The decision taken by the current Army Commander, Carlos Prestireplaces Louis Petrie In the Ministry of Defense it was known only in the same week that the call for a march to – Demanding the release of oppressive people convicted of crimes against humanity.
since Javier Miley Presumably there were executive decisions and public expressions and gestures that made it clear – at the very least – that V.I Freedom advances the Crimes committed during the last military dictatorship It is explained from Two devil theory. The question now is to what extent the ruling party intends to delve deeper into this line and what effects this will have on the country’s policy. Memory, truth and justice In the short and medium term.
The decision to appoint Presti sparked various discussions. On the one hand, this is the first time since the return of democracy that this has happened A soldier holds the position of Minister of Defense. On the other hand, his father Roque Carlos PrestiHe was a soldier accused of crimes against humanity during the dictatorship, when he was commander of the 7th Infantry Regiment in La Plata – and died before he could stand trial.
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Although no one can be held responsible for the actions committed by his parents – who were even accused in a case, but died without being convicted – the future minister He has never disavowed state terrorism publicly. In the past few hours, the soldier gave a short interview with the press at Casa Rosada and announced that he intends to “continue in the military hierarchy” and not withdraw from the force, but he did not make any statements about the recent past.
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The second piece of news that alerted human rights organizations this week was more problematic: a group of retired soldiers and militia militants called for a demonstration to demand the release of those convicted of crimes against humanity. Among the organizers, as revealed by ElDiarioAR, are: Orlando “You” GonzalezA Suppression of the marine mechanical school (ESMA) that He serves life imprisonment In your home, and Asunción BeneditMember of the Bañuelos Negros group and sister of the MP Freedom advances Beltran Benedet, one of the legislators who organized Alfredo visited Astiz last year in Ezeiza prison. There is also Guillermo Sotovia, the son of an air force member, and Alfredo Manzor, a former Malvinas Islands veteran accused of carrying out terrorist operations. Torture of recruits He is the current lawyer of the Judiciary of Tucumán.
These days, the group is in a state of convulsion: the Minister of Security, Patricia BullrichHe suggested to the organizers that the march be moved from Plaza de Mayo to Plaza San Martin. The goal is for the demonstrators not to intersect with the left’s call to support Palestine Avoid riots.
Nothing happened here
However, these are not the only signs of the emancipatory campaign against the politics of memory, truth and justice. Acquittals, delays in prosecutions against humanity and dismissals of key human rights organizations are deepening anxiety in a section of society about a possible setback in the consensus reached since the return of democracy.
Trials against humanity: acquittals and suggestive delays
Although they do not usually make headlines in the mainstream media, judicial processes related to crimes against humanity are progressing. There are currently 13 open oral trials in five provinces.
Fernando Tibelli is one of the founders of La Retaguardia, a medium that broadcasts experiences live and is about to end the year with nearly a million views. In an interview with PERFIL he warned against it Number of acquittals that have been registered In recent weeks.
On November 2, the Federal Oral Court in Rosario ruled 17 acquittals in the case known as “The Velazo” A metalworkers’ strike that was illegally suppressed under Operation Red Serpent Paraná, in 1975. It was a historically relevant operation, because it was an incident that occurred before the coup and put two former directors of Asindar in the dock, for cooperating in the operations and providing physical locations where the kidnappings, torture and murders took place.
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On October 24, the Federal Oral Court in Mar del Plata handed down 8 convictions and 27 acquittals in the La Huerta trial, which ruled on illegal detentions, torture, disappearances and other crimes against humanity at a rural property located near Tandil Military Air Base.
“If you add the number up, you have a total of 44 people who have been exonerated in just weeks, which is a very high number compared to the acquittal rate since the trials returned,” Tebeli said. This is objective data. According to the Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes against Humanity (PCCH), since 2006, there have been 1,195 convictions in 332 convictions and a total of 196 acquittals.
“Although we still cannot say that this is a trend, I think it is something that would not have happened in other years,” Tebeli said. In his view, Judge Alejo Ramos Padilla’s decision in August to acquit two former police officers on charges of cover-up and violating their duties as public officials in connection with the discovery of the remains of a death-flight victim was a clear message. “The fact that he was the one with the full history opened the door for other judges to feel empowered,” he added.
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Not everything is linear. In the Sheraton case, the judge in 2023 sentenced two men to life imprisonment, but the Fourth Chamber of the Federal Criminal Court of Cassation proposed using the simple murder number, which would mean a much lower sentence. “Yesterday we learned that the court had ratified the maximum sentence of 25 years. But in the case of Barbara and Camilo García’s mother, for example, Casacion took the same position and Sánchez Zeni – the convicted oppressor – was immediately released due to the time he had already spent in prison,” Tebelli said.
Pablo Lonto is a human rights lawyer and a leader in monitoring trials against humanity. In an interview with PERFIL, he spoke of “encouraging” the military sectors and the ruling party after the October elections, but stressed that there are still “no clear indicators linking the acquittals to the government’s electoral victory.”
According to Lonto, the “climate of the times” can be seen in the fact that “several judges decided to postpone the issue of trials related to crimes against humanity.” “It is clear that in these two years, since they were not among the priority cases of the executive branch, many judges placed these cases at the bottom of the pile,” he said.
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In these cases, the urgency is objective: the accused and survivors are very elderly, and if prosecutions do not advance, impunity will continue. “On the other hand, in the Cuadernos case, the judges smell or know how interested the political power is and come up with an absurd decision to speed up the court,” Lonto said. For this reason, on Tuesday 25th, the group Lawyers Against Humanity submitted a memorandum to the Federal Court of Cassation requesting a meeting and demanding that the same standards be followed in these matters as is the case with Reason for notebooks.
Lonto stressed another issue that occurs outside the media radar: for four years not a single meeting of the inter-power commission created with the aim of speeding up trials has been held. This is the space where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court must convene and where representatives of the federal judiciary and the executive branch must sit. Although there was no activity during Alberto Fernandez’s administration, there was no attempt to resume work either in Miley’s administration.
The libertarian crusade against the politics of memory, truth and justice
At the beginning of November, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Human Rights, Alberto Baños appeared before the UN Committee against Torture He questioned the figure of 30,000 missing people during the last military dictatorship. Although many liberal officials, including the president, insist on this argument, it has never been made by an official of an international organization before.
Since his appointment, Baños has been unable to establish a close relationship with human rights organizations, which warned of the government’s intentions in the decision to demote the Human Rights Secretariat to Undersecretary. And along with this decision came the typical saw: dismantling programs and firing key personnel.
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“Since Miley took office, action has begun to be taken Obstruction of prosecutions Lonto stressed the need to stop providing assistance, for example, to the judiciary in everything related to the investigation and documents or to dismiss the lawyers who promoted the cases.
in may, ESMA Memorial Site Museum Hierarchy was abolished and with it National Memory Archivecame under orbit International Center for the Promotion of Human Rights (CIPDH)It is an organization created under the auspices of UNESCO and is currently managed by the lawyer Ana Belen Marmorawhich has an active pro-life and anti-sexual and reproductive rights activism.
The libertarian campaign against the politics of memory combined with positions against “gender ideology,” and in October, the museum’s content director, Fernando Vidoya, decided to remove signs that had been placed in the permanent exhibition in order to show sexual violence against women in the secret detention center. Specifically, evocative words were interfered with.
As La Retaguardia reported in October, Vidoya has also added Manuel Larabori to his team as an advisor. He is the grandson of Colonel Argentino del Valle Larraburri, who was kidnapped and killed by the People’s Revolutionary Army in 1974, and is a symbol of organizations demanding “anti-subversion.”
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In fact, Colonel Larraburé’s son belongs to the Center for Legal Studies on Terrorism and its Victims (CELTYV), the organization founded by Victoria Villarroel, and during the millennium he was appointed to the Ministry of Defense.
All of these gestures, those that reach media headlines and those that happen without major repercussions, add to a long list of episodes that began the day Miley, in the 2023 presidential debate, referred to crimes committed by the dictatorship with the word “excesses.” During his presidency, a group of La Libertad Avanza deputies visited the condemned and repressed soldiers in the Ezeiza prison, and on March 24, Agustín Lage was the hero of a video published by Casa Rosada entitled “Day of Complete Memory.”
We will have to wait until Saturday the 29th to find out whether this line of “cultural battle” resonates in civil society or whether it is the same group that defends, with greater or less influence, the actions committed by the state in the 1970s.
CB