This was during Argentina’s military dictatorship in the late 70s and early 80s. I was working briefly in Argentina towards the end of the 1980s and heard about these stories from Argentine friends. Just horrific. Two of the former dictators have gone on trial. Good.

About 500 babies were stolen from their mothers during the dictatorship, according to the campaign group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Pregnant female political dissidents were interned a

t secret maternity wards in centres used to torture opponents of the dictatorship. The babies were handed to military officers or their relatives after birth while the mothers were simply killed, many of them dropped alive from military planes into the sea.

There’s a wonderful (sad) movie about this chapter of Argentine history, called “The Official Story” (La historia oficial). Do watch it sometime.

Another horrific story and movie (based on a book) about the same era is “The Night of the Pencils” (La noche de los lápices”). Wikipedia explains the background:

The motion picture was based on the non-fiction book, La noche de los lápices, written by María Seoane and Héctor Ruiz Núñez. The book profiles seven high school student activists from La Plata, Argentina, including lone survivor Pablo Díaz, who gives the authors his testimony. The students were kidnapped by the government after protesting for cheaper bus fare. Pablo Díaz was incarcerated for four years. The other six students became a part of the 236 Argentine teenagers who were kidnapped and disappeared during the military dictatorship.

I’ve mentioned this before – an Argentine friend, over dinner one night when I was still in Buenos Aires, late 1980s, was telling me about her friends who were killed by the junta during the dictatorship (called “the Dirty War”). I remember her crying in the restaurant, but don’t really remember anything about the conversation, or what I said to elicit her next comment (I suspect it was my usual adamant exuberance about politics), but she said to me:

“You know, they’d have killed you if you were Argentine.”

I asked her what she meant, and she told me that I was smart and impassioned. Had I been born in Argentina, the dictatorship would have killed me along with her friends, only a few years before our dinner. I still get chills telling that story.