Operation Charly

Operation Charly (Spanish: Operación Charly), was allegedly the code-name given to a program undertaken by the military establishment in Argentina with the objective of providing military and counterinsurgency assistance to Central America to combat left-wing subversion. The operation was either headed by the Argentine military with the agreement of the Pentagon, or was led by the US administration and used the Argentinians as a proxy.

Argentina's military involvement in Central America began during the Nicaraguan Revolution between 1977 and 1979, when Argentina began supporting the Somoza family regime in Nicaragua in its fight against the Sandinista Front. Argentina supported the Somoza dictatorship until its overthrow by the Sandinistas in July 1979. In November 1979, before the 13th Conference of American Armies in Bogotá, Colombia, junta leader General Roberto Eduardo Viola offered a proposition calling for a joint Latin American effort against leftist subversion, citing leftist subversion as the greatest military threat in the region. Pursuant with this plan (referred to as the "Viola Plan"), Argentina expanded its counterinsurgency and military assistance to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras at the behest of the military leadership in those countries.

The role of Argentina in Central America reached its zenith in the early 1980s with National Reorganization Process's involvement in covertly directing the Contra rebellion in Nicaragua in conjunction with the CIA. In December 1981, General Leopoldo Galtieri, in a palace revolution, replaced General Viola as the head of Argentina's military junta. A few days before assuming power, Galtieri exposed in a speech in Miami the Argentine government's decision to constitute itself as an unconditional ally of the US in the "world struggle against Communism": "Argentina and the United States will march together in the ideological war which is starting in the world" [sic]. At one point, beginning in early-1982, plans were underway between the United States and the Argentine junta for the creation of a large Latin American military force, which would be directed by an Argentine officer, with the initial aim of landing in El Salvador and pushing the revolutionaries to Honduras to exterminate them, and then to invade Nicaragua and topple the Sandinista regime. The operation would have been protected by a remodelling of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR).

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