Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri Castelli[a] (15 July 1926 – 12 January 2003) was an Argentine general and the de facto President of Argentina from December 1981 to June 1982.

[3] Galtieri's declining popularity due to his human rights abuses and the worsening economic stagnation caused him to order an invasion of the Falkland Islands in April 1982.

He was an enthusiastic supporter of the March 1976 coup d'état that overthrew President Isabel Perón and started the self-styled National Reorganisation Process, the establishment of a right-wing military junta government in Argentina.

During the junta's rule, Congress was suspended, trade unions, political parties, and provincial governments were banned, and in what became known as the Dirty War, between 9,000 and 30,000 people deemed left-wing subversives disappeared from society with torture and mass executions being commonplace.

An adherent to the Argentine military's Cold War-era doctrine of "ideological frontiers", Galtieri secured his country's support for Contra rebel groups opposing the Socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua during the Nicaraguan Revolution.

[8] Galtieri instituted limited political reforms which allowed the expression of dissent, and anti-junta demonstrations soon became common, as did agitation for a return to democracy.

Alemann inherited an economy in deep recession in the aftermath of José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz's economic policies of the late 1970s.

Alemann slashed spending, began selling off government-owned industries (with only minor success), enacted a tight monetary policy, and ordered salaries frozen (amid 130% inflation).

[10] The Central Bank Circular 1050, which tied mortgage rates to the value of the US dollar locally, was maintained, however, leading to further deepening of the crisis; GDP fell by 5%, and business investment by 20% over the weakened levels of 1981.

[11] One of Galtieri's closest allies, the head of the First Army Corps, General Guillermo Suárez Mason, was named Chairman of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF), at the time the state petroleum concern, and the largest company of any type in Argentina.

[16][13] The British government led by the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, dispatched a naval task force to retake the islands militarily if Argentina refused to comply with a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate Argentine withdrawal.

The Argentine Army's internal investigation, known as the Rattenbach report after the general who led it,[17] recommended that those responsible for the misconduct of the war be prosecuted under the Code of Military Justice.

[19] Galtieri was cleared of the civil rights charges in December 1985, but (together with the Air Force and Navy commanders-in-chief) in May 1986 he was found guilty of mishandling the war and sentenced to prison.