Today marks the 50th anniversary of the military coup that ushered in Argentina’s last dictatorship in 1976. For decades, the date has marked one of the country’s most powerful civic rituals. Each year, tens of thousands of Argentinians take to the streets to commemorate the victims of state terror and reaffirm their democratic commitment to memoria, verdad y justicia – memory, truth and justice. What began as a demand from grieving families searching for an estimated 30,000 disappeared gradually became something larger: the moral language that defined Argentina’s post-dictatorship democracy.

But this anniversary arrives at a moment when that moral compass is under assault. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, relishes flouting taboos around the country’s democratic consensus, questioning the scale of the dictatorship’s atrocities, celebrating the military and deriding activists as corrupt opportunists. As president, Milei has marked each anniversary of the coup with controversial videos questioning the number of victims or equating state repression with violence by leftist guerrilla groups. This year, rumours swirl that he could pardon military officers convicted in landmark crimes against humanity trials – a move that would shatter a central pillar of Argentina’s post-dictatorship settlement. What was once treated as untouchable has become a battleground.

A radical rightwing president challenging a longstanding democratic settlement is a familiar story. But Milei’s actions also reflect a harder truth: Argentina’s post-dictatorship consensus was always more fragile and incomplete than it appeared.

From the beginning of the democratic transition in 1983, debates over the violence of the past divided the country. Initial efforts towards accountability such as the Nunca Más (Never........

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