He saw my father, tied over some wooden trestles after a torture session, dying

Maximo Jaroslavsky was one of thousands of citizens who ‘disappeared’ under the dictatorship of General Domingo Bussi. With the return of the far-right across South America, son Andres Jaroslavsky warns Argentines not to forget the lessons they learnt back then

A new kind of fascism is on the rise across South America (Andres Jaroslavsky/Getty/The Independent)

Ten years have passed since the death of General Domingo Bussi. The general was a member of the Argentine army, and perhaps one of the worst criminals of the last military dictatorship that devastated Argentina between 1976 and 1983 – a dictatorship characterised by kidnapping, torture and the execution of tens of thousands of citizens, the disappeared. Among them was my father, Maximo Jaroslavsky.

Bussi’s story contains a tragic lesson that Argentine society, like so many others, seems to have learnt and then forgotten again.

During the 20th century, Argentina suffered six coups d’etat. The army developed a vision of itself as “supervisors” with a deep contempt for civil society, a role encouraged by the country’s most powerful economic sectors and given the invaluable blessing of the Catholic Church. The church supported the army not only because of the benefits it obtained. The army and the church shared the conviction that Argentina should be a Catholic country, a society living according to Catholic doctrine – whose God, paradoxically, told them: ‘Thou shalt not kill’.”