ARGENTINA: Pressure Builds for Action on the ‘Disappeared’

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 14 1996 (IPS) - Twenty years after a military coup in Argentina initiated a “dirty war” of repression, several European governments are pressing for the truth about those of its citizens who “disappeared” during the period.

France, Sweden, Italy — and now Spain — have joined relatives of the victims to seek the truth about loved ones lost after the 1976 coup. No longer resigned to Argentina’s legal impotence in the face of laws and pardons that protected those involved in the repression, the relatives see involvement of foreign governments as strengthening their cause.

At the end of April, as Jose Maria Aznar was swept into office as Spain’s new prime minister, deputies of the opposition United Left moved to support a demand by a commission of relatives of Spaniards who disappeared in Argentina that the Argentine military be tried in Madrid.

Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, currently investigating the GAL — paramilitary groups formed to combat Basque separatism — is also looking into the “disappearance” of Spaniards in Argentina.

He wants to discover whether Argentine soldiers may have acted as advisors to members of GAL. In addition, the judge may unearth evidence that would lend credibility to accusations by the victims’ families, said Argentine journalist Rogelio Garca Lupo, correspondent for the weekly Tiempo de Espana in Buenos Aires.

Twenty-seven Spaniards and more than 200 Argentines of dual nationality are being investigated.

Some Spanish legislators want Judge Garzon to try the military officers. Relatives of the disappeared want more than legal action: they demand to know the full story of the disappearances and to make sure the tragic fate of 30,000 people is never forgotten.

In a conversation with IPS, Consuelo Castano Blanco, a Spaniard kidnapped during the last military regime (1976-1983), told the story of her husband’s despair, her own captivity and that of her daughters of three, four and five years of age.

“I was alone with my daughters waiting for my husband when 20 men came into my house, covered me with a hood, hit me, threw me to the floor, and, since they did not ask me about my husband, I knew right away that they already had him. This was in 1979 and everyone already knew about the kidnappings,” Consuelo recalled.

She was missing 45 days until the pressure her parents put on the media and international humanitarian organizations allowed for her to be moved to a regular prison and tried by a highly unusual court-martial that condemned her to 18 years in prison.

She was saved by democracy in 1983. Only then, after four years of an arbitrary sentence, was she set free. Her husband, Regino Gonzalez, is still missing.

Regino was a candidate for deputy of the governing Justicialist Party in 1973. Consuelo is a teacher.

In 1988 she wrote a book called More Than Human (Mas que humanos) recounting her suffering. It was never released in Spain even though it was published by the Institute for Ibero-American Cooperation.

“Deplorably, Spain did nothing for its disappeared. Only now, under pressure of the European Parliament with the decision to hold a seminar in Madrid in February on impunity in Latin America, has Spain woken up,” said Consuelo.

Dionisia Lopez, 68, is hard to distinguish from other mothers of “disappeared” people who regularly protest in the Plaza de Mayo. She is Galician. Her son Antonio, born in El Ferrol, Galicia, disappeared at 23 years of age in 1976, along with his young wife. Both were labourers and came from a poor neighborhood.

Like Consuelo, she doubts that the military will be judged in Spain. However both believe the trials will help bring out the whole truth. “As painful as it may be, I want to know where the remains of my son and his wife are,” Dionisia tells IPS.

The same question stirs the relatives of the two French nuns who disappeared in Argentina.

In France, Captain Adolfo Astiz, blamed for the kidnapping and murder of the nuns, was condemned in his absence and his capture is called for internationally, but in Argentina he is free due to the law of due obedience that excused the human rights violators.

In the same way, last week in Italy a hearing began that should determine whether the Argentine military officers will be tried for the disappearance of Italian citizens there during the military regime. The prosecutors have already begun looking for clues and collecting testimonies in Argentina.

Lastly, Swedish television this month showed a program with new testimony regarding the murder of the Swedish-Argentine girl Dagmar Hagelin, kidnapped from her home in 1976, also by Astiz.

The revelations of former captain Adolfo Scilingo, who little more than a year ago confessed that many of those detained were thrown alive into the sea, disclosed that Dagmar was incinerated in the Armadas Mechanical School, the largest center of clandestine detentions.

The family’s lawyers have asked that authorities conduct a search to find out if that was the place where the young girl spent her last days. On the program, a friend of Astiz — Juan Aberg Cobo — admitted that Hagelin had been kidnapped by accident, because her name appeared in a “guerrilla’s” telephone book.