 Cafiero, during the Trial of the Juntas in 1985, had stated that the Isabel Perón government (which presided over the early phase of the Dirty War) believed that common police tactics were not enough to combat the guerrilla threat, and that he learned of human rights violations committed at the time only after Perón's overthrow in the March 1976 coup d'état.Cafiero has served as President of COPPPAL, the Permanent Conference of Political Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean, from 2005 to 2011.Cafiero lost his wife of fifty years, Ana Goitía, in 1994.