Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A MOTHER'S TESTIMONY
“M
y son was a student in La Plata but at the time of the coup,
because of all the problems in the university, he was living
here in Mendoza. . . . On the way home [one day] they drove into the
middle of a police and army operation. He didn't have his identity card
with him so they arrested him. . . . Effectively, he had disappeared. . . .
A month after his kidnapping they returned to the house. At that
moment our daughter Violeta, who was a student in La Plata, was stay-
ing with us and Ana María, the youngest who was at secondary school.
It was 22 January 1977. They arrived at eleven or twelve at night in a
number of cars, masked and with rifles. They invaded the house from
the front and back, kicking in the doors. They didn't say who they were,
but even though it was dark we could see that one of the cars was a
police car. They were talking about drugs.
They . . . threw us to the floor, threatening and insulting us, more
than anything else about our jobs as teachers. They took away our two
daughters aged sixteen and eighteen. They were both crying desper-
ately. I suffered a nervous attack and, I don't know by what miracle, but
they brought back the youngest.
. . . All this time the others were taking out everything from the
house, anything they could carry. And they took Violeta . . .
We heard our daughter weeping as they took her away . . .
One night, a week later, my husband heard a noise and looked out of
the window. He had a stick ready to defend himself against anyone who
tried to get in. It was Violeta. She was naked, crawling on all fours, don't
ask me in what condition—infections in her eyes, covered in bruises
and with a terror on her face . . . but she was there. She told us they
had taken her to a place outside the city and kept her inside a car all
the time, crouched up, with her hands tied, and blindfolded. . . . She could
hear the screams of people being tortured. They tortured her too.”
Source:
Fisher, Jo.
Mothers of the Disappeared
(Boston: South End Press,
1989), pp. 15-16.
would stay away. The
patotas
first secured the victims and their family
members, then ransacked the home for evidence. They then led the
victims away for interrogation. As their immunity grew, the
patotas
became common burglars. They raided middle-class homes that were
under no particular suspicion for harboring terrorists merely to fill up
