Richard Smith: Remember “the disappeared”
11 Sep, 09 | by BMJ Group
The most interesting, and certainly the most chilling, experience I had in four days in Buenos Aires was to visit the memorial to “the disappeared.”
Two of us were taken there by a doctor whose brother and sister in law were both among the disappeared. He and his wife brought up the two small children who were left.
Some 30 000 people disappeared between the early 70s and the early 80s. The military government snatched them, tortured them, often to death, and then dropped their bodies from planes way out in the Atlantic. Sometimes they drugged the disappeared heavily and dropped them into the water still alive.
They were called the disappeared because no bodies were found and because when the general heading the government was asked what had happened to these people, had they been murdered, he answered that they “just disappeared.”
My friend’s brother knew that he was in danger. His family urged him to flee, and many people - mainly young intellectuals - did flee. But his brother refused. He loved his country too much. My friend is proud of him and it’s some comfort to him that he knows that he wasn’t tortured to death. When they snatched him he ran, and they shot him. He was 27.
The sister in law of my friend was younger, and she was tortured to death. By a fluke she managed to ensure that her young children were not taken. Usually children were taken and given to new families.
My friend then left the country with several young children. Many of those who fled never returned.
The memorial is by the Rio de la Plata, the world’s widest river. When we were there it was cold, grey, and windy, and nobody else was there. There are sculptures that create the impression of a graveyard, an empty graveyard, but the main feature is two long, grey slate walls that list the names of the disappeared by year. Name after name after name. My friend’s brother was taken in 1976, the year that the most people were taken - and the year I graduated from medical school. His sister in law was taken in 1977. When we reached her name, my friend touched it gently.
Nobody has been tried for these crimes. The perpetrators were given an amnesty. There has been no justice, but the present government may charge people.
The mothers and grandmother of the disappeared keep the memories alive. Every Thursday afternoon they walk in a circle in the large square that contains the pink presidential palace, where Eva Peron appeared on the balcony to huge adoring crowds.
I then flew onto Lima and met another friend who told me of the 70 000 who have disappeared in Peru, mostly not well connected, middle class intellectuals but poor indigenous people.
We must not forget.
Thank you for sharing. I often think that because Latin America exists very well in Spanish, then awareness of these issues is often overlooked or easily forgotten in English language texts, newspapers and other forms of communication. It is good for the English world to be reminded.
In the US, UK, Europe, we talk about and study resilience as part of social and behavior sciences. However, when we look at the experience of many countries, the populations themselves are resilient having suffered trauma at a major scale like Argentina, like Bangladesh, like so many other places.
Dr. Tracey Perez Koehlmoos
September 12th, 2009 at 2:33 am
Thanks also for sharing: I was a young medical student in Spain in those years and I took part in many demonstrations in solidarity with LA countries (many of them ended in clashes with the police and we ran amidst clouds of tear gas). We read with horror all the reports that reached our country about tortures, etc.
Later, in the 80s, already a medical doctor, I worked in Central America: tough but beautiful years, we thought we could change that small part of the word. I saw horrors first hand, I have photograhps that I do not dare to look at. But nobody wants to remember or to hear about those years, quite different to Yad Vashem (the museum of the “shoah” in Jerusalem, that I visited two years ago). You see, I always remember the talk delivered by Haim Herzog, former and respected israeli politician and president of the Knesset(I am not a jew but a roman catholic, but we come from similar roots as we share the first books of the Bible): “We cannot change the past, but we can learn from its lessons”. That is the key point in the tragedy of the “dissapeared” (sometimes named “missing people”) and so many tragedies that have taken place along human history. May I advice two books to you, do not know if they have been translated or even easy to find: Ernesto Sábato, the argentinian writer, now very old, wrote with others a book known as “Informe Sábato” (Sábato´s report), in fact named “Nunca más” (”Never again”): it is an accurate description of the comission that the first democratic argentinian president, Raúl Alfonsín, created to elucidate what had happened those terrible years. Difficult to read but perhaps a must. And then Mr. Sábato wrote “Antes del fin” (”Before my end”), sort of farewell packed with wisdom and suffering. Good book in my opinion, not as difficult to read as the first one. Wonder if you have read it. Curiously enough, he is still alive about 10 years after he wrote it.
Try to spread the word as you have done: we must not forget if we want things like that not happening again, wherever else in this planet.
Have a good day.
Angel GF, general internist, aged 49, on call from a county hospital, southern Spain.
Angel García Forcada
September 16th, 2009 at 6:42 am