Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

RIGHTS-URUGUAY: First Remains of ‘Disappeared’ Uncovered

Darío Montero

MONTEVIDEO, Nov 30 2005 (IPS) - The finding of human remains on a farm near the Uruguayan capital, where an armed forces report indicated that two political prisoners who died under torture were buried during the 1973-1985 military dictatorship, could finally lead to the resolution of a case of forced disappearance for the first time in this South American country.

A team of forensic experts who have been searching for clandestine graves unearthed the skeletal remains of one person Tuesday, along with traces of quicklime, which is sometimes used to destroy organic matter, the president’s press secretary, José Luis Veiga, told IPS.

The experts, who have been searching for the remains of victims of forced disappearance on instructions from the leftist administration of socialist President Tabaré Vázquez, found the remains on the last day scheduled for excavations on a farm where two members of the Communist Party were buried, according to information provided by the military.

The two political prisoners in question were Arpino Vega and Ubagesner Chávez Sosa, who were abducted by the armed forces in 1974 and 1976, respectively. They were two of around 40 people “disappeared” by the 12-year de facto regime. A Peace Commission established last year that the two were tortured to death.

Veiga, however, cautioned that it would take several weeks to identify the remains through DNA testing.

President Vázquez planned to meet Wednesday with the heads of the forensic team to decide on the next steps to be taken in the excavations, which began in August, mainly in army garrisons.

Although some signs of possible clandestine graves have been found in one of the army garrisons, the remains found Tuesday were the first discovered so far.

Vázquez, Defence Minister Azucena Berrutti, and the president’s secretary Gonzalo Fernández visited the dig site Tuesday, expressing their confidence that the experts would find the remains of at least some of the people whose forced disappearance in Uruguay was confirmed by the Peace Commission set up by the conservative government of Jorge Batlle (2000-2005).

The Commission, composed of independent figures, also attempted to determine the fate of more than 160 Uruguayans “disappeared” by Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

In addition, it investigated clandestine transfers of political prisoners from torture camps in Argentina to Montevideo as part of Operation Condor, a covert military intelligence-sharing strategy followed by South American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s to track down and arrest or eliminate leftists and other dissidents.

The Commission also determined that nearly all of the “disappeared” were tortured to death in military garrisons or police stations, and that their bodies were buried in secret graves.

However, several sources, apparently former torturers, who anonymously spoke to the Peace Commission said many of the victims were cremated and their ashes dumped into the Rio de la Plata, the estuary that separates Uruguay and Argentina, although that version has never been confirmed.

After the leftwing Broad Front coalition – the main target of the dictatorship, since the Tupamaro urban guerrillas were already dismantled prior to the 1973 coup – assumed the country’s leadership for the first time on Mar. 1, it ordered the start of excavations in military barracks as demanded for years by the families of the victims, and instructed the armed forces to hand over documents and reports that would shed light on the fate of the “disappeared”.

The documents provided new information on the existence of clandestine graves of the “disappeared”, including María Claudia García, the daughter-in-law of Argentine writer Juan Gelman. García was 19 years old and pregnant when she was abducted in Argentina and taken to Montevideo, where she was held until she gave birth to a baby girl.

After an investigation by the local Montevideo newspaper La Republica, Gelman finally tracked down his granddaughter, who had been raised by a Uruguayan police officer and his wife.

The forensic team’s failure until Tuesday to come up with results based on the information provided by the military had prompted criticism of the armed forces commanders and pressure on the government.

Uruguay has an amnesty law that was passed in 1986 and ratified by voters in a referendum in 1989. But although it let members of the military and the police implicated in the dictatorship’s human rights crimes off the hook, it also left it up to the executive branch to decide which cases fell under the amnesty and which could be dealt with by the justice system.

It further stipulated that the executive branch was to investigate the whereabouts of the disappeared. However, few to no efforts were made in that sense by previous governments led by the two traditional political forces, the Colorado and Nacional (Blanco) parties.

The delay in coming up with results led the government to present a bill that would result in a much broader interpretation of the amnesty law and the clause stating that the executive branch must investigate the fate of the victims of forced disappearance.

If the bill is approved, it will open the door to legal action against former members of the dictatorship who up to now have been protected by the amnesty.

Vázquez told reporters that the discovery of remains gave rise to satisfaction on one hand that results had been found within the framework of the amnesty law, and enormous sadness for the country’s past on the other.

Lawyer Javier Miranda of the Association of Mothers and Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared told IPS that “if this new law helps unblock the legal investigations into the dictatorship’s crimes, it will be fantastic.”

But Miranda, whose father was “disappeared”, also pointed out that as it now stands, the amnesty law already allows judges to move forward with investigations into the fate of the disappeared, even though they have not done so.

Twenty years after Uruguay’s return to democracy, only one civilian official of the dictatorship, former foreign minister Juan Carlos Blanco, has been prosecuted in connection with the crimes against humanity committed by the de facto regime.

By contrast with Argentina, where as many as 30,000 people fell victim to forced disappearance, political prisoners in Uruguay were not systematically “disappeared”. Instead, they were held in prison for years, in many cases for over a decade, and at one point Uruguay had the highest proportion of political prisoners in the world.