The Argentine election campaign entered the Buenos Aires metro this week with the help of Ana Fernández, the granddaughter of one of the Plaza de Mayo mothers who was murdered by the military regime in 1977. Fears of a victory for far-right candidate Javier Milei in the Nov. 19 election prompted her to tell her disastrous family story to a handful of strangers traveling on the A line on Tuesday. “I apologize to all of you, I’m a little nervous, I’ve never done this before in my life and I’m doing it because I’m very worried. “I was born in Sweden, I was born when there was a dictatorship in Argentina,” Fernández began as cell phones turned on around him. “My mother was 16 years old when she was kidnapped while pregnant with me. She was sent to a concentration camp where everything was taken away from her, even her name, which became a letter and a number. She was brutally tortured and spent 17 years in this concentration camp,” he continued.
The events recounted by Fernández occurred in mid-1977. Her mother, Ana María Careaga, was released four months later and went into exile in Sweden, where she gave birth to Ana on December 11. Her maternal grandmother, Esther Ballestrino of Careaga He could never hold her in his arms. Three days before the birth of her child, the founder of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, who was still searching for other missing people, was kidnapped in Buenos Aires and taken to the dictatorship’s largest secret detention center, the Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada ( ESMA), transferred). Days later, she was drugged and thrown alive from a plane into the sea along with other mothers and two French nuns.
“I was at ESMA [Jorge] the Tiger Acosta, a genocidal man who today asks you to vote for Milei,” Fernández said to an audience that listened – and recorded – without missing any details. His parents decided to return to Argentina when the country regained democracy in 1983, and President Raúl Alfonsín sponsored a trial of the military regime’s junta for crimes committed under his command. It was the first of many: more than 1,200 oppressors were convicted of crimes against humanity. For Fernández, the consensus of Argentine society against the dictatorship is threatened by the denialist discourse of Milei and her vice-presidential candidate Victoria Villarruel, who reduce state terrorism to “some excesses” of the security forces.
“I don’t want violence for my children, I love this country, I want us all to be able to live with differences, express our differences and not be afraid of being kidnapped, tortured or thrown into the sea alive.” A vice president , who says her favorite sport is bullying and hitting lefties, never again. For the sake of democracy, please do not vote for Milei,” concluded Ballestrino de Careaga’s granddaughter, and many subway riders burst into applause.
One of the videos of his message went viral and was viewed more than two million times within three days. Fernández assured by phone that he did not want to publicly embarrass himself, but decided to keep in mind that “democracy is at risk” if Milei becomes president of Argentina. She says a friend who is a victim of gender-based violence convinced her and she also reached out to subway passengers to tell them that she would no longer be alive if the free sale of weapons, as by proposed by the Ultra candidate would be approved.
“What Villarruel says is not new. He always claimed the dictatorship with whom he met [el dictador Jorge Rafael] Videla was on the repressor’s agenda [Miguel] Etchecolatz, but it always surprises me at the level of hate and violence it has and how it uses democracy to legitimize things that are outside of democracy. State terrorism is anti-democratic,” says Fernández.
The 45-year-old administrator understands that young people who have already been born into democracy see dictatorship as something distant. He also understands that many feel unrepresented by the current government and want change, but he finds it difficult to accept that they will vote for Milei, convinced that he will not be able to do what he wants. “Many say: ‘Selling organs won’t make it, selling children won’t make it, genocidal murderers won’t be released, how do they know?'” he asks. She is convinced that she had to do something to stop those who defend her grandmother’s murderers and her mother’s tormentors. But since the video went viral, she hasn’t opened her social media for fear of negative comments. “I know they have a lot of followers and are very violent,” he warns.
Defense of criminals
In the vice presidential candidates’ debate on Wednesday, Villarruel refused to answer whether he favors releasing reprisals convicted of crimes against humanity. Instead, the La Libertad Avanza candidate lamented the lawlessness of Juan Daniel Amelong, whose father was murdered by the Montoneros guerrillas. The soldier he defended in the debate has amassed five prison sentences, including three life sentences, for crimes including kidnapping, torture, theft of babies and forced disappearances of people during the dictatorship.
In the last meeting of @DiputadosAR I asked him @VickyVillaruel When you visit your genocidal friends in prison, ask them where the bodies of our comrades are. Today I found out that he is visiting Juan Daniel Amelong, who was convicted of my old man’s disappearance. https://t.co/qcYM9grtmi
— Eduardo Toniolli (@eduardotoniolli) November 8, 2023
Villarruel’s speech outraged Peronist MP Eduardo Toniolli, the son of missing persons, and the two began a public discussion on social networks. “In the last parliamentary session I asked Victoria Villarruel that when she visits her genocidal friends in prison, she asks them where the bodies of our colleagues are. Today I found out that he is with Juan Daniel Amelong, who was convicted for the disappearance of my old man,” Toniolli said. Milei’s vice president responded that she understood the pain he might feel as a son, but it was important to put it in context: “Your father was a member of the Montoneros. “Montoneros terrorists murdered Amelong’s father in democracy.” The Peronist MP refused to accept his condolences: “They are as false as your alleged academic interviews with the genociders.” Argentina’s consensus against the dictatorship has never been so focused Put to the test like in this tense election campaign.