Leopoldo Galtieri
Leopoldo Galtieri invaded the Falklands to save his regime and destroyed it instead. Born in 1926 to Italian immigrant parents near Buenos Aires, he was an engineer officer who rose through the army bureaucracy and took the presidency in December 1981, the third leader of the junta that had ruled since 1976. That junta had conducted the Dirty War — some 30,000 people disappeared, taken from their homes, tortured in secret centres, and in many cases thrown alive from aircraft into the sea, with their infants given to military families. By 1982 it was in trouble. Inflation was running above 100 per cent, output was falling, and the unions had brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets in March. The Malvinas were a claim every Argentine government had pressed since 1833 and a genuinely popular one, and Galtieri's calculation was that Britain would not fight for islands 8,000 miles away that its own Foreign Office had been quietly trying to transfer for years. He also believed the United States would stay neutral, having just been thanked by Washington for Argentine help training the Contras. Troops landed on 2 April 1982, and the same square that had filled with protesters filled with people cheering him. A British task force sailed within three days. The war lasted seventy-four days and killed 649 Argentines, 255 British and three islanders. He was removed three days after the surrender, tried for military incompetence and imprisoned, pardoned in 1990, and charged over the disappearances in 2002. Democracy returned in 1983 and has held since.
- Lived: 1926 CE – 2003 CE
- Nationality: Argentine
- Roles: general, dictator, head_of_state
