Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
trucks with furniture and personal effects to sell at flea markets. Some
patotas
hunted for pretty young girls to assault in broad daylight. These
tactics vanquished the left-wing guerrillas fairly quickly, but the work
off the
patotas
continued, not for national security reasons but for the
sheer abuse of power.
The
patotas
reported to commanders at houses of detention. In
Buenos Aires, the military commands operated most of the detention
centers, converting barracks and military classrooms to the task. For
the most part, the police took a back seat to this activity, and the Triple
A retired completely. The strategy of these operations changed some-
what, as the military tortured and killed in secret and disposed of the
bodies discreetly, whereas the old Triple A had preferred, in Rosas fash-
ion, to display them as warnings. The navy established one of the most
notorious military detention centers at the Navy Mechanics School.
Each command maintained its own suspects' list, often enlarged by
information obtained after torturing prisoners with electric shocks. The
confusion of multiple lists meant that thousands of innocents ended up
in detention for no reason. Loved ones never knew where those arrested
were taken, complicating the process of following the already clandes-
tine proceedings. Civil rights lawyers also disappeared, and few judges
and journalists dared inquire into arbitrary arrests. One-third of the vic-
tims were labor leaders, testimony to the military's attempt once again
to crush working-class resistance. Often physicians attended torture ses-
sions in order to revive the victims long enough for the torturers to get
more information. They buried the bodies of victims in isolated places
without markers, thus giving rise to the term
desaparecidos,
or “disap-
peared ones.” Military units with access to aircraft drugged their victims,
flew them over a large body of water, slit open their bellies so they would
sink, and dumped them overboard. In time, the torturers continued
practicing their avocation—again with full immunity—merely for the
feelings of power or sexual arousal it gave them.
A combination of fear and economic boom muted public reaction
to the increasing evidence of disappearances. The government dealt
harshly with attorneys, judges, and news reporters who inquired too
closely about the missing. There was nothing at all in the newspapers
about guerrilla activities, which had declined dramatically, or about state
repression. Many did not want to know what was going on; however,
a group of women—mainly mothers and wives of the disappeared—
formed a protest group. The military officials rebuffed questions, telling
mothers that their sons probably had run off with prostitutes and wives
that their husbands had left to live with other women. Missing daughters
