“Today Amelia returns to her home, to her family and to her town.” This is how the relatives of those who disappeared during the Uruguayan dictatorship (1973-1985) expressed the relief that came with the identification of the remains of Amelia Sanjurjo, a victim of repression, known on Tuesday in Montevideo. Sajurjo’s skeletal remains had been found in June 2023 on a military compound in southern Uruguay, but her identification was delayed because she had no direct living relatives. The relatives of the victims recalled, for the umpteenth time, that this “slow and painful process” of almost a year could have been avoided if the military had provided information on the fate of the bodies of the 197 disappeared due to state terrorism.
Sanjurjo was 41 years old and pregnant with her first child when she was kidnapped in 1977. She was a member of the Communist Party and made a living selling books. “On June 6, it will be one year since the remains were found in Battalion 14 of this woman who was found face down, on a bed of lime, naked, with signs of violence. “This woman, today we can affirm that her identification has been achieved and her name recovered,” said anthropologist Alicia Lusiardo, who led the search team at the military property, at a press conference. In Battalion 14, the remains of teacher Julio Castro, kidnapped in 1977, had been found in 2011, and in 2012 those of Ricardo Blanco, arrested in 1978. Since 2005, the remains of six missing people have been found and identified in Uruguayan territory.
At the same press conference, the prosecutor specialized in Crimes Against Humanity Ricardo Perciballe explained that this Tuesday he received the results of the DNA analysis carried out in an Argentine laboratory and confirmed that “99.99%” correspond to Sanjurjo. “Everything was delayed because [muestras] We couldn’t get them from direct relatives,” he said. To establish the identity, he indicated, genetic samples from relatives in Italy and Spain had to be sought. “Amelia Sanjurjo Casal was a social and political activist who, for the sole reason of having resisted the civil and military dictatorship, was arrested on November 2, 1977 and transferred to the clandestine detention and torture center of La Tablada. [en Montevideo]. In that place she was subjected to various and aberrant torments that caused her death,” Perciballe specified. The prosecutor added that in the coming days the judicial case on the death and forced disappearance of Sanjurjo, which was archived, will be reopened.
“Today Amelia returns to her home, to her family and to her people,” said Alba González, a member of the organization Mothers and Relatives of Disappeared Detainees, who participated in the press conference. González thanked the work of the Prosecutor’s Office, the Forensic Archeology Research Group and the search team of the National Human Rights Institution: “It has been the joint work that has allowed us to arrive at the identification of our companion in what “It has been a slow and painful process, but today it finally allows us to reach the truth of his name.” On the other hand, she emphasized that the wait could have been avoided if the military had broken the “pact of silence” they maintain regarding the fate of the victims. “How much easier everything would have been if those who had the information had handed it over,” she said. In that sense, she insisted on the demand that has mobilized them for 50 years: “Today we once again demand that they tell us where they are, we reaffirm our eternal commitment in the search for memory, truth and justice.”
“We are very happy to give the identity to this person. But tomorrow we continue working in Battalion 14 [donde fueron hallados los restos de Sanjurjo]”said the director of the Human Rights Institution, Wilder Tayler. As he explained, excavations will soon resume on another Army property, the Material and Armament Service, as well as on other private lands. Tayler also recalled that the search faces the “pact of silence” of the military, which leads to the information obtained being vague, second-hand, imprecise. “We do not have plans or maps with a cross. “If we had that, all of this would be over very quickly,” he added.
Recently consulted by this newspaper, the lawyer specialized in human rights Pablo Chargoñia insisted on the need to improve investigations that could lead to the discovery of the bodies of the disappeared. “The premise is that gravediggers do not provide information; Betting on a kind of repentance or ethical reserve on the part of the kidnapper is a chimera,” said Chargoñia on the occasion of the last March of Silence for the disappeared. For the expert, one of the objections that can be made to the Uruguayan State is the lack of a state design so that investigations related to these cases follow a plan of greater effectiveness and better results. In his opinion, more personnel in charge of investigations, greater expertise and coordination in matters of archives are needed: “The investigation should be carried out in a coordinated manner and we do not see that.”
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