by VICTORIA DONDA
From 1976 to 1983, Argentina was mired in the so-called “Dirty War.” Amnesty International estimates that some 20,000 people suspected of being opposition activists or leftists were kidnapped and/or killed by the military junta. They are known as the desaparecidos — literally, the disappeared.
When the junta was overthrown, the leaders of both the army and the resistance guerrillas were tried, although many were granted freedom upon the introduction of pardon laws in 1986 and 1987 by President Carlos Menem.
In 2003, these laws were repealed by the government of Nestor Kirchner. Compensation and DNA testing have since allowed family members of desaparecidos to receive payments from the state, and to enable the children of the desaparecidos who were kidnapped and placed with other families to be reunited with their biological relatives.
Since succeeding her husband in 2007, President Cristina Kirchner has continued to prosecute the military and security officers responsible for the disappearances. But her appointment of Cesar Milani as head of the Army last month has horrified much of the Argentine population, as documents have emerged showing his signature in the case of a soldier’s “disappearance.”
As a result of this polemic, and in the run up to the legislative elections in November, Victoria Donda, national deputy for the left-wing opposition political party Libres del Sur and the daughter of two desaparecidos, has written an open letter to President Kirchner.
– OpEd –
BUENOS AIRES – I am not, Cristina, one of the people that accused your government of vote-hunting hypocrisy when it took up the fight for human rights. Today, at the end of this letter, I can sign with my real name thanks to Argentina’s citizens and the Abuelas [a human rights organization founded by mothers of the desaparecidos, those who disappeared during Argentina’s Dirty War. The organization fights to locate the children who were taken during the repression] who at a certain point decided to go in search of truth and justice. I am the result of this. And I am proud of it.
Nor am I, Cristina, one of the people who accused you of “retaliation” or “revenge,” and I never have been. I am, given my family history and my activism, a fighter for all the men and women who had their human rights violated under the last dictatorship and also those who today, throughout our country, continue to suffer human rights violations.
I did not vote for the pardon laws. I was just 10 years old when they were passed. But as soon as I understood what they stood for, they repulsed me and led me to become an activist for Libres del Sur, the political organization that I have belonged to for the last 15 years. We fight for truth and justice in memory of those who gave everything, including their lives, for the country that many of us dreamed of. We are far from a commercial enterprise.
I want to clarify these last two points because you claim that the people who today criticize your appointment of César Milani as Head of the Army are the same people who supported the pardon laws — or else people whose views are solely based on their business interests and who don’t care about the victims or human rights in the slightest.
I am the same person who couldn’t stop crying on March 24, 2004, the date the ESMA, which was used as a detention center during the Dirty War, was and converted into a Remembrance Museum. A pregnant colleague was stood next to me. I asked her: “How far along are you?” She replied: “Five months.” I was that small when I set foot in this place for the first time. The woman who gave birth to me after being tortured, who had me knowing that she was unlikely ever to see me again, deserves for her daughter to know what her eyes looked like. That day, despite the pain, I decided to do a DNA test.
Clarin/World Crunch for more