Former Argentinian President Raul Alfonsin, who courageously governed Argentina through one of its most difficult periods, after a disastrous and inhuman military dictatorship (remember the Falklands War, the "Desaparcidos" and the film "La Historia Oficial"), has passed away. He was a great man. NYTimes obit:

Raul Alfonsin, who guided Argentina's return to democracy in the 1980s after seven years of brutal military rule but failed to stave off a deep economic crisis, died Tuesday of lung cancer. He was 82. Alfonsin was president from 1983 to 1989 and won international admiration for putting on trial and jailing the former military leaders who tortured and killed thousands of suspected leftists in a vicious "dirty war." He had been a prominent opponent of the junta that took power in 1976 and his presidency restored respectability to a country regarded as a pariah after decades of coups and often thuggish rule.

RIP, Raul Alfonsin.