Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: ‘The Other Final Match’

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jun 26 2008 (IPS) - Thirty years after Argentina won its first Football World Cup, human rights groups and former players will pay homage to the victims of the dictatorship ruling the country at the time.

The homage "is not to criticise those who celebrated that triumph or to condemn the players," clarified Tati Almeyda, a member of the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora, (Mothers of Plaza de Mayo – Founding Line), which was created during the 1976-1983 military regime to demand the return of sons and daughters who were forcibly disappeared in the dirty war against leftists and other dissidents.

"What we want is to pay a debt to our ‘disappeared’ loved ones," Almeyda told IPS. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo is one of the human rights groups organising the Jun. 29 demonstration and ceremonies.

The 1978 FIFA World Cup was held in Argentina in June that year, despite reports of serious human rights abuses committed by the de facto regime, especially from 1976 to 1979.

On Jun. 25, Coach César Luis Menotti led the Argentine side to a 3-1 triumph over the Netherlands in the final match played in the River Plate stadium in Buenos Aires.

Tens of thousands of people immediately poured into the streets to celebrate.

Some say the celebration strengthened the dictatorship, which tried to hide its crimes behind a bloody curtain of censorship. But others argue that it was merely a natural outpouring of joy in this country where football is a religion.

"They took my son in 1975, before the coup, when he was 20 years old. So by the time the World Cup was held, he had been missing for three years already," said Almeyda. Her family celebrated the victory with mixed feelings. "It was a huge contradiction, the absence of my son amidst the shouts of ‘gol!’," she recalled.

On Sunday, the Instituto Espacio para la Memoria (IEM), which groups a dozen human rights organisations, will hold a series of activities under the theme "The Other Final Match – for Life and Human Rights".

The day will begin with a demonstration at the former Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), the dictatorship’s biggest clandestine torture and detention centre, where a total of 5,000 people were held, most of whom were killed. (Many were dropped, drugged but alive, from planes into the River Plate estuary.)

From ESMA, which is now a museum to preserve the memory of the horrors of the dirty war, the participants will march with a banner covered with the photos of thousands of ‘desaparecidos’ (the disappeared) to the nearby River Plate stadium.

The VIP seating section, where the three members of the military junta, General Jorge Videla, Admiral Eduardo Massera and General Orlando Agosti, watched the final match in 1978, will be empty this time and covered with a banner carrying the names of the regime’s 30,000 victims of forced disappearance.

And those taking part in the victory lap will not be football players but members of human rights groups, carrying signs with the photos of family members or friends who were "disappeared" by the dictatorship.

That will be followed by the awarding of medals and diplomas to the 1978 World Cup players taking part in Sunday’s activities, who will play a game between teams that also include members of Argentina’s current under-20 national team and non-professional young players.

One of the sides will be headed by the coach of the under-20 national team, Sergio Batista, and the other by retired footballer José Luis Brown, both of whom played in 1986 with Diego Maradona in Mexico, when Argentina won its second World Cup.

"Many of the 1978 stars aren't physically able to play an entire match. Others sent word that they’re sick. But they were all very open to this idea," IEM president Ana María Careaga said Wednesday during the launch of the activities.

"The Other Final Match" will end with a concert given by Argentine rock icon Luis Alberto Spinetta, Argentine pianist Lito Vitale, Uruguayan folk singer Daniel Viglietti, and others.

In the last few days, members of the 1978 team have taken part in different commemorative events, and they are also featured in documentaries on the World Cup victory during that tragic period of Argentine history.

One of the participants in the recent events was 1978 goalkeeper Ubaldo Fillol. "We didn't kill or torture or kidnap anyone, and we don't mind being asked about the issue, but it is painful that people associate us in any way with that," he commented this week in an interview at a sports journalism school.

He said he was grateful, however, for having a chance to talk about his experiences and views on the subject.

One of the documentaries being shown is "Mundial '78: La historia paralela" ("World Cup 1978: The Parallel Story"), produced by local sports reporters.

In the film, journalist Raúl Cubas, a torture survivor, says that when he was being held in ESMA, he was taken by his captors to a press conference to interview Menotti himself.

"It was so crazy, because I was there, but I didn't actually belong to that world," Cubas says in the film.

While doing the interview, he did not dare tell anyone where he had just come from, out of fear of being killed. After the news briefing, he was taken back to ESMA.

Argentine Nobel Peace Prize-winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel also took part in the launch of the commemorative activities this week.

"When the World Cup was played, I had been in prison for 14 months already," said Pérez Esquivel, the head of Servicio Paz y Justicia (SERPAJ – Peace and Justice Service), an international human rights group. Two days before the final match, the heavy international pressure forced the dictatorship to release him on parole.

"I bought a little black and white TV set, which I still have, and I watched the game with all of the mixed sentiments of someone who was unjustly detained and who had to listen to José María Muñoz (a late sports announcer who supported the dictatorship) say that Argentines were ‘derechos y humanos' (upright and humane)," an official slogan used to counteract the bad international press that Argentina was receiving, he told IPS.

(The regime’s "derechos y humanos" campaign during the World Cup was a play on words, as "derechos humanos" means human rights).

The head of the Permanent Human Rights Assembly, Miguel Monserrat, told IPS that the dictatorship’s campaign was "a distortion supported by sports announcers, journalists and media personalities."

"I remember, for example, (famous talk show host) Mirta Legrand or (journalist) Mariano Grondona saying that those who denounced the dictatorship’s crimes abroad in solidarity with the ‘desaparecidos’ and people forced into exile ‘were waging a campaign against the country’," he said.