Last Wednesday, Oct. 26, the Argentine Supreme Court sentenced former naval officer, Alfredo Astiz, to life in prison. Known and feared as “Él Ángel Rubio de la Muerte” (The Blonde Angel of Death), Astiz was found guilty of torture, murder and “forced disappearance” during Argentina’s right-wing military dictatorship of 1976 to 1983.
In addition to Astiz, 15 other Argentine military and police officers were also convicted of crimes against humanity. Of those, 11 were given life sentences and the remaining four were jailed between 18 and 25 years.
What was the common thread linking these men together throughout the exhausting 22-month trial? All worked at Argentina’s largest and most notorious concentration camp—the Naval Mechanical School (ESMA) in Buenos Aires—during a period of state-sponsored terror, initiated by Jorge Rafael Videla’s coup d’état known as “La Guerra Sucia,” or the Dirty War.
According to “Nunca Más” (Never Again), the report delivered in 1984 by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) to explain the atrocities of the previous decade, the purpose of the Dirty War was twofold—first, to imprison specific leftist terrorists, and second, to create an impenetrable environment of fear. It was the Argentine rendition of Operation Condor, a covert and U.S.-supported program implemented by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Core (mainly Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) in 1975 to obliterate their left-wing opponents.
Between 1976 and 1983, nearly 5,000 guerillas, dissidents and leftist activists were kidnapped, secretly detained and brutally tortured behind ESMA’s pristine brick walls. Only 10 percent of its prisoners—more than 70 of whom were among the trial’s witnesses—managed to survive. The rest were either killed by firing squad or drugged and thrown alive from airplanes over the Atlantic Ocean, often with weights tied to their feet to ensure they would never be found. These abominable “death flights” were painted with sadistic undertones. Many victims were made to dance for joy—only to be doped and dropped just hours later—on account of a false freedom they were told awaited them on the other side of the flight.
And ESMA was only one of more than 300 clandestine detention centers across the country.
These are “los desaparecidos” (the disappeared)—the lost faces of Argentina’s notorious Dirty War. Their irretrievable bodies, vanished beneath sand and rocks at the foot of the Atlantic, will never be found. Although left-wing activists were the primary targets, the government eventually began kidnapping writers, intellectuals, Jews, people who were even moderately leftist and people who simply had things high officials wanted.
Although CONADEP gives an estimate of approximately 13,000, most human rights groups insist the number of desaparecidos is closer to 30,000. There are also estimates, including the initial number reported by CONADEP, which are as low as 9,000. Why the discrepancies? This answer is simple. It is because of the unspeakable events that took place and the fact that the military worked diligently to cover up its tracks. Now 40 years later, it is still impossible for us to know the true extent of the Dirty War.
The next question that might be asked is: Why has it taken so long for justice to be served?
After the Dirty War, Argentina’s military dictatorship collapsed as a result of several factors, the most significant of which being an international economic crisis and an embarrassing loss to the United Kingdom in the Falklands War. Despite initial efforts to hold members of military government accountable, namely, the Trial of the Juntas, the majority remained unscathed. Then, in 1989 and 1990, the government of Raúl Alfonsín—perhaps facing the threat of military intervention—passed new amnesty laws and subsequent President Carlos Menem pardoned the few criminals who had already been convicted.
It was not until the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998 that hope for justice began to reemerge. In a 2001 case against Peru, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights voted that amnesty laws were a violation of international law. The Argentine Congress’s decision to repeal the amnesty laws in 2003 was, at last, followed by the Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate them in 2005, spurring swift legal action. Videla himself was sentenced to life in prison just 10 months ago.
Yet, the lingering memories of the Dirty War are deeper than legal justice. One of the most sinister—and signature—crimes committed by Argentina’s military junta was baby snatching. Pregnant women were kept alive in detention centers only until giving birth, after which they were murdered and their newborns were delivered to “pro-military families”—often times the very killers of their parents or accomplices to their murders. Today, only about 100 of these stolen babies have been identified through DNA testing, and there are at least 300 more who still must be accounted for.
The personal and emotional struggles of coming to terms with such an unspeakable past seem, to me, incomprehensible. The unsuspecting results of this painfully recent era is yet another reason why Argentina continues to amaze me. One would expect the societal wounds of such harrowing events, which took place less than half a century ago, to be fresh. Yet, even as much justice remains to be served, Argentine society appears to have moved on—if only on the surface—from what can be considered one of the most ravaging events in the nation’s tumultuous political past.
Sonia Havele is a Trinity junior and is currently studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her column runs every other Friday.
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