Luciano Benjamín Menéndez
| Luciano B. Menéndez | |
|---|---|
| Provisional Federal Interventor of Córdoba | |
|
In office 19 September – 20 September 1975 |
|
| Preceded by | Raúl Lacabanne |
| Succeeded by | Raúl Bercovich Rodríguez |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
19 June 1927 San Martín, Buenos Aires |
| Profession | Military officer |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | Argentine Army |
Luciano Benjamín Menéndez (born 19 June 1927) is a former Argentine general. Commander of the Third Army Corps from 1975 to 1979, he played a prominent role during the Dirty War.
(Not to be confused with his cousin Mario Benjamín Menéndez, another Argentine general of the Dirty war. Both are nephews of Benjamín Andrés Menéndez, an Argentine general who led a (frustrated) putsch against Peron in 1951).
Menéndez was born in the largely working-class Buenos Aires suburb of San Martín, in 1927. He enrolled in the National War College and was later transferred to Córdoba, where he was attached to the III Army Corps; the jurisdiction of the Third Army Corps comprises the provinces of Córdoba, Jujuy, Salta, Catamarca, La Rioja, San Juan, Mendoza, San Luis, Córdoba, Santiago del Estero, and Tucumán (Northwestern and Cuyo regions).
As head of the III Army Corps, Menéndez supervised the combat operations of the 5th Mountain Infantry Brigade during Operativo Independencia against Marxist People's Revolutionary Army (Argentina) (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo, ERP) guerrillas in Tucumán Province. The Baltimore Sun reported at the time, "In the jungle-covered mountains of Tucuman, long known as "Argentina's garden," Argentines are fighting Argentines in a Vietnam-style civil war. So far, the outcome is in doubt. But there is no doubt about the seriousness of the combat, which involves 2,000 or so leftist guerrillas and perhaps as many as 10,000 soldiers."
During last week of August 1975 he was instrumental in putting down the ERP-led armed uprising in the city of Córdoba aimed at stopping the deployment of the elite Córdoba based 4th Airborne Infantry Brigade in Tucumán province that resulted in the deaths of at least 5 policemen and practically the whole of the parachute brigade was called in to restore order and stand guard at strategic points around the city of Córdoba for the remainder of the year, after the bombing of the Córdoba city police headquarters and radio communications centre. In all, 293 servicemen and policemen were killed combating left wing terrorism between 1975 and 1976.
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