Additional reporting by Facundo Iglesia
Human rights organizations and politicians from different parties have strongly condemned a group of deputies from ruling coalition La Libertad Avanza (LLA) for visiting repressors in the Ezeiza federal prison, convicted of crimes against humanity committed during Argentina’s last dictatorship. The contentious visit also sparked divisions within LLA.
While the visit reportedly happened on July 11, news about it broke on Wednesday. Beltrán Benedit, the deputy who spearheaded the visit, sent a WhatsApp message to press describing the prisoners as “veterans of the battle against Marxist subversion under the orders of a constitutional government.”
The military Junta forcibly took power on March 24, 1976, through a coup, dissolved Congress, and put the Constitution and civil rights on stand-by.
Benedit described the outing as a “humanitarian visit,” claiming “their human rights are not respected.” He went further, accusing the sentencing judges of being “terrorists” and the charges for which they were convicted “made up.”
“The armed forces won over Marxist terrorists bearing arms,” Benedit said, adding that President Javier Milei “is fighting that ideology through politics.”
“We are not hiding,” he wrote.
On Thursday, public human rights organization Comisión Provincial por la Memoria (Provincial Commision for Memory) filed a criminal complaint against Benedit for crime apologia, saying his public statements “must be investigated and judged because they are an affront to democracy.”
The statement and the visit are bold examples of a government-supported discourse justifying the dictatorship’s state-sponsored terrorism as part of a “war” against left-wing guerrilla groups. Human rights organizations have consistently condemned the government’s consistent attempts to rewrite the country’s long-standing consensus over the dictatorship’s crimes which include kidnappings, tortures, murders, and the stealing of babies, among many others.
Guillermo Montenegro, Alida Ferreyra, Lourdes Arrieta, María Fernanda Araujo, and Rocío Bonacci were named as the other LLA deputies who joined Benedit. However, a member of LLA told the Herald that Bonacci went unwittingly — Benedit allegedly told her that they were going to see “veterans of the Malvinas war” who were “unfairly convicted.” When she found out the true nature of the visit on their way to the Ezeiza prison, Bonacci supposedly chose not to participate.
While Benedit didn’t mention who they visited, according to several communiqués from human rights organizations deputies met up with a group of repressors including Alfredo Astiz, Carlos Suárez Mason, Raúl Guglielminetti, Antonio Pernías and Adolfo Donda. Most of them are serving life sentences for crimes against humanity.
“We are alarmed and worried over some La Libertad Avanza deputies visiting crimes against humanity convicts, who are rightfully behind bars at the Ezeiza prison,” says a communiqué from Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo released Wednesday.
Those repressors “have been tried for crimes like the appropriation of our grandchildren, and they have never shown any sign of regret for their crimes or provided any information on the whereabouts of our children, or the 300 grandchildren we are still looking for,” the Abuelas added. “At the same time, the government is dismantling the memory policies that have been built over the past 40 years of democracy.”
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Astiz, known as “the Angel of Death,” is one of the deadliest and most feared repressors of the last dictatorship. He oversaw a task force responsible for torturing and killing thousands in the clandestine detention center that operated in the former Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA by its Spanish acronym). Astiz also infiltrated the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, helping to forcefully disappear several of them and other members of human rights organizations via “death flights” in 1977.
“Astiz is a repressor, he was convicted to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity committed at the ESMA,” wrote HIJOS, an organization that groups children of forcibly disappeared people. The government led by President Javier Milei and Vice President Victoria Villarruel, they said, is “denialist and apologist” of the dictatorship’s crimes.
The visit was also condemned by the Peronist Partido Justicialista and center-right party Unión Cívica Radical (UCR). “Visiting repressors and speaking amicably with people who violated the most fundamental civil rights is harming the victims, families, and the entire Argentine people,” the UCR said in a communiqué.
UCR is linked to the fight for human rights given it was the party that won the first elections after democracy was restored and, during its government, the military junta was tried and convicted. Since Milei became president, the party has been part of the so-called “friendly opposition,” supporting most of the government’s legislative proposals in Congress.
LLA deputies were also upset about the visit, sources from the party told the Herald. “I disagree completely with deputies elected in democracy going to see repressors of the bloody military dictatorship,” said a LLA deputy who chose not to give his name, who added that a “majority” of the party shared his views. “I abhor the methods of these repressors, who have been judged. I am on the opposite side of the aisle,” the source said.
However, at press time, the party itself has not made public statements regarding the visit. A spokesperson for Villarruel told the Herald that the vice president, facing social media outrage for defending the national football team after it was criticized over singing racist chants, is not planning on commenting on the topic.
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