Concentration

On March 23, the commanders in chief of the army, the navy and the air force pay a visit to Monsenor Tortolo at the bishopric's headquarters. Hours later, on March 24, they overthrow and imprison Isabel Peron. The governor of the province of La Rioja, Carlos Menem, and other Peronist leaders, are confined to a navy prison ship anchored in the port of Buenos Aires. Once again, the Congress and the Supreme Court are dissolved. Clandestine concentration camps are set up in units of the armed and security forces, and those who are abducted are taken to them, always secretly and without any judicial order. There they are tortured, then covertly murdered. In a meeting of the bishopric, Tortolo defends torture with theological arguments.
The military junta designates the chief of the army, General Jorge Videla, to be president, but the junta is being torn apart by internal conflicts.
Old jealousies are erupting between the army and the navy, led by Admiral Emilio Massera, who maintains that the junta is the organ of maximum power and Videla no more than its delegated administrator. In the plans approved by the military junta, it falls to the army to command the operations of the dirty war, and the jurisdictions are clearly determined. But Massera does not respect those agreements and invades the jurisdiction of the army as a way of accumulating intramilitary power. His instrument for doing so is the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), where a clandestine concentration camp is operating. The task force that administers it answers directly to the chief of the navy, who personally participates in certain operations. In June, an army patrol brings down the leader of the ERP, Roberto Sanrucho, and the dismantling of that organization is complete.

Horacio Verbitsky's Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior