Hundreds of thousands of people poured into the Plaza de Mayo square in Buenos Aires on May 10 to protest a Supreme Court ruling that made it possible to reduce the prison sentences of dictatorship-era human rights abusers – a verdict neutralised by a new law passed by Congress on May 10. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, May 12 2017 (IPS)

What at first was terrible news that outraged a large proportion of Argentine society, who see the conviction and imprisonment of dictatorship-era human rights violators as an irrevocable achievement for democracy, became a cause for celebration a week later.

An unexpected ruling handed down by the Supreme Court on May 3 initially opened the door to hundreds of members of the military and civilians in prison for crimes against humanity committed during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship to seek a reduction of their sentences, which would in some cases even allow them to immediately be released.

However, the wave of outrage that arose in human rights groups spread in the following days throughout society, leading to changes that came about at a dizzying pace that made it unlikely for the court ruling, which applied to one particular case, to be used as a precedent for other human rights abusers to obtain a reduction in their sentences.“I don’t recall in the history of Argentina any other time that Congress has reacted so quickly to a legal ruling. And I am convinced that the entire justice system is going to rebel against this Supreme Court ruling.” -- Andrés Gil

“It won’t go any farther than this. In the Argentine justice system, the Supreme Court’s decisions are not binding on lower courts. After the strong social repulsion and after all political sectors spoke out against the early release of human rights violators, this will end with Muiña,” Jorge Rizo, chairman of the Buenos Aires Bar Association, told IPS.

It was the case of Luis Muiña, a civilian in prison for his participation in kidnappings and torture in 1976, that sparked the massive protest demonstrations held over the past week.

In a divided ruling, the Supreme Court decided to apply the “two for one” law that compensates for time spent in pre-sentence custody, to reduce Muiña’s 13-year sentence to the nine years he has already served.

But exactly a week later, on May 10, Congress passed a law supported by all political sectors which established that the two-for-one law was not applicable in cases involving genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity.

A few hours later, hundreds of thousands of people filled the Plaza de Mayo square in Buenos Aires, reminiscent of the biggest rallies in the country’s history.

Many wore white headscarves, a symbol of the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo human rights groups, who in April celebrated the 40th anniversary of their first march in the Plaza de Mayo square to demand that their “disappeared” sons and daughters be returned to them.

According to human rights organisations, 30,000 people were killed or “disappeared” by the regime.

A big banner on the stage read: “Never again! No freedom for human rights abusers”. The main speaker at the massive rally was Estela de Carlotto, the longtime head of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who have so far found 122 of their grandchildren, stolen by the dictatorship and raised under false identities.

“Just like with the Nazis, wherever they go we will go after them,” Carlotto chanted along with the crowd estimated by the organisers at 400,000 people.

“Fortunately, society has taken a firm stance,” said the activist, adding that the quick action by Congress “fills us with hope and gratitude.”

“Never again! No freedom for human rights abusers”, read a big banner in the massive rally where hundreds of thousands of Argentinians, wearing white headscarves representing the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo human rights group, demanded full punishment for dictatorship-era human right violators. Credit: Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo

In the demonstration there was in the air a strong rejection of the government of conservative President Mauricio Macri, even though it did not play any role in the trial. Many protesters held signs linking the president to the Court’s decision, a connection also insinuated in Twitter by former president Cristina Fernández (2007-2015), who at the moment was traveling through Europe.

The government had a somewhat unclear response to the Supreme Court ruling. It initially left the response exclusively in the hands of Human Rights Secretary Claudio Avruj who, although responsible for this area, is not a high-ranking official. Perhaps over-cautiously, he urged people to be “respectful of the verdict.”

But as the negative repercussions grew, the government began to reject the ruling, through more important figures. And once Congress passed the law, Macri himself congratulated the lawmakers, and said he was opposed to “any tool that favours impunity, and especially when this tool is applied to crimes against humanity.”

The Supreme Court ruling was divided, three-to-two. The majority was made up of Elena Highton, Horacio Rosatti and Carlos Rosenkrantz – the latter two named to the Court last year on Macri’s recommendation.

The two-for-one law, which stated that every day spent in pre-sentence custody counted for two days after two years had been served, was designed to help Argentina address the large proportion of people in prison who have not yet been tried and sentenced. But the 1994 law was repealed in 2001 as it had failed to achieve its aim.

But the three Supreme Court justices argued that the most beneficial law for the accused must be applied in penal law, even in cases involving crimes against humanity.

“The sentence, technically, goes against international law,” said Gastón Chillier, executive director of the Social and Legal Studies Centre (CELS), a human rights organisation created during the dictatorship.

“The law which was passed promptly by Congress is a result of the cross-cutting nature of the reaction against the ruling. From now on, the justice system will have to be very autistic to ignore the rejection that the sentence generated,” Chillier told IPS.

One of the founders of CELS, lawyer Marcelo Parrilli, filed criminal charges accusing the three magistrates of prevarication, or knowingly handing down a decision contrary to the law.

Soon after, federal prosecutor Guillermo Marijuán considered that there were grounds to launch a judicial investigation. And the Front for Victory (FPV) political faction headed by former president Fernández sought to impeach Highton, Rosatti and Rosenkrantz.

But it did not all end there, since a well-known constitutionalist lawyer, Andrés Gil, asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to order Argentina to abstain from reducing the sentences of those convicted of human rights violations.

Gil told IPS: “I don’t recall in the history of Argentina any other time that Congress has reacted so quickly to a legal ruling. And I am convinced that the entire justice system is going to rebel against this Supreme Court ruling.”

“Those who signed that decision did not realise that the trial and punishment of those responsible for human rights abuses during the last dictatorship now form part of the heritage of the Argentine people,” he added.

“Thanks, thank you so much.” These were the words tweeted by Guido Montoya Carlotto on Friday Aug. 8 when he first met with his grandmother Estela de Carlotto. Credit: Twitter account @IgnacioHurban

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 8 2014 (IPS)

The recovery of “grandchild number 114” – one of the sons and daughters of those who were “disappeared” during the Argentine dictatorship – caused a commotion that many compared to the excitement of making it to the final match of the World Cup a month ago.

A degree of compensation for the wound that has remained open during 30 years of democracy but has finally begun to heal.

“Speechless”, “excited”, “ecstatic” were some of the terms repeated over and over on the social networks which reached a record number of retweets and shares on Aug. 5, when the discovery of the grandson of the president and founder of the Abuelas (Grandmothers) de Plaza de Mayo organisation, Estela de Carlotto, was announced.

A sensation of “speechlessness” felt by most – although not all – people in Argentina and reflected across the media, regardless of ideological slant.

“The tireless struggle to search for their blood relatives could never be called into question, it is something so natural, so logical, so right, that no one can remain indifferent towards it,” lawyer Marta Eugenia Fernández of the University of Buenos Aires told IPS.

Since 1977 the Abuelas have been looking for the children born into captivity or kidnapped along with their parents during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, which left 30,000 people dead or disappeared, according to human rights groups. The children were raised by military and police couples as well as by families unaware of their origins, who adopted them in good faith.

The search for her grandson took 36 years, the age today of “Guido”, as his mother wanted him to be called, or Ignacio Hurban, as he was named by the parents who raised him in Olavarría, a town 350 km from the city of Buenos Aires, apparently unaware of where he had come from.

Guido, a pianist, songwriter and arranger, decided to have a DNA test taken to get the sample compared to a national database because of doubts about his own identity.

The test showed, with a compatibility match of 99.9 percent, that he is the son of Laura Carlotto, a university student and member of the defunct guerrilla group Montoneros who gave birth in captivity in the Military Hospital on Jun. 26, 1978. She was killed two months later, another victim of one of the cruelest dictatorships in Latin America, a region plagued by de facto military regimes in the 20th century.

Guido’s father was Oscar Walmir Montoya, a musician like his son, and a Montoneros militant who was killed shortly after he and Laura were seized in November 1977.

“Laura Carlotto and Oscar Montoya will not come back to life,” journalist Luis Bruschtein wrote in the Buenos Aires newspaper Página12. “The damage is infinite and irreversible. The recovery of their son is an immense reparation for that infinite damage.”

Fernández wrote: “The news of the reunion of the grandson with one of the grandmothers in the vanguard of the struggle is as cinematographic as seeing [Argentine football star] Lionel Messi make a goal in the 98th minute.”

Nearly a month after the end of the FIFA World Cup, held in Brazil, where Argentina lost the final match to Germany on Jul. 13, other football enthusiasts made similar comparisons.

“Not only football can bring us together,” said legendary midfielder Diego Armando Maradona.

Messi, meanwhile, called for the struggle to continue because “there are still many more” grandchildren to track down. According to the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, some 400 children who were kidnapped or stolen during the dictatorship are still missing.

Ahead of the World Cup, Messi and other players on the Argentine team expressed support for the Abuelas’ cause in a video that transcended national borders.

But Argentine society is still divided 30 years after the return to democracy and the release of the report “Never Again”, produced by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons.

Referring to the kidnapped children in a conversation with IPS, pensioner Edith Gómez referred to them as “the children of the subversives” and said it was better “that they were raised by decent people.”

Laura Carlotto and Oscar Walmir Montoya, the parents of Guido Montoya Carlotto who was finally reunited with his grandmother 36 years later. Credit: Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo

Arguments of this kind are not heard infrequently.

But things are changing thanks to the adoption of “respect for human rights as a state policy” over the last decade, according to psychoanalyst Viviana Parajón.

Parajón said the new generations, which neither experienced the dictatorship nor were its direct victims, are beginning to internalise concepts like “repudiation of crimes against humanity.”

She mentioned measures like the creation of a “National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice” commemorated on Mar. 24, the day the coup d’etat ushered in the dictatorship. The national day was approved by Congress in 2002 and was declared a holiday in 2005 by then president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007).

The history of the dictatorship and genocide committed by other regimes around the world has also been added to school textbooks.

“Until a few years ago the question of the ‘disappeared’ was only addressed by a small segment of society – the rest took stances that ranged from indifference to the theory that there were two ‘demons’,” she pointed out to IPS.

This argument justifies the human rights abuses committed by the dictatorship because they were comparable to – and responded to – the armed violence waged by the guerrilla organisations.

“What is so nefarious and ghastly was that they went so far as to annihilate not only that generation but several more,” said the psychoanalyst, who added that in this sense the recovery of Guido will have a “healing effect.”

“He’s like everyone’s grandson…a reparation for that horror,” she said.

Fernández said: “He wakes us up from our slumber, shakes us to our inner core because on a personal level we are all sons, daughters, parents or grandparents, and on a social level we share the same history – and this, like our DNA or blood, can’t be erased, it remains latent there until an unexpected event confronts us with that common identity, which can’t be debated or taken away.”

Psychologist and reporter Liliana Helder recalled on Argentine Public Television that after other genocidal events like the Holocaust or the Armenian Genocide, studies have shown that “the two or three following generations continue to feel the consequences, when things have been left hanging.”

“The appearance of each grandchild is a little bit of disinfectant on the wound,” she said.

But in a story such as Carlotto’s and Guido’s, which had a happy ending like in a movie, where the 83-year-old grandmother was finally able to embrace her stolen grandson before it is too late, there is nothing better than letting the main character explain it.

“If by stoning to death the poet you think you’re killing the memory, what is left of this land that is gradually losing its history,” goes one of the songs, “Para la memoria” (For memory), written by the man who until now was known only as Ignacio Hurban, who actually took part in the event “Music for identity” two years ago – organised by the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo.

“The exercise of not forgetting will give us the possibility of not repeating it,” says another verse of the song by the man known now as Guido Montoya Carlotto, which he wrote before he knew who he really was, and before he became a symbol of the recovery of identity in his country.
Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes