The discovery is the result of excavations carried out by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) in the Loma del Torito area, within the La Calera Military Natural Reserve. The skeletal remains, found disarticulated and fragmented, confirm the hypothesis held for decades by the survivors: at the beginning of 1979, the military carried out a large-scale “cleanup” to hide the evidence of the genocide before the imminent visit of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
Using heavy machinery from the 141st Engineer Battalion, the repressors removed the mass graves, compacted and moved the bodies to unknown locations, trying to erase all traces of the horror. However, science and the unwavering struggle of the relatives and the Human Rights movement achieved the impossible: finding the fragments that remained and beginning to give them an identity.
“This is an achievement of the struggle of the relatives and survivors of the genocide,” they say from the human rights movement. For the families it is an achievement to know what the fate of their loved one was, but it is also a victory to remove them from the graves dug by the genocidaires, who continue with their pact of silence.
During these hours, the court is working on notifying family members. Only when they are informed and authorize the publication of the names will a press conference be called. Meanwhile, the EAAF asks the families who provided blood samples to update their contact information, since there are still hundreds of remains to be identified in the 14,000 hectares of the property.
La Perla: a clandestine center of 14,000 hectares
La Perla operated between 1975 and 1978 under the orbit of the Third Corps of the Army, commanded by the genocidal Luciano Benjamín Menéndez. More than 5 thousand people passed through his cells: workers, students, popular activists. The testimonies of the survivors, collected in the trials against humanity, describe the macabre ritual of the “transfers”: the prisoners were blindfolded, gagged, and loaded into Mercedes-Benz trucks.
Trips of just 20 or 30 minutes that ended in shootings within the military garrison itself. Lieutenant Colonel Guillermo Enrique Bruno Laborda, in a document presented in 2004, confessed to having participated in these shootings – including that of a woman who had just given birth – and detailed the 1979 body removal operation, stating that the remains were “compacted” and thrown into salt flats in La Rioja.
Memory, truth and justice
This discovery not only brings truth and a bit of justice for twelve families. It also opens a light of hope for all the people who still continue to fight to know the truth. 50 years after the coup, the slogans “Appear alive now” and “Let them say where they are” remain.
The new generations, the grandchildren of the disappeared, together with the human rights movement, take up the baton of this historic struggle. The identification of these 12 comrades shows that, despite the time that has passed and the attempts of the genocidaires to erase the evidence, the fight for Memory, Truth and Justice is still valid.
We demand the total opening of the dictatorship’s archives. It is necessary that the State and the Armed Forces break the pact of silence and provide the information that will allow us to continue finding the 30,000 missing people and to recover the identity of the babies born in captivity.
And there are 30,000!
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
