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On the night of 14 December 1977, Esther Careaga was thrown from the Skyvan PA-51 plane with 11 other civilians. Esther’s mother, with the help of the ‘Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’ protested her daughter’s killing. This was just one evening of many in Argentina’s last military dictatorship, an era that transformed the country into a nation of los desaparecidos (“the disappeared”). At the time, the victims of this violent repression had few means with which to challenge their oppressors, but over the decades the tide has turned, and retrospective justice is now a hot topic in a country still coming to terms with its past.

Confrontation with the past

In March 1976, a military coup placed Jorge Rafael Videla and a military junta in power, leading to a campaign of terror throughout the country. In their commitment to rid the country of communists and subversives, civilians would be arrested, questioned, tortured and never seen again. Students, journalists, teachers, and anyone politically affiliated with the opposition would be ‘disappeared’ by the authorities. Their families, if they were not seized as well, would remain unaware of the truth and unable to find it. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo became a famous opposition group that denounced the disappearances of their sons and daughters. They would walk on Thursdays in front of the presidential palace with white scarfs. During the military regime that lasted until 1983, an estimated 30,000 people were killed.

At the time, several repressive US-backed dictatorships were in power in Latin America, supported by Operation Condor – an attempt by the right-wing southern cone dictatorships from the late 1960s to repress leftist movements in which systematic state killings and torture of activists took place. This intelligence operation was coordinated by Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil. In May 2016, fourteen former military and intelligence chiefs who were part of the operation were convicted of crimes against humanity. Argentina was the first country to hold trials for the perpetrators of crimes under the 1976 military dictatorship. By September 2016, 2,541 people were charged and 723 convicted of crimes.

A protest organised by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo group in Argentina – Creative Commons image

The ‘death flight’ that Esther Careaga boarded was a 3-hour flight piloted by Mario Daniel Arrú and Alejandro Domingo D’Agostino, two military pilots who were sentenced to life imprisonment on the 29 November. ‘Death flights’ were a method of killing, in which the victims would be drugged and thrown into the Atlantic to try and dispose of their bodies without leaving evidence. These two former military pilots were convicted as part of a 5-year trial of crimes committed at the Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), the notorious navy school used as a detention centre were an estimated 5000 people died. The trial involved 484 cases and 54 defendants, amongst them captains Alfredo Astiz and Jorge Eduardo Acosta, who were also sentenced to life for crimes against humanity. They had already been convicted for torture and killings in 2011. Astiz became known as the ‘Angel of Death’ during the military regime for infiltrating the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo group and reporting on its members, among them Esther Careaga.

The crimes of Argentina’s past created a ‘post-dictatorship generation’ that has tried to reconcile itself with the country’s painful past, despite the desire for denial, and to see a future where democracy and justice can have a place. The trials of the perpetrators of the crimes that took place during the military regime have been part of that effort of reconstruction and acceptance. In 1983, the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) was created to investigate the crimes committed. This culminated in the publication of a report entitled Nunca Mas (Never Again) in 1984. The report includes detailed accounts of torture from survivors that took place in 340 detention centres, as well as methodologies employed by perpetrators to seize, question and kill victims. Since that report, DNA evidence has been instrumental in identifying bodies, as well as, establishing the true identity of children that were kidnapped and adopted by military families. This concerns an estimated 500 children, of which many were born when their mothers were held captive and killed.  

The search for acceptance of the past has been especially difficult for the actual sons and daughters of perpetrators and former military chiefs. Pablo Verna’s father is a former military doctor, who was responsible for drugging victims who were sent on ‘death flights’ at the military hospital of Campo de Mayo. His father kept his involvement during the regime secret until 2013 when he confessed to his son. Pablo Verna is unable to testify in court against his father because of legislation prohibiting him from doing so. Verna has joined a group of lobbyists, other relatives of perpetrators that formed the group Disobedient Stories on Facebook to speak out against their fathers and demand a change in Argentina’s penal code to allow them to testify.   

In 2016, Mauricio Macri, Argentina’s current president, came under severe criticism by human rights groups for calling the military dictatorship a ‘dirty war’ – a term implying the existence of a two-sided conflict, instead of a one-sided repressive dictatorship, against which those targeted were defenceless. He expressed uncertainty as to the number of victims, not willing to concede to the generally accepted figure of 30,000, and declaring that the human rights focus should be on today and not on crimes of the past. He argued that the crimes that occurred are much more significant than just a number.

Argentina’s confrontation with horrific human rights abuses that have occurred relatively recently has been challenging not only on an emotional level but also, perhaps more importantly, on the political stage. The deep scars of repression and torture left by military and state authorities on the country have invariably formed its painful legacy and its image in the international community’s perception. Argentina’s past makes us question how the country has responded to the presence of violence today, but unfortunately, the answer remains disappointing.

Reality of violence today

On 31 January 2009, Luciano Arruga, a 16-year-old boy, left his house in Lomas del Mirador (Province of Buenos Aires) and was never seen again. His unidentified body was found on 17 October 2014. He had allegedly been subject to torture and unlawful arrest at the hands of the police because he refused to commit robberies for them.

The presence of ‘violencia institutional’ in Argentina is still a cause for concern according to the Provincial Commission for Memory. This is a public body that operates in the Province of Buenos Aires to investigate and monitor human rights violations. Its Committee Against Torture published a report in 2016 regarding the prevalent ‘politics of crime’ that propagates the existence of structural violence against disadvantaged neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods tend to be the ones most affected by high levels of criminality and poverty, and low levels of health and education. Structural violence takes the form of repressive measures carried out by the police in the name of security, both in the public domain and in the penal system.

The Committee Against Torture carries out research to monitor conditions within prisons in the Province of Buenos Aires and the quality of life of its prisoners. It has denounced for nearly ten years the use of torture against prisoners, which has taken the form of beatings with sticks and electrical shocks amongst other methods. The Committee reported that torture has been used systematically in a persistent way that targets all sorts of prisoners in practically all prison units. The cause can be traced to the inefficiency of the Penitentiary Service Bonaerense (SPB) in delivering transparent structures and mechanisms of control to address and reprimand perpetrators of violence.

Structural violence within the penal system indicates a lack of political will to implement policies to improve the situation and the shortcomings of an overloaded judicial system. The spirit of denial that accompanies it prevents root causes from being addressed and a clear picture of the scope of the problem being drawn. Pervasive cultural and social behaviours such as corruption aren’t challenged by the SPB but rather concealed.

A 2017 Centre of Legal and Social Studies (CELS) report on torture in prisons attributes the use of violence to the increased need for disciplinary action against prisoners. This is easily understandable in the light of an overpopulation in prisons of 59.8%. In December 2015, the SPB recorded 34,096 prisoners for 20,732 places.

Structural violence takes the form of repressive measures carried out by the police in the name of security, both in the public domain and in the penal system
This over-crowding accounts for the increase of violence but also the lack of adequate utilities, scarce provisions such as food and drinkable water. In 2015, there were 145 deaths in prisons of the province, of which 65% occurred as a result of preventable diseases. This includes over 3 deaths per week and represents an increase of 12.4% from 2014 according to the Committee Against Torture.

The failures within the penitentiary system particularly affect vulnerable prisoners, which includes those under age and those suffering from mental illnesses. Mental health is not effectively recognised by the penal system. On the contrary, vulnerable prisoners are subject to isolation, inadequate medical attention or supervision and poor diets, which affects 12,700 adults in the province of Buenos Aires.

It is clear that violence permeates the political and social structure in both Argentina’s past and present. The historic abuse of power by the authorities goes some way to explaining their contemporary failure to tackle some of the key issues of the day. A history of corruption and extralegal action has left the judiciary and police without the institutional strength to prosecute their duties to the fullest extent. What has prevailed is a lack of trust in the institutions supposedly serving to protect civilians, and an admiration for the individuals who confront those institutions.

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