José López Rega (17 October 1916 – 9 June 1989) was
ArgentinaArgentina, officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America, constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations, though Mexico,...
's Minister of Social Welfare during the
PeronistPeronism , or Justicialism , is an Argentine political movement based on the ideas and programs associated with former President Juan Perón and his second wife, Eva Perón, referred to as Spiritual Leader of the Nation of Argentina...
government started in 1973 by
Juan PerónJuan Domingo Perón was an Argentine general and politician, elected three times as President of Argentina, after serving in several government positions, including the Secretary of Labor and the Vice Presidency. He was overthrown in a military coup in 1955...
and continued after Perón's death in 1974 by his third wife and vice-president,
Isabel Martínez de PerónMaría Estela Martínez Cartas de Perón , better known as Isabel Martínez de Perón or Isabel Perón, is a former President of Argentina. She was also the third wife of another former President, Juan Perón...
(1974-76), until the
coup d'etatA coup d'état , or coup for short, is the sudden unconstitutional deposition of a legitimate government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another, either civil or military...
of 1976 that initiated the so-called
National Reorganization ProcessThe National Reorganization Process was the name used by its leaders for the military government that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983 The National Reorganization Process (in Spanish, Proceso de Reorganización Nacional, often simply El Proceso) was the name used by its leaders for the military...
(1976-83) under Jorge Videla's direction. Earlier a
Federal PoliceThe Policía Federal Argentina is a police force of the Argentine federal government. The PFA has detachments throughout the country, but its main responsibilty is policing the 3 million population of the Federal District of Buenos AIres...
corporalCorporal is a rank in use in some form by most militaries and also by some police forces or other uniformed organizations. It is usually equivalent to NATO Rank Code OR-4. The word is probably derived from a medieval Italian phrase capo corporale, meaning "head of a body "...
, he was made
Comisario General of police, the highest rank, under Isabel Perón's rule. He was known as
El Brujo ("The Warlock") and
El Evola argentino ("The Argentine Evola", in comparison to fascist esotericist
Julius EvolaBarone Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola also known as Julius Evola, was an Italian philosopher, esotericist, author, artist, poet, political activist, soldier and Perennial Traditionalist...
).
Before Juan Perón's return
López Rega's mother died giving birth to him in
Buenos AiresBuenos Aires is the capital, and largest city, of Argentina, currently the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the eastern shore of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
. According to his
biographyA biography is a description or account of someone's life and the times, which is usually published in the form of a book or essay, or in some other form, such as a film. An autobiography is a biography of a person's life written or told by that same person...
by Marcelo Larraquy (2002), he was a respectful, introverted boy, who had a library covering an entire wall and a special interest in spiritual topics (which would later turn into a passion for esoterism and occultism). He married at the age of 27. In 1944 he joined the Federal Police; with the help of police chief Filomeno Velazco he joined the guard which protected the
Casa RosadaLa Casa Rosada , officially known as the Casa de Gobierno or Palacio Presidencial , is the official seat of the executive branch of the Government of Argentina .The Casa Rosada sits at the...
, seat of the executive, with the rank of
corporalCorporal is a rank in use in some form by most militaries and also by some police forces or other uniformed organizations. It is usually equivalent to NATO Rank Code OR-4. The word is probably derived from a medieval Italian phrase capo corporale, meaning "head of a body "...
.
In 1951, he met Victoria Montero who introduced him in the subject of esoterism. López Rega was a frequent visitor in Montero's home, where he met members of the freemasons organization. A common interest for esoterism linked him to Isabel, Perón's third wife, in 1965. Sent to Argentina by Perón, exiled in Spain since the 1955 "
Revolución LibertadoraThe Revolución Libertadora was a military uprising that ended the second presidential term of Juan Perón in Argentina, on September 16, 1955....
" coup, she organized a meeting in the house of major Bernardo Alberte, Perón's delegate and sponsor of various left-wing Peronist movement, among which the CGT de los Argentinos, a labor union federation which, between 1968 and 1972, gathered opponents to a pact with
Juan Carlos OnganíaJuan Carlos Onganía Carballo was a military president of Argentina from 29 June 1966 to 8 June 1970. He rose to power as military dictator after toppling, in a coup d’état self-named Revolución Argentina , the democratically elected president Arturo Illia .-Economic and social policies:While...
's dictatorship, and which had an important role in the 1969
CordobazoThe Cordobazo was a civil uprising in the city of Córdoba, Argentina, in the end of May 1969, during the military dictatorship of General Juan Carlos Onganía, which occurred a few days after the Rosariazo, and a year after the French May '68...
insurrection. After winning Isabel's trust, López Rega traveled to Spain, where he worked first for Perón's security before becoming the couple's personal secretary.
Perón's return and the September elections
When
Héctor José CámporaHéctor José Cámpora Demaestre was president of Argentina from 25 May until 13 July 1973.Cámpora, affectionately known as el Tío , was born in the city of Mercedes, in the Province of Buenos Aires...
was elected president on March 11th, 1973, for the first general elections since 1963, as Perón's stand-in since the latter was forbidden from running himself, José López Rega, sent by Perón, became Minister of Social Welfare. From there, he opposed himself to Esteban Righi and others representatives of the Peronist left-wing. Perón returned to Argentina on June 20, 1973, acclaimed by the masses. The Ezeiza massacre, organized by López Rega on the day of Perón's return from a 20 years-old exile, led to a definitive split between left and right-wing Peronism, with Cámpora as representative of the left-wing and López Rega as representative of the right-wing. López Rega had positionned snipers under Perón's stage, who opened up fire upon the masses and the left-wing Peronist organizations, such as the
MontonerosThe Montonero Peronist Movement was an Argentine left-wing Peronist guerrilla group, active during the 1960s and 1970s. Its motto was venceremos...
, etc. On the following days,
Mario Roberto SantuchoMario Roberto Santucho was an Argentine revolutionary. He was the leader of ERP . He was killed by the military in 1976...
, leader of the Guevarist
Ejército Revolucionario del PuebloEjército Revolucionario del Pueblo or Ejército Popular Revolucionario may refers to:* People's Revolutionary Army * People's Revolutionary Army * People's Revolutionary Army...
(ERP), held a press conference during which he accused López Rega and Colonel José Manuel Osinde of the massacre. Perón and López Rega, who, while in Spain, had supported left-wing Peronists, strongly criticized them this time around. López Rega openly criticized president Cámpora's position during the cabinet's meeting. After finding out about Perón's meeting with
José Ignacio RucciJosé Ignacio Rucci was an Argentine politician, general secretary of the CGT starting in 1970...
and other right-wing
CGTThe General Confederation of Labour of the Argentine Republic is a national trade union center of Argentina founded on September 27, 1930 as the result of the merge of the USA and the COA trade union centers...
leaders and also with the
ArmyThe Argentine Army is the land armed force branch of the Argentine military and the senior military service of the country.- History :...
, Cámpora and his vice-president
Vicente LimaVicente Solano Lima was a moderately conservative newspaper publisher and politician who served as Vice President of Argentina from May 25, 1973 to July 13, 1973.-Life and times:...
resigned. All of Cámpora's followers were sacked from all government positions, and López Rega's son-in-law,
Raúl Alberto LastiriRaúl Alberto Lastiri was an Argentine politician who was interim president of Argentina from July 13 1973 until October 12 1973. Lastiri, who presided over the Argentine Chamber of Deputies was promoted to the Presidency of the country after Héctor Cámpora and Vicente Solano Lima resigned...
, also a member of
P2Propaganda Due , or P2, was a Masonic lodge operating under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of Italy from 1945 to 1976 , and a pseudo-Masonic or "black" or "covert" lodge operating illegally from...
, became interim president and organized the elections. On September 23, 1973, Perón won them with almost 62% of the votes, naming his third wife Isabel Perón as vice-president.
Beside Raúl Lastiri's interim presidency, López Rega's success in the expulsion of the left-wing Peronists from power was confirmed on August 4, 1973, during the National Congress of the
Justicialist PartyThe Justicialist Party is a Peronist political party in Argentina, and the largest component of the Peronist movement.It is led by Daniel Scioli. The current president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and former presidents Carlos Menem and Eduardo Duhalde are members...
(official name of Perón's party), with the nomination of his protector Isabel as candidate for vice-presidency. On September 23, the Perón-Perón ticket won comfortably, with 61.85% of the votes. Troubled by the right-wing shift of Peronism and of the government, the Montoneros, a left-wing Peronist group, assassinated CGT's leader José Ignacio Rucci on September 25, 1973. The latter had also been involved in the creation of the Triple A. This assassination gave a pretext to López Rega to decree the prohibition of all armed groups and the closure of
El MundoEl Mundo can refer to:*El Mundo , Spanish newspaper*El Mundo , Colombian newspaper based in Medellín*El Mundo , Venezuelan newspaper*El Mundo , Puerto Rican newspaper*El Mundo , Argentine newspaper...
, a left-wing newspaper. A month later, radical senator Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen was seriously injured in the first terrorist attack claimed by the Triple A. Federal Police Chief Rodolfo Almirón had been suspected of organizing this attack.
Juan Perón's death and Isabel Perón's presidency
Among Juan Perón's first actions after taking office were tougher sentences against "sedition" and "subversion". Started after the Ezeiza massacre, the split with the Peronist left-wing became even more visible with the resignation of eight deputies belonging to the
Juventud Peronista (Peronist Youth). When Perón died on July 1, 1974, Isabel assumed power and López Rega almost became her Prime minister, assuming the direction of all ministers in the Presidency's orbit. He decided almost by himself on the composition of the new cabinet, keeping for himself the title of Minister of Social Welfare. He was promoted to
Comisario General, the highest rank in the
Federal PoliceThe Policía Federal Argentina is a police force of the Argentine federal government. The PFA has detachments throughout the country, but its main responsibilty is policing the 3 million population of the Federal District of Buenos AIres...
; he had reached the rank of corporal when a member of the police force.
As Isabel Perón's Minister of Social Welfare, López Rega conducted an unpopular policy of fiscal conservatism. In 1975 his protegé Celestino Rodrigo, Minister of Economy,
devaluedDevaluation is a reduction in the value of a currency with respect to other monetary units. In common modern usage, it specifically implies an official lowering of the value of a country's currency within a fixed exchange rate system, by which the monetary authority formally sets a new fixed rate...
the
Argentine pesoThe peso is the currency of Argentina. Its ISO 4217 code is ARS, and the symbol used locally for it is $ . It is divided into 100 centavos...
by 50%, causing a massive economic havoc,
inflationIn economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation is also an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a loss of real...
, loss of savings, and general hardship on the middle and lower classes (in particular, public employees and retirees). López Rega came under attack from the leftist factions of the Peronist Party, accused of being a counter-revolutionary and a
fascistFascism, , comprises a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology and a corporatist economic ideology developed in Italy. Fascists believe that nations and/or races are in perpetual conflict whereby only the strong can survive by being healthy, vital, and by asserting themselves in...
.
In July 1975 he was formally accused by the main party organ of instigating the action of the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance (known as
Triple A). A terrorist group organized with his other protege
Rodolfo AlmirónRodolfo Almirón Sena was a former Argentine police officer and a leader of an extreme right-wing death squad known as the Triple A, operating in Argentina during the mid-1970s...
and funded by the Ministry of Social Welfare, this death squad was responsible for the death of 1,500 persons and the exile of hundreds more. Starting with the June 20, 1973 Ezeiza massacre, it initiated the "
Dirty WarThe Dirty War refers to the state-sponsored violence against Argentine citizenry and left-wing guerrillas from roughly 1976 to 1983 carried out primarily by Jorge Rafael Videla's military government...
" in Argentina which was later taken up by
Jorge VidelaJorge Rafael Videla Redondo was the 43rd President of Argentina from 1976 to 1981. He came to power in a coup d'état that deposed Isabel Martínez de Perón...
's
junta (1976-83) during which 30,000 persons were "disappeared."
Attacked because of Celestino Rodrigo's economic policies, López Rega had to resign on July 11, 1975; he was hurriedly appointed
ambassadorAn ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents their country. They are usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization, to serve as the official representative of their country....
to
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
by Isabel Perón and fled to
Franco's SpainFrancisco Franco became the dictator of Spain when he defeated the Republican government in the Spanish Civil War. Franco declared an official end of hostilities on April 1, 1939, and reworked the name of the republic into the “Spanish State,” a new moniker attempting to distinguish the new regime...
with Rodolfo Almirón; Almirón later became the chief of security of
Manuel FragaManuel Fraga e Iribarne is a Spanish politician from the northwest region of Galicia. Fraga's career as one of the key political figures in Spain straddles both General Francisco Franco's dictatorial regime and the subsequent democracy. He was the President of Galicia from 1990 to 2005 and is...
, leader of the
People's AllianceThe People's Alliance is the English name of several political parties in various nations.-Spain:The People's Alliance was a conservative political party in Spain, formed by a group of General Franco's partisans after his death and consequent restoration of democracy...
post-Franco conservative party, but was arrested in Spain in December 2006.
López Rega's fall
On 24 March 1976, President Isabel Perón was deposed by the military Junta, which in turn organized the so-called "
National Reorganization ProcessThe National Reorganization Process was the name used by its leaders for the military government that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983 The National Reorganization Process (in Spanish, Proceso de Reorganización Nacional, often simply El Proceso) was the name used by its leaders for the military...
" and generalized the "Dirty War". López Rega spent the following ten years fleeing justice abroad, leaving Spain for Switzerland, where he lived near Geneva until 1982. Discovered by a photographer, he then fled to the Bahamas. He lived between Miami and the Bahamas until 1986. In 1986, three years after the return to democracy, he was arrested in the United States while trying to renew his passport, and
extraditedExtradition is the official process whereby one nation or state requests and obtains from another nation or state the surrender of a suspected or convicted criminal. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...
to Argentina, where he was wanted for corruption, conspiracy, and multiple homicide. He died of diabetes on 9 June 1989 in Buenos Aires, while awaiting trial in prison.
Esoteric work
His involvement with astrology and Afro-Brazilian Umbandism help illustrate his peculiar personality. López Rega was author of quite many books on the occult. In his work "Esoteric Astrology" ("Astrología Esotérica"), he points out the appropriate flowers, colors, and astrologically correct time to find a job. Another one is "Alpha and Omega: A message for Mankind" ("Alfa y Omega, un mensaje para la Humanidad", published by Editorial Rosa de los Libres, 1964). What follows are extracts from "Alpha and Omega":
"[A]lmost all (...) problems aren't but THE TWO MAGNETIC POLES, which can be synthesized in SEX and POWER, the latter being conferred by money. (...) Those who have problems should seriously think about this issue, and they will find out that HEAVEN and HELL are located in the same place. FORTUNE and DISGRACE! LIFE and DEATH!"
"If we divide the INITIATIC process in THREE IMPORTANT STAGES, we will enter the realm of MASONIC mysteries strictly speaking, as in the THREE TRAVELS required so that the PROFANE would join the ranks of the workers of SALOMON'S TEMPLE" (p. 215)
"Well, let's study the Karmic debt which Mankind has with COWS, not to mention the religious worship some peoples make of it. We know, according to what we have listened in our conversations with our friends, and by the statistical data available at newspapers, that there's quite a many women who currently lack of milk to feed their children; we also know that some others are sterile and cannot bring an offspring to this world. Well, this is when it has historically took place the sacrifice of COWS in their service for MANKIND. They give us their precious milk and other milk derivates; we eat their meat and use their leather to create shoes, bells, jackets, and so forth, and, particulary due to "cow boy" fashion, we even wear jeans ["vaqueros", in Spanish]. Thus, we can conclude that the whole HUMAN RACE is fed up with COWS. How can we repay such a sacrifice, such a huge debt as that we have with COWS? (...) COWS should look for their food within the very small places were we confine them (concentration camps?), without any signs of human love. These places [farms] look more like places to jail war criminals, rather than to preserve and strengthen the food of the Argentine Republic. (...) The COWS' eyes are very open, and they look at us as if they were waiting of the "night of TIMES" [when cows will avenge themselves]". (Bra, Gerardo, "La 'P-2- en la Argentina", in Félix Luna (ed) et al, Todo es historia, No. 214, Feb 1985, pp.12-15).
Sources
- Biography of José López Rega (in Spanish)
- López Rega. La biografía. Marcelo Larraquy. Editorial Sudamericana. 473 pages. ISBN 9500724413.
- Bra, Gerardo, "La 'P-2- en la Argentina", in Félix Luna (ed) et al, Todo es historia, No. 214, Feb 1985, pp.12-15