Thirty-six years after they were killed, the trial for the murders of catholic priests Carlos de Dios Murias and Gabriel Longueville will begin in La Rioja today. Ex-army general Luciano Benjamín Menéndez, ex vice-commodore Luis Estrella and ex-police superintendent Domingo Vera have been charged with the murders.

Murias and Longueville worked at the parish of bishop Enrique Angelelli, a politically active priest who supported the activities of peasants and workers’ unions from his church in Chamical, La Rioja.

The two priests were tied down, blindfolded, tortured, and shot to death on 18th July 1976, at a time when a military government ruled the country. Two weeks later, and as he was investigating the murders of Murias and Longueville, Angelelli himself died in a mysterious car accident, though it is widely believed he was killed.

Ramiro Fresneda, the lawyer representing the human rights secretariat, said that he will prove the existence of “a systematic plan of persecution against Enrique Angelelli’s diocese.”

The trial for the murders of Murias and Longueville was due to start at 9am this morning, but had to be postponed until this afternoon, as Menéndez is being driven from Córdoba, where he is serving a life sentence for the murders of 31 political prisoners in 1976. Menéndez has also been charged with the death of monsignor Angelelli, together with former dictator Jorge Videla.

Proceedings opened this morning in the Federal Oral Tribunal against officials of the former dictatorship charged in Jujuy with the disappearance of 43 people. The tribunal marks the first public and oral trial of officials charged with Crimes Against Humanity in the northern province.

The accused are Luciano Benjamín Menéndez, Antonio Orlando Vargas, José Eduardo Bulgheroni, and Mariano Rafael Braga. The four are charged with unlawful entry, illegal deprivation of liberty and homicide in connection with the 43 disappearances.

Nearly 200 witnesses are expected to testify during the proceedings, and it is estimated that the first trial will take about four months.

Menéndez, who was the director of the Third Army Corps, is the principal accused. He has already received seven life sentences, and has been excused from appearing in court for medical reasons.

Vargas, Bulgheroni and Braga were present today in court.

Vargas, the former director of Penitentiary Service, is now 71 years old and fell ill while the judge was reading the summons. He was examined by a doctor and moved to a private clinic, where he was placed in a room with video conferencing so that he could follow the proceedings.

Bulgheroni and Barga, both former army intelligence officials and both 61, were present throughout today’s proceedings.

The trial unites five cases under Crimes Against Humanity. Four of the cases include multiple victims. According to Prosecutor Pablo Pelazzo, the five cases are related to the disappearances of: Julio Álvarez García; Luis Ramón Aredez with five other victims; Paulino Galéan with the victims of Tumbaya and San Salvador de Jujuy; Reynaldo Aragón and the victims of San Pedro held in the Villa Gorriti prison; and Avelino Bazán and the Mina El Aquilar case.

Julio Ronaldo Álvarez García, the only victim whose case will be tried individually, was a student and the leader of the Peronist University Youth (JUP). His case will be the first to be tried.

Another of the victims, Luis Ramón Aredez, was a radical leader, pediatrician and the former mayor of the city of Libertador General San Martín.

Libertador General San Martín is also the home city of Ledsema, the company accused of complying with the 1976 “Blackout Night” when electricity was cut in the city and an estimated 400 people were kidnapped. Charges are pending in San Salvador in Jujuy against Ledesma owner Carlos Pedro Blaquier in connection to these crimes. Among the 43 victims, many were employees of Ledesma.

The judges overseeing the Federal Oral Tribunal are René Vicente Casas Gamboni, Mario Juárez Almarez and Daniel Morín.

Over 150 family members of the disappeared, civil society actors and government officials filled the courtroom this morning. Outside of the courthouse, members of civil society groups and human rights organizations gathered throughout the day.

The preparations necessary to begin today’s proceedings accelerated after resignation of former Judge Carlos Olivera Pastor in March. Prominent human rights organizations had accused the judge of blocking trials of Crimes Against Humanity from moving forward. The judge’s resignation followed a demonstration by many of these civil society groups, including the Madres y Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos and H.I.J.O.S.

Photo Courtesy of Monte Madre

IdeaMe is an online platform, which helps creators, be they inventors, artists, or designers, among others, to finance their projects through crowd funding. The Indy features and promotes one project every week, with the aim of helping the creators finance and achieve their dreams.

Even through adversity, love manages to bloom.

And our project this week hopes to promote one Argentine story of how this is true.

La Legendaria Theatre Club is getting set for ‘Monte Madre’, a play that tells the true story of how a young couple of militants managed to evade the dictatorship’s clutches, living in nature and bringing two children into the world.

Alan Robinson said he was moved when he first read the story of the couple, Remo Venica and Irmina Kleiner.

“I liked it a lot,” he said. “I read it in one night, entirely, in one night on the bus from Entre Ríos to Buenos Aires.”

La Legendaria Theatre Club is a group of seven people, and each one has a role as actor and producer. This is the second play for the group.

“We want to start to make theatre jobs professions,” he said. “So that actors in theatre can live as actors, and they don’t have to do commercials, television or movies.”

This play takes place between 1974 and 1978 in Argentina. The lovers hid in the forest and survived by nature before and during the last dicatorship.

During the first few years, they were hunted by the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina (AAA).

“Everyone who was politically affiliated with social work, all the people who were socialists of some sort, who were with socialism looking for a better world – they were persecuted by the AAA,” Robinson said.

When the dictatorship began in 1976 the pair, Venica and Kleiner, had to hide from the military and others.

“It wasn’t just a military coup d’etat,” he said. “There were also support from private capitalists or support from certain sectors of society, the church, among others.”

Robinson said there are four important themes, the first of which is love.

“We are going to tell the story of love during a dictatorship,” he said. “We are going to talk about love, in the first place. This is our central theme.”

Photo Courtesy of Monte Madre

Survival is the next important theme.

“How to live in the natural world,” he said.

Spirituality is another theme the cast will be focusing on.

“We are working with spiritual conflicts,” he noted.

Lastly, Robinson said identity plays an important role in Monte Madre.

“It’s a very present theme, and it’s an actual theme – like the identity of the children of the disappeared,” he said. “In this play, the couple was not disappeared, but exiled. But we’re going to work on the theme of the identity of the generation that is between 25 and 35 who are people – the children of the people who were disappeared.”

He also said it is good to get a different discourse on the last dictatorship, that it does not happen again.

“That we don’t have discourses that take us back to living this terrible experience,” he said.

Love is a way to help repair his parents’ generations wounds, he said, noting that they will be using magical realism.

“It’s a very Latin American genre,” he noted. “It’s natural.”

As one would guess from the theme of survival, things end happily for the couple. Today, Venica and Kleiner are spreading their love for nature by working on the organic farm “Naturaleza Viva,” educating people and producing food based on ideas of respecting the earth and all its beings.

Monte Madre will first come to stage in the form of two previews for friends, producers and reporters in November 2012. The play will be open to the public from the 24th March, 2013.

Commemorating the 30^th anniversary of the Falklands/Malvinas War, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner made a speech today at just after 1pm from Plaza Islas Malvinas, Ushuaia, to honour the deaths of 649 Argentines who died during the war.

The president paid tribute to the soldiers, stating “We come to honour these men with medals on their chests, won in battle. But we are also here to honour the hundreds of young people who fought on the islands.”

Commenting on UK prime minister David Cameron’s speech made earlier today, the president stated that Argentina wanted “live in peace” with the inhabitants of the Falklands/Malvinas.

“Few countries the world have such an open immigration policy as Argentina. How will we not respect the interests of the islanders? We want to live in peace with them.”

She also criticised Cameron’s assertion that in 1982 Argentines invaded the freedom of the islands’ inhabitants. “He is clearly not aware that back then, the Argentine people’s freedom was also taken captive by the military dictatorship… it was not the decision of the Argentine people to go on to war.”

President Fernández was one of five speakers today in Plaza Islas Malvinas, Ushuaia. The Tierra del Fuego governor also made a speech, as well as war veterans from around the country

Federal Judge Daniel Bejas has confirmed that human remains discovered last year in the former military arsenal Miguel de Azcuénaga are a DNA match with ex-Senator Damián Márquez and Peronist Youth activist Pedro Corroto.

The remains, which were found last March and included 15 bodies, stand out from other instances of disappeared government officials during the dictatorship. Generally, remains of politicians have been found at neutral sites rather than military facilities.

Márquez, formerly a militant Peronist senator in Tucumán, was kidnapped on the night of January 13, 1977. He presided over the provincial Senate chamber and was secretary general of the local General Labour Confederation (CGT).

“The military can no longer deny that there were more disappeared during the regime because this is proof,” said Márquez’ son, Daniel.

The Azcuénaga arsenal was a known clandestine detention centre during the dictatorship. Under a partnership between the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) and the Interdisciplinary Group of Archaeology and Anthropology of Tucumán – with the attention of the courts – the site fell under scrutiny in 2005.

At the excavation last March, bones, bullets, clothing, footwear, and burnt tires were found under a layer of earth. The team hypothesises that the bodies were first burned, thrown into the pit, and then covered again with filler and soil.

“We want to leave a message to society because the forensic team, who met with us on Monday, told us that there is still a large percentage of family members who must submit to DNA, which is necessary in order to identify bodies,” Daniel Márquez said.

The announcement from Judge Bejas comes just two days ahead of the Day of Memory anniversary, now 36 years since the dictatorship regime took power in 1976. It is estimated by human rights organisations that approximately 30,000 lives were lost at the hands of the regime.

Parque de la Memoria is one of the most photographically interesting landscape sites in Buenos Aires to shoot and the contemporary sculptures are an powerful way to commemorate the estimated 30,000 desaparecidos (or “disappeared”) who were victims under the dictatorship in Argentina between 1976 and 1983. Seventeen specially commissioned sculptures dot the grassy hill which ultimately ends at the Río de la Plata, where many of the desaparecidos met their untimely death from planes flown overhead from the nearby military airport. Both national and international artists contributed to this powerful memorial. Jocelyn Mandryk shares her view of this memorial as we approach Día de la Memoria on 24th March.

“Torturers are not born that way: someone educates them, trains them and supports them.” This statement belongs to a report by Amnesty International as part of its campaign to eradicate torture. The same report states that there are over 150 military training centres in the world whose job it is to provide training to foreign armed forces. Protected by secrecy and without any independent control, these centres have the potential to “facilitate human rights violations”.

Latin America and the SOA (image courtesy of N.ree.K)

Such is the case of the infamous School of the Americas, a US Army education facility aimed at training members of Latin American armed forces which has been operational since 1946. Many of its graduates have taken part in military dictatorships throughout the continent and have been accused of committing crimes against humanity using the counter-insurgency methods they were taught at the school. The School of the Americas is not an anomaly, but an integral part of US foreign policy that reached as far south as Argentina.

As we commemorate a new Día de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia (the anniversary of the 1976 coup d’etat) this Saturday 24th March, it is worth remembering the role the School of the Americas played in the country’s recent history.

The Cold War And The National Security Doctrine

“America for the Americans” is a phrase commonly used to summarise the so-called ‘Monroe doctrine’. In his State of the Union address in 1823, US president James Monroe set out what would become the US policy towards the rest of the American continent to this day: by rejecting the intervention of the European powers in the continent, America would become part of the US’s sphere of influence.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the political, cultural, economic, and military influence of the US on the continent expanded. The onset of World War II accelerated the process, already underway, of military cooperation, and favoured a common defence policy based on continental solidarity. Thus, the 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance stated that any foreign attack on one of the signatory states would be deemed an attack on all of them.

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Fostor Dulles, mastermind behind the 1954 coup d'etat in Guatemala (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

In the 1960s, US policy towards Latin America shifted as the Cold War intensified and the success of the Cuban revolution brought the communist threat to its backyard. The fight against communism -or any political movement identified as such- became the number one objective for the US. The role of the Latin American armed forces within the continent and even within their own countries was then redefined to achieve this objective: their main aim became to guarantee internal stability.

The National Security Doctrine, whilst not written down or systematised, is considered to be a military doctrine developed by the US government and instilled into Latin American soldiers through training centres such as the School of the Americas. Many trace its origins to the counter-insurgency teachings of the French military, who developed their own doctrine to fight against the resistance of the independence movements from their former colonies in Algeria and South East Asia.

The most important aspect of the National Security Doctrine, the one which shaped all the policies developed under it, was the idea that social conflict and armed struggle in Latin America (and the so-called Third World in general) was not the result of internal factors, but of communist infiltration by groups backed by the USSR. This way, all internal conflicts were redefined as being part of the bigger threat of the Soviet Union against the US, thus justifying US intervention. This intervention, however, was not direct. As military involvement by the US was generally not supported at home, especially after the Vietnam War, the training imparted to Latin American soldiers and the redefinition of the role of the armed forces sought to prepare them to carry out their job as regional ‘police’ within their own borders.

‘Torturers Are Not Born That Way…’

Leopoldo Galtieri (Argentina), Roberto Viola (Argentina), Hugo Banzer (Bolivia), Manuel Noriega (Panama), Juan Velasco Alvarado (Peru), Omar Torrijos (Panama). What reads like a ‘who’s who’ of Latin American dictators is but a small fraction of the long list of graduates from the School of the Americas.

Leopoldo Galtieri, graduate of the School of the Americas and Argentine dictator during the Dirty War (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The School, ran by the US Army, first opened its doors in 1946 in Panama. Back then, it was called Latin American Training Center, Ground Division and its objective was to train Latin American soldiers in war and counter-insurgency techniques. In 1950 it was moved to its definite location in Panama, Fort Gulick, and Spanish was adopted as its official language. It would remain in Fort Gulick until 1984 when it was relocated to the US. In 1963 it was renamed United States Army School of the Americas, the name by which it would become internationally known.

According to the NGO SOA Watch, since 1946 the school “has trained over 64,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics”. Many of these were involved in military regimes across the continent in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. More recently, graduates from the school participated in the attempted coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in 2002, and the coup that deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya in 2009.

What exactly did the soldiers learn in their visits to the School of the Americas? In 1991, seven Spanish-language Army manuals, based partly on lesson plans used by instructors since 1982, were released to the US Congress and in 1992 two CIA manuals used for training in Latin America were added. These texts included material from CIA and US Army manuals written in the 1950s and 1960s and had titles such as ‘Revolutionary War and Communist Ideology’, ‘Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla’, ‘Handling of Sources’, and ‘Interrogation’.

One of the most striking features of these texts is the lack of distinction between legitimate and legal opposition movements and armed guerrillas. The ‘Counterintelligence’ manual defines as potential counterinsurgency targets any groups or political parties “that have goals, beliefs or ideologies contrary or in opposition to the National Government” or the US. It then recommends the creation of black lists to include “enemy agents” and “subversive persons”, including political opposition leaders and “collaborators and sympathisers of the enemy”. The suggested solutions to the enemy presence include infiltrations into enemy groups and population control techniques such as curfews, military checkpoints, house searches, issuance of ID cards and rationing. Detention procedures compliant with the rule of law are ignored. According to the analysis carried out by NGO Latin American Working Group (LAWG), “throughout the manuals there is discussion of detaining suspects without mention of proper procedures for arrest, obtaining admissible evidence, trial and conviction. There is no mention of warrants or the right to contact an attorney or any comparable local laws. In fact, it is recommended throughout that detainees be kept in isolation and not be allowed to contact anyone.”

WHINSEC Change of command ceremony in 2010

The declassified CIA manuals are even more crude. Whilst the Army manuals try to keep up appearances by making references to documents such as the Geneva Convention, the CIA’s “Human Resource Exploitation Manual” has an entire chapter dedicated to coercive interrogation techniques. The aim of these techniques, they explain, is to induce psychological regression in the prisoner, defined as “a loss of autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioural level”. The “three major principles involved in the successful application of coercive techniques” are physical weakness, dependency and intense fear and anxiety. To achieve this, the manuals indicate that suspects should be held incommunicado and should be deprived of any kind of normal routine in eating and sleeping. Interrogation rooms should be windowless, soundproof, dark and without toilets. Causing fear by threatening the prisoner is included as a technique in this chapter, as the manual indicates that the threat to inflict pain is often more effective than the feeling of pain. Other coercive techniques discussed in the manual include prolonged constraint, prolonged exertion, extremes of heat, cold, or moisture, deprivation of food or sleep, disruption of routines, solitary confinement, deprivation of sensory stimuli, hypnosis, and use of drugs or placebos.

This type of training has had serious consequences for hundreds of thousands of people. US backing for Latin American dictatorships has been widely documented, but what the manuals from the School of the Americas show is the true and chilling extent of the intervention. It did not only consist of political support: it went as far as teaching the soldiers how to torture prisoners.

Even those who did not suffer the application of these ‘coercive techniques’ on themselves or their loved ones, those who were oblivious to it all or those who had not been born yet suffered the consequences of State-sponsored terrorism. The social and economic outcomes of the Latin American dictatorships are still being felt by many to this day. The techniques taught at the School of the Americas were but a means to an end: to subjugate the opposition to the massive social and economic changes introduced by the dictatorships from the 1970s onwards.

‘Different Name, Same Shame’

In 1984, Panamanian president Jorge Illueca denounced the School of the Americas as the biggest base for destabilisation in Latin America and evicted the US army from Fort Gulick, a step which was part of the broader process put in motion by the Panama Canal Treaty and which involved the progressive withdrawal of US forces from Panama.

Protesters hold up crosses with the names of the disappeared at SOA Watch's annual vigil. (Photo: Carolyn Scorpio)

The School of the Americas was then reopened in Fort Benning, in the US state of Georgia. In 2001, and after the public outcry caused by the release of the training manuals, the school closed down and was replaced by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). SOA Watch and other human rights NGOs have been publicly denouncing WHINSEC ever since, as they consider it to be “the School of the Americas under a different name”. There has been no critical assessment of the way the school was conducted and therefore no real changes to its objectives, procedures and lack of independent control.

Many NGOs advocate for the closing of WHINSEC, with SOA Watch at the forefront of the struggle. The sole purpose of SOA Watch, based in Washington DC and with offices in Latin America, is to push for the closure of the School of the Americas, under whatever name it may be called. Founded in 1990 after the massacre of six priests and two women by School of the Americas graduates in El Salvador, this NGO has been working relentlessly through demonstrations and nonviolent protest to achieve their goal. Last November, during a yearly vigil, a SOA Watch activist was arrested for breaking into the grounds of WHINSEC in Fort Benning, and later condemned to six months in prison. Unlike the school educators, hundreds of anti-WHINSEC activists throughout the years have had to face justice and serve prison time.

Despite their efforts, an average of 1,000 students per year (mainly Latin American) continue to attend WHINSEC for training on counterdrug, urban terrain, major combat and joint operations. The school receives a budget of US$14m annually.

The most promising gesture regarding the School of the Americas has not come from the US, but from the Latin American governments. Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia have all decided in recent years to stop sending soldiers for training at Fort Benning. This goes to show that, whilst changing the 200-year long foreign policy of a world super power may not be easy, only the autonomous decisions of a strengthened and united continent can save millions from being at its mercy.

For the first time since Brazil’s military dictatorship between 1964-1985, a criminal complaint has been filed against an army colonel alleged to have disappeared five former guerrillas in the 1970s.

The complaint, filed by prosecutor Tiago Rabelo, charges former colonel of the Army Reserve Sebastiao Rodrigues de Moura of commanding troops to kidnap and torture five members of the Araguaia guerrilla movement in 1974.

The case represents a growing move toward revisiting crimes of the dictatorship, which have been immune from prosecution under the amnesty law of 1979.

Under increasing pressure from Human Rights Watch and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), abuses of the past have been given renewed attention. The IACHR concluded in a 2010 ruling that the amnesty law should not prevent investigation into human rights violations committed during the military rule.

“This action is extremely important to us,” said prosecutor Rabelo, “mainly because these people will be called upon to explain what they did. They must emerge from the shadows.”

Despite sharp objections voiced by retired military officers in a letter published last month, the government, itself headed by a former guerrilla in Dilma Roussef, has maintained its stance on continued inquiry under the recently formed Truth Commission.

“We live in a state of law and the armed forces are perfectly tailored to the Constitutional reality,” said Minister of Justice José Eduardo Cardozo.

That reality is unclear, however, about whether the amnesty law, which has never been revoked, must be applied in this particular case, or whether other legal arguments could lead to a conviction.

“It does not matter to either party to review the amnesty law, because in that case even the president of the republic could be judged, since he belonged to an armed wing of a dissident organisation,” suggested Marcelo Rech, editor of the website Inforel.

Prosecutors have argued that the complaint does not contradict the amnesty law and instead follows precedents established by high court rulings on two previous extradition cases.

The president of the Guild of Lawers of Brazil, meanwhile, has stated that the case will likely only succeed if the Supreme Court reconsiders the validity of the amnesty law.

By comparison with the rest of the region, Brazil’s military dictatorship was less violent and repressive than others in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. To date, about 475 deaths and disappearances during the dictatorship have been recognised by the Brazilian government.

Antonio Domingo Bussi, former general accused of crimes against humanity, has died at age 85. Bussi was admitted into a cardiology clinic in Tucumán on Monday and died yesterday from cardiac arrest.

The body is currently at The Heart Institute and will be transferred to Pilar tomorrow, province of Buenos Aires, where he will be buried. The ceremony was short and intimate, with only family and close friends.

Born in Entre Ríos, in 1975 Bussi took charge of ‘Operation Independence’ in San Miguel de Tucumán, taking over the role of Acdel Edgardo Vilas. He had gained political power in the area twice, once during the military dictatorship in 1976, and once after, between 1989 and 1993.

In 2008, Bussi was given life imprisonment for his involvement in the murder of Senator Guillermo Vargas Aignasse. He is also accused of connections with detention centres across the Tucumán area during the dictatorship.

Historical revision of the covers of the independent magazine that managed to come out during the military dictatorship (1976-1983), Expreso Imaginario, based on freedom and exploration.

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