As Argentina's current crisis unfolded last month, many of those protesting hard times were most alarmed at the ferocity of the police response to demonstrations. Mounted officers wielding whips reminded people of the last dictatorship and the persistence of repressive tendencies among police and some others in society.

Between 1976 and 1983, Argentines lived through the most brutal period of dictatorship in their history. As many as 30,000 people were killed by the repressive military government that ran the country fighting an illusory Third World War against a supposed communist menace. Even though the country returned to elected government in 1983, Argentines have struggled with their past. The legacies of military repression are lasting. Corrupt political processes, inadequate judicial systems and rampant police violence are some of the persistent indicators that Argentina still grapples with its repressive past. In my work, I try to understand how the Argentine military built and defended its repressive machine by charting the problem of foreign policy and human rights violations. My study charts the effort of foreign governments, international human rights organizations, and other agencies to confront the Argentine government and to hold it accountable for human rights abuses.

As foreign pressures against the military regime grew, Argentine authorities developed an increasingly determined strategy to conceal human rights abuses and defend their human rights record. The problem of human rights claims, both on the part of the Argentine military authorities and of their opponents abroad can be understood in legal, cultural, and political terms. After the coup d'état of 1976, the military junta quickly invoked three strategies to defend against human rights violations accusations. First, military authorities undertook a human rights "cover" by sponsoring projects that seemingly advanced human rights in Argentina. Argentine diplomats were encouraged, for example, to advance in international forums arguments in favor of women's equality. The military government also set about reaching new agreements on landholding and other rights with aboriginal groups in Argentina. Second, the junta denied the abuses. Third, the generals obfuscated and, where necessary to their interests, moved prisoners from clandestine prisons and torture centres into the court and "above ground" penal system.

These strategies comprised a major preoccupation for a regime bombarded, by 1978, with constant requests for information and human rights claims on the part of Amnesty International, dozens of Church groups, tens of governments, and thousands of individuals. My research highlights the role of the Organization of American States, the Spanish government, US authorities, and a range of other groups in pressing the Argentine government on human rights problems. It also shows how such pressures were dealt with by Argentine police, military, and judicial authorities through the collapse of the regime in 1983.

In the end, the Argentine military likely fooled very few in the international community as a result of its insistence that there were no human rights abuses in Argentina. How they structured that defense is important in understanding how the military entrenched a variety of lasting problems in Argentine society that stand in the way of a more open and democratic society.

David Sheinin is Professor of History at Trent University. His books include Beyond the Ideal: Pan Americanism in Inter-American Affairs (2000) and Searching for Authority: Pan Americanism, Diplomacy, and Politics in U.S. Argentine Relations (1998).