Osvaldo Cacciatore

Osvaldo Cacciatore
Cacciatore in 1982.
62 Mayor of Buenos Aires
In office April 2, 1976 – March 31, 1982
President	Jorge Rafael Videla, Roberto Eduardo Viola, Leopoldo Galtieri
Preceded by	Eduardo Crespi
Succeeded by	Guillermo del Cioppo
Personal details
Born	1924 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Died	July 28, 2007 (aged 83) Buenos Aires, Argentina
Alma mater	School of Military Aviation
Profession	Military officer
Military service
Allegiance	Argentina
Service/branch	Argentine Air Force
Years of service	1946–1973
Rank	Brigadier

Osvaldo Cacciatore (1924–2007) was an Argentine Air Force brigadier and former de facto Mayor of Buenos Aires during the National Reorganization Process military dictatorship.

Osvaldo Andrés Cacciatore was born in Buenos Aires in 1924. He enrolled at the School of Military Aviation in 1946 and on September 28, 1951, joined an attempted coup d'état against populist President Juan Perón. The putsch, led by retired General Benjamín Menéndez, was a bid to thwart the upcoming 1951 general elections (in which Perón was re-elected). It quickly failed, however, and Menéndez, Cacciatore and a number of others escaped to neighboring Montevideo, Uruguay, whose government was at odds with Perón's.

Cacciatore returned to Argentina and was reinstated into the Air Force. Following a collapse in Church-state relations in Argentina in late 1954, Cacciatore joined a second mutiny against the President, led by Rear Admiral Samuel Toranzo Calderón. On the eve of the planned, June 16, 1955, attack, Toranzo had decided to postpone the move; but unaware of the decision, an Air Force detachment, which included Cacciatore, carried out the brutal bombing of Plaza de Mayo (the public square facing the presidential offices, the Casa Rosada) as scheduled, and during a Peronist rally. Piloting one of the Gloster Meteor jets deployed for the raid, Cacciatore was among the pilots whose attack took over 300 civilian lives, after which the pilots flew to safety in Uruguay.

An Army revolt led by General Eduardo Lonardi in September 1955 ultimately succeeded in deposing Perón, and following the September 23 installation of the Revolución Libertadora regime, Cacciatore returned. An uneventful career in subsequent years was capped by his appointment in 1972 as Acting Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President Alejandro Lanusse, whose military regime was in its final days. Elections called by Lanusse for March 1973, would include, for the first time since Perón's ouster, a lifting of the ban on Peronism, and Cacciatore chaired the government delegation to negotiate terms for Perón's preliminary November 17, 1972, Argentine visit.