Mapuche (23 page)

The women had assembled in front of the obelisk, wearing a cloth diaper—the
pañuelo—
on their heads like a scarf, as a symbol of their stolen children. Openly defying the government, the Mothers insisted that their loved ones must “reappear alive,” rejecting mourning on that principle: the children had been alive when they were taken away, and as long as the torturers had not admitted their crimes, these
desaparecidos
would remain alive. The police had quickly threatened them, and then ordered them to disperse, but the Mothers, locking arms, had started circling the square, clockwise and counter-clockwise, in an ultimate act of defiance. “Madwomen” had mocked the government's power.

But they came back. Every Thursday.

Dogs had been unleashed on them, mounted police had charged them, mass arrests were made: after they were dispersed, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo returned every time, re-formed their ranks, which were soon increased by their sisters, daughters, and friends. They began making files on their aggressors, questioning the rare detainees who had been freed, and gathering a quantity of information for which they paid a high price: abandoned by the high clergy of the Church, infiltrated and then betrayed by Astiz (a military man so ferocious that his colleagues had given him the ironic nickname of “the blond angel”), overwhelmed by the abduction and disappearance of three founding Mothers and the two French nuns who supported them, the women continued to demand justice as they circled, every Thursday, in front of the Casa Rosada.

The fall of the dictatorship did not long calm their ardor. To the laws of “national pacification” issued by the military, Alfon­sin, the new president elected by universal suffrage, had at first responded by abrogating the amnesty, with the result that the leading generals were indicted and half the officers were forced into early retirement, while at the same time he condemned the violent acts committed by the revolutionary army of the people and the Montoneros, whose leader was arrested. A theory of “the two demons” that proved fatal: the army threatening to call out the soldiers in the barracks, Alfonsin retreated and announced that trials for human rights violations would be held in military courts, abrogating the “duty to obey” clause and thus de facto disinculpating the perpetrators, except in the case of “proven atrocities.”

A commission on the
desaparecidos
, the CONADEP, was set up, but its role was more to provide a death certificate for the persons abducted than to prosecute the guilty. The “Full Stop” law
11
soon gave plaintiffs no more than sixty days to indict accused members of the armed forces before Menem drove the point home by decreeing the
indulto
, a pardon. After fifteen years of legal proceedings, Videla, Galtieri, Viola, and Massera, the leading generals, got off with a few years in detention in comfortable prisons, while the pillagers, the torturers and their accomplices, everyone who had not attained the rank of colonel, was acquitted.

An insult to the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who became more than ever unbending. No exhumations of bones without investigating or judging the guilty, no posthumous homage or indemnities to clear the slate, no reconciliation with the Church.

Iglesia! Bassura!

Vos sos la dictatura!
12

The Grandmothers would fight on to their last breath, not in a spirit of vengeance, but without pardoning, without forgetting. “They may have succeeded in killing our husbands and children, but they have not killed our love,” they repeated.

More than thirty years had gone by, and Elena Calderón was no longer the haughty, distinguished woman who handed out daiquiris to the Chilean refugees passing through her home, but her determination was as young as ever.

A furious wind was blowing over the Plaza de Mayo. Elena was preparing the display table where she would distribute the association's latest information bulletins when her son appeared among the tourists in shorts suffering from the humidity. Rubén was wearing a pseudo-casual plum-colored shirt and impeccably cut black trousers, his walk was supple, alert, as if something in him wasn't aging, either. Elena smiled at her partiality: she now had only her son, who reminded her so much of Daniel.

“Hi, Mama.”

“Hello, honey!”

Rubén hugged his mother, smelled her light perfume and felt her heart beating against his with a special emotion.

“You look tired,” she said, smiling as she looked at him.

“It could have been worse.”

Then Elena saw the terrible red welt around his neck, the bloody scab covered with a healing cream, and her beautiful blue eyes dimmed.

“What's going on?”

“A body was found last night, washed up on a bank at the ecological preserve. The body of María Victoria Campallo, the daughter of Eduardo Campallo, a friend of the mayor. María had discovered that she was a child of
desaparecidos
. At least that seems plausible. And she was murdered before she talked.”

Elena forgot her son's wounded neck, her information bulletins, her
pañuelo
.

“My God!”

“Yes. I also found a document, an ESMA internment form that traces the sequestration of María's biological parents and the birth in detention of her brother. Eduardo Campallo is named as the
apropriador
.”

Rubén cast a hostile glance at the rows of overequipped cops keeping the square under surveillance. His mother was digesting the information, surprised and dismayed.

“The poor little thing,” the old lady said.

“Uh-huh. Especially since María was pregnant when she was kidnapped.”

“Ooh . . . But why didn't she come see us? We would have helped her! Why contact
Página
?”

“She wasn't going to call
Clarín
.”

The editor of the center-right newspaper was herself suspected of being an
apropriadora
. Elena conceded the point, still under the shock of the revelation. The affair reeked of sulfur and her son's general tendency to stir up hornets' nests. All this didn't tell her anything worthwhile.

“I don't know how far Campallo is involved,” Rubén continued, “and even if the papers I found accuse him, María remains his daughter. The whole thing is getting complicated. I need you to decipher the document and track down the murdered parents. I have their name, but they don't appear in our files.”

The wrinkles on his mother's face deepened. Elena no longer had the energy she'd had at the time of the first demonstrations, the first trials (when she thought about it—thirty years!—the bitterness of the fighting made her dizzy), her legs had grown heavier, her dresses hung loosely on a body that had become virgin again, but her thirst for truth and justice was still intact. She squinted in the direction of the square and the Grandmothers, who were closing ranks behind their banners: the vice president of the Grandmothers was beckoning to her from the obelisk, where the female warriors were about to begin their Thursday rounds, wearing a baby diaper instead of a helmet. Elena put a stone on the tracts being ruffled by the wind.

“I'll tell Susana and be right back,” she said to her son.

 

*

 

At the age of seventy-six, Susana Arguan wore springlike polka-dot dresses on a body that was still lively (she was the only one who wore her
pañuelo
like Marilyn Monroe) and wielded irony with the false levity of a bitter despair. The daughter of a communist worker, Susana had lost everything when her daughter was kidnapped at dawn, along with her little boy, one day in April 1977. A portrait of her looking like a damned angel hung in a place of honor near her desk, a darling in black and white as intact as her faith in their quest.

Elena Calderón, known as “the Duchess,” wondered whether this little old woman was a force of nature or a congenital worker like a red ant: a friend, that was sure.

Specializing in searching for children who had disappeared during the dictatorship, the
Abuelas
learned of their existence through letters, anonymous appeals, or when victims tormented by doubts presented themselves at the association's office in Virrey Cevallos Street. This office, more a town house than a bureau of investigation, was where the
Abuelas
had established their headquarters, a veritable war machine directed against the state's lies. A secretariat, accounting office, press bureau, a reception desk for people who showed up spontaneously, with a psychological team, an investigative bureau and another for attorneys who came on Fridays to offer their advice, a kitchen, and the head office near the entrance, shared by the president and the vice president: the headquarters accommodated forty persons working permanently or episodically for the
Abuelas.
Here they received witnesses, supporters, journalists, and schoolchildren, wrote to judges, and harassed politicians, military men, and retired policemen. Like the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo with whom they worked hand in hand, the
Abuelas
had experienced everything: intimidation, sacking, and disappearances of important files or computers. Their time was limited, and that made each victory all the more precious.

They were getting ready for the celebration of the one hundred and sixtieth baby reunited with its true family when the association's vice president arrived at the headquarters with Elena Calderón and her detective son in tow.

On the way, Rubén had told them what he knew: Ossario's revelations before he died, the killers in Colonia waiting in front of the house, Miguel's abduction, and the copy of the document held by Miguel's mother, her death by strangulation, the call he made to Anita to ask her to pick up the corpse, the transvestite's hair that he had taken that morning from a wig in her “dressing room,” and deposited at the Center for Forensic Medicine, and then his visit to the Duran hospital, where the
desaparecidos
'
DNA was stored. If María Victoria had doubts regarding her origins, the only way to track down her biological parents consisted of asking for DNA tests, which would amount to launching legal proceedings against Eduardo and Isabel Campallo. And that she had not done.

“She probably didn't have time,” he said.

“Yes, but if Miguel's DNA matches that of María Victoria, that would prove that the Campallos stole the children!”

“They'll never agree to have the tests unless an official complaint forces them to.”

“What about her so-called brother, Rodolfo?”

“His big ass is sitting on a pile of gold; he won't budge.”

“Great attitude,” Susana commented. “All right, let's get started.”

The office was minuscule. They sat down without even taking time to drink a cup of tea. The Grandmothers adjusted their glasses while Rubén spread out his fragments: three sheets like jigsaw puzzles, made of torn up paper that was sometimes illegible, and that the detective had Scotch-taped together. Several pieces were missing in the triptych, but the whole left the Grandmothers speechless.

Identified by numbers, each detainee imprisoned in the clandestine centers had a “strictly confidential and secret” file. Indicating identity, background, activity, level of dangerousness, this file was known only to the interrogating officers. That was the kind of document the Grandmothers had before their eyes. The writing was small, typed, and the photocopy was poor in quality, but it was possible to decipher the different places where the
desaparecidos
had been transferred, the names of some of the interrogators, the date and time of the torture sessions, the prisoners' condition afterward—“normal” or dead . . . A document of a very administrative precision that elicited vengeful growls from the old women: Samuel and Gabriella Verón had been kidnapped on August 13, 1976, and taken to the Navy Engineering School along with their little girl, aged one and a half. At that time, Gabriella Verón was eight months pregnant. They had not tortured her, but they had tortured her husband, every day. The girl who was to be renamed María Victoria had been taken away and put with other children of the
desaparecidos
while waiting to be adopted by people close to the government. On September 19, Gabriella had given birth to a boy in the clandestine maternity ward at the ESMA (the name of the military doctor involved had been eaten away). Since the infant suffered from a cardiac insufficiency, his appointed
apropriadores
, the Campallo family, had exchanged him for another baby born to
desaparecidos
ten days earlier, “Rodolfo,” who was then in the possession of Javier Michellini, a noncommissioned naval officer, and his wife Rosa.

The Grandmothers' hearts beat faster. The identity of the child-stealers was not the only information on these forms: they also contained the names of the torturers, their accomplices, the places, the dates . . . An exceptional document, of which they had only a partial copy.

Susana was the first to react.

“The paparazzo,” she said. “He's the one who had the original?”

“
Had
. Yes, probably.”

“You think the killers took it back?”

“Maybe.” Rubén rummaged in the pockets of his coat while the Grandmothers were considering. “Can I smoke if I open the window, Miss Marple?”

“Sure,” the old communist replied. “When I'm canonized a saint.”

“What a stubborn person you are.”

“I still don't have cancer. Great, huh?”

“What are you planning to do with this document, Rubén,” his mother said, returning to the subject at hand. “Attack the Campallo family?”

“We have only a half-legible copy of a thirty-five-year-old internment form,” he said, frowning. “In its current state, Campallo's lawyers would dispute the authenticity of the document, three pieced-together sheets of paper that could just as well have been falsified. No, you'll have to track down the parents, Samuel and Gabriella Verón, members of their family, and find out why they've kept silent. Witnesses may still be alive, people who are in hiding, who are afraid or who no longer want to remember . . . ”