AFP, published on Saturday 24 June 2023 at 04:45
He will soon be one of the most chilling witnesses to Argentina’s dictatorship (1976-83): A small, ugly twin-engine machine used on the “death flights” that threw prisoners into the sea has just been repatriated after several decades abroad. for one last trip. that of memory.
“It’s a very difficult moment because on the one hand we want the plane to be there and on the other hand we say to ourselves: what will my feeling be when I say to myself that they threw my plane from there? Mummy…? It’s very strong.
More than 45 years later, Cecilia de Vicenti and Mabel Careaga, some 60 daughters of people who disappeared during the dictatorship, told AFP the mixed feelings when the plane returned. He landed in Tucuman (Northwest) on Friday, found AFP and is expected in Buenos Aires on Monday. Between relief, even the “chance” to “close” the story further, Cecilia dares and “horror” to imagine her drugged mother in this zinc.
The Skyvan PA51 is a small, paunchy 1960s transport aircraft with unattractive lines that we think are practical. “Flying shoebox”, as it was called in aviation because of its rectangular fuselage. Praised for its short takeoffs and landings, its capacity (19 passengers) and therefore… its wide stern ramp.
This Skyvan was used on several “death flights,” including on the night of December 14, 1977, when 12 people were ejected from the vast La Plata Estuary. Among them the mothers of Cecilia and Mabel, some “mothers of the Place de Mai”, but also two French nuns, Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet.
– Aircraft patient tracking –
Of those 12, five were among the rare victims of the “robbers” whose bodies were recovered – with the aim of making them disappear forever. This time, counteracting sea winds brought remains to the shore, which were hastily buried under the designation “NN” (unnamed).
Only much later – in 2005 – did exhumations and genetic tests lead to identification. The others, probably thousands (the number was never established, but there were hundreds of thefts), were never found after their “transfer”.
The expression meant a drop at sea: the detainees were told that they would be “transferred” to a distant detention center in the south of the country, but that they would have to be euthanized for the journey…
With cynicism, they nicknamed these flights “Pento-Marine” (for the use of the anesthetic Pentothal), which was deferred to AFP Enrique Piñeyro, a former pilot and director who helped track down the plane.
Because the return of the Skyvan is the result of a patient search. By Cecilia, Mabel, but also by a prison survivor, Miriam Lewin, and an Italian photographer, Giancarlo Ceraudo. The latter, who made a report on “the flights”, asked Miriam: “Have you thought about where these planes could be? Because if you say airplane, you say … trace of the pilots.” The trials against the dictatorship were resumed after a controversial phase of amnesty and opened up new perspectives.
First it was necessary to locate the planes, through aviation registers but also through websites of “fanatics” or “spotters” whose hobby is to track planes all over the world.
– The memory or the “show”? –
Six planes – there were more – were identified as participating in the “flights of death”. Some were destroyed in the Falklands War (1982), one sold to Luxembourg, another to the UK, another to Florida where mail thefts were carried out.
What aircraft “trackers” didn’t know was that an aircraft’s “history,” flight schedules, and pilot names remain recorded even if the aircraft changes hands. Once these registers were recovered, they were helped by pilots in decoding the data and identified “between 10 and 15 suspicious flights” at night.
The judiciary was on the move again, notably with a river trial that resulted in 48 convictions in 2017 — including three pilots for taking part in Flights of Death.
The Skyvan’s final location (in Arizona, where it was used for recreational skydiving) and the idea of returning it didn’t come up until 2022. The owners approved of the idea and the government actively supported it.
The Skyvan departed the United States in early June, arriving on Friday after several stops. And finally to be exhibited in Buenos Aires near the Museum of Remembrance, which has become the former ESMA, the “School of Mechanics of the Navy”, the most famous detention center of the dictatorship.
If he at least overcomes the protests of a dissonant wing of the “mothers of the Plaza de Mayo”, denouncing the attempt to “make death a show”, and wanting to melt down the plane’s metal to make a sculpture out of it in homage to mothers and deceased.