The Lower House voted against sanctioning five deputies from ruling coalition La Libertad Avanza (LLA) who visited dictatorship-era repressors serving sentences for crimes against humanity. The visit took place at the Ezeiza prison on July 11 but made headlines last week.

Left-wing deputy Nicolás del Caño kicked off Wednesday’s session by proposing a motion to change the order of the day, requesting instead to start with a condemnation of the deputies and to form a commission to investigate the matter. The motion was rejected with 113 votes against and 112 votes in favor. Four deputies abstained.

All LLA deputies voted against the motion except for Rocío Bonacci, who, curiously, was part of the visit but later claimed that she was deceived as to what the true objective of the visit was. According to Bonacci, she refused to participate in the meeting once the group arrived at the prison and she realized who they were going to see. She has since stated that Lower House head Martín Menem authorized the visit.

“We were very upset about the negative vote because the perpetrators of genocide they visited are rapists, torturers, murderers, and have proven convictions for hundreds of crimes,” Del Caño told the Herald. “They are seeking impunity — the Justice Minister said that they are seeking benefits for repressors.”

Last week, Justice Minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona said the repressors should not be in prison. “They deserve to die in their houses with an ankle monitor and holding their wives’ hands,” he said.

One of the parties that voted against the motion was the Radical Party (UCR, for its Spanish initials). “The party’s grassroots activists are deeply outraged,” Agustín Rombolá, head of the UCR’s youth, told the Herald. President Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989) ordered the historic 1985 trial of the military junta leaders that led the dictatorship.

 “We cannot understand how, being the party of democracy, of the trial to the juntas, of the CONADEP, and of [president Raúl] Alfonsín’s fight, these [lawmakers] […] do not deviate from the rules and join a repudiation that is already taking a long time.”

“Unfortunately, the vast majority of UCR deputies have been bureaucrats at the service of this government, of a government that […] vindicates the coup and the most serious genocide in the last 100 years of Latin American history.”

The Church and the dictatorship

The scandal also brushed the Argentine Catholic Church this week, as human rights organizations demanded Father Javier Olivera Ravasi, a priest involved in planning the meeting, be expelled. The request took place on Tuesday during a meeting between the activists and monsignors Oscar Vicente Ojea and Marcelo Colombo, president and vice president of the Argentine Episcopal Conference.

The conference had already distanced itself from Olivera Ravasi, the son of a former mayor during the dictatorship years nicknamed “the butcher of San Juan” who is currently in jail for crimes against humanity. 

“The words and actions of the priest Javier Olivera Ravasi related to a group of deputies’ visit to Ezeiza Prison do not reflect the thoughts and attitudes of the Episocopal Conference of Argentina,” the organization’s spokesperson, Máximo Jurcinovic, wrote in an X thread on Monday. 

Despite the bishop’s statement, the visit brought out dissenting views from another priest regarding the church’s position on the dictatorship. 

Father Christian Von Wernich, a former chaplain of the Buenos Aires Province Police during the dictatorship who is currently serving time for crimes against humanity, said repressors should be freed in a readers’ letter to the La Nación newspaper. He also defended the LLA deputies involved in the visit to the Ezeiza prison. Von Wernich was sentenced to a life sentence in 2007, which was ratified in 2010.

“With my 87 years of age and being an old priest who lived the 70’s as a police chaplain, I say to those who want to install ‘a new inquisition’ for those facts that we cannot change the past; we can remember it, but we cannot stay living it,” he wrote.

In their meeting with the Catholic leaders, HIJOS also demanded Von Wernich be removed from the church.