Justice Out of Argentina’s Dark Past: Dictatorship Era Torturers Sentenced

Wednesday, 09 November 2011 22:45 Marie Trigona

Listening while verdict is announced at court case on abuse at EMSA. All photos: Marie Trigona

A federal court in Argentina recently sentenced 12 former military officers to life in prison for crimes against humanity carried out at the ESMA Navy Mechanics School, a former navy school and one of Latin America’s most notorious torture-centers. More than 30,000 people were secretly imprisoned and executed during Argentina’s bloody dictatorship from 1976-1983.

Due to the magnitude of the crimes and system of terror implemented at EMSA, the school has been described at Argentina’s Auschwitz. More than 5,000 people were disappeared at the ESMA, the country’s largest clandestine detention center in operation during the 1973-1983 dictatorship. Many of the victims were drugged and dropped into the sea from military planes.

Survivor Enrique Fukman describes the ESMA as a nexus of terror, “I was held kidnapped at the ESMA for 18 months; for 6 months I was hooded and tied up,” he told Toward Freedom. “The remaining time the officers used me for slave labor, they made us work or they would kill us.”

The Burden of Surviving

Outside of the courthouse on October 26, the day of the sentencing, hundreds celebrated as they watched the verdict being broadcasted on a large screen TV. Relatives, survivors and activists cried and screamed “assassin!” as the perpetrators heard their sentence. Many had mixed emotions about the verdict, especially torture survivors who have carried the burden of surviving and living without justice for more than 30 years.

“Today there’s mixed feelings, on one side there’s the celebration after struggling for so many years; next month marks 33 years ago since I was kidnapped. [It is important] that we could at least reach this point,” said Fukman. However, he lamented that so few perpetrators were sentenced for the murder of thousands of victims who perished inside the ESMA. “I feel rage that only two repressors are today on trial in connection with my kidnapping – as if only 2 individuals could have carried out all the crimes.” The trial investigated the disappearance of 86 individuals from the clandestine detention.

For many victims of this repression, the trial represented over 30 years of survival and providing testimony so that the perpetrators of the abuses would be put on trial. “I felt emotion that is still with me, because in some way the trial was a way for us to fulfill the mandate that they had given us: which was to get out and to denounce the crimes,” Lila Pastoriza, an ESMA survivor told the Argentine daily, Pagina 12. “As a survivor I have the satisfaction of fulfilling the mandate of those disappeared, the commitment of a generation that wanted to transform the country. The disappeared were those who the repressors tried to erase from history and our memory.” Survivors and lawyers have repeatedly faced threats and carried the burden of giving testimony.

Nexus of Terror

Sign with portraits of the disappeared outside EMSA gates

Fukman described the ESMA as a nexus of terror. “The ESMA was a school to train cadets, thousands of officials operated at the ESMA,” he said. The front of the ESMA faces out into a major avenue in Buenos Aires. Commando groups transported illegally and clandestinely detained prisoners in green Ford Falcons, entering the ESMA’s front gates in plain view of the public. Blindfolded prisoners were unloaded from the cars in broad daylight.

“I think this was a factor for the security forces of the Marines to successfully turn the ESMA into a machine to terrorize society, which is why the fight against impunity for the crimes at the ESMA has had an emblematic place,” said Pastoriza.

Hundreds of officers served at the ESMA Navy Mechanics School. While prisoners were tortured in the basement, insulated with egg cartons to drown out the cries of pain, officers socialized, ate and slept in the floors above. Victims were also held in the top floor, which resembled an attic. There, prisoners were tied up, hooded, and periodically moved for bathroom breaks or torture sessions. Inside the ESMA, the military set up a maternity ward for female prisoners who were held captive while pregnant. It is estimated that 200 babies were born at the ESMA’s maternity ward and taken from their mothers. The former military school was closed down in 2005 and converted into a museum documenting the crimes during the dictatorship, including the kidnapping of children born while their mothers were held captive.

Thirty years on, the former officers who now face charges unrepentantly defend their crimes and refuse to provide information that may lead to the true identity and location of the children, now in their 30s, who were kidnapped by appropriators with connections to the military. When Hector Febres, a former coast guard officer who faced trial for abuses carried out at the ESMA showed signs that he may betray the pact of silence, he was found dead in his jail cell from cyanide poisoning. His death has been investigated and Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado has ruled that Febres was killed to keep him silent. The secrets from the military junta and the fate of newborn babies stolen from prisoners went to the tomb with Febres.

In the landmark trial investigating the crimes committed at the ESMA Navy Mechanics School, 12 former navy officers were convicted of kidnapping, torturing and killing leftist dissidents. The disappearance of Susana Engarola’s husband was one of the cases investigated in the trial. Engarola’s husband, Juan Carlos Ansorena was 28 when he was disappeared for his labor organizing activity at a Nestle plant in Buenos Aires. Engarola explained, “With our struggle we were able to take away the impunity. The officers being sentenced today enjoyed 30 years of impunity. The state had to change the laws that blocked justice for the crimes committed during the dictatorship. Today we are seeing justice.”

“However, only 300 officers are facing charges for abuses during the dictatorship, when that is the number of clandestine detention centers. Thousands participated in the crimes. Only the repressors who were seen by the small number who survived the concentration camps have been put on trial,” said Engarola. Many of the officers sentenced in the ESMA trial were indicted in the 1980s, but laws passed in the 1990s protected former security personnel from charges. Even with judicial roadblocks, human rights groups continued to push for investigations into the disappearance of tens of thousands. In 2005, Argentina’s Supreme Court overturned amnesty for the military.

Blonde Angel of Death

Alfredo Astiz, a lieutenant who served at the torture center was among those sentenced to life in prison. Astiz, also known as the blonde angel of death is most notorious for infiltrating the human rights group Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and coordinating the disappearance of two of the founding mothers.

People listen to verdict holding placards of Rodolfo Walsh's portrait

As Astiz was sentenced to life in prison he gave cameras a defiant smile and pinned a patriotic colored ribbon to his suit. During the trial, Astiz and his fellow defendants showed no remorse, and on the contrary sent threatening messages to survivors and human rights advocates in the courtroom audience. On the opening day of the trial, Astiz in a tattered sweater listened to the opening allegations, which included over 80 accusations of forced disappearances, torture and rape. Under the scrutiny of media outlets, Astiz sat with a smile and held a book titled Return to Kill (Volver a Matar) by Juan Bautista Yofre, ex-chief of the nation's State Intelligence Agency.

The long standing impunity led many former military to believe that they would never be tried for their crimes. During the 1990s, military officials who had tortured and assassinated so called dissidents during the junta were often spotted at night clubs, vacation spots and high profile restaurants. In his final remarks to the court days before the landmark sentence Alfredo Astiz accused victims and their families of being paid to give testimony and said, “They don’t forgive us for having successfully fought subversion.”

Latin America’s Dark Past

Astiz and those sentenced were involved in the killing of political journalist Rodolfo Walsh. On March 23, 1977 on the first anniversary of the coup, Walsh published the Open Letter From a Writer To the Military Junta, where he broke the censorship and reported on the abuses that occurred at the time. Walsh’s letter would become one of the most famous writings about the crimes committed during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. While he delivered the letter distributing to various mailboxes in the capital, he was gunned down by a commando group. He was later taken to the ESMA Navy Mechanics School and his final whereabouts remain a mystery. His letter continues to be read throughout the world as attestation of a writer “committed to give testimony in difficult times.” Walsh also highlighted in his letter that the abuses carried out by the junta were part of a regional plan to wipe out opposition to an economic model that created disparity, unemployment and poverty.

Leonel Curutchague, one of the human rights lawyers working on the ESMA trial, said that Argentina has set legal precedent by defining the crimes committed during the military junta as systematic genocide and crimes against humanity. “The ESMA is one of the first mega-trials held,” Curutchague said. “Argentina should be proud of these trials, because they are an example of international legal precedent. We have set an example by trying repressors when the majority of them are still alive. Argentina is one of the few countries which have recognized the forced disappearance of individuals as a crime against humanity.”

Courts have just begun to scratch the surface of the magnitude of the genocide that took place with U.S. support in Latin America. However, Argentina has set an example for a region which shared dictatorial rule similar to that of Argentina.

On the same day of the ESMA verdict, Uruguay revoked amnesty for military officials who committed human rights atrocities during the nation’s 1973-1985 dictatorship. While justice has been slow for victims in the region, through the painstaking work of human rights activists, justice is now possible. Trials like the one dealing with ESMA have helped piece together a dark past which sends the reminder that no military can take honor in the torture, rape and murder of thousands. The trial also helps society overcome the fear of speaking out against a systematic genocide that aided in the spread of neoliberalism.

Marie Trigona is an independent journalist based in Argentina. She can be reached through her blog: www.mujereslibres.blogspot.co
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Argentina probes role of US financial institutions in dirty war

Tens of thousands will march in Argentina to mark what they now call the National Day of Memory. Today marks 35 years since Argentina’s military launched a coup that overthrew Isabel Peron, and escalated that country’s “Dirty War.” Ongoing human rights trials have led to the arrest of over 200 former military officers for participation in torture, murder and the forced disappearance of up to 30,000 in the seven years following the coup. Now, these investigations are taking a different turn: human rights advocates are probing the role of US financial institutions in funding Argentina’s military dictatorship. FSRN’s Marie Trigona reports.

Listen to radio story: FSRN.ORG

Argentina’s Mothers of Plaza de Mayo: A living legacy of hope and human rights

Marie Trigona

One of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo on the recent 34th anniversary of Argentina's 1976 military coup. She holds images of her son and daughter-in-law who became part of 'the disappeared' on July 29, 1976. Image: Marie Trigona/WNN

Buenos Aires, Argentina: Buenos Aires city center, known as Plaza de Mayo, has been a site of protest for decades. It is here that the Mothers of Argentina’s ‘disappeared,’ begin their weekly march in the capital plaza every Thursday afternoon.

Known as the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, they have passed down a legacy in defending human rights as they walk steadily together around the plaza to show the world that they still have not forgotten what happened to their loved ones during what has been called, ‘Argentina’s Dirty War.’

The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo have been integral to recent investigations and discoveries in what have been called ‘crimes against humanity’ in the more than 30,000 estimated missing sons and daughters who became part of ‘the disappeared’ during the reign of Argentina’s military juntas from 1975 to 1983.

“I keep on looking for my children and everybody else’s children, because to me your daughter is my daughter, she’s a little bit mine. My children are a little bit yours,” said Carmen Robles de Zurita, a woman who is the Mother of two missing children: Her son, Nestro Juan Agustín Zurita, abducted at the age of 25, August 1, 1975; and Carmen’s daughter, María Rosa Zurita, abducted at the age of 21, November 1, 1975.

Now after three decades, justice is finally possible in criminal courts. Thanks to the investigations carried out by victims’ families and human rights activists, Argentina’s government is now revisiting its dark past with landmark Supreme Court human rights tribunals, following the 2003 removal of amnesty laws that protected members of the military government from prosecution of human rights abuses.

The Motor of Society

“The disappearance of people created a paralysis in society,” says Dr. Rodolfo Mattarollo, international law and human rights expert.

“Today we still don’t have the complete truth or information as to what happened to our children.”
- Marta Ocampo de Vazquez,
President of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo – Founding Line

On April 30, 1977, fourteen mothers gathered in the large plaza in front of the government building. The dictatorship prohibited people from gathering in public places, so they began walking around the pyramid in the center of the plaza. As more women joined the rounds, having visited police stations, prisons, judicial offices and churches, but finding no answers, the Mothers began to identify themselves by wearing white head scarves to symbolize the diapers of their lost and ‘disappeared’ children.

“Today we still don’t have the complete truth or information as to what happened to our children,” says Marta Ocampo de Vazquez, president of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo – Founding Line. “Who gave the order? Who executed them? What was our children’s final destiny?” she asks.

Nothing could stop the Mothers protest, not even physical attacks or endless threats. In 1977, three of the founding Mothers and two French nuns, who supported the efforts of the Mothers, also became part of ‘the disappeared.’

“It surprises me when I see what I am today. Before I was a shy cry-baby. I had no political consciousness. I didn’t have any kind of consciousness. All that interested me was that my children were well. I was one of those mothers who went everywhere with their children. If they organized dances at the school to collect money, I was the one who was selling tickets. I was involved in everything my children did. You only become conscious when you lose something. When the Mothers first met we used to cry a lot and then we began to shout and demand, and nothing mattered anymore, except that we should find out children. Now I fight, I shout, I push if I have to, I kick but I still wonder to myself how I could have gone into those military buildings with all those guns pointed at my head,” said Mother, Margareta de Oro in an interview with author, Josephine Fisher, for the book, ‘Mothers of the Disappeared.’

The Pain of the Past

Alfredo Ignacio Astiz, a 22 year old Argentine Naval lieutenant and intelligence officer, infiltrated the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo posing as ‘Gustavo Niño,’ a brother of one of the disappeared. Astiz’s infiltration would haunt the Mothers and the nation for decades to come. The Mothers say today they still remember young “Gustavo,” who attended meetings of family members and marched with them.

“I keep on looking for my children and everybody else’s children.”
- Mother of Plaza de Mayo, Carmen Robles de Zurita

On December 8, 1977, the Mothers – Esther Ballestrino de Careaga and Maria Eugenia Ponce de Bianco – were forcefully taken, along with eight others, by military officials as they were attending a meeting at the Santa Cruz Church in Buenos Aires. Azucena Villaflor, another founding Mother, was also kidnapped outside her home just days later.

Two days later, on December 10, eight hundred and thirty-four Mothers signatures were printed on an almost full page petition advertisement in “La Nacion,” Argentina’s daily newspaper. The ad pleaded for justice asking Argentine officials to open up and investigate cases of their missing children.

Two weeks following the secret raid on the Santa Cruz Church, only one week after the December 15 afternoon march of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, five dead female bodies washed up on the shore of the Río de la Plata (the River Plate). The River Plate is a wide expansive river which borders both Argentina and Uruguay as it opens to the Atlantic Ocean.

“The Mothers had planned a major turnout, at their usual Thursday afternoon demonstration on Dec 15, but the abduction of members of the Mother’s group had a chilling effect on attendance,” said the American Embassy in Buenos Aires in a 1977 (then classified) report to the U.S. State Department. “An additional sheet of signatures for that petition, as well as $250 of funds collected to pay for the advertisement were taken during the abduction,” outlined the Embassy.

On the 30th anniversary (December 8, 2007) of the disappearance of the mothers from the Santa Cruz Church, Mother of Plaza de Mayo, Elia Espen, kneels at a memorial stone dedicated to the Mothers who lost their life. Image: Marie Trigona/WNN

In the early 1990s, on the edge of new breakthroughs in forensic science, it finally became possible to recover and identify DNA from skeletal remains. Genetic testing quickly became a critical tool in human rights investigations worldwide.

In 2005, through detailed forensic investigations of skeletal remains, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), was able to use DNA and forensic evidence to identify four of the washed-up bodies. It was decided without any doubt. The bodies belonged to three of the founding Mothers – Azucena Villaflor, Maria Eugenia Ponce and Esther Careaga, along with the French nun, Léonie Duquet.

“Everywhere we work we have seen the incredible pain and paralysis that a disappearance produces for a family.”
- Mercedes Doretti,
co-founder of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF)

“The remains of the four women are thought to have been thrown into the ocean from Air Force planes. The bodies washed out on the shore in 1977 and were buried as “N.N.” (unknowns) in the General Lavalle municipal cemetery, province of Buenos Aires,” a 2006 Annual EAAF Report explained. “EAAF exhumed the four women from General Lavalle cemetery and identified them based on anthropological and genetic analysis.”

“Everywhere we work we have seen the incredible pain and paralysis that a disappearance produces for a family. Recovering the remains is not enough to erase the pain of the past but it is a huge part of healing and a crucial form of reparations. Families need it. In fact, we think that too often the recovery and identification of remains is not viewed enough as an integral part of the reparations process,” said Mercedes Doretti, co-founder of EAAF.

Twenty-eight years after the founding Mothers themselves ‘disappeared,’ on December 8, 2005, the remains of Azucena Villaflor, Maria Ponce de Bianco and Esther Ballestrino de Careaga were cremated and their ashes buried in honor at Buenos Aires, Plaza de Mayo.

Breaking Walls of Impunity

Since Argentina’s seven year bloody military dictatorship, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo have endlessly searched for truth, transparency and accountability. Today the Mothers have succeeded to break the walls of impunity as a wide international symbol of non-violent action.

The 1986, Argentina Full Stop law and the 1987 Due Obedience law was “used to obstruct the investigation of thousands of cases of forced disappearance, torture and extrajudicial execution committed between 1976 and 1983 when the military governments were in power,” said the International Commission of Jurists and Amnesty International in a 2003 Legal Memorandum. These laws were a deep blow to the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, who resisted the government’s attempt to use amnesty laws to pardon military actions and human rights abuses.

“As the youth today take up our banner, the 30,000 ‘disappeared’ will never be ‘disappeared.’ They will be present.”
- 2010 statement by the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo

Today, alternating between years of amnesty and arrest, Alfredo Ignacio Astiz is facing a stepped up Supreme Court battle. He is facing investigation along with seventeen other officers and officials. In addition to individual crimes, the Court is also investigating charges of ‘crimes against humanity’ committed between 1976 – 1983 at the ESMA Navy Mechanics School in Buenos Aires.

Known as the largest and most notorious torture center in Argentina during the nation’s ‘dark years,’ the ESMA Navy Mechanics School has been linked to more than 5,000 people, who’s fate has brought them to become part of ‘the disappeared.’

(Now) “The military are having the trials that our children never had,” said Mother of Plaza de Mayo Truth Commissioner, Nora Cortinas. Nora’s son, Carlos Gustavo Cortiñas, was an economy student who became part of ‘the disappeared’ on April 15, 1977.

Because many of the mothers are now in their 80s, some worry that they will not live to see the former Argentine military machine held responsible for its crimes.

“What we want is for the trials to speed up a little bit and not be tried on a case by case basis; and that the government takes responsibility to help end the threats against witnesses, judges, and lawyers, so that we can really say that there’s justice in this country,” added Mother Cortinas.

“I was one of those mothers who went everywhere with their children. If they organized dances at the school to collect money, I was the one who was selling tickets. I was involved in everything my children did. You only become conscious when you lose something.”
- Mother of Plaza de Mayo, Margareta de Oro

Mother, Ocampo de Vazquez, now 81, has gone through decades of struggle and frustration. But she knows her long campaign to find the truth must continue. “I don’t see an end in sight,” she exclaimed.

“We resist because there are crimes unpunished and questions about the disappearances left unanswered,” says Ines Ragni, a Mother from the southern province of Neuquén. The Mother’s slogan, “Never Again,” was adopted by the Mothers with the hope that Argentina and other countries in the region, including Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, who have also suffered from military dictatorship, would never repeat their own dark chapters in history.

“Our children wanted to live, but their lives were taken away. The youth in the street protesting today are part of the memory of our children,” echo the Mothers.

“As the youth today take up our banner, the 30,000 ‘disappeared’ will never be ‘disappeared.’ They will (always) be present.”
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This historic video shows the desperation of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in the early days of their campaign in the 1970s. By reaching journalists around the world, the actions and voice of the Mothers began to bring light to the the terrible plight of the families of ‘the disappeared’ in Argentina.
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Truth Commissioner Nora Morales de Cortinas, co-founder of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, speaks of our world humanity and truth at the National Truth Commission for the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign in Cleveland, Ohio. July 15, 2006.
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For more information on this topic go to:

• “Building Bridges of Memory: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Cultural Politics of Maternal Memories,” History and Anthropology, Vol. 15, No.2, Margaret E. Burchianti, June 2004
  
• “Silhouettes of the Disappeared: Memory, Justice and Human Rights in Post- Authoritarian Argentina,” Vincent Druliolle, Department of Government at the University of Essex with Denver University, June 2009
  
• “Unearthing the Truth: an Interview with Mercedes Doretti, co-founder of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF),” Veerle Opgenhaffen for the International Center for Transnational Justice, September 2007

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Investigative journalist, filmmaker and radio producer, Marie Trigona, has focused on many human rights and social justice stories covering Argentina. Her work has appeared in The Buenos Aires Herald, Canadian Dimension, Dollars and Sense and many other publications. She is also a reporter for Free Speech Radio News, a daily syndicated radio news program, broadcast from the U.S.

Grassroots Unionism Under Attack in Argentina: Killing of Activist Sparks Protests

Toward Freedom
Wednesday, 27 October 2010

Wherever union representation is democratic, combative or revolutionary, we must defend it. Wherever rank and file are attacked by the union bureaucracy we must defend them. Union bureaucracy is the use of union posts with the objective of curtailing unionist activity. Union bureaucracy seeks to squash any insubordination, even the most just of strikes.

– Augustin Tosco, general secretary of Luz y Fuerza, combative labor organizer who fought for democratic union practices. He died in hiding, for fear he would be killed, after the Luz y Fuerza labor union was abolished in 1974.

The killing of a 23-year old labor activist has sparked massive protests in Argentina. Argentina’s rich labor history has been plagued with violent episodes: massacres against striking workers at the turn of the 20th century, the systematic disappearance of 30,000 activists under the dictatorship, the 38 deaths during Argentina’s 2001 popular rebellion, the 2002 police shooting of two unemployed activists Maximiliano Kosteki and Dario Santillan, and the death caused by a tear gas canister to the head of public school teacher Carlos Fuentealba in 2004. Mariano Ferreyra, an activist and student who was recently killed, sends an ominous reminder of the legacy of union bureaucracy and violence against workers.

Mariano Ferreyra was shot dead on October 20 in Argentina in a union dispute along Buenos Aires train lines. He was marching in solidarity with subcontracted train workers fired as part of cutbacks. Unionists from the main railway workers union broke up the protest against low wages and firings of subcontracted employees. As the protestors were ending the action, a group of unionists and other men began throwing rocks and running after the protestors. Television cameras showed a group of 40 men chasing after the protestors.

“The thugs from the green slate, guarded by the provincial police, were waiting for us along the train lines since early in the morning,” says Ariel Pintos, a subcontracted train employee shot in the leg at the protest. He told Pagina/12, “They chased us, yelling you’re going to pay for this, we’re going to kill you.”

Then, according to witnesses, as police stood by at least one man opened fired. Marcelo Adrian, a friend of the victim, says the corrupt union structure favors business interests. “The state is responsible, the bureaucratic unions… And the police that acted as accomplices. A group of 40 thugs from the Train Transport Union, Green list attacked us. It was a planned attack and there have been incidents of attacks against the subcontracted employees.” Three men have been arrested in connection to the shooting.

Mariano Ferreyra

The death of Mariano Ferreyra has opened wounds of the pain and preventable death which was the result of corrupt union practices. Ferreyra’s commitment as an activist was celebrated at the massive march to repudiate his death. More than 25,000 protestors came out to repudiate the death of Ferreyra, demand an end to undemocratic union practices and demand justice for the death of the activist.

The victim was a member of Argentina’s Workers Party. He began his activist activity at the age of 14 in a neighborhood branch of the Trotskyist organization shortly after the popular rebellion of 2001. The young Ferreyra participated in the 2002 road blockade in the suburb of Avellaneda where two activists lost their lives. Police shot members of the movement of unemployed workers Maximiliano Kosteki and Dario Santillan inside the Avellenada train station. This event would mark the life of Ferreyra in his commitment to activism and later tie him to the fate of the two victims. Eight years later, Ferryra was killed only a few blocks away from where Kosteki and Santillan died.

A cameraman present at the events said that after Mariano was shot he heard a person cheer: “one less lefty.” No one has been arrested in connection with the killing.

Labor practices

The workers protesting along the train lines wanted to draw attention to a common labor practice called outsourcing. The firing of 140 workers sparked the protest on October 20. The temporary workers demanding that laid-off workers get permanent employment with the Roca Railroad.

Subcontracting, synonymous with neoliberal capitalism, has become a common practice in public as well as private companies in Argentina. Workers, are hired temporarily by outsource companies that provide service along the train lines. “Subcontracted workers are paid half as much as formal workers. They do not have the right to unionize or to make demands,” says Ruben Sobrero, president of the body of delegates from the Sarmiento train line.

Argentina’s train system was dismantled during the mass privatization of public services in the 1990’s. “Menem with the participation of the current union leadership privatized the train system and more than 90,000 workers were laid off,” explains Sobrero. Today concessionaries subsidized by the state run the train system which provides services for millions of passengers who ride from the surrounding suburbs to the nation’s capital. Dozens of fatal accidents occur each year as a result of passengers falling off of overcrowded trains.

“They make us to three times the amount of work as formal employees. Many young workers have permanently injured their lower backs and when they come back from medical leave they are fired. They don’t provide us with work boots or protective uniforms. They don’t even provide us with water when we are working along the train tracks,” said Ariel Pintos.

The Train Workers Union benefits from this system because they get a percentage of ticket sales and gain from supporting business interests. At least 600 workers have been fired by the private company that is government subsidized to run the train lines that lead from the capital to the suburbs. The “violet list,” as the opposition group in the Train Workers Union is called, have organized a campaign for the formal contracting of workers and an end to subcontracting along the train lines. “The leadership of the UF doesn’t want workers to block the railways because they’ll lose part of ticket sales. They also don’t want to see salary increases for workers because that would cut into the union funds from union dues,” says Alfredo Esteban de Lucas who is a metallurgical worker that constructs trains.

Union bureaucracy

“This incident marks a rise in union violence on part of what is called union bureaucracy, which use these tactics to stop workers from organizing independently,” says Sobrero as an elected representative of an opposition slate has been the target of union violence. These incidents of violence form part of the long tradition of the union structure in Argentina, where trade unionists use tactics to pressure workers not to vote for opposition slates.

In the past year alone, representatives from the growing movement of grassroots labor organizing have been victim to threats and physical attacks. Subway workers have organized an independent union since 2006. They have held a number of protests to demand that the Labor Ministry grant legal recognition of a democratically voted independent union, breaking from the UTA transport union. The ex-wife and children of Nestor Segovia, an elected subway union representative, were attacked by police and affiliates of the UTA transport union in their home during an alleged eviction notice in November, 2009. “Union bureaucracy is strong right now because the nation’s main union CGT and the government support the apparatus. When there’s a growing movement of workers that the apparatus can’t control, the bureaucracy reacts,” said Segovia, at the national day of protest.

The International Labor Rights Forum listed the Kraft Corporation in Argentina as one of the worst companies for the right to association. The Food and Beverage Union did not support the Kraft workers’ demands or intervene when 140 workers were fired from the plant, many of whom were elected representatives from an opposition slate. Last year casino workers have also had to fight violent attacks from the formal unions in their union organizing efforts to create an independent union organization.

The nation’s main train union (UF) had threatened to stop workers from protesting on October 20. Pablo Diaz, a representative from the UF who is now under arrest for the killing of Ferreyra, publicly stated on the day of the protest “We are not going to allow the train lines to be blockaded.” In September, the subcontracted train workers organized a press conference in the Constitution train station to report the firing of 140 workers. A group from the UF’s Green slate from interrupted the press conference, shouting and pushing subcontracted workers while the police watched.

Human rights groups, journalists and academics have called for reflections and reforms in union representation. “The events demand a reflection about the significance of the struggle to democratize union representation, which forms part of a transition from the model of neoliberal deregulation of worker protection toward protection for workers,” said the Center for Social and Legal studies in a public statement about the killing of Ferreyra.

Grassroots labor organizing

At the march the day after Ferreyra’s death, dozens of groups from opposition slates marched in their work uniforms. “Most of us here are from opposition slates, we are a large movement that is proposing a new way of organizing workers, where workers have participation in assemblies,” says Segovia. This movement, called grassroots unionism, has challenged the verticality and corruption of the formal structures which groups say tries to curtail workers’ protests. Segovia adds that the government and industrial leaders worry that workers may demand better salaries and working conditions as the Argentine economy has boomed since 2003. “Union democracy implies that rank and file workers have a voice to debate. A union delegate should represent the workers, as a union delegate I was voted to reflect what rank and file workers propose.”

The death of Mariano Ferreyra reflects Peronisms’s (of the ex-president Juan Peron) tradition of union bureaucracy and attacks against workers which has reared its ugly head, despite a government that has made progressive measures. However, the diversity of opposition slates and delegates assembly fighting for democratic union representation reflects a growing grassroots labor movement, which continues to grow despite corrupt and violence practices on the part of official union leadership.

Marie Trigona is a writer, radio producer and translator based in Argentina. She can be reached through her blog, www.mujereslibres.blogspot.com

Supporters rally for Mapuche in Argentina on day that marks indigenous rights

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Today marks the International Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People — a day that also marks the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. Activists and indigenous representatives held festivals throughout Latin America to celebrate aboriginal cultures. In Argentina, people marched in support of prisoners who are Mapuche — the native people of the Patagonia region — many of whom have been displaced and some who’ve been imprisoned.

Marie Trigona has more from Buenos Aires.

Long Standing Impunity Challenges Argentina: 4 Years Without Julio Lopez

Written by Marie Trigona

Monday, 27 September 2010 Upside Down World

Julio Lopez, Luciano Arruga, Silvia Suppo – three names recently listed the doleful roll call of Argentina’s victims of state repression, a legacy left over from the bloody 1976-1983 military dictatorship. These three names have left painful reminders of the paradigm of disappearances and how the social stigma of the crimes committed during the dictatorship has scarred Argentina and other nations which survived brutal military dictatorships.

Argentina recently commemorated the four year anniversary of the disappearance of Julio Lopez, to demand that the torture survivor and human rights activist be found alive. After four years of searching, marches, and impunity, the cries for justice and punishment seem to have found no response from an indifferent government which claims to defend human rights. Activists also demanded information on the whereabouts of Luciano Arruga, a 16-year-old who was forcefully disappeared in January, 2009 and investigation into the 2010 murder of Silvia Suppo, a human rights activist and torture survivor testifying in a landmark human rights trial.

4 years without Julio Lopez

Julio Lopez has been titled as the man disappeared twice. He last went missing four years ago on September 18, 2006 in his hometown of La Plata. He was disappeared on the day the that his perpetrator and former police chief Miguel Etchecolatz was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity and genocide. Julio Lopez was absent from the courtroom, to witness the historic moment in the landmark trial having been abducted hours earlier.

Lopez was a key witness in the 2006 human rights trial in which Etchecolatz was found guilty of kidnapping, torture and murder of activists during the military dictatorship. Etchecolatz coordinated kidnappings and torture sessions in a network of clandestine detention centers in La Plata, 30 miles from Buenos Aires. In one of these torture centers, Lopez first met Etchecolatz during his detention from 1976-1979.

Julio Lopez is exactly where the repressors want him, in the abyss of impunity that the military have enjoyed for the past 34 years. Julio Lopez was never able to listen to the sentence of his repressors. He was kidnapped the day before his perpetrator Miguel Etchecolatz was sentenced to life in prison and Lopez became another disappeared.

“The forced disappearance of Lopez is called impunity,” wrote the human rights group HIJOS in a press release on the fourth anniversary of Lopez’s disappearance. Impunity for human rights abuses has been Argentina’s dark legacy. Since 1999, when the human rights trials were closed due to amnesty laws, the human rights group HIJOS went out into the streets and into former military officers’ neighborhoods to let the community know that they were living next to an individual who carried out abuses such as kidnapping, rape, torture and forced disappearances. On the fourth anniversary of Lopez’s disappearance HIJOS reminded the government of the results of letting the military go about their normal lives for more than a decade following the passage of amnesty protecting the military from criminal prosecution. “It is the consequence of nasty leftovers from the dictatorship which endured in democracy, added to the government’s lack of response to the seriousness of what occurred.”

Result of impunity

Now justice is possible in criminal courts, following the 2003 abolishment of amnesty laws that protected members of the military government from prosecution of human rights abuses. Many members under arrest were released in the 80’s when the amnesty law was passed. This amnesty allowed former armed forces members to maintain power and hold powerful positions such as judges and executives at private security firms. Etchecolatz was one such repressor who was put on trial and sentenced in the 80´s for abuses, specifically for 91 cases of torture, but later released. The former police chief conspired with local policemen to form right-wing, nationalist groups. “It was foreseeable that the repressors would not stand still when their time came to sit on the court room bench and answer to the courts and the Argentine people,” said the group HIJOS.

According to the human rights group CELS, more than 1,500 former members of the armed and security forces are facing charges of human rights abuses during the dictatorship. However, only 81 people have received sentences.

Meanwhile, the investigation into the disappearance of Julio Lopez has reached a deadlock. The government waited 19 months to consider Julio Lopez a case of forced disappearance. Authorities have also delayed investigation into communication to and from the Marcos Paz jail, where more than 40 repressors are currently under arrest and held under the same roof with the liberty to communicate with one another.

“It’s a combination of lack of response, complicity and covering up,” said Adriana Calvo at the march for Julio Lopez. No one has been investigated much less detained in the police investigation of the disappearance of Julio Lopez.

Witness Safety

“Lopez reminds us that the repressive apparatus has not been dismantled and the trials progress but witnesses and survivors testifying are in danger,” said Adriana Meyer, a journalist for the national newspaper Página/12. However, the government and the media have left the issue of witness safety from public spotlight.

The recent murder of Silvia Suppo, a key witness in a human rights trial on crimes committed during the Argentine dictatorship, has sparked fears for the safety of witnesses who testify publicly in the cases. Suppo, a torture survivor, was stabbed to death on March 29 at her crafts shop in the province of Santa Fe in an alleged robbery. In 2009, Suppo testified in a human rights trial against a former judge for his role in abuses during the dictatorship. Human Rights groups suspect that Suppo was killed to send a message to those still willing to testify as human rights trials progress.

For survivors there is a way to guarantee witnesses safety, for the trials to progress and for all of the repressors. “witness protection program is a mess. Witnesses in a human rights trial in La Plata have received isolated threats.,” said Carlos Zaidman, a torture survivor. “We believe that the only way to protect witnesses is for all of the repressors to be jailed. This has made is doubly important to testify. They haven’t stopped the struggle by disappearing 30,000 compañeros or by disappearing Lopez.”

Silence is impunity

For a democracy to flourish, impunity must end. While Argentina’s government has taken the lead in supporting efforts to try former military and police for rights abuses carried out during the junta years, justice has been slow. And the issue of Julio Lopez has entered an abyss of silence from the media and president.

Lopez’s family sent a letter to the president asking her to push for the investigation into the disappearance of Lopez so that the man who disappeared without a trace twice in his life doesn’t “become the first disappeared in democracy.”

This request has come too late as Argentina has a number of disappeared and thousands of victims of a state repressive apparatus still in tact. Julio Lopez, Miguel Bru and Luciano Arruga are just three of these disappeared in democracy. For democracy to avoid being disappeared, state repression must be abolished.

Julio Lopez presente!

Students rebel in Buenos Aires

Students in Buenos Aires take over schools to demand improvements to public education

Listen to radio story

In Argentina, a student rebellion has spread throughout the nation’s capital with high-schoolers occupying more than 30 public schools. On Thursday, tens of thousands of students marched in Buenos Aires to protest deteriorating public education in the South American country. FSRN’s Marie Trigona reports.