ARGENTINA: The Past, More Alive than Ever 22 Years after Coup

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 24 1998 (IPS) - Argentina woke up Tuesday, the 22nd anniversary of the coup that gave rise to a seven-year dictatorship which claimed tens of thousands of lives, to a flood of news connected to the question of human rights violations.

Reports of a previously unknown case of a 14-year-old boy who was held in a clandestine detention centre during the 1976-83 dictatorship and later “disappeared” made the headlines of local papers.

The boy was the son of other detainees. A survivor of the repression reported having seen him in the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), the regime’s most notorious illegal prison.

Another report which captured the attention of Argentineans Tuesday was the submission of a bill – the second this year – in Congress to overturn the amnesty laws that benefited around 1,000 members of the armed forces involved in the repression.

The draft law, submitted by the opposition Alliance, is seeking a non-retroactive repeal of the amnesty laws.

To counteract the bill’s political impact, the ruling party drew up a list of thousands of civilian officials who collaborated with the dictatorship, many of whom are active today in opposition parties.

Tuesday also marked the second day of a visit by Spanish prosecutors who have accused – in Spain – the former heads of Argentina’s de facto regime in connection with the disappearance of Spanish nationals.

The prosecutors protested President Carlos Menem’s assertion that the trial in Spain constituted “harassment” of Argentina’s armed forces.

The case presided over by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon has become a forum to which hundreds of relatives of victims of the repression, as well as political, human rights, union and student leaders from Argentina, have turned this year in their search for justice.

Garzon contends that there is no statute of limitations for crimes against humanity, and has begun to hear testimony on Spanish nationals who were disappeared in Argentina.

The armed forces chiefs who headed the dictatorship were sentenced in Argentina in the 1980s in connection with the abduction, torture and disappearance of 11,000 people – a figure that human rights organisations put at 30,000. But President Menem pardoned the officers after they served five years in prison.

Shortly before the pardon, trials of their subordinates were cut off by amnesty laws.

Tuesday also saw the start of a heated debate on a new tactic being used by human rights groups, which stage demonstrations outside of the homes of rights violators, pasting posters listing their crimes and chanting for several hours.

“No subas por la escalera, no tomes el ascensor, que al lado de tu casa vive un torturador”(“Don’t use the stairs, don’t use the lift, next door to your house lives a torturer”), activists chanted Monday outside the residence of Albano Harguindeguy, who acted as interior minister under the regime.

The protesters then headed to the home of former navy chief Emilio Massera, who was sentenced in the 1980s and later pardoned.

Massera testified last week in a trial in which the family of Rodolfo Walsh is seeking to locate the writer-journalist’s remains and final manuscripts. The former head of the navy, who had already been sentenced for Walsh’s disappearance, was cited last week to provide details on the case. He refused to cooperate, however.

Retired military officers responded this week by pasting their own posters in the streets, protesting the “virulent aggression” that has “international support” – a clear allusion to the trial in Spain.

Never before, not even on the 20th anniversary of the coup, has so much news related to the dictatorship occupied the local media.

In January, remarks by former navy captain Alfredo Astiz vindicating the repression marked the start of a year that looks like it will be marked by a resurgence of memory.

A precedent-setting court decision was also reported Tuesday. Mario Bufano, who was forced to flee into exile after the coup in 1976, was awarded indemnisation, after appealing an earlier decision by the state to compensate him only for the day he spent in prison.

Bufano was abducted in 1976, but escaped after spending one day in a clandestine detention centre. After hiding for five days he fled to neighbouring Uruguay, then Brazil, and finally Mexico, where he remained until democracy was restored in Argentina in 1983.

Twenty-two years later, a judge ruled that the state must compensate him for his years in exile, setting a precedent that analysts say could open the floodgate to similar claims by thousands of people forced to flee to other Latin American countries and Europe.

Meanwhile, retired general Antonio Domingo Bussi, the current governor of the northwestern province of Tucuman, who was responsible for the disappearance of at least 600 people while he governed the province during the dictatorship, is still being investigated in Spain by Judge Garzon, whose probe revealed a secret Swiss bank account in his name.

The news, reported in February, earned Bussi sanctions from a military tribunal of honour. The office of the public prosecutor and parliament are now investigating whether he amassed a fortune at the expense of victims of the regime.

Amidst so much news linked to events that took place during the regime, the announced protests and commemoration ceremonies faded into the background, as did the government’s decision that every year on Mar. 24 schools will study the coup and its consequences, in order to keep Argentina from “losing its memory.”