Elena Holmberg
Argentinian diplomat (1931–1978)
Elena Angélica Dolores Holmberg Lanusse (24 May 1931 – disappeared 20 December 1978), better known as Elena Holmberg, was an Argentine diplomat who was kidnapped and assassinated in 1978. Distinguished for being the first woman to graduate from the Institute of Foreign Services of the Nation, Holmberg was an important official of the military dictatorship which took power in 1976, and is generally believed to have been detained-disappeared and then killed by the regime to which she belonged.
Biography
Elena Holmberg came from a traditional family, the sister of retired Colonel Enrique Holmberg and cousin of General Alejandro Lanusse (former president of Argentina). She worked as a career functionary at the Argentine Embassy in France.
Due to friction with the staff of the "Pilot Information Center" (a group of Argentine Navy intelligence officers headquartered in Paris, where Puma Perrén, Alfredo Astiz, and Adolfo Donda were also assigned), the diplomat was summoned to Buenos Aires to report to her superiors. There she was kidnapped by Task Group 3.3.2 on 20 December 1978 when she left the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to meet a group of French journalists.
People released from the Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy (ESMA) declared that at that time certain officers of the detention center alluded to their participation in the disappearance of Elena Holmberg.
On 11 January 1979, her decomposed body was found in the Luján River in Tigre, Buenos Aires Province. It was later identified by her cousin Lanusse.
Holmberg's family and journalist Andrea Basconi have asserted they believe that Admiral Emilio Massera was the one who directly ordered her death, believing that she possessed compromising information about his contact with members of the Montoneros.
The public source identifies “Elena Holmberg” as argentinian diplomat (1931–1978). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Elena, Holmberg and Argentinian.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5893656. VIAF identifies the subject as 304047834. The Library of Congress control number is no2013068162. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1931, 1978, 1976 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elena Holmberg” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.