Alejandro Almeida was arrested and disappeared in Buenos Aires when he was 20 years old, on June 17, 1975. His mother, Taty Almeida, remembers that day precisely. The young man was a member of the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP), an urban guerrilla that operated in Argentina during the 1970s, but his mother did not know about it until after that day. There was less than a year left before a coup d’état began the last dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983) and the woman, who was 45 years old, did not suspect what was happening in the country. One day, after Alejandro’s disappearance, she approached the Plaza de Mayo and began to walk around a monolith with a group of women who were complaining in the midst of the dictatorship for their missing children. They called them crazy; They were the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.
The militancy of Alemeida, who was born into a military family, was a teacher and is now 93 years old, began in Madres and has not stopped since then. The human rights organization went through difficult times, such as the murder of three of its founders, who were thrown alive into the sea in the so-called death flights of the dictatorship, or a separation that divided the group in two. But the activist is convinced that the legacy is assured. Even now, when 40 years of uninterrupted democracy have passed and Javier Milei and Victoria Villarruel take power, they have denied the state terrorism of the dictatorship, recognized by justice. “The resistance is going to be enormous,” predicts Almeida, who receives EL PAÍS in his apartment in Buenos Aires. The first demonstration was made a few days after the triumph of the extreme right at the polls, when hundreds of people participated in the round that the Mothers and Grandmothers have done every Thursday since 1977.
Ask. How do you remember your first approach to Madres and the first round?
Answer. All Mothers have a life story, if it had not been for the disappearance of our children we would not have met. On June 17, 1975, before the civic-military-clerical coup, my son Alejandro came home and told me that the next day he had a [examen] partial. He was studying his first year of medicine and he didn’t tell me anything about his militancy. In the year 75, Isabel Perón was already a puppet, managed by López Rega, a sinister character, a sergeant who was in charge of the parapolice organization Triple A. That’s where the murders, the kidnappings, the political prisoners… The genocide began. It started before ’76. “I’m coming” was the last thing I heard from Alejandro. The next day, I wake up and see that he was not there. He lived with me here. In that furniture I found a phone book and in the last 24 pages, 24 poems.
Almeida points to a painting. The house is filled with photographs – of her family, of herself, with former presidents, with fellow militants, with soccer players, with the Pope – but that painting is practically alone on the wall. The handwritten poetry of her missing son is framed with a photo of him, very young, with curly hair and horn-rimmed glasses. “If death / surprises me / far from your womb, / because for you / the three of us are still in it; / if he surprises me / away from your caresses, / that I need so much; / if death / embraced me tightly / as a reward / for having wanted / freedom, / and your hugs then / would only involve memories, / cries and advice / that I did not want to follow; / I would like to tell you mom / that part of what I was / you will find / in my companions.”
Q. Did you know he wrote poetry?
R. I didn’t know that he was active in ERP and I didn’t know that Alejandro wrote poetry. I read them, yes I read them, and there I began to know the other side of Alejandro. He leaves that poetry to me and it is a farewell. He knows that he is going to die.
Q. He was telling us about his arrival at Madres and his first round.
R. I started alone, like all Mothers started. First it was an individual search. We went to the hospitals, to the regiments, to the police… And in my case with even more reason. My entire family is military. I grew up in that anti-Peronist environment. Gorilla, what’s it called. My hair was coming out everywhere, but I already shaved. I had all those friends and it didn’t occur to me that they were to blame for Alejandro’s disappearance. That’s why it was difficult for me to approach Madres. I said: “With the resume I have, they’re going to think I’m a spy.” So at the end of ’79 I decided. We went with my daughter to the Mothers’ house and when she entered I knew that she was not the only one. María Adela Gard from Antokoletz helped me and the only thing she asked me was: “Who are you missing?
Q. Had you already been to Plaza de Mayo?
R. Yes. We turned around. Some with a scarf, others not yet. Later I’m going to tell you the story of the handkerchief… For many years, we shouted “Apparition alive!” Because one believed that they were prisoners, incommunicado in some prison in Argentina… But that word, de-sa-pa-re-cido, we didn’t know it, we didn’t pronounce it. After a while, we learned the truth.
Q. There are people who say that Milei voters, many of them young, are not interested in this issue.
R. This vice president we have [Victoria Villarruel] vindicates the genocide. There was no war here, there was a genocide. Here there is forced disappearance. That’s why [los perpetradores] They were judged. We gave them the opportunity and we continue to give it to them because the trials continue. Not our boys. They directly tortured them, they disappeared, we don’t even know where the remains are. This woman justifies everything.
Q. How do you speak to the population that has mostly voted for that sector?
R. There is no effect without cause. The beating they have given us [al peronismo en las elecciones] It has a reason. There was a lot of discontent. What these people who voted for him don’t know is that we are going to be worse. It won’t be long before those who voted for him realize the brutality. It is unfortunate, but as we say: we lost the election, they have not defeated us. The resistance is going to be enormous. Always legal, never justice into one’s own hands.
Q. They are preparing a law to…
R. [Se adelanta] Yes, that’s it. We presented a law to legally punish the denier and that is what we are doing. How are they going to be claiming what they have done, please. There has to be a law that sucks. Not with prison, but with disqualification from holding public office. Very difficult times await us.
Q. Your son disappeared before the 1976 coup d’état. Is there enough talk about the violence of those years in Argentina?
R. That’s why Mothers go everywhere, not only in Argentina, we have gone out into the world to tell. But it is missing, because there are really very few mothers left today.
Q. How many?
R. We are just three of the Founding Line [parte del grupo escindido que integra Almeida]. But we are calm because we have a wonderful militant youth. Not everyone voted for Milei, eh? There is no need to be afraid of militancy. Militancy is commitment, camaraderie, helping others. We have been passing the message to them for some time now, they receive it and put it into practice.
Q. Today do you think your legacy is assured?
R. We know that memory will always be present. So many people who want to make it disappear are not going to achieve it. I always say: we passed that post little by little because despite the canes and the wheelchairs, we crazy people are still standing.
Q. He was born into an anti-Peronist family. Since when do you recognize yourself as a Peronist?
R. Not a Peronist. But with Néstor and Cristina [Kirchner]. In 2003, Néstor Kirchner was the first president who listened to us. He was the first president to take human rights as state policy. The impunity laws were repealed, and it was the same policy that Cristina took later. They were really 10 years of tranquility, no one disrespected the memory of our children. Arrive [el expresidente conservador Mauricio] Macri and in one of the first speeches he said that “the job was over” [la estafa] of human rights organizations. What a shame! He talks about work!
Q. What do you think when you hear that Kirchnerism used human rights politically?
R. They have not used it politically, at all. What we asked them they did, which is different. I have great affection for Néstor Kirchner, what we need. I’m not going to forget when we were about to enter the exEsma for the first time. [el predio del mayor centro de torturas de la dictadura, que es hoy un espacio de memoria y ha sido declarado patrimonio universal de la UNESCO]. We were waiting, behind the bars, to enter and Néstor did not arrive. And what was he doing? Bringing down the pictures [de los dictadores Jorge Rafael Videla y Reynaldo Bignone] at the Military College. That was wonderful. When he arrived, we found out. I haven’t told you the story of the handkerchief…
Q. It’s true. Is that the first one he had?
R. No, I gave the first one to an indigenous person who had been tortured. A friend embroidered this for me. Shall I tell you the story? Every year in Argentina there is a procession to the Basilica of Luján, 70 kilometers from Buenos Aires. Every year thousands of people go. And every year the ecclesiastical hierarchy goes, which never received us. In the eighties we said: “We have to go to Luján, we are going to approach them there.” But among thousands of people, how were we going to find each other? A mother suggested we put our children’s diaper on. Before, there were no disposables, they were made of fabric. Many mothers had saved that diaper. So since that diaper was used to take care of them when they were babies, we later put it on to pray for their lives. Now, with the issue of the abortion law, they said that white turns green. Take! White is white, and green is green. In good time!
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