Vice presidential candidates Victoria Villarruel (La Libertad Avanza, LLA) and Agustín Rossi (Unión por la Patria, UxP) met for a TV-organized debate Wednesday night that ended in a heated exchange over human rights and the dictatorship. 

Villarruel, who has ties with military officers who were part of the 1976 dictatorship, once again denied that the number of disappeared was 30,000. She called Rossi a “liar” for stating this and added that there are only 8,751 names inscribed in monuments in the Memory Park devoted to dictatorship victims. She also refused to say what she thought should be done with military officers convicted of crimes against humanity.

“Do you think the perpetrators of genocide should be freed?” Rossi asked Villaruel. She answered that there were “no human rights” for the victims killed by armed groups in the 1970s. Rossi asked again about her position regarding the fate of dictatorship repressors, but to no avail. 

“I’m left with the feeling that you want all perpetrators of genocide to walk free,” Rossi finally said. Villarruel responded that all she wanted was that the law be upheld. 

Rossi and Villarruel had already shared a heated exchange regarding the dictatorship in the first vice presidential debate last September, when the UxP candidate accused his LLA counterpart of “infiltrating” democracy. “I think that, deep down, you stand by the dictatorship,” Rossi told Villarruel. “I’ve never heard you criticize the torture, the rapes, or the stealing of babies.”

Villaruel founded the Civil Association of the Victims of Argentine Terrorism (CELTYV, by its Spanish acronym) in 2006. Although it’s technically a civil organization, it has strong ties to the military and aims to seek reparations for those who died in attacks  by armed groups before and during the military dictatorship. 

The CELTYV and Villarruel herself have been accused by human rights organizations of promoting denialist ideas of the state-sponsored terrorism that took place during the dictatorship. Villarruel is a lawyer, and although she has never formally defended any military officers on trial for crimes against humanity, she has publicly defended them and attended several trials to support them.