RIGHTS-URUGUAY: Excavations Close to Finding Remains of ‘Disappeared’

By Dario Montero Reprint | | Print |

Darío Montero

MONTEVIDEO, Aug 10 2005 (IPS) - She was 19 and pregnant when she was abducted in Argentina in 1976 along with her husband, a leftist activist, who was killed two months later. After she was taken to neighbouring Uruguay, she was held in a clandestine torture centre until giving birth, after which she was never seen or heard from again.

Her baby was given to a police officer’s family in Uruguay, who raised her as their own daughter.

Although between 10,000 and 30,000 – depending on the source of the estimate – people were "disappeared" by Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship, the case of María Claudia García de Gelman has drawn international attention because of the intense campaign mounted by her father-in-law, renowned Argentine poet Juan Gelman.

Through his own in-depth investigation, Gelman was able to locate his missing granddaughter, Macarena, in 2000.

On Tuesday, 20 years after the restoration of democracy in Uruguay, excavations began in an army garrison near the capital, in search of María Claudia García’s remains.

That is where the young "disappeared" woman’s body was buried, according to the first official military report on the "dirty war" waged by Uruguay’s 1973-1985 dictatorship.

Gelman’s daughter-in-law was taken to Uruguay as part of Operation Condor, a coordinated U.S.-backed plan among the military governments that ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s, involving cooperation in tracking down, capturing and eliminating left-wing opponents.

Forensic and legal experts say it could be a question of days or even hours before the first body of a victim of forced disappearance – that of María Claudia García – is found in Uruguay.

By contrast with Argentina, political prisoners in Uruguay were not systematically "disappeared", but were held in prison, in many cases for years. Some 200 Uruguayan leftists and others fell victim to forced disappearance, most of them in Argentina.

It was not until Uruguay’s new leftist Broad Front government took office in March that the armed forces began to provide information on the whereabouts of Uruguay’s "disappeared", under orders from Socialist President Tabaré Vázquez.

But although the imminent discovery of García’s clandestine grave represents a major breakthrough on the human rights front, it has become even less likely that her kidnappers and killers will be brought to trial.

On Monday, prosecutor Ricardo Moller asked that the case be shelved once again. Judge Gustavo Mirabal, who is handling the case, had already archived it once before, in 2003, at Moller’s request.

Moller argued this week that the case cannot be reopened because the government of Jorge Batlle (2000-2005) had decided that García’s disappearance was covered by Uruguay’s amnesty law, which was passed in 1986 and ratified by voters in a 1989 referendum.

The law put an end to prosecutions against members of the armed forces accused of committing crimes against humanity during Uruguay’s 12-year de facto regime.

But the law also gave the executive branch some leeway in determining which cases of human rights abuses were covered by the amnesty, while ordering the government to investigate the whereabouts of the disappeared.

José Luis González, the lawyer for the Gelman family, told IPS that it is now a question of waiting to see what the judge decides.

"Mirabal could follow Moller’s recommendation, and in that case, it’s all over," he said, pointing out that the only route that would be left would be to turn to an international body like the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

But he added that "I am confident that the judge will keep the case open" and summon the retired members of the military and police who are implicated in the case to testify.

The prosecutor would then be likely to appeal, and the case could eventually make it to the Supreme Court.

González noted, however, that the whole process could take too long for justice to be done, because the statute of limitations could expire.

Lawyer Guillermo Payssé with the Peace and Justice Service (SERPAJ), a Uruguayan human rights group, was a bit more optimistic about the future of this and other human rights cases.

"I am confident that the judiciary will rise to the occasion, in keeping with the current widespread climate against impunity," he remarked to IPS.

"I believe it is time for each person to examine their own conscience, to revise positions taken by the judiciary, and for everyone to combat the impunity, within the framework of today’s laws, because it is not good for a state of law to be built on a foundation of impunity," said Payssé.

Now that the armed forces have begun to cooperate with the government in the search for the remains of the disappeared, it is ironically a prosecutor who has become the biggest hurdle in the fight to uproot impunity.

The investigation into the whereabouts of García’s body has made greater headway than another high-profile case: the May 1976 murders of Uruguayan legislators Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz and of two other Uruguayan political activists in Buenos Aires.

President Vázquez stated in his inaugural address that neither the disappearance of García nor the murders of the four Uruguayan politicians and political activists are covered by the amnesty law.

Vázquez’s predecessors, Batlle and Julio María Sanguinetti (1985-1990 and 1995-2000) of the right-wing Colorado Party and Luis Alberto Lacalle (1990-1995) of the centre-right National Party, had decided that all human rights cases fell under the amnesty law.

The body of Marcelo Gelman, García’s husband, was found in the 1980s in Buenos Aires. He had been shot to death shortly after he was kidnapped at the age of 20.

By means of his own investigation, Marcelo’s father Juan Gelman found that the baby girl that García gave birth to in Uruguay was given to a police officer with close ties to former president Sanguinetti, who in his second term in office did not order an investigation into the case, despite Gelman’s requests and international pressure to do so.

International cultural figures sent hundreds of letters to Sanguinetti urging him to reveal the whereabouts of the poet’s granddaughter Macarena and the remains of his daughter-in-law María Claudia.

But it was Sanguinetti’s successor, Batlle, who confirmed the identity and location of Macarena, after he set up a Peace Commission.

The independent Commission established that 26 of the 200 Uruguayans who were "disappeared" during the dictatorship died under torture in military barracks.

The final fate of many others could now be clarified as a result of the ongoing excavations on the grounds of military garrisons in Uruguay.

The report turned over to Vázquez Monday by the three branches of the armed forces also provides new information that was not made available to the Peace Commission.

"This is the start of a new phase, the route of truth, which we have been demanding in our silent marches every May 20 (the anniversary of the murders of Michelini and Gutiérrez Ruiz), and the participation of the armed forces is welcome," said Payssé.

The activist applauded the new government for living up to the campaign pledge to investigate the fate of the disappeared.

"I believe that the armed forces will admit that they were wrong to act as they did during the dictatorship," he added. "The least they should do is apologise to the nation."