Argentina: “Milei Feels Hatred for Human Rights”

By Luciana Bertoia on August 20, 2024

The President of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Estela de Carlotto repudiates the government’s decision to eliminate the investigation unit that operated within the Conadi, and says the search for the grandchildren will not stop, and she also affirm that the deputies who went to be photographed with the repressors in prison should be thrown out of Congress.

Estela de Carlotto has been searching for truth and justice for 47 years. Together with the other women who formed the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, they have been searching for hundreds of children who were appropriated during the years of State terrorism. The Grandmothers, in these almost five decades of existence, did what was thought impossible: they restored 133 identities, they made science provide the answers they were looking for to find their grandchildren, they made the right to identity known around the world as Argentine law and they even shaped State institutions.

The government of Javier Milei and Victoria Villarruel has put the human rights movement under siege. On Wednesday, the President, by decree, eliminated the Special Investigation Unit (UEI) that functioned within the National Commission for the Right to Identity (Conadi). It was a new blow against the search for babies stolen during the dictatorship. In this way, the administration of La Libertad Avanza (LLA) blocked the possibility that the organization, which depends on the National Secretariat of Human Rights, to conduct investigations to find the whereabouts of the grandchildren that have yet to be found and to access the archives held by the State. “We do not have hatred or revenge, we simply need that what was achieved in so many years of struggle not be closed, not be erased, not be transformed into something else”, claims the president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo in an interview with Página/12.

-Why do you think the government is moving against Conadi?

The government is advancing against everything related to human rights. Conadi is a very special place, which has been created 31 years ago. It was founded by Carlos Menem. Every day, Conadi is leaning towards more people, so that it is not only those who have disappeared for political reasons, but also the children who are stolen or taken away in hospitals. It is itself dedicated to the defense of children. But they are not only advancing against Conadi. We, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, have no budget. They say they are not going to give us a penny. It is an act of wickedness of a government that should allow us to have the security of knowing that we are who we are when we have doubts and replace that injustice of living with another name, with other people and with another history. This is the government we have. It does not want us. It is closing spaces permanently and one of those spaces is the Conadi, which has been dismantled.

-Does it seem to you that the government is responding to the demands of the repressors or appropriators?

Yes, on the one hand if we take into account that the vice-president is a relative of the military and that she is with them, but it is Milei who governs, not her. He is the one who decides. The responsibility is his. Sometimes I feel like calling him to give me an audience, which he will not give me, to see why he has this repression and this hatred against human rights -if human rights also cover him, if he needs it. We do not have hatred or revenge, we simply need that what was achieved in so many years of struggle not be closed, not be erased, not be transformed into something else.

-What expectations do you have regarding the announcement by Governor Axel Kicillof that he will create a unit to investigate appropriations in the province of Buenos Aires?

A lot, because Axel is an excellent governor, a man with a good brain. He governs for a people and knows that he has to do what is best for that people. We have known him for many years, we know who he is. To found a space in Buenos Aires -which is so huge, almost like a country- is to benefit a society that needs to know its history, to recognize itself, to meet. There is still a long way to go. We are looking for many grandchildren we have not found. Who knows where they are. The province of Buenos Aires, which is very important, may contain many of them –who do not know, do not realize or feel something and do not know how to solve it. We do things in peace, for the common good and we do not harm anyone. We are suffering that the government, which was voted by the people, is making so much division between what they want and what they don’t want — as if this were a market where they sell vegetables. Still, we are struggling. I would like to look Milei in the eye to understand why he is so negative with one sector and so generous with another.

-On Friday, Milei said that there was a smear campaign against the Armed Forces and talked again about reconciliation. What do you think about these statements?

Reconciliation, nothing. Here it is truth, memory and justice. Here there was a genocide. There were dead, wounded, disappeared, stolen children. All this must be clarified. And, of course, this was done by the Armed and Security Forces. The responsibility of each one must be investigated. Those who have nothing to give up because they did nothing wrong will be at peace and those who did what they should not have done must pay for it to avoid repeating history in the future. Or don’t we have to defend the future? Here there were 30,000 disappeared, and they still make fun of this number.

-How do you face the search for the grandchildren in the context of a government that denies the crimes?

-The same as always. We have the directive commission, the technical teams, the Conadi -which was a very valuable element. We are in a very sordid, illogical and negative moment. Officials promise in vain and do not do what they promised. That they take us as if we were elementary school children hurts us very much. Here there is pain, there is struggle and, fortunately, we have formed a board of directors with the grandchildren. I am the president and the vice-president is Buscarita Roa, a dear grandmother. We are now only the two of us. Rosa Roisinblit celebrated her 105th birthday. I could not go, but her grandchildren and the people from Abuelas went to greet her. What we have is love and the need for this to be known, for those responsible to have the corresponding sanctions and for something like this to never happen again.

“They should be out of Congress”.

On July 11, six congretioinal deputies went to Ezeiza prison to visit Alfredo Astiz and other repressors who are imprisoned for aberrant crimes. The delegation – made up of Beltrán Benedit, Guillermo Montenegro, Alida Ferreyra Ugalde, María Fernanda Araujo, Lourdes Arrieta and Rocío Bonacci – left Congress in a van provided by the Lower House, presided over by Martín Menem .

The Federal Penitentiary Service (SPF) had a hard time explaining how the visit was arranged. The Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, tried to distance herself from the hikers and said that she found out about the visit through the media, especially after messages appeared informing that she would facilitate the entry of legislators who empathize with the criminals in uniform. The conclave was extensive and hardly went unnoticed. The deputies were photographed with the genocidaires. In the family photo was Adolfo Donda, who this year was sentenced for having participated in the appropriation of his niece, Victoria Donda Pérez, born in the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA).

From what one of the visitors, Lourdes Arrieta, denounced in the federal justice of Lomas de Zamora, it was known that the visit was only a link in a long chain: there were meetings and projects to get the designers of genocide out of the prisons. The main organizer of this movement is the priest Javier Olivera Ravasi, son of the repressor Jorge Olivera, who has just been expelled from the diocese of Zárate-Campana.

The human rights organizations also made a presentation to Supreme Court Justice Horacio Rosatti because in the chats Judge Agustina Díaz Cordero, vice-president of the Council of the Judiciary, is also mentioned as a participant in the pro-impunity meetings. Pagina 12 tried to contact the judge, but she did not answer the messages.

-What happened to her when she found out that there were six deputies who went to see Astiz and other repressors imprisoned in Ezeiza?

They should be kept out of Congress. We have all seen that congressman who was inadvertently kissing his wife and they threw him out. And these deputies who went to see these criminals -who do not repent and if they got out they would do it again because they say so, and who deserve to be eternally in jail because they are not human- cannot be left without sanction. They say they did it by mistake, don’t take us for fools. They knew who they were seeing. They took pictures of themselves. This is a mockery of the people. There is a sector of society that has not suffered what we have suffered and that has not learned from the press or from the history books what has happened and that it should not happen again. It would be good for schools and universities to continue talking about human rights especiallywhen they were violated. We will all be seeing what the government does right and what it does wrong. In that case, we will criticize so that it can’t go backwards. This is democracy, we are not in a dictatorship.

-Are you demanding the dismissal of the six deputies?

Of course I am. That is what they deserve. There is a great lightness in many parties, which are seeing what is more convenient for them than what is convenient for society. This can be seen. It hurts to say it. I hope they react, that they understand that they are also Argentines and that they can be victims tomorrow with something very deliberate, as it touches your family.

-What do you think about the role of the priest Olivera Ravasi?

I did not know him. I am getting to know him now. He deserves that the Catholic Church claims him and punishes him accordingly.

-What do you expect the Council of Magistrates to do with the situation of Judge Diaz Cordero?

What we always hope is that it will be clarified who is who and what he has done, if it is something that does not correspond. Justice is the thing that has to know what to do with people who make mistakes.

-Do you think that this government has an impunity plan?

I would like to see Milei’s face, to know what happened in his life, if he thinks that being president is to say nonsense. A president has to do what is good for his people. They have come to govern with a criterion that they are putting into practice, and the people are the ones who suffer.

-How do you deal with this situation?

Violence, nothing. Participation, yes, and complaints, too. We should not offend people who march to make a claim. The permanent claim should be to the President, that he receives the comments of the people who lack food, of the people who have a coffee at night and do not have dinner because they have no money. This happens to the elderly and also to the children. All this is part of the humanity that a government should have in mind. We have to make them see it.

-On August 5 it was ten years since you found your grandson Ignacio. How was this time with him?

These have been beautiful years. We got to know each other. He is already a father. He has a little girl, who is a beauty. Whenever we can we see each other, we talk. I’m not much of a phone person, but he comes by. He talks a lot with Claudia, my daughter, and she passes it on to me. The little granddaughter is a child who admires her grandmother, whom she never knew. She has Laura’s picture in her room. This joy of having found him is permanent and growing. He is already a big boy and a great musician. He always wants to see us, to meet us, even though we live a little far away. I had the joy of meeting him. How many grandmothers, who are no longer in this world, have not had that happiness?

Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English