Qualla: Margarita Belen massacre

Margarita Belen massacre: Introduction

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The road between Resistencia and Formosa runs straight and flat through the Chaco lowlands, the kind of road where you can see for kilometers in every direction. On December 13, 1976, somewhere along National Route 11 near the small town of Margarita Belen, that road became a killing ground. Twenty-two political prisoners -- most of them members of the Montoneros organization -- were taken from their cells, driven into the countryside, and executed by soldiers of the Argentine Army and officers of the Chaco Provincial Police. The military claimed the convoy had been ambushed by guerrillas. The courts would later call that story what it was: a fabrication designed to mask murder.

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Margarita Belen massacre: The Night Before

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The prisoners came from different places. Some had been legally detained at Penitentiary Unit No. 7 in Resistencia. Others were transferred from prisons in Misiones Province. On December 12, all of them were brought to the Resistencia police headquarters, where they were tortured...

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Margarita Belen massacre: A Story That Did Not Hold

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The official military account claimed that guerrillas had attacked the convoy on the road, that at least five prisoners had died in the resulting gunfight, and that the rest had fled. The military version named specific individuals -- including Reynaldo Zapata Sonez -- as having ...

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Margarita Belen massacre: Justice, Delayed but Delivered

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1985, two years after the dictatorship ended, the massacre became one of many cases brought before the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber in the Trial of the Juntas -- a landmark proceeding in which Argentina held its former military rulers accountable for crimes against humanity. T...

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Margarita Belen massacre: What the Road Remembers

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The town of Margarita Belen is small and quiet, the kind of place most travelers would pass through without stopping. But every December 13, it becomes a site of national remembrance. The massacre has entered the broader memorial landscape of Argentina's Dirty War -- a conflict i...

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