Javier Milei dismantles a key area that provides evidence in trials for the crimes of the Argentine dictatorship

The Argentine Ministry of Defense has made progress in the dismantling of a state area that provided fundamental evidence to clarify and judge crimes against humanity committed during the last military dictatorship (1976-1983). Since its creation in 2010, the area carried out a pioneering experience in which for the first time a group of civilian professionals accessed the archives of the Armed Forces for analysis. Its management could now be in charge of military institutions.

Made up of civilians and specialized professionals, the so-called Survey and Analysis Teams were created in 2010 based on the political decision to open the archives of the Armed Forces and access the documentation they produced during the dictatorship. On March 27, 10 of its 13 workers were fired by the Ministry of Defense headed by Luis Petri on which they depend, while the remaining ones were warned that the team would be “disarmed” and that task would no longer continue. Slimming down the Administration is one of the main promises with which Javier Milei won the elections. So far this year he has fired at least 24,000 of the 340,000 people that the State had hired.

“He has a Marxist ideological background that makes it advisable not to enter and/or remain in the public administration.” With this description, the Argentine military dictatorship defined the “Formula 4”, a group of intellectuals, journalists, musicians and artists who, according to the repressors, were at the highest level of danger and therefore their connection with the State was discouraged. Under this classification, the Argentine writers Julio Cortázar and Osvaldo Bayer were identified; the journalist Francisco,

Paco,

Urondo, murdered in 1976 at the hands of a gang; the filmmaker Leonardo Favio and the musicians Mercedes Sosa, María Elena Walsh and Horacio Guarany, among many others.

This statement was reflected in the so-called “black lists” drawn up by the military during the dictatorship, which were found in 2013 by the Air Force and subsequently studied by the Survey and Analysis Teams of the Armed Forces archives. The discovery, known as the Cóndor Finding because it was found in the basement of the Cóndor Building, headquarters of the Aeronautics, allowed us to reconstruct the logic of censorship that was applied to great references of Argentine culture.

In a collection of 1,500 boxes, filing cabinets and folders, in addition to the “black lists”, the so-called “secret minutes” of the meetings that the successive Military Juntas held periodically between 1976 and 1983 were found. The discovery of the complete and original documentary allowed to know reports that gave doctrinal or ideological support to the Government plan, conceptual contributions of business organizations to the development of the dictatorship and records of the requests that reached the Board about men and women who disappeared daily.

During these years, the team surveyed more than 17,000 documents from the bureaucratic-administrative archives of these institutions such as files, historical books of the regiments, military justice proceedings, summaries and even claims by soldiers to obtain a promotion alleging their participation in different operations. repressive. Although the administrative archives do not speak for themselves about the crimes committed, even having been created for other purposes, they allowed us to prove facts, identify perpetrators and reconstruct the repressive operation of State terrorism, even with the difficulty implied by the clandestinity in which they are carried out. executed.

Based on its analysis and as a result of rigorous knowledge perfected over more than a decade, more than 170 reports were provided and served as evidentiary material in different trials against humanity. At the time of the layoffs, the team was working on approximately 30 legal requests that specifically requested their participation. “These works could not be carried out, nor partially delivered at the time of dismantling the area and that is why there will be judicial cases against humanity from all over the country that will not have the information they need for their development,” explained one of the laid-off workers in the area, who preferred to reserve his identity.

One of the most important contributions made by the civilian analysis team was within the framework of the “ESMA mega case”, which tried the crimes committed at the Navy Mechanics School, the largest clandestine detention center that operated during the dictatorship. . Nearly 5,000 men and women were detained-disappeared there, most of whom were thrown alive into the sea in what were called the death flights. The archival material provided was key in the trial of the pilots accused of participating in the last part of the repressive plan, of which there were no survivors who could provide their testimony as in other cases.

The documentary contribution from the military archive made it possible to reconstruct the mechanics with which the planes were mobilized and the chain of responsibilities involved in each operation. The inclusion of these works in the trials against humanity helped prove that the actions of the Armed Forces were not reduced to a set of isolated responsibilities – or “excesses” – nor to a confrontation as proposed with the “theory of two demons.”

Following the dismissals of the civil archivists, it is expected that the military agents themselves will respond to the requirements that come from the justice system, in a context in which the leadership of the Ministry of Defense (on which the Armed Forces depend) is currently largely run by retired military personnel. In this scenario, the team expressed its “deep concern” about the documentation that remained in its custody. “The dismantling of the area also implies that no one is left paying attention to what happens with that documentation,” they warned.

Since the return to democracy, 343 sentences were issued by the courts and 1,210 repressors were convicted of participation in crimes against humanity. However, given the magnitude of the illegal repression implemented in Argentina during the last dictatorship, many of those responsible still need to be identified and tried, the remains of the vast majority of the disappeared victims must be found, and the identity of almost 300 boys and girls who were appropriate. According to the latest survey by the Crimes Against Humanity Prosecutor's Office, at least 17 trials are ongoing in different jurisdictions and 62 cases have a request to go to trial.

“There is no sentence that was issued in these years that is not based on the documentary evidence that emerges from these files. The sentences explain very well the importance of the same and of personnel trained to know how to read the data,” maintains the plaintiff lawyer in trials against humanity Pablo Llonto. After learning of the dismissals, Llonto, along with Mariana Maurer, presented an action for protection to ensure the continuity of the experts' tasks and to protect the documentation. The lawyers warned that the spirit of the new Government of Javier Milei is to "hinder in every possible way the progress of the work of decades of Memory, Truth and Justice and the process of trial and punishment of the guilty."

Meanwhile, representative Victoria Montenegro, who chairs the Human Rights Commission of the Buenos Aires Legislature, made a presentation before the UN and requested the intervention of the special rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice and reparation of the multilateral organization, Fabián. Salvioli. For the legislator, who was appropriated days after birth and later returned by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the measures adopted directly impact "the right of the victims, their families and society in general to know the truth about what happened” and affects “the construction of collective memory.”

Since the return to democracy in 1983, it was the victims of state terrorism, their families and human rights organizations who promoted the demand for the recovery of the archives that would allow the reconstruction of the extermination plan devised by the dictatorial government. In 1983, before the dictatorship ended, de facto president Reynaldo Bignone – who was convicted of crimes against humanity – issued a decree ordering the destruction of the intelligence files of every military force in Argentina. Only a few copies of this documentation, which represented the heart of the repressive information, were recovered. However, during these years there were important experiences of declassification of archives, such as that of the Intelligence Directorate of the Police of the Province of Buenos Aires (DIPPBA), recognized by UNESCO and declared a World Heritage Site in 2008, or the archives declassified intelligence from the United States.

The recovered collection also includes the National Memory Archive, dependent on the Secretariat of Human Rights, where around 30 workers were fired last month and there are still no authorities designated for the management of this archival institution. “The archive is preserved thanks to the workers, because this management is not interested in this organization nor in memory,” said Octavio “Pilo” Rampoldi, archive worker and delegate of the Association of State Workers (ATE).

Created in 2003, the National Memory Archive preserves valuable documentation that “society needs to protect memory, to make it known so that the events that have occurred in this country are not repeated again and that we do not have state terrorism again. once,” Rampoldi describes. Its vast catalog - which ranges from the complaints compiled by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Conadep) and the Trial of the Juntas to cassettes that allow a son to recover the voice of his disappeared parents - has been key as evidence in the trials and as a basis for the management of reparation policies for victims of State terrorism, in addition to being a source of permanent consultation for investigations and journalistic productions.

In a context in which the national government announces a “new era of reconciliation” with the Armed Forces and presents them as victims “of harassment and humiliation,” the workers who support memory policies in Argentina raise the alarm and denounce the scrapping and attempted dismantling of “all the pieces of the State that provide and preserve evidence in the process of ascertaining the truth and judging.”