A period of violent unrest aggravated by the weakness of the executive and internal tensions in the Peronist movement favored a new military coup in March 1976, which led to the arrest of the president and the assumption of power by a military junta led by the general Rafael Videla, appointed head of state. With Parliament suppressed, the parties dissolved, the military instituted a harsh and oppressive regime. In March 1981, General Videla handed over the presidency to General Roberto Viola, who in December of the same year, seriously ill, was replaced by Lieutenant General Leopoldo Galtieri. Inaugurating the presidency with some liberal measures to remedy the serious economic crisis, Galtieri ordered the occupation of the Falkland Islands in April 1982, in the hope of attracting sympathy and consensus to the junta. However, Britain, after an attempt at mediation, reoccupied the archipelago in June of the same year, inflicting a very heavy military defeat on Argentina. Galtieri was forced to resign and was replaced in July 1982 by General Reynaldo Bignone. Now irremediably compromised, in 1983 the army decided to restore power to civilians. Thus ended a period of bloody dictatorship, responsible for thousands of victims. The general elections for October 1983 were called, these saw the affirmation of Raúl Alfonsín, leader of the Unión Cívica Radical, who defeated the Peronists of the Frente Justicialista, led by Italo Luder. Alfonsín, as a first act of government, put under investigation the soldiers guilty of the disaster in the Falklands and the death of numerous political opponents, but found very strong resistance, manifested in repeated insurrections of some military units. At the same time, between 1985 and 1986, he set up an advisory body for the reform of the Constitution, announced a plan, later abandoned, for the transfer of the capital to Patagonia and changed the monetary unit, replacing the peso with the austràl (replaced again by weight in 1992). Meanwhile, the pressing economic crisis and the tensions caused by the government’s attitude towards the military led to a climate of popular dissatisfaction, which manifested itself especially in 1987 with the harsh electoral defeat of Alfonsín’s party and in May 1989 with the victory for the presidency. of the country of the Peronist candidate of the Nationalist Justicialist Movement, Carlos Sàul Menem. Alfonsín, therefore, having taken note of the situation and pushed by the onset of inflation, which had already forced him at the end of May to decree a state of siege due to the continuous riots of the population exasperated by the high cost of living, in the following June he resigned. before the expiry of his mandate.

The appointment of Menem as President of the Republic reopened a new season of execution in the country. The president, inherited a country in financial chaos and with galloping inflation, immediately put his hand, with the help of Domingo Cavallo, an illustrious representative of neoliberalism Latin American, to a policy of rigor and economic liberalism, a policy that soon gave its fruits with a significant reduction in the inflation process (1992). The economic recovery of the country, however, took place in a contradictory context, in which the increase in productivity was counterbalanced by the decrease in real wages, stagnation and the increase in unemployment. The liberal choice in economics was matched in foreign policy by a substantial international alignment with the United States, which resulted in the suspension of supplies of nuclear material to Iran (1992) and the decision to publish the archives on the Nazi hierarchs who had taken refuge in Argentina, a country of South America defined by philosophynearby, com. Defined, in 1994, with the opposition leader Alfonsín a “democratic pact” and elected the Constituent Assembly for the approval of the new fundamental charter, which reduced the presidential term to four years and allowed the immediate re-election of the outgoing president, Menem in 1995 reapplied for the presidency of the Republic and won the elections, despite the growing discontent with the his government. The fate of the model of economic liberalism, which had characterized Menem’s presidency, in fact, by now appeared to be sealed: in 1997 the consultations for the partial renewal of the Chamber resulted in a significant loss of votes and seats for the president’s party and the elections presidential elections of October 1999 saw the victory of the center-left Alliance candidate, Fernando de la Rua. The center-left coalition also won a majority in Parliament, but the economic crisis worsened in the last months of Menem’s rule soon caused problems within the new executive. All attempts to remedy the economic recession, as well as the use of the International Monetary Fund, were in vain, resulting in several government reshuffles.

To overcome the crisis, Fernando de la Rua entrusted the department of Economy to the former minister Domingo Cavallo and the Senate approved a law that gave the government special powers for the launch of economic measures, such as cuts in salaries and pensions. Meanwhile on the judicial front, again in 2001, a sentence by a federal judge, well received by the numerous families of the disappeared and which caused some concern among the veterans of the Armed Forces, declared unconstitutional the laws granting immunity to soldiers involved in human rights violations during the Peronist regime (1973-83), approved between 1986-87 by president Alfonsín. In a climate of widespread discontent, mainly due to the deterioration of living conditions due to the launch of restrictive economic measures, the legislative elections of October 2001 saw the center-left alliance lose the majority of seats in the Senate and in the Chamber and the comeback of the Peronist party. In the month of December of the same year, the state of crisis in which the country was facing was further exacerbated: the population, exasperated, manifested in the streets; the most violent fringes ransacked shops and supermarkets and clashed with police and army. A state of siege was declared, and the police severely repressed the revolt: in a few days there were over twenty dead and hundreds of wounded, very numerous were the people arrested. After the attempt to form a government of national unity failed, De la Rua resigned and Cavallo also renounced his post. Soon after, the Peronist Luís Adolfo Rodriguez Saá was appointed president, but after just eight days, overwhelmed by popular protest, he was forced to resign. His successor, Eduardo Camaño, remained in office for just one day. On January 1, 2002, the choice of Congress fell on Eduardo Duhalde, also a Peronist, who pledged to give stable leadership to the country, with the goal of governing until 2003, the year of expiry of the mandate of De la Rua. The new president launched an emergency budget, which was based on a heavy devaluation of the peso, thus putting an end to ten years of parity with the dollar, and on the “freezing” of the very heavy debts accumulated with foreign countries. In the presidential elections of 2003 the Peronist asserted himself NC Kirchner. In the same year, at the proposal of the president, the Argentine Parliament annulled the pardon for the military protagonists of the repression, during the period of the dictatorship, thus allowing both the reopening of the trials and the extradition of the same abroad. Midterm elections took place in October 2005, giving the majority to the president’s formation. Presidential elections took place in October 2007, won in the first round by C. Kirchner, wife of the outgoing president. In 2008, to counter the rise in prices within the country, a law was passed that increased the export tax on agricultural products, which however provoked protests and strikes. In 2009 the legislative elections were held which saw a weak victory of the parties of the Peronist left, linked to the Kirchner spouses. In October 2011 the outgoing president Kirchner was reconfirmed with over 53% of the votes, but in the following two years she lost consensus due to the economic policies implemented by the government. In November 2015, the mayor of Buenos Aires Mauricio Macri won the presidential elections, defeating the Peronist candidate Daniel Scioli in the ballot.