Viola, Roberto

(1924–1994)

   General and president of the second junta (March to December 1981) during the “dirty war” in Argentina. (The other members of the junta were Armando Lambruschini and Omar Graffigna). Promoted to general in 1971, he commanded the Second Army Corps during the 1976 coup that ousted President Isabel (“Isabelita”) Perón. With General Jorge Rafael Videla, he had been one of the main plotters—Viola and Videla were known within the military as “the two Vs.” Viola became president when the “dirty war” was beginning to wind down—the regime’s opponents had been killed, exiled, or terrorized into submission—and he began taking slow steps toward a political liberalization. But his junta was replaced eight months later by a third junta, led by Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri. In the 1985 trial of the nine former junta commanders, Viola said that Argentina’s return to democracy was made possible only by the military’s war against subversives and that he was “responsible, but not guilty.” Nevertheless, he was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison, though a Supreme Court ruling a year later shortened his sentence by six months. He was pardoned in December 1990 by President Carlos Saúl Menem.