Victoria Eugenia Villarruel (born 13 April 1975) is an Argentine politician, lawyer, writer, and activist who has served as Vice President of Argentina since 2023. Described as a conservative politician, she is the founder of the civil association Centro de Estudios Legales sobre el Terrorismo y sus Víctimas (transl. Center for Legal Studies on Terrorism and its Victims), which she has chaired since its inception. She was a member of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies from 2021 to 2023. Villarruel belongs to the La Libertad Avanza political coalition. She has been accused of Argentine state terrorism denial by several media outlets and human rights organisations. Villarruel denies such accusations, maintaining that she does not support the National Reorganization Process.
In the early 2000s, Villarruel hosted a radio show called Proyecto Verdad. She started her political activism with Karina Mujica's group, Memoria Completa, according to statements by Pedro Rafael Mercado, a retired Major Colonel and husband of Cecilia Pando.[5]
Villarruel was also part of the Association of Relatives and Friends of Political Prisoners of Argentina (AFyAPPA), of which Pando was president. She protested in front of the Comodoro Py courts together with Pando to demand the release of those convicted of crimes against humanity during the National Reorganization Process.[6] According to Mercado, between 2001 and 2003, she was part of the meetings that would later give rise to Jóvenes por la Verdad, a group of which he was a member, dedicated to organizing visits to Jorge Rafael Videla while he was under house arrest, and which was also in charge of collecting letters for ESMA repressor Ricardo Cavallo while he was imprisoned in Spain, and Villarruel personally arranged for Mercado and his son to meet Videla.[7]
In 2003, she founded the Center for Legal Studies on Terrorism and its Victims (CELTYV),[8] which some human rights organizations in the country repudiated.[9] On 21 December 2005, she participated in the first march of the Association of Relatives and Friends of Political Prisoners of Argentina (AFyAPPA), which criticized Cristina Fernández de Kirchner for calling "those who saved us from subversive terrorism criminals". AFyAPPA is an association that considers military and security forces personnel prosecuted by the civilian justice system for their participation in state terrorism during the last military dictatorship to be political prisoners and calls for their release.[10]
In 2011, Villarruel spoke at the Oslo Freedom Forum, where she disputed the 'official history' of Argentina. She argued that terrorism occurred not only during Argentina's Dirty War under military rule but also between 1973 and 1976 under a democratic government. Villarruel's point of view was that organized terrorism also occurred between 1973 and 1976, when it had a democratic government. She postulated that the two major Argentine guerrilla groups of that era, the People's Revolutionary Army and Montoneros, had links with the Castro regime in Cuba and with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), with at least one of the groups training Islamists in the Middle East and supplying the PLO with weapons that were used in deadly attacks on Israel. Villarruel said that this history was later covered up by the Kirchner government, that the terrorists of the 1970s went on to enjoy the Kirchners' protection, and that many of those former terrorists held positions of responsibility in the Argentine establishment, citing civil servants or journalists. In her talk, Villarruel also accused the Kirchner government of acting in complicity with Iran.[11]
Villarruel’s 2014 book, Los otros muertos, has been criticized for errors, like listing 84 unknown victims from before the formation of the groups she identifies as terrorists and failing to differentiate between civilian deaths and military casualties.[12] According to Villarruel, the majority of their crimes had in fact been committed during the three years of democracy immediately prior to the 1976 military coup.[2] Because of her criticism of the terrorists and of their rehabilitation, she has been accused of defending the Dirty War.[2]
Political career
Villarruel and Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele in October 2024
During their presidential campaign, observers pointed to several differences between Villarruel and Milei. Villarruel supports civil unions but not same-sex marriage in Argentina, and disagrees with Milei on questions like organ trade legalization, on the grounds that the human body should not be treated as goods; their differences of views have been explained as philosophical issues due to Milei's economist background.[18] They also held different views on the National Reorganization Process. While Milei publicily expressed that he is not a defender of it, Villarruel is the daughter of a military officer and has been accused by some of historical revisionism in her accounts of the period.[19][20] Despite this, she had a significant influence on Milei during the campaign.[21]
During a September 2023 debate, Villarruel was accused by Agustín Rossi, the vice-presidential candidate from the Union for the Homeland, of "infiltrating democracy", while the leftist vice-presidential candidate Nicolás del Caño from the Workers' Left Front asked Villarruel about her meetings with Videla and what they talked about, referencing the Etchecolatz case.[22] In late August 2023, it was made public that Villarruel's name and mobile phone number were written down in handwriting by Miguel Etchecolatz, who was convicted of kidnapping and murder in the Night of the Pencils, in the diary where he was preparing the defence of his trial in 2006 for crimes against humanity. Referencing one of the military dictatorship's most infamous members, a former marine officer also known as "the Angel of Death", Rossi told Villarruel: "I think that, deep down, you vindicate the dictatorship. I've never heard you criticize the torture, the rapes, or the stealing of babies. You remind me of Astiz, you know how he infiltrated the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo organization?"[22] In response to Rossi's claims that she does not believe in democracy, Villarruel said: "Not only do I believe in democracy, but I have also been calling for democracy to recognize the civilian victims of terrorism that were attacked by the armed organizations you are implicitly defending."[22]
In a November 2023 debate between the vice-presidential candidates, Villarruel disputed the higher estimate of 30,000 killed or disappeared during the 1974-1983 Argentine Dirty War, and defended the role played in the illegal repression by Juan Daniel Amelong, an Argentine Army lieutenant colonel who has accumulated five convictions for crimes against humanity committed in Rosario, Santa Fe. Her statements attracted criticism not only from the human rights secretary Horacio Pietragalla Corti and Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel but also from leaders of the centrist Juntos por el Cambio coalition, the Radical Civic Union deputy Mario Negri, and Pablo Avelluto, who criticized Patricia Bullrich for having praised Villarruel's performance in the debate.[23]
Political positions
Politically, Villlarruel has been described as a conservative[24] and a right-wingnationalist.[25] On social issues, while she is favorable to civil unions for same-sex couples, she is opposed to same-sex marriage.[18] She has defended the National Reorganization Process, which along with some of her views on the military junta period, have garnered criticism.[20] Those stances have attracted controversy, including accusations of Argentine state terrorism denial.[19][26] In a 2011 interview, Villarruel asserted that opposition politicians in Argentina avoided speaking about the victims of 1970s terrorism. She said that the Center for Legal Studies on Terrorism had managed to identify by name 13,074 victims of terrorists, of which 1,010 were assassinated, and added that this figure was only preliminary.[27] Villarruel's views on social issues are heavily influenced by her traditional Catholic faith, as she attends a church from the Society of Saint Pius X.[28][29][30]
Following the Kirchner era, Villarruel continued to criticize the administrations of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, claiming they protected left-wing terrorists. She said: "For the past twelve years, the Kirchner governments have glorified the armed struggle of the guerrillas. In Argentina, if you don't support the guerrillas, people assume you support the dictatorship."[2] As a result of her statements, critics accused her of trying to rewrite the history of the military dictatorship and of whitewashing the junta, charges that she denied.[2]
As Vice President, Villarruel has opposed plans by Javier Milei to deploy the Argentine military to intervene in domestic security operations, particularly in the context of increasing drug-related violence in Rosario, saying that "The role of the armed forces is not to fight civilians."[31] Villarruel also opposed the Milei government's agreement with the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands, describing it as "contrary to the interests of our nation".[32]
Following a complaint by the French Football Federation after racist chants by Argentinian football players against French player Kylian Mbappé, Villarruel stated, "No colonialist country is going to intimidate us because of a stadium chant nor for speaking truths that they do not want to admit."[33]
^Presented on an electoral list. The data shown represents the share of the vote the entire party/alliance received in that constituency.
Publications
Los llaman... jóvenes idealistas (They Call Them... Idealist Youth), 2010.[39]
Los otros muertos. Las víctimas civiles del terrorismo guerrillero de los 70 (The Other Dead: The Civilian Victims of Guerrilla Terrorism in the 1970s), 2014, co-written with Carlos Manfroni.[3][11]
^"Elecciones 2023". Argentina.gob.ar (in Spanish). Dirección Nacional Electoral. 2023. Archived from the original on 29 November 2023. Retrieved 10 December 2023.
^"Elecciones 2021". Argentina.gob.ar (in Spanish). Dirección Nacional Electoral. 2021. Archived from the original on 16 August 2023. Retrieved 16 August 2023.
.jpg)
