Oscar Feito: "The testimonies on the IACHR are with …

September 6, 1979 It's a hot date in Argentine history. On that day, members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States (OAS) receive complaints from victims of state violence committed by the repressive apparatus of the then military dictatorship Jorge Rafael Videla. Few members of the Commission imagined seeing three tail blocks at the door of the local headquarters of the agency. Much less to leave the country with 5,580 complaints who joined three thousand others gathered previously by the Argentine League of Human Rights and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Forty years later, the half-film Always tell your story, directed by Oscar Feito and also producer Fernando Sokolowicz, organized by the Human Rights Secretariat of the Province of Buenos Aires, recalls this visit through numerous testimonies from members of the IACHR, American diplomats, lawyers, officials and representatives of different human rights organizations.

Among those appearing on camera are Leandro Despouy, Carlotto's Estela, Juan Méndez, Tex Harris, Tom Farer, Luis Almagro and Leonardo Fosatti. For the latter, a member of the HIJOS group, the film gives him the latest images. "He is the son of two missing, has found his identity and is working today with the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. I wanted to close the documentary because those who know how to work mothers and grandmothers know that they have the prospect that memory is important to build the future. Leonardo embodies that, "he says before Page / 12 Oscar Feito

– In an instant of the documentary, you are seen next to Sokolowicz reading the files of the IACHR. Was it difficult to access this material?

– We went with Fernando to Washington and we had access to the Commission's files which were then used as the basis for the report. There are more than fifty boxes stored in a warehouse. They chose about ten of these boxes. There were not only testimonies collected by the mission, but others collected in previous years. Before coming to Buenos Aires, the Commission had sent meeting requests in different fields, from Videla to human rights organizations. They also mentioned that they wanted to meet the political authorities of Argentine youth. On this list was José Antonio Díaz, who at that time was a leader of the Communist Federation and then worked for this newspaper.

-What type of material did you find?

-We found the names of the people involved in the visit, either because they had met the Commission or lodged a complaint. As well documents specifically referring to disappearances. Of course, we record something that we watch, but many testimonies move because they are written by hand. The agencies that were working on the issue at that time, such as the CELS and certain groups of lawyers, began to submit habeas corpus. In the boxes were the complaints made by the typewriter, and many of them were attached to handwritten letters in which a family member told how the disappearance took place.. In addition, there is very hot statistical work, such as references to where the arrests took place and at their age. I was moved that most of the missing are between 16 and 24 years old.. We also talk about professions. In the first boxes, we find intellectuals or people known to most public opinion, but reading, ordinary people, workers This shows that it was a plan that nobody saved, that There was something systematic to kill people.

– How were the respondents' reactions memorized at that time?

-Very felt. I am always impressed by the testimony of Tex Harris, a US Embbady official who helped many people leave the country and was one of the leaders of the visit. He says that in Battalion 601, where the military intelligence apparatus worked, explained the nature of the plan badociate it with cancer: They said that when you fight it, you must not only attack the compromised part, but also clean it to prevent it from spilling out. I was also impressed by what he said Tom Farer, an American academic who came in the first group. He stated that in the La Plata cemetery he had interviewed one of the gravediggers on the NN graves. The answer was that those who buried people there were soldiers who arrived at night and smuggled it.

– One of the sources stated that the IACHR was "the most complete, the most rigorous and the best informed report of those years". Do you agree?

-Yes, who says that it is Juan Mendez, world authority of human rights. At the time, he was a young lawyer defending political prisoners who had managed to leave Argentina. The report clearly indicates that there was a systematic plan. This report has subsequently had a considerable international impact. It was something that could not be contained, that spilled over and began to spread around the world, generating very strong pressure for dictatorship. The documentary shows, both in the first part, that it tells how the visit was generated and in the second part, where the repercussions are discussed, the importance of this international level. What happened in Argentina was repressed, silent and what was possible was done. Outside the country, there was more to know than in the interior.

-You just mentioned the international repercussion, something impossible to think about without the rounds of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. What role did they play?

Many of these mothers were able to travel to Washington to make presentations to the OAS and the US government. They had a fundamental role because they started making the problem visible to the press and creating a larger organization. This allowed them to complain to those who had more strength to put pressure on the Argentine government.

– Would the visit have been possible without them?

-I do not know if I visit him, but what would not have been possible is the struggle to know the truth. When footage of the rounds around the Plaza de Mayo began to be seen around the world, when mothers appeared before organizations to be heard, the government began to feel the effects of pressure and, among other things, being seen. naked in front of the world on the atrocities that they committed.