The Trouble with Peace
"...let us never forget who it was who led us not only into this economic disaster, but our political and military one too! It is now up to the people to rise up and take back this country..."
- Saul Ubaldini, head of Argentina' CGT Labor Union
The formal Treaty of Cordoba that ended the Beagle War would in most normal circumstances seem to be a case for hope; a senseless, remarkably bloody war between two major South American militaries, the most severe international conflict on the continent in decades, was over in less than a year. 33,000 Argentines and 19,000 Chileans lay dead, with over a hundred thousand wounded; among the latter, it was primarily civilian casualties. Much of Santiago and Valparaiso lay in ruins; the Argentine military, however, had been effectively destroyed. Most of their planes shot down, most of their ships sank, and their elite mountaineer divisions shredded down to the bone.
The trouble with peace, however, was that Argentina's military dictatorship - one in a line of many dating back fifty years - was the reason the country had been marched into the meatgrinder. Not only was its prestige in civilian governance, stepping in after the chaotic final act of Juan Peron and his latest politically-inclined wife, completely shattered, but its competence as a fighting force gone too. The economy was in crisis as it was even before the Venezuelan oil shock (where the government had driven the leftist cadres of the military into the jungles as in Panama but still failed to find the ringleaders) and now seemed to be in utter collapse. The only thing the military seemed to be good for was disappearing people; it couldn't even fight Chile to a draw!
The announcement of the Treaty of Cordoba was the final straw. Border adjustments uniformly benefitted Chile and a massive, crippling indemnity was part of the final agreement. The last man on the unstable musical chairs of junta heads, Reynaldo Bignone, was in office just long enough to sign the treaty before mass protests even larger than those that had shook Buenos Aires all year erupted after a fiery speech by union head Saul Ubaldini. SIDE spies and Army officers began shooting not just at protesters but at each other; the various factions of the military descended into anarchy, the streets of the capital and other major cities consumed by ugly paramilitary violence and immediate radicalization. Bignone resigned and tried to implement a transitional council to elections in 1980; more violence erupted at Ubaldini, one of the most respected anti-junta leaders, was gunned down on his way to meet with Raul Alfonsin, the well-regarded head of the moderate UCR who agreed, to act for the salvation of Argentina, to chair said transition. Peronist guerillas spread like wildfire in the countryside along with rising numbers in the ranks of the ERP socialist revolutionary network; Argentina's postwar crisis had only now begun.
As for Chile, the war effectively gutted whatever opposition Pinochet had had. He was a national hero to most Chileans now, or at least that's what they admitted to publicly when asked; he had defended the homeland and defeated hated Argentina in their war of aggression. A new constitution was promulgated and voted on with mass irregularities in the new year; Pinochet so thoroughly consolidated rule in Chile that he would not leave office until after two further eight-year terms as President, finally retiring in 1996 as one of Latin America's longest serving and most ruthless dictators. His economic performance, despite some bright spots navigating the late 1970s, only grew worse with time too; his wave of privatizations (with the robust mining sector excepted) made Chile a playground for international and domestic conglomerates like never before, and by the time he left office after 23 years the average Chilean was nearly 40% poorer than when he had seized power in 1973...
