The Argentine electoral campaign has entered the Buenos Aires subway this week with the help of Ana Fernández, granddaughter of one of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo murdered in 1977 by the military regime. The fear of a victory for the far-right candidate Javier Milei in the elections on July 19 pushed her to narrate her disastrous family story in front of a handful of strangers who were traveling on line A on Tuesday. “I apologize to all of you, I’m a little nervous, I’ve never done this in my life and I’m doing it because I’m very worried. “I was born in Sweden, I was born when there was a dictatorship in Argentina,” Fernández began while cell phones turned on around her. “My mother was 16 years old when she was kidnapped pregnant with me. She went to a concentration camp where they stripped her of everything, even her name, it became a letter and a number. She was brutally tortured, she served 17 years in that concentration camp,” she continued.
The events reported by Fernández occurred in mid-1977. Her mother, Ana María Careaga, was released four months later and went into exile in Sweden, where she gave birth to Ana on December 11. However, her maternal grandmother, Esther Ballestrino of Careaga, was never able to hold her in his arms. Three days before giving birth, this founder of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo who was still searching for other missing persons was kidnapped in Buenos Aires and transferred to the largest clandestine detention center of the dictatorship, the Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA). Days later, she was drugged and thrown alive into the sea from a plane along with other Mothers and two French nuns.
“At ESMA I was [Jorge] the tiger Acosta, a genocidaire who today asks that you vote for Milei,” Fernández said before an audience that listened to her—and recorded—without missing any details. Her parents decided to return to Argentina once the country regained democracy, in 1983, and President Raúl Alfonsín promoted a trial against the military regime junta for the crimes perpetrated under his command. It was the first of many: more than 1,200 repressors have been convicted of crimes against humanity. For Fernández, the consensus of Argentine society against the dictatorship is threatened by the denialist discourse of Milei and her vice presidential candidate, Victoria Villarruel, who reduce state terrorism to “some excesses” committed by the forces of security.
“I don’t want violence for my children, I love this country, I want us all to be able to live having differences, saying our differences and without fear of being kidnapped, of being tortured, of being thrown alive into the sea. A vice president who says that her favorite sport is bullying and hitting left-handed people, never again. Please, for the sake of democracy, do not vote for Milei,” Ballestrino de Careaga’s granddaughter concluded, and many of the subway travelers burst into applause.
One of the videos of his message has gone viral and has accumulated more than two million views in three days. Fernández assures by phone that he did not want to expose himself publicly, but he decided to consider that “democracy is at risk” if Milei becomes president of Argentina. He says that he was convinced by a friend who is a victim of gender violence and also addressed subway travelers to tell them that if the free sale of weapons were authorized, as proposed by the ultra candidate, she would not be alive.
“What Villarruel says is not new. He always claimed the dictatorship, he met with [el dictador Jorge Rafael] Videla, was on the repressor’s agenda [Miguel] Etchecolatz, but it never ceases to surprise me at the level of hatred and violence that it has and that it uses democracy to legitimize things that are outside democracy, state terrorism is antidemocratic,” says Fernández.
This 45-year-old administrator understands that young people, who were already born in democracy, see the dictatorship as something distant. She also understands that many do not feel represented by the current Government and want change, but it is difficult for her to accept that they will vote for Milei convinced that she will not be able to do what she wants. “Many say: ‘the sale of organs is not going to do it, the sale of children is not going to do it, the genocidaires are not going to be set free, how do they know that?’” She asks herself. She is convinced that she had to do something to try to stop those who defend her grandmother’s murderers and her mother’s torturers, but since the video went viral she has not opened her social networks for fear of negative comments. “I know they have many followers and that they are very violent,” she warns.
Defense of criminals
In the debate of vice presidential candidates held on Wednesday, Villarruel refused to answer whether he is in favor of the release of repressors convicted of crimes against humanity. Instead, the La Libertad Avanza candidate lamented the lack of rights of Juan Daniel Amelong, whose father was murdered by the Montoneros guerrilla. The soldier whom he defended in the debate has accumulated five sentences, including three life sentences, for crimes such as kidnappings, torture, theft of babies and forced disappearance of people during the dictatorship.
In the last session of @DiputadosAR I asked him @VickyVillarruel When you visit your genocidal friends in prison, ask them where the bodies of our comrades are. Today I found out that he frequents Juan Daniel Amelong, convicted for the disappearance of my old man. https://t.co/qcYM9grtmi
— Eduardo Toniolli (@eduardotoniolli) November 8, 2023
Villarruel’s speech outraged Peronist deputy Eduardo Toniolli, son of missing people, and the two began a public discussion through social networks. “In the last session of Deputies, I asked Victoria Villarruel that when she visits her genocidal friends in prison, ask them where the bodies of our colleagues are. Today I found out that he frequents Juan Daniel Amelong, convicted for the disappearance of my old man,” Toniolli said. Milei’s running mate responded that she understood the pain that she could feel as her son, but that it was important to contextualize: “Your father was a member of Montoneros. “Montoneros terrorists murdered Amelong’s father in democracy.” The Peronist deputy refused to accept his condolences: “They are as false as your supposed academic interviews with the genocidaires.” Argentina’s consensus against the dictatorship has never been so tested as in this tense electoral campaign.
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