A museum for our memory

When the international media, or even the national Buenos Aires-based ones, speak of the last military coup and its executors, most actually speak of the junta and its top officials, of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, of the Navy Mechanics School. But of course, the dictatorship took power all throughout Argentina.

Right now several represores are being judged in a high-profile trial in Corrientes. Another group of criminals, the presumed authors of a massacre of prisoners, are to be tried in Trelew, Chubut.

No such trials are in progress in Rosario. Yet here were the headquarters of Second Army Corps, responsible for hundreds of forced disappearances — kidnappings followed by torture and murder, usually. Prisoners were held in a massive building that takes up a whole downtown block. The building was the police headquarters, until in 2001 the provincial government turned it into a local delegation for the southern region of Santa Fe. The municipality of Rosario also got a space. Then an enclosed square was built inside, and after the fire that burned down most of the Natural History Museum, the rest of it was moved to a section of this building as well.

The place where the prisoners were kept is now called Centro Popular de la Memoria. When Boston Review did a coverage of the 30th anniversary of the coup, in 2006, they used one of my pictures to illustrate it... but although the article spoke about illegal detention centers, the main focus was on ESMA, the Navy Mechanics School in Buenos Aires.

Now it seems we'll be recovering another space for the memory of those days. It's a lovely house on a corner, a block away from the CPM, and it's occupied by a bar. The current owners paid a lot for it, and the ones who run the bar would have it forever. It's a prime spot and a beautiful building. But it's also where the orders for the kidnappers and torturers came from.

The place was embargoed, and the municipality paid a sum of money to expropriate it, but the owners would have none of it. Moreover, the ones managing the bar said they had renewed the contract until 2009. The municipality threatened to deny the bar its license, but didn't. And then a judge said the municipality had paid incorrectly — to the federal court that had embargoed the building, instead of to a provincial court.

Days ago, another judge reversed the ruling, so after this ridiculously long legal battle, the bar will have to close and the building will become property of the municipal state, which will install a Museum of Memory there, moving some things (such as photos and documents) from the former site at the CPM. It will open in May 2009.

Crimes of the Church

I wanted to write about something that was news only a week ago, and something that wasn't news anymore, though it should be. The former is the life sentence for Christian von Wernich; the latter is the lack of punishment of Edgardo Storni. They have in common the fact that they're both priests, that as such they've lived off the state (i.e. us) for decades, that they've both committed horrible crimes, and that the Church, being aware of that, has refused to condemn them in the strongest terms.

Von Wernich's crimes were far more horrible (complicity in multiple instances of kidnapping, torture and homicide), and justice has come to him at last, with a delay of thirty years. He was sentenced to a life term for his collaboration with the last dictatorship's murderers. He masqueraded as a faithful chaplain, trying to convince prisoners to confess, and providing theological support for the program of extermination carried out by the military. In his trial he expressed no regrets and he compared himself to Christ.

The top of the Catholic Church stalled long until he was sentenced, and then released a brief note saying "they were moved to pain" by von Wernich's deeds, committed "under his personal responsibility", and speaking against "hatred and resentment" (in Churchspeak, that means the victims' insistence on pursuing justice). The note didn't even hint at the well-oiled relation between the dictators and the Catholic hierarchy, and didn't show any pain for the victims, which included not only guerrilla members but also young activists and pregnant women. The bishop overseeing von Wernich didn't immediately do anything; he said he'll wait a bit — so von Wernich is still technically allowed to confess, celebrate mass, and serve as any good loyal priest.

Storni's crimes were of a wholly different nature and comparatively minor (he only sexually abused a young seminarist) but the rot runs as deep. Storni was the Archbishop of Santa Fe. When the scandal broke out, a priest called José Guntern, sent him a private letter where he told the archbishop he knew about two other instances of sexual abuse, urging Storni to confess and repent. Storni sent for 85-year-old Guntern and had his proxies sit him down before a recantation and a public notary. Guntern signed, but then filed an accusation against Storni. That came to nowhere.

Storni was first sent to Rome, he resigned as Archbishop, and then the Church gave him a nice private home in a secluded spot in Córdoba for his trouble. He's still waiting for his sentence on the abuse case, but in the meantime, the Church arranged for him to receive the retirement pension that bishops are entitled to by a law dictated during the dictatorship — over 7,000 pesos per month. The arrangement was illegal, since it's for disabled bishops over the customary retirement age of 75, and Storni is a healthy 71-year-old. The money comes from the 16.6 million pesos that the state pays the Catholic Church each year, a relic from colonial times that somehow slipped into the Constitution and that nobody has ever challenged.

The secrets of Isabel Perón

If you've been following the news, you'll undoubtedly know that judicial proceedings are being started (or resumed) to investigate and punish criminals of the Dirty War, particularly a number of military and police officers that did such nice things as running illegal detention centers, overseeing and conducting torture sessions of political prisoners, and the like. The first of these was Julio Simón, aka "El Turco Julián"; the second was Miguel Etchecolatz. The trial of Cristian Von Wernich, a torturer priest and chaplain, is another example, as well as the arrest of the former Navy officer Alfredo Astiz, "the Blond Angel of Death".

The Dirty War, however, did not only include the crimes committed under the dictatorship that began in 1976. Its preliminaries can be located already under the third term of Juan Domingo Perón, which began in 1973 after his return from exile and was interrupted by his death in 1974. Peronism had a populist-corporatist ideology that could and did host extremely diverse factions, ranging from the far-right to the leftist-Catholic Montoneros. Perón played the political game with these factions more-or-less easily, even as he became old and physically weak. When he died, however, government was left in the hands of his wife Isabel Martínez, a spineless idiot who was easily manipulated by the dark characters in Perón's inner circle.

To cut a long story short, as the rule of Isabel unfolded, right-wing death squads (beginning with the AAA or Argentine Anticommunist Alliance) took their conflict with left-wing movements and their fight with politically subversive elements to the streets. The result was (from both sides) bombings, kidnappings, and a general sense that the country was going nowhere — since Isabel was incapable of handling it. Thus, the solution: a coup d'état, led by the military, supported by the upper classes, the right-wing nationalist Catholic establishment, and the forces in Argentina and abroad that feared Socialist/Communist expansion, such as the local landowners and the U.S. government. The lower classes were persuaded by the threat of increasing violence, and later distracted using the circus of the 1978 FIFA World Cup, among other things.

After the restoration of democracy, the military have often demanded that "the others" be judged as well. In truth, the misleading word "war" in "Dirty War" was coined by them, implying that the military and the police (the forces of order) were conducting a war against a formally defined enemy, the subversives (the forces of anarchy and lawlessness). The term has stuck, even though it's incorrect, and even as the left has often directed its verbal attacks toward supporters of the so-called "theory of the two demons". It's clear that this wasn't a war, but a systematic plan of extermination of dissidence and a scheme of state terrorism to subdue the masses (getting to that "officially", out of the mouth of a judge in a formal sentence, took no less than 30 years). "The others", the leftist insurgents that blew up buildings, kidnapped, tortured and assassinated people, had been in some cases tried by justice.

The news here is that a recent investigation has been directed at the role of Isabel Martínez de Perón in the beginning of the "war" against insurgency. Not long after Perón's death, Isabel and her cabinet signed a decree ordering Argentina's security forces to "annihilate" subversion. In view of some, this was a thinly veiled authorization (and certainly a clear post facto legitimation) of the illegal repression that ensued. The decree did not mention the AAA, of course, though its ties with the Peronist establishment were notorious. However, it's interesting that the military who overthrew Isabel pretended to do so not for ideological reasons (anti-Peronism, as in 1955) but under the guise of bringing back order that Isabel was "unfortunately" unable to maintain; that's why they dubbed their dictatorial rule "National Reorganization Process".

Since Isabel signed the decree and it was José López Rega, one of Isabel's ministers who organized the AAA, judges are now investigating her responsibility. In Argentina, the Constitution expressly forbids using the Armed Forces to repress breaches of law and civil unrest; the military exist to provide defense against external threats. Isabel's decree, besides violating that principle, in a way equalized internal violent dissidence (which it was) with a threat to the state (which it definitely wasn't).

Isabel Perón lives in Madrid, Spain, since she chose to exile there. Two different judges are investigating her, on a forced disappearance case that took place before the coup and in connection with the Triple A. One of the judges has required that she be extradited to Argentina. As an interesting (if pathetic and depressing) display of Argentine political culture, signs with the inscription NO JODAN CON PERÓN ("DON'T MESS WITH PERÓN") have appeared in Buenos Aires; they're attributed to a certain Peronist labour union, whose leaders are offended by the idea that anything related to their unofficial saint patron, Juan Domingo Perón, could be tainted by association (or proof of involvment) with the extremists of the beginning of the Dirty War.

Quite tellingly, the national government, led by a leftist-populist Peronist who has consciously rejected the liturgy of Peronism (big posters with the faces of Perón and Evita, constant quotations of Perón's sayings, untuous expressions of loyalty to Perón's mythical figure), has stayed almost silent on the matter. This is an executive branch that has an opinion about everything, even if it means notoriously intruding in the turf of other branches of government, but it's understandable. With the re-opening of old, unhealed wounds of Argentine history, Kirchner's administration has also re-kindled political debate inside its own party; better wait and see what that can of worms holds.


PS: An interesting article by Héctor Olivera in La Nación, 2 Feb 2007: En los años de plomo, no hubo dos demonios ni santos inocentes. I'm not sure what to make of it, but it's worth a read.