Tommy Hicks, who preached to record
crowds in Buenos Aires.
In defying the Catholic Church, however, Peron had
overreached. On June 16, 1955, Pope Pius XII
excommunicated Peron and threatened his followers with
similar punishment. When Argentine Catholics were forced to
choose between the church and Peron, they sided with the
church. Facing a possible coup, Peron resigned in October
1955 and fled into exile, leaving Nelly Rivas behind.
After his downfall, Peron wandered in jet-age exile across Latin
America and the Caribbean. He was the guest of Venezuela,
Panama and the Dominican Republic.
During his Panamanian sojourn, Peron's "Latin playboy
lifestyle" led his chauffeur to arrange for Joe Cuba's touring
cabaret dance troupe to entertain at a Christmas party where
Peron was the guest of honor.
One of the dancers was a beautiful 24-year-old Argentine,
called Isabel. She and Peron met at the party and immediately
hit it off. The pair shared not only an Argentine background
but a strong interest in the occult. Isabel had lived for 10 years
as a housekeeper for a family of professional spirit healers.
Within three weeks, the couple was living together, as Peron
continued his wandering exile through the Caribbean. Isabel
then went with Peron to Spain where he settled under the
protection of far-right dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco. On
Nov. 15, 1961, Juan and Isabel married, though Peron was
ineligible for the church sacrament.
In 1964, Isabel Peron began the slow process of Peron's
rehabilitation. She returned to Argentina on an official visit as
Peron's emissary, testing the political waters.
Jose Lopez Rega, then a police corporal, finagled a personal
introduction, according to Peron biographer Joseph Page.
Lopez Rega apparently had served as a bodyguard for Peron
when he was Argentine president. Lopez Rega's favorite photo
showed him riding on the running board of Peron's limousine.
After the meeting, Isabel hired Lopez Rega as a valet and
secretary. He accompanied her on the rest of her three-month
visit to Argentina. When Isabel returned to Spain, Lopez Rega
left his wife and daughter to go, too.
Like the Perons, Lopez Rega was fascinated by the occult.
With flinty blue eyes and a hawkish profile, Lopez Rega fit the
image of his self-proclaimed status as a wizard. He divined
astrological charts and authored 11 volumes on the
supernatural. He also possessed a dark charisma with a
temperament that was described by other Peron cronies as
devious, ruthless and egomaniacal.
Besides his occult interests, Lopez Rega was deeply
pro-fascist, a follower of reactionary philosophers such as
Charles Maurras, Walther Darre and Jordan Genta. Lopez
Rega's political views were typical of Argentine right-wing
thought and gave him entrée to the neo-fascist circles of
Europe.
In Madrid, Lopez Rega built ties to the old fascist network of
Nazi SS Col. Otto Skorzeny, a Hitler loyalist known as
"Scarface" from a dueling wound. The dashing Skorzeny had
been a central figure in protecting fugitive Nazi war criminals
and developing a new generation of neo-fascists.
U.S. Army intelligence documents identified Skorzeny as a
leader of the Nazi's legendary ODESSA network, the
underground organization of SS veterans that helped resettle
Nazis in the Peron's Argentina and other countries. [For details
on Skorzeny, see Martin Lee's The Beast Reawakens.]
By the early 1970s, Lopez Rega also was holding
conversations with neo-fascist terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie,
who had moved to Madrid after an aborted right-wing coup plot
in Italy in 1970. With Skorzeny's blessing, delle Chiaie worked
to build the new international neo-fascist movement.
During the years in Madrid, Lopez Rega also had made
himself indispensable to his patrons, the Perons. Aging
quickly, Peron suffered from a variety of ailments: a liver cyst,
hardening of the arteries and prostate problems.
Lopez Rega nursed Peron and practiced his occult arts of
healing. On one occasion, Lopez Rega was overheard
boasting how Peron had once died and was brought back to
life by Lopez Rega's magical powers.
Lopez Rega worked his way deeper into Peron's good graces
by helping arrange the return of Eva Peron's carefully
preserved corpse. To deny Peron's followers an emotional
rallying point inside Argentina in the 1950s, the post-Peron
government had secretly shipped Eva's body to a cemetery in
Milan, Italy.
On Sept. 23, 1971, Eva's remains were transported from Italy
to Spain where they were turned over to Peron. Later, Lopez
Rega moved the body to a second floor room at Peron's
house and ordered Isabel to lie on the coffin. Amid burning
candles, Lopez Rega reportedly performed rituals to transfer
Eva's spiritual essence into Isabel.
By the early 1970s, despite his physical decline, Peron was
itching to return to power in Argentina. From Spain, the
still-savvy politician cultivated supporters from the socialistic
left, the pro-reform center and the neo-fascist right. Inside
Argentina, Peron's backers orchestrated popular outcries for
the exiled general's return.
The Argentine government helped out by voiding an
outstanding criminal warrant against Peron for statutory rape
in the Nelly Rivas affair. According to some historians, Licio
Gelli, who directed Italy's secretive and right-wing Propaganda
2 lodge, chartered a DC-8 jet that returned Peron to Argentine
soil for a brief visit in late 1971.
By June 1973, when the enfeebled Peron made his triumphant
official return to Argentina, he was deeply indebted to the
ultra-right networks. They even supplied the black-shirted
bodyguards who flanked Peron as he disembarked at Ezeiza
airport. When disorder broke out, the bodyguards fired
indiscriminately into the crowd.
In August 1973, a pro-Peron fill-in president stepped down,
clearing the way for Peron’s restoration. Peron selected Isabel
as his vice presidential running mate for upcoming elections.
Some Argentines were troubled by the Ezeiza incident and by
the nepotism, but their support for Peron held strong. In
October 1973, he and Isabel were easily elected.
At the time, CIA analysts in Argentina took note of the personal
influence exercised by Lopez Rega, according to biographer
Joseph Page.
One CIA cable read: "Peron has lucid periods, interrupted by
periods of depression during which he becomes a dependent
old man. In these latter periods [he] refuses to talk to anyone
but his wife … and … Lopez Rega … upon whom he becomes
very dependent."
After his election, the 78-year-old Peron suffered a continuing
health decline. Shadowing the president day and night, Lopez
Rega controlled access to Peron and even installed a
microphone in Peron's bedroom to monitor the president's
breathing.
Lopez Rega seemed to exercise even fuller control over
Isabel, who was spell-bound by the charismatic occultist. From
Isabel's servant in 1964, Lopez Rega had transformed himself
into her master. He once was quoted as saying, "Isabel does
not exist; she is entirely my creation."
Lopez Rega's Ministry of Social Welfare also provided cover
for the development of the Argentine Anti-communist Alliance,
known as the Triple-A, a brutal paramilitary organization that
became the prototype for Latin American "death squads."
To help organize the Triple-A, Lopez Rega ordered the
release from prison of Francois Chiappe, considered a ranking
member of the "French Connection" heroin smuggling ring.
Since World War II, that ring had worked closely with French
intelligence in exchange for official protection of its heroin
shipments from Indochina through Marseilles to Latin America
and then to the United States.
During his presidency, Peron consistently resisted U.S.
demands for Chiappe's extradition. Whenever American
pressure forced Chiappe's confinement in Argentina, he lived
in a deluxe jail with fine furnishings, catered meals and
frequent furloughs.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government continued to foot the bill for
Argentina's supposed drug suppression. One $13.5 million aid
package went directly to Lopez Rega's ministry.
With Peron back in power, the Triple-A began a systematic
campaign to kidnap, torture and murder perceived leftists.
Officially, the Argentine government insisted that it was baffled
about the activities of the Triple-A and was busy investigating
this mysterious outlaw band. In reality, however, the Triple-A
coordinated its operations with Lopez Rega's secret police.
In June 1974, Peron slipped into a terminal medical crisis while
Isabel and Lopez Rega were on diplomatic missions in Europe.
Reached in Rome on June 19, Lopez Rega immediately flew
back to Argentina where he took charge of Peron's medical
care. Isabel returned on June 28 and went to her husband's
bedside.
On June 30, Peron suffered a cardiac arrest. For two hours,
the medical team sought to revive him without success. Lopez
Rega then stepped in to try his hand. He gripped Peron's
ankles and uttered incantations. But Peron was beyond Lopez
Rega's wizardry.
"I can't do it, it … I can't …" Lopez Rega muttered. "For 10
years, I did it, but now I can't."
Peron's death elevated Isabel to the presidency. But Lopez
Rega's control of the powerful Ministry of Social Welfare and
his influence over Isabel effectively made him the most
influential politician in Argentina. On public occasions, Lopez
Rega sat near Isabel and literally mouthed the words of her
speeches as she delivered them. When asked why, he
explained that he was channeling the spirit of Juan Peron to
guide her.
Lopez Rega soon found himself an inviting target for the
government's critics. He came under strong criticism for
corruption.
His excesses -- both his personal arrogance and the brutality
of his Triple-A allies -- made Lopez Rega politically vulnerable.
When Lopez Rega appeared at one public gathering, a crowd
of 80,000 Argentines jeered him off the platform. Soon
afterwards, in July 1975, the military demanded his resignation
and Lopez Rega was forced to step down.
As a sop, Isabel Peron gave him a special ambassadorship
that allowed him to move to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and then
later to his old haunts in Madrid. According to his girlfriend at
the time, Lopez Rega also traveled to Switzerland seeking
access to the fabled Peron bank accounts.
Back in Argentina, Lopez Rega became a wanted man. An
Argentine military investigation "uncovered" a massive cocaine
smuggling ring operating in Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia.
The leaders allegedly included Lopez Rega; his deputy, Col.
Jorge Osinde; and Lopez Rega's son-in-law Raul Lastiri, who
was Isabela's appointee as president to the Argentine
Congress of Deputies. But the case was not pursued
aggressively.
After Lopez Rega's departure, Isabela Peron became the
lamest of ducks. The economy was in ruins and disorder was
spreading. The "left-Peronist" Monteneros and other radical
guerrilla groups were stepping up their violent resistance to
the government.
By 1976, the Argentine military had seen enough. Top
generals staged a coup that put Isabela Peron under a
comfortable house arrest. Some of Peron's cronies, such as
the Corsican Chiappe, suffered a worse fate. To placate
Washington, the military regime of Gen. Jorge Videla finally
extradited Chiappe to the United States.
But most of the drug-tainted Triple-A operation survived and
grew more powerful. Working more openly with the Argentine
security forces, rightist goon squads "disappeared" tens of
thousands of suspected leftists.
The victims underwent bizarre tortures that combined Middle
Age crudity with some Nazi-like innovations. There were
Medieval-style genital mutilations, gang rapes, skin peeling,
burning with hot coals and acids, and immersion in water
befouled with human waste.
But there were also newer twists to break the human will:
applying electric shocks, using family mementos to inflict pain,
engaging in humiliating torture in front of family members, and
involving doctors to make sure that the victim did not die
prematurely.
After the torture, many of the captives were shot and buried in
mass graves. Others were stripped naked, shackled together
and dumped from planes into the ocean.
In the United States, the Carter administration objected to
these gross abuses of human rights. But the CIA maintained
close ties to Argentine intelligence and other right-wing
elements in South America.
Some prominent politicians, such as former California Gov.
Ronald Reagan, even expressed public sympathy for the
Argentine military. In one radio commentary, Reagan chastised
assistant secretary of state Pat Darien for her human-rights
protests, saying she should "walk a mile in the moccasins" of
the Argentine generals before criticizing them.
The Argentine military also banded together with six other
South American military dictatorships in Operation Condor,
which hunted down leftists and other dissidents around the
world.
To finance these and other operations, the intelligence
services relied on illicit sources of cash. According to U.S.
Senate testimony by Argentine intelligence officer Leonardo
Sanchez-Reisse, the Argentines funded many of their
paramilitary operations with $30 million in Bolivian drug money
laundered through Miami businesses. [For details, see Robert
Parry’s Lost History.]
In 1980, using that slush fund, the Argentine military joined
forces with Bolivian drug lords and right-wing military officers to
overthrow an elected left-of-center government in Bolivia.
Spearheading the putsch was Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie
and elements of the same international band of neo-fascist
terrorists who had flown to Argentina with Juan Peron.
Because of the prominent involvement of drug lords, the
Bolivian putsch became known as the Cocaine Coup. After the
coup, the drug lords gained government protection to ship
their raw coca to Colombia where the fledgling Medellin cartel
pioneered modern methods of production and distribution of
cocaine to the United States.
The next stop for the Argentine intelligence teams and their
drug-supported paramilitary operations was Honduras, where
they began training a Nicaraguan counterrevolutionary army
known as the contras.
With Ronald Reagan's election in November 1980, the
Argentines gained a powerful ally in the United States. In 1981,
Reagan ordered the CIA to join the Argentines in training the
contras into a full-scale army.
Apparently overestimating their value to Washington, however,
the Argentine generals invaded the British-ruled Falkland
Islands, a decision that forced the Reagan administration to
side with Great Britain in crushing the Argentine invasion
force. In 1983, the disgraced generals ceded power to a new
civilian government.
After Raul Alfonsin was elected president, investigations into
the "dirty war" estimated that the number of dead may have
totaled 30,000. But Argentine authorities shied away from
holding the generals accountable. In 1990, President Carlos
Menem, a Peronista who succeeded Alfonsin, pardoned the
leading "dirty war" generals.
Meanwhile, the mysterious Lopez Rega experienced his own
twists of fate. Apparently unable to access the Peron fortune,
he moved to Miami where he lived in obscurity, frail and sick.
In 1986, the FBI found him and extradited him back to
Argentina where he faced corruption charges.
While incarcerated, Lopez Rega sent letters to Licio Gelli
pleading for help and complaining about abandonment by
"The Family," an apparent reference to Gelli's P-2 lodge and
its Argentine allies.
But Lopez Rega had outlived his usefulness. With no one
willing to come to his aid, he died in an Argentine prison in
1989.
Robert Reed is an anthropologist who has studied the
intersection of Latin American drug trafficking and politics.
Back to Front
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