A-Infos (en) Argentine Citizens' Resolve `Not Forgetting, Not Forgiving'

[Tom Burghardt <tburghardt@igc.apc.org>]

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   ARGENTINE CITIZENS' RESOLVE `NOT FORGETTING, NOT FORGIVING'
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     HOUSTON CHRONICLE
     SUNDAY, MAY 10, 1998
     http://www.chron.com/
     By JACK EPSTEIN
 
     BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- "Nazi, Nazi, you can't hide!
We'll find you!" chanted a crowd of protesters, banging drums one
recent night outside the home of a retired Argentine general with
a "Dirty War" past.
 
     "We won't forget and we won't forgive," said Ernesto Dario
Borzi, a 28-year-old political science major. Borzi is the son of
one of more than 9,000 people who disappeared during the
Argentine military dictatorship's 1976-83 offensive against
leftist opponents, the brutal era since referred to as the Dirty
War.
 
     Borzi was only 7 when his father, Oscar, a glass-factory
worker and union leader, was taken from their suburban home by
soldiers. Two years ago, he joined 300 others -- children at the
time their parents became "the disappeared" -- to form a pressure
group.
 
     To the surprise of many, there is a new wave of public
interest in resolving the nation's past by a group of victims'
relatives, human rights groups, attorneys, politicians and
journalists.
 
     Previously, society's outrage seemed to be virtually
confined to an association of lonely mothers of young men and
women who disappeared. They have protested weekly since 1977 in
the downtown Plaza de Mayo.
 
     But now a much broader group of citizens is ignoring a
series of amnesties for military and policemen who committed
human rights violations during the military rule and is pressing
the government of President Carlos Menem to prosecute them. They
insist that only then can Argentina heal the trauma caused by the
bloodiest conflict in its history.
 
     This renewed zeal to investigate is causing repercussions
from South America to Europe, since hundreds of foreign citizens
were among those who disappeared. They included 336 Spaniards,
300 Italians, 76 Germans, 15 French, four Americans and one
Swede.
 
     "The military thought that when the Mothers of the Plaza de
Mayo died out, they would be off scot-free," Borzi said. "Then we
young people came along saying we would join the protest. That
really bothers them."
 
     In recent months, the members of Borzi's group have resorted
to demonstrations at the homes or offices of some of the most
infamous members of the military junta. Argentines call the
demonstrations "outings."
 
     The "outing" Borzi attended in March was for Gen. Albano
Harguindeguy. As interior minister in 1976-81, Harguindeguy was
in charge of the nation's police, who worked with the military to
suppress political opponents.
 
     After calling reporters, Borzi and others alerted the
upper-middle-class Barrio Norte neighborhood about the general by
spray-painting "assassin" on the sidewalk in front of
Harguindeguy's apartment and posting photos of him with his
address on telephone polls. Some sang the words to "Child of the
Disappeared," a rap song recently written by offspring of the
victims.
 
     The next day, the members of the group and 30,000 others,
including high school students, union activists, retirees and gay
rights groups, marched on the 22nd anniversary of the military
coup.
 
     Many carried signs saying "Never Again" or "Jail Videla,"
meaning former military president Gen. Jorge Videla, and "Life
Imprisonment for Astiz," referring to retired naval officer
Alfredo Astiz, accused as a death squad member.
 
     On the same day, members of Congress unanimously voted to
repeal the 1987 immunity laws for military officers from
prosecution of human rights violations. Since the bill was not
made retroactive, it was largely a symbolic gesture, but legal
experts say it could set a precedent for investigators to reopen
cases of the disappeared. Congressional legislators also plan to
form a "truth commission" later this year to investigate the
whereabouts of the disappeared.
 
     To be sure, most polls show Argentines are more worried
about jobs, rising crime, corruption and their failing health and
educational systems than they are about unearthing the past. But
Argentine society has clearly changed from the initial years
after the dictatorship when many dubbed human rights activists as
"psycho-bolches," suggesting that only psychiatrists and
Bolsheviks were interested in such matters.
 
     "The military wants public recognition for defeating leftist
subversion, for winning the war," said Felipe Noguera, a Buenos
Aires-based political consultant. "But that has no echo here and
isn't taken seriously."
 
     Even Gen. Martin Balza, the current army commander-in-chief,
has recently criticized his institution's past. In a February
speech, he described the Dirty War as a "macabre operation," and
strongly condemned "blind obedience."
 
     Nevertheless, there are still Argentines who
enthusiastically defend the military's past.
 
     "They won the war that was started by Marxist terrorists,"
said Roberto Alemann, who was finance minister in 1981-82 and now
publishes a German language newspaper. "Ever since then, we have
lived in peace. The military gave us peace."
 
     Currently, five federal judges are at work on related cases
while another is studying what happened to the estimated 500
children who were sold or given to childless couples after their
mothers were killed.
 
     The new cases have produced some dramatic moments.
 
     In March, a Swedish citizen, Ragnar Hagelin, confronted
former Adm. Emilio Massera in a Buenos Aires courtroom. Hagelin's
17-year-old daughter, Dagmar, was kidnapped in 1977 by navy
security agents on the city's streets and never heard from again.
 
     Hagelin, who has pressed the search for his daughter since
her abduction, told the ex-officer: "I will hound you until the
day you die."
 
     Also, a former policeman named Roberto Gonzales told
investigators that he participated in the 1977 ambush of
well-known writer Rodolfo Walsh near a Buenos Aires train
station. Walsh, the author of novels and short stories and a
militant leftist, had angered the military by secretly sending
information abroad about the dictatorship's political detention
centers.
 
     Gonzales told investigators that 12 agents surrounded the
writer, who drew a .22-caliber pistol in self-defense, and
riddled his body with bullets. The body was then taken to the
infamous Naval Mechanics School, where 5,000 people are believed
to have been tortured and killed.
 
     Patricia Walsh, the author's 45-year-old daughter, believes
her father was cremated on the school's grounds and says Gonzales
told investigators that he knows what happened to Walsh's body
and others but said he'd leave it to the military to say where
they are.
 
     Ernesto Borzi, who remembers the night his father
disappeared as if it happened yesterday, says reconciliation is
an absurd concept.
 
     In vivid detail, he describes how soldiers ransacked the
house, handcuffed his mother, leapt onto his parents' bed and
threw a blanket over his father, who had been knocked to the
kitchen floor.
 
     For the past 20 years, Borzi has sought information about
the kidnappers and his father's fate. He now knows many of their
names, including the doctor who bandaged his father's chest after
he was stabbed with a bayonet as he opened the door to let the
agents in. He now believes that his father died after three days
of torture at the Pozo de Banfield detention center.
 
     "How can we reconcile with torturers?" Borzi asked.
 
     Copyright 1998 The Houston Chronicle
 
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