40 years after the visit of the IACHR, the beginning of the end of the dictatorship

The landscape of Avenida de Mayo at 700 changed from September 6 to 20, 1979, on the eve of spring. A queue of two or three blocks, with a majority of women, overcame the fear of report the disappearance members of their family to an international organization that went to Argentina. In the OAS delegation, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), He carefully recorded each case, by hand, in a book similar to those used for accounting records.

In one column, the name of the missing person, in another the date. Also the characteristics of the detention, the procedures followed and the identity of the person making the complaint. Timerman, Muñiz Barreto, Forti are some of the thousands of registered surnames, each of them referring to a family destroyed by one or more kidnappings, sometimes, of a pregnant woman.

The complainants were heard and, for the first time in the country, they felt that the horrors they would not be ignored or denied for the recipients, because even the Catholic Church itself, who had felt the dagger of illegal repression within it, I turned their backs on them.

In fact, when the members of the delegation of the IACHR they visited the school of marine mechanics, the site where liberated survivors reported that a clandestine center of torture and extermination was operating, missing detainees still alive were transferred to a property of the church in the Tiger Delta, the fifth which bore the significant name of El Silencio. According to the testimony of Alfredo Ayala, they had already been forced to make repairs on the spot, in the Turú Paré stream of the third section.

The main person responsible for the visit of the IACHR had been Emilio Mignone, founder of the Center for Legal and Social Studies. Alongside him, the former Augusto Conte, Graciela Fernández Meijide, Alfredo Bravo, Simón Lázara and other activists of the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights (APDH) and the Ecumenical Rights Movement. the man (MEDH).

The intent of the military junta was to resist anything it called interference in the country's internal affairs, another maneuver of what he called "the anti-Argentine campaign abroad". The army sought to neutralize the charges of gross human rights violations, first with the 1978 World Cup and on the occasion of the president's visit. IACHR, declaring school holidays so that high school students can overwhelm the center of Buenos Aires with festivities Youth Championship obtained in Tokyo a year after the hand of Diego Maradona.

By the time the national team landed in Ezeiza, the sentence "We, the Argentinians, are rights and humans"was used in hundreds of thousands of adhesive wafers to cover the city with paper The message was sent to the inspectors of the IACHR, which was undesirable for the Commission. discredit and ridicule the visit of the commission.

The mothers of the disappeared, distraught, endured stopped on the sidewalk of Avenida de Mayo where high school students celebrated the euphoric victory while waiting to tell their tragedy. Many boys, some of the age of their lost children, they even insulted them.

The military also ordered raiding in two of the local human rights organizations that had favored the visit. They will probably look for the reports and documents they will give to visitors.

The commission was in Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Tucumán and Rosario. He visited the La Rivera and La Perla illegal detention camps in Córdoba and El Atlético, Olimpo and ESMA in Buenos Aires. Also the prisons of Devoto, Caseros and Rawson. They met twice with the military council and Videla, as well as human rights organizations: APDH, LADH, MEDH, Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and Family. They saw the former presidents Isabel Martinez, held in fifth of San Vicente, Alejandro Lanusse, Arturo Frondizi and Héctor Cámpora, isolated at the Embbady of Mexico.

They also received the Episcopal Conference and Ricardo Balbín and Raúl Alfonsín, Deolindo Bittel, Diego May Zubiría and Rafael Marino, Enrique De Vedia and Francisco Cerro and Simón Lázara. To trade unionists, student representatives, business groups and bankers. Also to professional badociations of architects, psychiatrists, psychologists and lawyers. They personally interviewed Lorenzo Miguel, Ernesto SabatoJacobo Timerman and Alfredo Bravo. They received 5580 complaints kidnappings and disappearances.

The IACHR against the lie

A visit of the archives of the period shows the members of the delegation at the exit of the department of the central police, with the person in charge of the body, the General Juan Bautista Sasiain, on which depended several secret detention centers at that time.

A member of the Commission presents an intelligent apology to the press. "We can not reveal any of the issues discussed, perhaps we should focus on collaboration and general exhibition of the general, who gave us all the information we need. "

A spokesman for Sasiain tried to deflect the focus of the IACHR investigation. "When questions were asked about the paramilitary forces, it was stated (at the visiting official) that there are no paramilitary forces in the country and he was reminded that there were armed bands that were operating, the famous three A, led by López Rega. The thought of the chief of police is that Christianity is the only thing that can save the world and that this principle is the one that governs from the ideological point of view all the activities of which commands. This war was a serious war, which penetrated very deeply at all levels and the aggression began in '69, "he told the microphones.

The military also ordered searches of two of the premises of the human rights organizations that organized the visit.

"The Commission has come to the conclusion that, through the action of the public authorities and their agents, they were committed in the Argentine Republic during the period of validity of this report – from 1975 to 1979 – numerous and serious violations of human rights"The final report of the visit would begin in a devastating manner, with the beginning of the end of the dictatorship.

After the publication of the report on the human rights situation in the country, several months after the visit, the Argentine Foreign Minister, Carlos Washington Pastor, met with the Secretary of State of the United States , Cyrus Vance, and, according to a recently declbadified document, he lost his temper, he published TN.com.ar. He said that the IACHR "was a group with prejudices that he had written his report before going to Argentina, as evidenced by the fact that he had not taken into account all the documentation provided by the Government. "

The President of the IACHR was Venezuelan Andrés Aguilarwho had presided over the Supreme Court of his country; and Vice President Advocate of Honduras Luis Tinoco Castro. It has also been integrated by lawyers Marco Momroy Goatthe Human Rights Institute of Costa Rica; and Carlos Dunshee from Abranchesthe lawyer Tom Farer, the United States; and the Peruvian Francisco Beltrán Galindo. The secretary was the Chilean Edmundo Vargas Carreño.

A delegation of current members The Commission will travel to Argentina to attend several events. It is composed of Esmeralda Arosemena de Troitino (President of the IACHR), Paulo Abrao (Executive Secretary of the IACHR), Joel Hernández (First Vice-President of the IACHR) and Antonia Urrejola (Second Vice-President of the IACHR). In addition, Constanza Argentieri, Promotions Coordinator, and Erick Mendoca, Specialist Secretaries General.

They will participate in a discussion table and the inauguration of a thematic exhibition in the exESMA and, in the afternoon, they will have a meet protocol with the president Mauricio Macri.

A sample in exESMA

The temporary exhibition opens at the Museo Sitio de Memoria on Friday "1979-2019, the visit of the IACHR".

"From unpublished testimonials, the exhibition of objects and the presentation of documents, it will be possible to know in detail the period during which the working group of the ESMA put all kinds of strategies to conceal, before the imminent arrival of the IACHR, suspicion of repressive activity in the region, as well as the use, in parallel, of a temporary clandestine center located in the Paraná delta, called the Island of silence, where a group of detainees and detainees was taken away, "says the site.

The exhibition can be visited until December 10th, from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm. At its inauguration, on Friday 6am to 10am, the delegation of the IACHR visiting the country on the occasion of the anniversary will be present.

"Always tell your story"

A documentary produced by the Human Rights Secretariat of the province of Buenos Aires and by Aleph Media, directed by Oscar Feito and Fernando Sokolowicz, pbades through the 14 days 11 international experts sent by the IACHR were in Argentina. Always tell your story did not reach the commercial circuit, but will be displayed in a private function whose human rights organizations will participate.

The film gathers the testimonies of some protagonists, including Judge Tom Farer, Tex Harris, Isabel Mignone, Luis Almagro, Juan Méndez's lawyer and Estela de Carlotto, and shows the archives and documents held by the IACHR in Washington.

The report of the IACHR marked a turning point in international law: it established the missing figure and to create a definition in international law of crimes against humanity outside the ordinary Penal Code.

The idea and general supervision were in the hands of Canton of Santiago, former Executive Director of the IACHR from 2001 to 2012 and currently Secretary of Human Rights of the province.