Disappearing In The Darkness

People here sit in the shade. They’re happy to stop and savour a medialuna while enjoying a spot of music from the odd guitar player who accessorises the pavements. It's a welcome distraction from the yo-yo economics and volatile politics of Argentina, where the peso has dropped significantly in the short time I’ve been here. 

And wandering through the civilised streets of Buenos Aries, I struggle to understand how its population copes so calmly with the constant uncertainty of wildly variable expenses. But I guess they already learned how to live with the threat of much worse.

In a nation so bitterly divided between left and right, only football unites the people here, so it’s perhaps fitting that the World Cup of 1978 turned the world’s attention to Argentina. Its dark secrets suddenly at risk of exposure.

During the military dictatorship which started two years earlier with a coup d’etat and would last until 1983, the country’s leadership implemented a dark campaign to eradicate left-leaning political opposition and annihilate all traces of its ideology. 

This endeavour was part of the wider ‘Operation Condor’ - a clandestine plan which spanned Latin America. It’s aim was to share intelligence across borders and eliminate leftist opposition which could pose a threat to the right-wing dictatorships in power. In the context of a cold war, it was easy for right-wing governments to portray those with socialist ideas as a virulent Communist threat. This plan of violence, terror and political elimination was quietly supported by the American Government. Remember them? Land of the Free?  Guardians of democracy?

Those deemed to be a threat by the ruling military junta were mainly students, trade unionists, journalists, left-wing activists and members of the working classes who sought to protect the workers’ rights and improved living standards previously established by former leaders Juan and Eva Peron. 

The junta was strategic in its approach.  Portray the community defending its rights to be terrorists. Make sure ‘reasonable people’ think them a threat. Isolate, shame and destroy them.  In other words, the ABCs of political manipulation. Techniques that have worked throughout the decades, reincarnated in various ways, often so subtle in their implementation that they’re hard to detect - until people begin to die.

Eventually, these dangerously free-thinking individuals of Argentina were snatched off the street in broad daylight and bundled into the back of a car by men in plain clothes. The many, many people who witnessed this all shared a simple explanation: “They must have done something”. But did they believe that? Or were they fearful? Apathetic? Perhaps this eased a relentless discomfort of conscience, which, like a stool with a definite imbalance between right and left - never quite sits comfortably. And how many of us would have the cojonas to respond any differently? 

Between 1976 and 1983, 30,000 Argentinians completely ‘Disappeared’. A convenient ending for the authorities who did not have to investigate the ‘hypothetical death’ of those who had simply vanished without trace.

You might assume those captured by what came to be known as ‘The Death Squad’ were killed immediately. That, however, would have been too humane. The regime’s plan was more sinister than simply removing the nuisance of opposition. They wanted to ridicule and demonise the ideology of their opponents - who were the bad guys, right? They had to control the spread of such ‘dangerous’ thought. Create fear of capture. Switch off the lights of accountability. The violence therefore, had to be as psychologically destructive as it was physical.

Those captured were taken to secret torture camps, kept for indefinite periods of time in dark, windowless rooms with a bag over their heads so they had no concept of time and no notion of when their inevitable end was coming. They were chained to coffin sized compartments called ‘Kennels’ and forced to excrete into communal buckets as part of the dehumanising process. They were tortured and interrogated. Pushed to reveal information about their counterparts and friends.

The lucky ones were put to work. Forced to toil against their cause, writing propaganda for the press or translating documents in a workspace called the fishbowl, where they were constantly watched by hostile eyes. 

Gradually, rumours of the torture leaked out from holding camps like a slow seepage of poison, contaminating the minds of ‘the free’ with fear of engagement in politics. Job done.

Then, there were those ‘dangerous extremists’ who happened to be pregnant. Removed from their kennel at around 7 months, women were taken to a holding area and given just enough food to keep them and their baby alive. To do otherwise would have amounted to abortion - and that would be immoral.

For the birth, women were chained to a table and offered no particular assistance though a doctor - someone trained in the means of saving human life and easing pain - was present to save the child.

It’s thought that around 500 children were born in this way. Shortly after their birth, they were removed from their mothers and given to a law-abiding family of the regime to raise as their own.

But the mothers of The Disappeared and grandmothers of these babies did not regurgitate the standard line of blame. Instead, they marched round Plaza de Mayo, in front of the President’s residence, demanding to know where their children had gone. The ultimate act of bravery and defiance. For them, nothing worse could happen. And I guess those little old ladies had the biggest cojonas of all.

Today, The Grandmothers, still march around the Plaza every Thursday afternoon, wearing the white headscarves that have come to be the symbol of their movement. A motif which appears here and there in the city’s street art.

They march to show that they and their pain, have not disappeared. They will continue to march until they find answers and carry pictures of their loved ones, to prove they existed - have you seen them? 

I visited the Plaza one Thursday, to watch the living ghosts of history march on. Afterwards, I approached the grandmother with the kindest face, who was selling little keyrings to raise money for their campaign. I tried to speak and only tears came out so she gave me a hug, but, shouldn’t that have been the other way around? 

What eventually happened to Los Desaparecidos? Well, most were drugged into submission and thrown alive out of planes into the South Atlantic Ocean on what are now known as, 'The Death Flights’. 

Decades later, people are still searching for information, some for justice and others for reconciliation. And it would be simple to place blame with a violent dictatorship which is no longer in power. Too simple, you might say. Surely their attempts to destroy an ideology required the cooperation of an entire society and it’s this complicity which makes unequivocal blame difficult to place. It would, for example, be hard to create an irrational fear of any community amongst ‘upstanding citizens’ without the support of a willing media. How much did the religious and civil establishment of the very recent past really know? Whose turn is it now, to be afraid? Sure, those calling for reconciliation might be looking for progress and closure. Let’s hope so. Or are they looking for something else? Protection? Absolution? What a handy way to avoid the exposure of collusion, though of course, it couldn’t possibly be that.

Ultimately this campaign of terror relied on the consent of society as a whole.  And what does consent look like? It looks like nothing. Doing nothing. Saying nothing. Seeing nothing. Makes you wonder what injustices we permit today, by indulging in ….  Nothing? 

For modern-day Argentina the past cannot be called history while it’s still so present. It’s dark demons creep amongst the people like shadows of a society not quite prepared to expose them to the light. 

These events happened in living memory. Walking through the streets of Buenos Aries today, people are living normal lives, going to work and walking their dogs or meeting a friend for coffee. But almost everyone has a connection to this darkest of times and the trauma inflicted continues to span generations. Mothers without children. Adults who have lived a whole life based on lies. Argentina’s psychological scars - unlike its people - won’t simply disappear.

A woman in her early forties walks past me in the street. Can she be sure of who her parents are? Did they work for the regime? Or turn a blind eye?…. And what was the difference? 

I took a taxi to the Memorial Museum. A former naval academy used to imprison and torture The Disappeared, now a museum devoted to educating the next generation. My driver tells me his best friend disappeared. He has never been inside the museum. He calls it a sad place.

My guide, Maria, has an impressive knowledge of events. She appears to be in her early thirties, so, too young to have lived experience. I ask what her connection is and she tells me she is a historian, whose parents were left-wing activists during The Dirty War. They were lucky enough to survive. She explains that the regime thrived by making sure political engagement was a frightening concept. Something to be avoided. By disengaging the population, it was much easier to do as they pleased and they grew emboldened. The kidnappings more obvious. The popular perception that politics means danger is a hangover which lingers on and Maria believes that this, is what should now disappear, because apathy is far more dangerous.

Overly powerful governments rarely start with a Death Squad. They start with a gradual reduction of rights. They start by ridiculing those brave enough to ask questions or pose alternatives. They start when apathy, fear or collusion allow the darkness of democratic violation to spread unchecked as the light of accountability fades. 

Can we be sure we’re immune to this? Who today, is demonised for their viewpoint? Where today, is protest condemned? Who in your life, is not allowed to be questioned? And when you stand by the water-cooler at work listening to someone ridicule another, consider how harmless your laughter really is.

Argentina’s Dirty War failed in its primary aim to annihilate opposition because you can kill one person, one family, or one entire political group, but its ideas can never be destroyed. In fact, they are more likely to be reborn than repressed.

Each life taken in Argentina inflicted pain that was belittled by demonisation; facilitated by collusion; supported by apathy; and fuelled by fear. And walking through the sunny streets of beautiful Buenos Aries today, this casts a dark shadow that still lingers closely behind each person - yet to disappear.