Part I
The Repression

Nunca Más (Never Again) - Report of Conadep  - 1984
 

Health conditions

This very harsh system aggravated any diseases already suffered prior to abduction and brought on others as a result of burns, bleeding and infection; many women had their menstrual cycles interrupted because of the conditions. These were imposed with the aim of destroying the individual identity of the prisoners, this being an essential objective of the methodology we have been analysing. Medical care, in many cases:

Treatment... was in the hands of prisoners with limited knowledge, which didn’t prevent many people from ’expiring during torture’. (Testimony of Mario Villami, file No. 6821.).

N.B.B. (file No. 1583). abducted and held in El Banco together with her husband Jorge, was repeatedly raped, which made her haemorrhage. She was taken to the infirmary at the pozo and later released:

... two days after being hospitalized I was checked by a doctor called Victor, himself abducted a year earlier, who had a Cordoban accent and treated the prisoners harshly. He prescribed coagulants. I learnt from Victor that, in spite of his status as a prisoner, he was transferred to different pozos to give medical assistance to the prisoners.

Lack of facilities and the precarious sanitary conditions were seen at their most dramatic in the case of women who gave birth in prison, as will be seen in Part Two.