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Part I
The Repression


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

 

'Bodies are not handed over'


The father of Elena Arce Sahores (file No. 4272) gives a painful but moving account of the disappearance of his daughter. The information he provides and the existing evidence corroborate that she was kidnapped by the 113th Operations Group and kept for ten days at La Plata Police Station No. 8.

All Señor Sahores' attempts to recover his daughter were in vain. In the end, through a couple he knew, he obtained an interview with an Army colonel who promised to look into the case.

He did so, and her arrest in an anti-terrorist operation was confirmed, though the details were not clarified and he ended with a sentence which has remained burnt into my memory: 'Do not look for Elena any more, her sufferings are over, God rest her soul.' He explained the technical side of this kind of operation, which he described as 'in white' or 'in black' according to whether the people carrying it out were in uniform or not. In short, it was a cruel account. A few days later, when I had recovered from the shock, I contacted him again at his home and claimed the body of my daughter. He replied: 'bodies are not handed over...'

It must have been true. The country was scattered with the bodies of unidentified people, buried separately or collectively, illegally and secretly. They are in the cemeteries, the fields, the rivers, the dams, and, as we have seen, in the sea too.

The evidence has now reached proportions unimaginable a few years ago, when a few isolated instances created the illusion that such things could not be representative of a general practice. But now the evidence is with us, and over recent months there have been almost daily releases of testimony, legal actions and newspaper articles publishing the discoveries.

 

 

 

 


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