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the properties of four victims of kidnapping and execution at the Navy
Mechanics School. A year later, a police sergeant received a sentence
of 25 years for kidnapping and killing a young couple and selling
their baby. Another judge convicted Police Commissioner Miguel
Etchecolatz of the murder of two 21-year-old suspected subversives,
who had been repeatedly raped and beaten. A witness had said that one
of the victims had pleaded to no avail for the intervention of the police
chaplain, who since had become a bishop in the Argentine Catholic
Church. Some repressors cheated justice. The ex-chief of the First
Army Corps, General Guillermo Suárez Mason, died of a heart attack
as he waited to be tried for having ordered 200 kidnappings and 30
homicides. “It is divine justice,” remarked one human rights activist,
“but I would have liked him to be punished on earth first” (Ginzberg,
2005). Prosecutors even began to go after former members of the noto-
rious Triple A, the Argentine Anticommunist Association, which began
the Dirty War in 1975 during the government of President María Estela
Martínez de Perón, who now lives in Spain. She, too, has been named
as a person of interest in the investigations.
The prosecutions under way prompted the Mothers of the Plaza de
Mayo finally to bring an end to the protests they had mounted each
Thursday for the previous 25 years. “The enemy is no longer in the
House of Government,” explained Hebe de Bonafini (Dandan 2006).
Not everyone supported the reversal of impunity. Two thousand five
hundred protesters, dressed conservatively in jackets and ties, few of
whom appeared to be younger than 40 years of age, gathered before
the statue of General José de San Martín, patron of the modern army,
and listened to speakers extolling the work of the military and police
in having defeated communism. The speaker did not identify him-
self. “Marxist subversion today appears hypocritically transformed
as defenders of human rights, which they always trample underfoot.
Today the field of battle is public opinion. From the modes of com-
munication they attack with the same malice with which they used
to fire grapeshot and throw bombs,” he said. Referring to President
Kirchner, the orator continued, “There are some who want to con-
struct the heroic past for themselves when they were merely timo-
rous, shamefaced, and cowards” (Piqué). The crowd responded with
prolonged applause. Although theirs is a minority opinion in the
nation, those who want to preserve impunity have the slow pace of
justice to protect them. As of mid-2007, only seven of the 700 defen-
dants charged with human rights abuses have been convicted.
