Transcript

1.30.25 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated January February
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twenty twenty five. As a reminder, Radio I is a
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reading service intended for people who are blind or have
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other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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Please join me now for the first article, which is
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part two of four decades after the fall of Argentina's dictatorship,
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A fight over the country's darkest chapter is reopening grievous
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wounds inside the fight to memorialize victims of the military
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junta that ruled over the South American nation in the
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nineteen seventies and eighties by Joshua Hammer. In Part one,
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we learned how the reopening of the traumatic history of
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Argentina's dictatorship has sparked new conflicts and efforts to remember
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the victims. The Navy School of Mechanics AS and Buenos
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Aires served as a primary detention and torture center during
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Argentina's military dictatorship from the mid seventies to the early
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nineteen eighties. The dictatorship fell in nineteen eighty three after
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losing the Falklands War, leading to democratic elections and trials
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for junta leaders. Although many were later pardoned, the trauma
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of the dictatorship era remains evident, with ongoing efforts to
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identify victims and memorialize the Desperasidos, including the establishment of
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the ESMA Museum and Memory Park. The newly elected government
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in twenty twenty three has controversially justified the regime's actions,
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threatening to close memorial sites and audit human rights organizations,
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causing social tension. Human rights activists, including former ESMA prisoner
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Miriam Lewin, continued to challenge the government's stance and worked
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to preserve the memory of the dictatorship's victims. Here now
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is part two. They kept me blindfolded, Miriam Lewin recalled.
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They used electric shock, They put a gun to my
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head and pulled the trigger. They played Russian Roulette. Her
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interrogators demanded that she gave up the whereabouts of Patricia Paletzuelos,
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a friend since high school, suspected of planting a bomb
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in Air Force headquarters. Polotzuelo's father was a top Air
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Force officer. Lewin continued to insist she had lost track
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of Paletzuelos when she joined the Monteneros Armed Wing. Eventually,
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she says, her captors believed her, but they kept her imprisoned.
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Security forces reportedly found Polotzuelos by accident and killed her
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in September nineteen seventy seven while they were searching a
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group house for a burg Soon afterward, Lewin's captors blindfolded
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and handcuffed her, threw her into a car trunk, and
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drove her to Esma, where she said awful things were
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said to happen. She thought they were taking her to
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be killed, but the military had decided to spare her life.
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Lewin spoke English and French, and she was put to
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work in the center's press department, which meant translating articles
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about the dictatorship from the Washington Post and other American newspapers.
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At night, she slept in the capucha beside chained prisoners.
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I was free to walk around and talk to them.
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She said. They were sitting there blindfolded, with rats crawling
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around them. Lewin was fed the line about the transfers
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to Patagonia, and she suspected something more sinister was happening.
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You left in the morning to go to work, and
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you saw a lot of people, and you came back
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at night, and the capucha was empty. Lewin was released
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in nineteen seventy nine, just months before the Inter American
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Commission visited Esma. Afterward, she was monitored closely by the military,
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she says, but she made a new life. She married
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another former prisoner, gave birth to a son, and left
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the country with her husband and child in nineteen eighty one.
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She had another son soon afterward. For three years, she
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worked as a paralegal and translator in New York while
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raising her young children. Then returned to Argentina at the
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dawn of the Alfonsine era. After testifying against the junta.
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She got a job writing for a magazine, and she
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was eventually hired by the TV news program Telenotche Investiga
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Akin to sixty minutes. As a victim of torture, she
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was hesitant to produce stories about the dictatorship's crimes, believing
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that she could not report about them impartially. But while
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she was attending a journalism workshop at the Pointer Institute,
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the global pro democracy nonprofit based in Florida, her professor
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told her, on the contrary, you should do it because
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your sensibility will make all the difference. When you are
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interviewing victims or survivors. There were certain issues, he said,
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where there are not two sides. For years, the known
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history of the death flights was limited. That finally changed
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in the nineteen nineties when a guilt racked former Navy
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Lieutenant Aldolfos Gilingo broke a pact of silence and confessed
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his role in the murders to the Argentine journalist Hiracio Ribitski,
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who told the story in his book Al Vuelo The Flight,
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published in nineteen ninety five. In two thousand three, gian
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Carlo Ceraudo, an Italian photojournalist working in Argentina, became caught
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up in the story of the Desperacidos. He had come
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to Weuenos Aires to cover an economic crisis, but the
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brutality of the former dictatorship was in your face, he recalled. Recently,
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the mothers were marching, victims were talking. The story was alive.
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An aviation enthusiast since childhood, when a pilot friend of
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his father's would fly him over Rome in a single
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engine Cesna sarah Udo believed that tracking down the death
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planes might provide the key to finding those involved in
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the murders. Argentina's armed forces only had about fifteen planes
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and not so many pilots, he told me. Sara Udo
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credits his Roman upbringing with teaching him to value the
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history embedded in inanimate objects. When I saw stones as
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a child, I thought, this stone reveals things about the
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Roman Empire. The object for me has a soul. A
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colleague gave sarah Udo a copy of a little noticed
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follow up bemoir written by Scalingo that contained a vital clue.
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The former Navy lieutenant identified the principal model of plane
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used in the death flights, a clunky but durable British
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made aircraft known as a short SC seven sky van,
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nicknamed the Flying shoe Box. Sara Udo spent the next
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few years shuttling between his home in Italy and assignments
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across South America, returning frequently to Argentina to shoot portraits
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of the mothers of Plaza de Mayo and victims of
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the Junta. Every year I got more deeply inside the story,
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he said. In two thousand seven, a colleague introduced him
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to Lewin and the two picked up the quest for
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the Plains in Earnest. An extensive online search turned up
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the serial numbers of several Short SC seven sky Vans
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used by the Argentine Navy and Coast Guard in the
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nineteen seventies. Other sites compiled by aviation officionados tracked the
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plane's ownership history. Two short sky Vans had been lost,
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probably shot down and destroyed during the Falklands War. The
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Argentine military had sold another sky Van to a skydiving
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company in Luxembourg, but the company's owner refused to provide
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any more information about his plane, so Lewin and sarah
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Udo kept searching. Soon they traced another sky Van to
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a private American mail carrier c B Airlink in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
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In two thousand nine, the owner of GB Airlink shared
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with Lewin and sarah Udo a critical document, the plane's
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flight logs, dating to nineteen seventy one, when the plane,
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then registered as PA fifty one, was originally purchased by
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the Argentine Coast Guard. The logs contained records of every
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flight the plane had made in four decades, every d
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maintenance operation, every problem, every flight had to be recorded.
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Lewin said, you cannot sell a plane without that. To
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make sense of the logs, sarah Udo and Lewin enlisted
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the help of a commercial pilot in Argentina, who co
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operating in secret for fear of repercussions, singled out a
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number of suspicious flights from the mid and late nineteen seventies.
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In each case, the short sky van had taken off
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from a regional airport five miles from the Asma detention
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center on a Wednesday evening. It had flown for nearly
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four hours and returned to the same airport without making
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any other stops. The long journey close to the plain's
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maximum range raised the pilot's eyebrows. According to standard aviation practice,
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planes should never use more than seventy five percent of
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their fuel on any flight, and military pilots were known
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for their strict adherents to the rules. But this plane,
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the airmen told Saraudo and Lewin, was basically running on fumes.
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He theorized that the military pilots had pushed the plane
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to reach the Atlantic Ocean, a three hundred mile round trip,
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where bodies could be disposed of without a trace, but
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he refused to put this theory on tape or sign
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in affidavit. Most of his fellow commercial pilots were ex
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military men, he explained to them. They would kill me
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if I did, he said, according to Lewin. Finally, in
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twenty ten, Lewin and Sarauto turned to Enrique Penaro, a
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prominent Italian Argentine ex airline pilot turned actor, film director,
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and political activist who felt he had little to fear
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from a discredited military. One date in the flight logs
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leapt out at Penaro December fourteenth, nineteen seventy seven. Six
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nights earlier, the leaders of the Mothers of Plaza de
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Mayo and other relatives of Desperacidos had gathered to plan
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strategy at a church in Buenos Aires. One group member,
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who had introduced himself as the brother of a missing
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leftist and was known affectionately as the Little Blonde, was
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in fact an undercovered naval officer named Alfredo Astiz. He
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later became known as the Angel of Death. As the
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meeting broke up, Astes singled out twelve activists with a
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tell tale kiss on the cheek, including three mothers and
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two French activist nuns. Over the next two days, plain
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clothes officers arrested each of them and transported them to
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ESMA Task Force. Torturers beat and administered electric shocks to
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the women for nearly a week. Then they made the
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nuns pose before Montenero's banner and released it as evidence
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that the guerrillas had kidnapped them. ZMA survivors would recall
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seeing the women at the center on December fourteenth. A
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few days later, after a night of storms and heavy waves,
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five corpses washed up on the coast. Workers hastily buried
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them in a local cemetery. It wasn't until July two
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thousand five that forensics researchers exhumed the remains. DNA analysis
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identified one French nun and the three mothers. The fifth
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body was not identified and the remains of the second
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nun were never found. Pinaro, pouring over the logs, saw
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that on December fourteenth, the sky van flew for three
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hours and ten minutes, making no stops before returning to base,
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and the log contained other information the names of the
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flight's three coast guard pilots. They were Mario Danio Areu,
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Alejandro Domingo da Gastino and in Enrique de Saint Georges.
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Lewin investigating further found that the pilots were still working
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in commercial roots Madrid, Miami and Rome, she told me.
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Realizing this, she was overcome by surprise and horror. Within
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a year, thanks to their investigation, the pilots were arrested
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and charged with crimes against humanity. Around the same time,
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Argentine prosecutors were building a larger case that would, unfolding
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over the next five years, expose the inner workings of
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the entire torture and murder apparatus at Esma. A first
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Esma trial had taken place in two thousand seven, after
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years of delays, with a single defendant who died before
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a verdict could be handed down. A second trial in
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two thousand nine had ended with sixteen convictions and two acquittals.
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The so called Esma Mega case, the largest trial in
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Argentina's history, opened in Buenos Aires in twenty twelve. The
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trial of fifty four defendants took testimony about seven hundred
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eighty nine individual crimes from around nine hundred witnesses, and
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presented new details about the death flights, including the complicity
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of church officials who sometimes blessed the pilots before their flights.
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It also revealed how Esma was used at times as
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a clandestine maternity ward for pregnant detainees who were then
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killed and whose new borns were illegally adopted. In the
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course of the trial, prosecutors presented powerful evidence against the
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three pilots, identified by sara Udo and Lewin as responsible
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for the murders of the French nuns and the members
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of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo on December fourteenth,
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nineteen seventy seven. The defense didn't dispute that the three
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men had flown the plane, but it argued that the pilots,
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isolated in their cockpit, were unaware of the horror unfolding
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in the rear. Prosecutors countered that it would have been
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impossible for them not to be in on the executions.
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Before lowering the ramp mid flight, the operator and back
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had to signal the pilots so they could decelerate to
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about one hundred and forty miles per hour or risk
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structural damage even the plane's destruction. Moreover, as the ramp
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winched open, the pilots would have experienced a sudden drop
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in temperature and heard a deafening roar above the whine
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of the sky van's engines. In twenty seventeen, judges found
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two of the pilots guilty of crimes against humanity and
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sentenced them to life in prison. The third had died
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in prison while awaiting trial. When it was over. The
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Esma Mega case resulted in forty eight eight guilty verdicts.
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Twenty nine people received life sentences and nineteen others were
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sentenced to between eight and twenty five years in prison.
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In the trial's closing remarks, the prosecutors called Vera Jarrek,
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a founding member of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo,
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who spoke of the importance not only of seeking justice
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for the victims, but also of documenting and remembering the
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atrocities for posterity. Jarek was an Italian born Jew who
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fled to Argentina with most of her family in nineteen
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thirty nine. Her grandfather, who stayed behind, was murdered at Auschwitz.
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In nineteen seventy six, Jerik's eighteen year old daughter, Franca,
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was abducted by the dictatorship and was never seen again.
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We know that truth, justice and memory are the best
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guarantees for nuncamas, Jarak said. With our efforts to promote memory,
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we try to ensure that these tragedies don't fall into oblivion,
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and on the contrary, that they allow us to recognize
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symptoms of repetition, since history teaches us that what happened once,
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unfortunately can happen again. It was in that spirit that
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immediately after the trial, Lewin Saraudo, victim's families, and the
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mothers of Plaza de Mayo began pressuring the government to
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acquire the sky Van and bring it home for display
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at the ESMA Memorial Center. We always thought the plane
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had to be in Argentina. Lewin told me, it's iconic,
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it's important to the new generation. But the president at
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the time, Marizio Maqi, had other priorities and dragged his
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feet on trying to arrange a handover. In twenty nineteen,
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the plane was sold to Win Aviation, a commercial air
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contractor based in DeKalb, Illinois. The company was not aware
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of the aircraft's history. Not long afterward, following a personal
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appeal from the mothers of Plaza de Mayo, the government
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of Macris's successor, Alberto Fernandez, struck a deal to purchase
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the plane. Then the COVID nineteen pandemic put everything on hold.
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It would be three years before there was any movement.
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At last. On the morning of June third, twenty twenty three,
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Ivan Bluski, an Argentine pilot with wind aviation, climbed into
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the cockpit of the former death plane. Two newly installed
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ferry tanks nearly doubled the plane's fuel capacity, but the
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journey from Illinois to Buenos Aires would require at least
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ten stops. Bluski and his co pilot landed first in Arkansas,
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where they picked up non working replicas of the short
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sky van's original propellers and engine to be retrofitted in
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Buenos Aires for display over Jamaica, an oil leak caused
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a turbine to overheat, nearly resulting in a catastrophic engine failure.
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The pilots had to ground the plane near Kingston for
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thirteen days as they waited for a new engine to
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arrive from the United States and performed tests to make
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sure the plane was fit to fly. Next, they crossed
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the Caribbean to Barranquilla, Columbia, then soared over the Andes,
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huddling in their frigid, unpressurized cabin at sixteen thousand feet
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while keeping a close watch for ice accumulating on the wings.
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They stopped on a jungle strip in Letitia in the
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Colombian Amazon, touched down in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, then landed
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in Tucuman in northwest Argentina on June twenty fourth, three
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weeks after the sky Van set out on its six
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thousand mile Bluski guided the plane through thick winter fog
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as it approached Jorge Newbery Regional Airport in Buenos Ayres.
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Sara Udo stood on a runway alongside Lewin, leaders of
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the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, and dozens of family
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members of death flight victims whose final journeys had started
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at this point. As the ghostly outline of the sky
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Van emerged through the mist, sara Udo recalled, he drew
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a breath. I had come up with this idea nearly
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twenty years before, and now I saw this aircraft landing
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in Buenos Aires. He told me. I moved away to
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stand alone, and for the first time, I cried. The
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Malaya government swept into office that December. Villarouel, the Vice president,
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has continued to argue that leftist guerrillas bore primary responsibility
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for the violence that convulsed Argentina, and she routinely disputes
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that thirty thousand people were killed by the regime, while
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human rights groups say guerrilla violence likely killed hundreds or
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possibly more than a thousand people. They argue these figures
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include soldiers killed during armed confrontations and can't be equated
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with the many thousands of non combatants known to have
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been killed by the junta. In a sign of how
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fractious this debate has become, last March, on the forty
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eighth anniversary of the coup, tens of thousands of protesters
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in Buenos Aires carried signs reading not only nucamas, but
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also they are thirty thousand, an apparent challenge to the
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new government line. Villaruelle declined my requests for an interview,
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and a spokesperson wrote in an email that for the moment,
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she is not interested in speaking about this subject. Milai's
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office did not respond to my quest for a comment.
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One of Villaruelle's frequent targets of criticism is Miriam Lewin,
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whose journalistic exposees public condemnation of the government and high
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profile efforts to bring back the sky van have made
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her a symbol of the movement to honor Argentina's historical memory.
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Villarouel has needled Lewin by referring her to her as
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Penny and Polacca, misleadingly conflating Lewin as her captors did
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with the noms de guerre of guerrillas. During my torture,
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the men of the air force kept asking me if
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I was Penny or love Polacca, Lewin explained. In one
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of several posts on x formerly Twitter attacking Lewin, villaruelle
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cited Lewin's incarceration at Ozma as apparent proof of her
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terrorist activities. In fact, Villaruel has called for dismantling the
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Asthma Memorial Center itself. She proposes turning it into a
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school so that, she has said it could be enjoyed
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by all the Argentine people. She has shepherded funding cuts
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to other former torture centers that are now memorial sites,
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arguing that they present a biased perspective by ignoring the
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alleged crimes committed by those detained there. I visited one
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such site, known as Elvasubio, where I met Veronica Castelli,
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the caretaker during the dictatorship. Villaruel's uncle, Ernesto Villeruel, was
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an intelligence officer supervising El Vuzibilo. He was later arrested
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and charged with crimes in connection with the role, but
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he was never tried and he was released in twenty
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sixteen because of poor health. Castelli was two years old
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in nineteen seventy seven when her parents were kidnapped and
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taken to Elvesubio. Her mother was six months pregnant, and
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Castelli never saw either parent again. Castelli was raised by
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an uncle, and she only learned about a younger sibling,
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a sister born while her mother was in captivity and
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then appropriated. In two thousand eight, That's when a decade's
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long investigation turned up the name of a Buenos Aires woman,
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then thirty one years old, in the files of the
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Christian Family Movement, a Catholic organization with ties to the
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junta that acted as an intermediary in illegal adoptions. DNA
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testing confirmed that she was Castelli's younger sister. Castelli opened
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a padlocked gate and led me across a field past
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three stone pillars marked memory, Truth and Justice. The grounds
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had once contained officers quarters, prison cells, and a torture
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chamber known as rooum Q four Cabrada broken in reference
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to prisoners spirits, but all that was left were the
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Stone foundations. Since the government cut funding, Castelli told me
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she has paid for the sites up keep herself. The
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government has sold off other public sites of memory, including
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part of La Perla, a former torture and execution center
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in the city of Cordoba, and an old army infantry
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headquarters in the province of Corrientes. Other programs are also
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losing critical government support. For decades, the grandmothers of Plaza
25:31
Demayo have been instrumental in the search for adopted children,
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amassing of vast database about suspected adoptees compiled from anonymous tips,
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suspicious neighbors, relatives of the disappeared, and other sources. Since
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the late nineteen eighties. The government has also overseen a
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genetic database containing DNA from family members of despresidos known
25:56
to have been pregnant at the time of their abductions,
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and during the Kirchner years it established a special investigation
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Unit as a part of the National Commission for the
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Right to Identity, which granted the grandmother's access to old
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military files. Last July, and Malai government eliminated the special unit,
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arguing that it violated the country's constitution by usurping prosecutorial
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powers and intruding on the right of privacy of security officers.
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Hierramo Perez Roisenblitt, an adoptee who learned his true identity
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in two thousand and now works to find other appropriated children,
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told me the unit was essential in helping the grandmothers
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of Plaza de Mayo pursue its investigations. This has made
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things more difficult, he admitted. The administration has also shuddered
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a special Justice Department office that investigated dictatorship era crimes.
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Lewin told me the government is ruling by decree dismantling
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all public entities related to human rights at ESMA. After
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touring the main building, I walked across the tranquil campus
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until I reached an asphalt plaza near the main gate.
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Directly in front of me, protected by a low metal barrier,
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was the boxy, gray, sub snubnosed propeller plane with five
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passenger windows to a side and a rear ramp, the
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very aircraft from which government killers had thrown their perceived
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enemies thousands of feet to their death. When I met
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with Makai Corcito, the ESMA Memorials Sites Director. She conceded
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that the past year had been difficult. I cannot say
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that we don't have problems, she said, But she stressed
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that for many Argentines, the battle for memory, truth and
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justice has never felt so urgent. It's a dangerous moment
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when the government of a country doesn't condemn crimes against humanity.
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This concludes readings from the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your
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reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and
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have a great day.