Editor’s note: This column reflects the story of an Argentine woman who “disappeared” between 1978 and 1982. It is part two of a two-part series.
Ana stared at her scars during breakfast. They are a grim reminder of the mornings she spent in a straight jacket next to an electric prod.
Each day she walks the city streets, a “leper” to the neighbors who know her survival story.
Democracy had been restored in Argentina. A renewed hope is among its people, and the Montonero guerillas have become nothing but an unwritten chapter in the history books. More than 10,000 suspected communists disappeared, many of whom were headed on paths toward political and educational leadership.
Ana thought back to the days when she met Juan, her husband. A time when she still believed the world could be changed with loving arms.
“My daughter asked me why I could have all these ideas at 17 and she couldn’t. Love and politics were all mixed together. I felt I had fallen in love with the most handsome guy. He was dark and handsome, and he was to be Paula’s dad. That day, it was love at first sight. He was making a speech, and I was among the crowd. But in the crowd I stood out. He saw me and I stood out. It took me a long time to bury him inside of me. It was only after 10 years that he had been missing that he started to melt inside my memory,” she said.
With the return of democracy, Ana contacted a girl who had known Juan. Their meeting at the Retiro bus station in Buenos Aires would forever haunt her.
“She had a long talk with Juan when he learned I was out,” Ana said. We are talking about the end of 1980. When I was already released, Juan knew I was out. Juan did not want to meet me. He could have met with me, but he didn’t want to. In Juan’s eyes, I was a traitor. I had come out of the Navy Camp alive, what else could I be?”
Montonero organizer Juan Silva was taken in by the army and executed.
After struggling through torture in a concentration camp, Ana never had the chance to confront the man who had fathered her child. He died believing she was a traitor.
“I don’t really know why I survived,” she said. “It could be that the few of us who survived the navy camp were part of an experiment.”
While Ana may be one of a few experiments in Argentina, her story is far from uncommon in Latin America. In fact, CIA School of the Americas’ torture and military methods claimed roughly 60,000 lives throughout the continent just a few decades ago.
The Dirty War of Argentina occurred during the Cold War, when the United States and Russia were trying to spread their political beliefs among the world.
This was not a war between two enemies; it was an armed struggle between capitalism and communism.
After thousands were kidnapped and murdered in the name of suppressing communist beliefs, many Latin Americans found themselves living in a new system of North American democracy. Today, many of those who witnessed the first years of this system work in American factories.
It appears the United States won the war.
“We are the backyard of America,” said Mariano Roca of the Rosario city council. “They let us feel it with cultural, political and economic penetration. Your TV programs. Your advertisements. It is out of proportion. They open and close the door, the gate,” he said.
Our economic and cultural influence is undeniable. It governs the lives of thousands overseas, enslaving them in a ruthless system run by those they first resisted.
“In the last century, America has had a very decisive opinion about military intervention,” Roca said. “It is in their economic interest to support military government. It is not convenient for them for the rest of the continent to develop. It is a geo-political game. We are living in a new global order, run by the G-20. They were afraid of communism. It was obvious. When you have ‘friend’ governments, you can do what you want. The Latin American dictatorships of the Cold War were like puppets for the United States,” he said.
“Puppets” that killed anyone who opposed our economic occupation.
Politics aside, people were killed for what they believed in. People who opposed the military were kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the United States-funded, military-supported Argentine Anticommunist Alliance.
“The threat of guerilla organizations was the excuse of the military to massacre an entire generation of intellectuals, politicians, social leaders, unionists and students,” Roca said. “That leadership is missing today in Argentina. Corruption is everywhere in Latin America, but in Argentina it is a cancer.”
A cancer our nation endorsed in the name of freedom.
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