After letting it sit in my inbox for almost a week, my sense of love for comics finally overtook me. Camouflage comics is a monument of comics to Argentina’s “Dirty War” of 1976-1983. Briefly, in 1976, Argentine army commander-in-chief Jorge Rafael Videla and others (Emilio Massera, Orlando Agosti) overthrew then-President (and Videla appointer) Isabel Martinez de Perón and installed a military junta at the helm of Argentina.

From Wikipedia (here):

By mid-1975, the country was in chaos. Extreme right death squads used their hunt for far-left guerrillas (like the Montoneros) as a pretext to exterminate their ideological opponents on the left and as a cover for common crimes. In July, there was a general strike. Wealthy, conservative landowners encouraged the army, which prepared to take control by making lists of people who should be ‘dealt with’ after the planned coup. “As many people as necessary must die in Argentina so that the country will again be secure,” Videla declared in 1975 in support of the death squads.

The junta was responsible for the slaughtering of an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 Argentineans, mostly trade-union members, students and people thought to espouse left wing views. Camouflage Comics notes in its own mission statement that it rides dangerously close to founding the (Argentinian) Holocaust Entertainment Industry, which it does, but some of the comics are quite beautiful, and the collection introduced me to a lot of exciting Argentine comic-creators. Case in point, from Dante Ginevra and Diego Agrimbau…

Camouflage comics