4 Month Porteña: I Don’t Remember How . . . But the Terrorists Are Dead

This entry is immensely long, and it's also about one of the top two most interesting things I've experienced in Argentina.

In Full View

Twice a week Tribunal Oral en lo Criminal Nº1, a courthouse in La Plata, Buenos Aires closes off the street in front of it, and holds a trial on the rights abuses during the late 70s. This period in Argentina, from 1976-1983, is often called the “Dirty War”, except for by its victims, who claim it was not a war, because a war needs two armies. Instead they use the term “el Proceso” (“the Process”) to refer to 7 years of a government preying on any citizen who spoke against it. While it is important to remember that the citizens’ opposition was not pacifistic, they did not deserve what happened.

The trial my class and I went to see was for information, not for a verdict. The defendant on the stand Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz, the Director of Investigations for the Police of Buenos Aires during the Proceso, had already been condemned to life in jail in 2006. The trial was purely to find information, about a particular occurrence during those years.

Anyone with identification can enter a courtroom and watch a trial, and my school group was joined by art students and some middle aged observers. One woman with long white hair was a founding member of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group that still demands justice for the children the government secretly kidnapped during the Proceso. The only rules the courthouse gave us were you must be over fourteen, because the themes were so heavy, and you could not bring in food or water, lest you throw them at someone. This implied the due bitterness surrounding the trials. The courthouse staff gave us official wristbands and let us enter.

Set the Stage

The courtroom itself appeared to be an old theater. The seats the public sat in looked just like those for a play-going audience, and a red curtain was pulled to the side above the stage where sat the judge, defendant, and lawyers. Despite its theatrical origins, it was a very plain building, devoid of any decorations. A somber place dedicated to a practical job: finding the truth.

The judge sat facing the audience, along with two assistants. (It surprised me to see that one had dyed her hair magenta). On the right, rows of prosecuting lawyers with laptops and coffee cups, faced inwards, towards center stage. On the left, a cage jutted out into the audience, and here, protected by five guards in bulletproof jackets reading “SPF”, sat the defense. One guard had a riot shield, and they spent the time watching the audience and the case. Throughout the trial more guards with radios and black berets walked the floor.

Etchecolatz rose, a normal looking older man with white hair and a gray suit, and sat at a desk, his back to the audience, facing the judge. This is what evil looks like, I told myself, knowing I was seeing a man who had presided over murder and torture, and yet I felt no repulsion. This was just a man.

Clara Anahí as photographed by her grandmother days before the attack. I borrowed it from: http://www.apdhlaplata.org.ar/espacio/n31/esp12.htm

Memory of Family
Etchecolatz had been called in from prison to give his account on the case of Casa 30. This house had been home to five Montoneros, anti-government rebels, and two of theirs baby girl. Most importantly, the house hosted a secret printing press the Montoneros used to distribute their political flyers. To cover it up, they raised and sold rabbits (as food, not pets). Because of this, the novel written about Casa 30 is called “Casa de Los Conejos”, or “House of Rabbits”.

Etchecolatz and the police attacked the house in 1976, killing everyone inside it, save, perhaps, for the three month old baby, Clara Anahí Mariani. Neighbors reported seeing the police take the baby from the house, and it was not an uncommon practice for police to kidnap children and raise them as their own. Estimates say 400 of these “disappeared” children are going about their lives today, completely unaware of their real identities. Clara Anahí’s grandmother is still looking for her; if she has survived this long, she turned 35 last August. But even if Clara Anahí was taken alive from the house, she could have been hit by a car at age 15 and died, or died of cancer at age 30; if alive she might not even still be in the country. It soon became clear that Etchecolatz’s objective in the trial was to say the daughter was dead, and thus that the search should stop, and that he was not complicit in anything blameworthy.

Designing Justice
Trials in Latin America follow a different structure from the U.S.’s precedent-based system. The codified system in Latin America places more trust in written evidence and reviewing data, while the USA emphasizes oral evidence from witnesses. Watching this case, another difference became obvious: in Argentina, the judge, in addition to the lawyers, has a chance to examine the defense, and the defense can be brought in to be questioned again, if new evidence appears. For an hour or more, our judge questioned Etchecolatz

Summary: Ray of Truth, Fog of Lies
The events of the day at Casa 30 began to become clear as the trial proceeded. The facts that Etchecolatz and other accounts agreed upon were that Etchecolatz had arrived at Casa 30 along with other military officers, that several officers entered the house, and that the five Montoneros were killed. During the attack on Casa 30, Etchecolatz was on the roof of the adjacent house, along with a man with a bazooka.

Etchecolatz handwaved over his involvement, trying to suggest that his entire participation in the conflict had been to merely exist on the roof, instead of having any job assigned to him, or having been involved with organizing the event. The police director also attempted to put a nationalistic, positive spin on the actions of the police in the Proceso, presenting them as a civilian, humanitarian group, and putting all blame for torture on the military. Part of Etchecolatz’s aim was also to insist that the Proceso had not been unilateral aggression: “[Los Montoneros] también tenía resistencia” (“The Montoneros also had resistance”) he said, and claimed the guerrillas had killed 270 policemen.

There were a few notable flaws with Etchecolatz’s account. First, he, the director of police, had followed someone else’s orders to go to the house, and yet had not been assigned any role to do while there. He hadn’t been on the roof to catch people fleeing, he insisted, nor even really to observe. Secondly, all the Montoneros were to be killed and their bodies burned, Etchecolatz reported, yet he claims neither saw bodies nor flames nor heard shots. In regards to the detention centers, in Etchecolatz’s world, the police were merely there to take care of the abducted people’s health and nutrition, the rest was the military’s job. Finally, despite physical evidence and numerous first hand accounts, Etchecolatz denied that torture was a common occurrence.

In Defense of a Nation

When Perón ran for president in 1945, it was immediately after World War II and photos of the concentration camps were just leaking out to full public view. The U.S. ambassador, Braden, accused Perón of supporting Hitler and harboring Nazis. To explain to the class why this was such a harsh, campaign-damaging accusation, my history teacher clarified: it would be like saying you supported the ESMA, a major detention center used in the Proceso. Argentina is a place where those responsible for the Proceso draw a quicker gut reaction, a more immediate repulsion, than Nazis. In my human rights classes and history classes, no one could even question that the military committed horrors.

Just thirty years after the Proceso, and in a society where everyone knows the full extent of the abuses committed, I heard Etchecolatz continue to assert that his actions were fully justified. While I had been warned that most of the Proceso’s human rights criminals were unrepentant, it still felt unreal. Etchecolatz referred to those kidnapped by the government as “terroristas” (terrorists), and “prisioneros de la guerra” (prisoners of war”).

“Tenían que perseguirlo [y] matarlos como ratas” (“We had to chase them [and] kill them like rats”), he insisted; The Proceso was a campaign to protect country’s institutions, and allow Argentina to live in peace.

Words for War
Among Etchecolatz’s description of the military government, stark nationalistic phrases continued to pop up. He told how the military government had tried to “recuperar la verdad” (“to recover the truth”), “recuperar lo que ha perdido” (“to recover what had been lost”), “[asegurar] respecta para sus instituciones” (“to ensure respect for its institutions”), “[asegurar que Argentina puede] vivir en paz” (“to makes sure that Argentina could live in peace”), “sofocar una situación de ofensa” (“to suffocate an offensive situation”), and “afrentar el enemigo” (“to confront the enemy”).

Brainwashed Language
During the Proceso itself, the government enacted a huge propaganda campaign in which they repeatedly used nationalistic images to present their work as glorious and righteous and encourage belief in their side. If the police and guerrillas clashed, the newspaper was bound to report that the police had eliminated a subversive, or, if luck went the other way, that a policeman had been murdered by terrorists.

Euphemisms made torture seem less offensive: a “sumbarino” (submarine) is a tasty treat similar to hot chocolate, made by dropping a bar of chocolate in warm milk. When the government attached the name “submarino” to a form of torture, it became easier for soldiers to distance themselves from what they were actually doing: waterboarding a victim in water tainted with feces and urine. In a 1984-esque attempt to cut down on subversive thought, the word “revolution” was banned, even including in reference to science.

Play by Play

It feels the most honest representation is to report the event as straightforwardly as possible, including giving the original Spanish, as that is the most accurate and true wording. I will translate as closely as I can.

What Did You Do?

It began with the judge questioning:

“¿Cuándo se producen muertes era porque hay sido resistencias?”

When killing occurred was it because there had been resistance?

I didn’t catch all of Etchecolatz‘s response. It was something like:

“Somos ciudadanos .. . . no es así permitir abusos, no recibí ningún orden de torturas. . .”

We are citizens . . .it is not so that abuses were allowed, I didn’t receive any order to torture. . .

In a somewhat jumbled way, Etchecolatz went on to detail the event. The government forces attacked Casa 30 because it had a printer for “panfletos terroristas” (“terrorist pamphlets”) in the house. He believed that everyone in Casa 30 was killed, as the order had been to leave no one alive (“nadie quedar con vida”). Officers entered that house, the Montoneros inside resisted (at least he emphasized that he thought this was what happened), and, presumably, said Etchecolatz, the officers killed them all. Still, he reminded his listeners “no vi nada” (“I didn’t see anything”), and “no oí disparos” (“I didn’t hear shots”). Etchecolatz said that “fueran carbonizados a todos en la casa” (“Everyone in the house was burned to ashes”), but when the judge asked he admitted that he had not seen fire or felt heat. Witnesses in other meetings on this case had also not seen fire. According to my human rights teacher, it was a common practice for the military/police to take away the bodies of their victims, so as to leave no tangible evidence. If Etchecolatz could suggest the bodies were burned, he would not have to explain what actually happened to them. But he could not blatantly contradict the testimonies of other witnesses.

The judge picked at the story:

“¿Por qué estabas allá si hiciste nada? ¿Cómo fue estar en el techo sin ver nada? ¿Por qué estabas en el techo? Los disparos de afuera . . .estabas allá parar matar a alguien que saliera de la casa?”

Why were you there if you didn’t do anything? How was it that you were on the roof and saw nothing? Why were you on the roof? The shots outside . . .where you there to kill anyone who left the house?

Etchecolatz:

“Estaba allá por parte de posición en la policía”

I was there as part of my position in the police.

He continued, saying that he was only support and that no one gave him an order.

Judge:

“¿Dices que no hecho ningún tipo de exceso? ¿Nunca influido por exceso del gobierno de este época?”

You said that you never committed any type of excess? You were never influenced by the excesses of the government of this time?

Etchecolatz:

“Lo que cumplí estaba acuerdo del ley”

What I did was in agreement with the law.

Judge:

“Si recibió un orden a matar, debió negar”

If one received an order to kill, one should refuse it.

Etchecolatz:

“¡Ningún orden matar!”

There wasn’t any order to kill!

Etchecolatz continued, saying that he had only received orders to go to the roof.

Vanished Children

Judge:

“¿Hijos de personas desaparecidos eran recobrados?”

Were the children of the disappeared recovered?

Etchecolatz:

“No sé.”

I don’t know.

In regards to the child Clara Anahí, Etchecolatz merely mentioned that the people in the house “enseñaba a niña revistas subversivos” (“taught the girl subversive magazines”); this is no doubt a major reason the military would have taken her. El Argentino, a newspaper present at the trial that day, quoted Etchecolatz as saying “No puedo asegurar que la criatura estaba adentro, pero si estaba adentro, la criatura no pudo salir con vida” (“I can’t be sure that the child was inside, but if she was inside, the child could not have left with her life”). Despite this claim, it is known, thanks to a testimony in El Argentino, that the police had at one point attempted to sell Clara Anahí to her grandmother, something that strongly suggests the child was not killed at the house. Relatively recently, it was thought that the daughter of the owner of Clarín, an important newspaper, was in fact Clara Anahí. The daughters looked similar, were of the right age, and it was known that the newspaper owner’s daughter was adopted under strange circumstances. For much time the newspaper owner’s lawyers stalled and resisted requests for a DNA test, then suddenly agreed to it, presumably because they discovered through other evidence that the daughter was not a match.

A Skeptical Audience
In response another line of questioning, Etchecolatz told the judge that whatever happened to pregnant women was the decision of the clandestine detention centers that held them, and was not his fault. The police, he said, were only responsible for the health and food of the prisoners, nothing else. The police’s orders, he reiterated, were to “mantener higiene, cuidar salud física, no interrogar” (“to maintain hygiene, to take care of physical health, not to interrogate”). The military was the one who had the responsibility for the prisoners and the detention centers.

However, Etchecolatz said he did remember one instance of a pregnant prisoner. When this girl gave birth, he said, the staff at the detention center bought her presents and a card. Groans of disbelief rose from the audience when they heard this. He couldn’t remember the girl’s name or last name. But she was from La Plata, the neighborhood the trial was in, he said, and the police, because it was a humanitarian issue, took charge of letting her family know.

By this point, the audience had seen thousands such trials, and knew to expect these sort of responses from the accused. In 1986 it was prohibited to try anyone for human rights abuses committed during the Proceso and since then many criminals were pardoned. About a decade ago, then-president Néstor Kirchner re-opened the trials. The lying and lack of repentance was nothing new to the audience of this trial, and the bitterness was clear. When Etchecolatz announced that “caminaba en lo más sucio de la sociedad y no me contaminaba” (I walked in the filthiest part of society, and it didn’t contaminate me”) members of the audience laughed aloud in scorn.

Remember with Care
When the judge returned to asking Etchecolatz about the events on the day at Casa 30, Etchecolatz tried to say he didn’t remember much of anything. Occasionally, in the trial Etchecolatz would get flustered responding to questions, would answer in a stream of “Sísísísísí” or “Nononono.” After prodding, he admitted he did remember how he arrived (in a car), but not who drove it, and admitted that he did now remember that others were in the car with him. He did not remember, however, who ordered the attack on the “casa de los terroristas” (“the terrorists’ house”). As Etchecolatz was the director of the police, it is a fair bet that he himself ordered the attack.

Here the lawyers took over.

One asked:

“¿Si no estaba parte de investigaciones, si solo cuidaba salud física, porque estaba a la Casa 30?”

If you weren’t there as part of the investigations, if you only took care of physical health, why were you at Casa 30?

I don’t believe Etchecolatz answered this one.

The white building or this flat roof here is likely where Etchecolatz was during the attack.

House of Holes

After the trial, we went to see Casa 30, a small gray cement building. A whole window and most of the wall was blasted out, presumably by the bazooka, and deep holes marked around the door and wall. Glancing through a bullet hole on one wall we could see inside the house, a wall similarly pockmarked by bullets. The roof Etchecolatz must have stood on could not have been more than 8 feet from the door of Casa 30.

The house itself has been preserved as it was since the attack

Epilogue: The Curtain Doesn’t Fall
The face and name Jorge Julio López is something I've seen graffitied all across Buenos Aires, on walls, on tiles in La Plaza de Mayo, and especially in La Plata. Eventually, I learned why.

in La Plata

at Plaza de Mayo

This man had been kidnapped and personally tortured by Etchecolatz from 1976-1979. During the first trial of Etchecolatz, López was a major witness, and his testimony against Etchecolatz was invaluable: In addition to recounting to his own horrific experience, López had seen Etchecolatz execute five people.

Though the Proceso trials offer a form of resolution and validation, testifying is nonetheless extremely painful for the victims. In a documentary on this trial, called “Un Claro Día de Justicia” (“A Clear Day of Justice”), I saw López struggling to get the words out. He remembered a woman named Patricia who was imprisoned with him; he was the only one of them with a chance of leaving the detention center alive, she told him, and she begged López to find her parents or her brothers and tell them to “dame un beso a mis hijas” (“give a kiss to my daughters for me”). Recounting, reliving, this moment, López’s voice almost failed him, it was with painful effort that he managed to speak. The older man’s hands trembled, like a hummingbird flapping, so much that he couldn’t pick up a glass of water; someone had to hold it out for him to sip.

López during the trial. (Photo credit to Haydeé Dessal y Elena Luz González Bazán at http://www.villacrespomibarrio.com.ar/2011/septiembre/ciudad/derechos%20humanos/lopez%20en%20fotos.htm)

During the days of this trial, López, a white haired, 77 year old man with children, vanished. In the midst of recounting his horrifying disappearance, disappearances ceased to be a memory and became the state of his life once again. (The trials continued without López, and Etchecolatz was sentenced to life in prison.) This was five years ago. López still has not been found.
            It was 23 years after the end of the Proceso, supposedly in a better government and better world, and yet, with López’s abduction, the disappearances were re-opened. Since then, there have been accusations the police’s fruitlessness in the case is deliberate. The satire magazine, Revista Barcelona, publishes a weekly piece ridiculing the police’s attempts to find López. Clara Anahí and Jorge Julio López have still not been found, but until they, or their final resting places are, the trials will still go on, and the protests will continue in the Plaza de Mayo.