Susana Beatriz Montoya, mother of a human rights activist and widow of a deputy commissioner forcibly disappeared by the last military dictatorship, was found murdered in her home on the outskirts of Córdoba city on Friday afternoon, although news about her identity broke out on Saturday.
Local media reports state that her son Fernando Albareda found her. Albareda was a member of the Córdoba branch of H.I.J.O.S., an organization that groups the children of those kidnapped by the dictatorship. He currently works for the National Human Rights Secretariat.
“We’ll kill you all. Now we’re going for your children. #Police,” said a message written on one of her walls in what appeared to be red lipstick, Albareda told Córdoba outlet La Voz.
Autopsy results are still not available, but Montoya allegedly suffered blunt force trauma to the head and stab wounds, according to La Voz, and Albareda did not report signs that a robbery had taken place.
The Herald confirmed that Córdoba prosecutor Juan Pablo Klinger will be in charge of investigating her murder and formal inquiries will begin on Monday. The provincial judiciary did not give further details on the case.
Albareda, who gives human rights workshops to aspiring police officers, has already received threatening messages. In December, he found several handwritten notes stuck to his front door, one of which read: “Don’t go to the police headquarters anymore. We’ll make you reunite with your daddy. You are going to die,” along with a Nazi swastika. He also found six bullets scattered near the door.
Albareda’s father and Montoya’s husband was Ricardo Fermín Albareda, a Córdoba police deputy commissioner and member of the armed organization PRT-ERP. Fellow members of the provincial police kidnapped him in September 1979 and tortured him in a clandestine detention center. He was never seen again.
Montoya was not involved directly in human rights activism but had participated in several tributes and events after the fall of the dictatorship. Albareda said his mother was a homemaker until his father’s disappearance, after which she took multiple jobs “cleaning in bars and restaurants, day and night, to provide food to our home.”
H.I.J.O.S. told the Herald that several rights groups would issue a statement later on Sunday.
Meanwhile, local organization Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights Forum expressed solidarity with the family, calling for the judiciary to investigate urgently and explore potential political motives, “given the reiterated threats against the Albareda family.”
In March, two men broke into the home of an H.I.J.O.S. activist in Buenos Aires, tied her up, sexually assaulted her, and threatened to kill her. The attackers said they had come for her because of her activism and that they were paid to do so. They also painted “VLLC” on the wall, the acronym for President Javier Milei’s libertarian slogan viva la libertad, carajo (long live freedom, dammit).
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