#montoneros

[leftistfeminista]

Voices from the darkness: 20 dictatorship survivors and their tales

Half a century after the coup, a look at 20 key survivors who not only lived through the terror, but helped the country understand what happ

Mercedes Carazo: Survivor who faced enforced Stockholm syndrome 

Mercedes Carazo was abducted and taken to ESMA detention centre in 1976. Her case became emblematic for the perverse system of "recovery" applied by the Navy – she was obliged to work for her captors while maintaining a forced relationship with one of the officers in a bid to demonstrate that they could "convert" the militants into collaborators via extreme psychological pressure.

Carazo explained in court: "Survival at ESMA was not a free choice, it was a daily negotiation with horror where they even took away the notion of who you were." Her narrative permitted an understanding of the deeper psychological layers of torture seeking the total disintegration of the personality of the captive before their physical elimination or release. 

Silvia Labayru: Giving birth among sailors

Silvia Labayru was abducted in 1976 while pregnant. She gave birth at the ESMA Navy Mechanics School in a room guarded by officers who later grabbed her daughter to hand her over to her own family – a rare "privilege" in that context since it was not snatched for forced adoption. 

Labayru was later obliged by the naval officer Alfredo Astiz to accompany him posing as his sister to deceive and infiltrate the Madres de Plaza de Mayo.

At her trial, Labayru detailed how cold and calculating the “repressors” were: "Astiz used me as a shield and familiar face to gain confidence among the Mothers while he marked out those to be snatched." Her testimony was vital in convicting Astiz for the disappearance of the Santa Cruz group, exposing the Navy’s methodology of infiltration and deceit.

Pilar Calveiro: Intellectual who analysed camps from inside 

Political scientist Pilar Calveiro was seized in 1977 and sent to ESMA, the Quinta de Funes and a detention centre in Rosario. Her survival was not only physical but also intellectual – she used her experience to write one of the deepest analyses of the logic of the clandestine centres. Her outlook permitted an understanding of these camps as not an excess but as a central piece in the social reorganisation of Argentina.

In her book Poder y desaparición, Calveiro points out: "The missing person is a silent place produced by the state to terrorise the rest of society." Her testimony in the trials contributed a structural dimension for understanding how the network of clandestine centres operated as an integrated system of social and political control.

Graciela Daleo: Woman who was taken out to dinner by her torturers

ESMA survivor Graciela Daleo had one of the strangest experiences under the repressive machinery: being obliged by her abductors to go out to dinner at a fancy restaurant while legally figuring as missing. This strategy of "recovery" sought to break down the detained morally, showing them a fictitious normality while their comrades were dying in the basement of the Officers’ Canteen.

At the Trial of the Juntas, Daleo described that feeling of absolute alienation: "Seated in that restaurant, I was not a person but a war trophy which they flaunted to demonstrate their total power over our lives." After her release, she became an active human rights militant, rejecting any attempt at reconciliation not including the trial and condign punishment of all those responsible for genocide.

[sublecturas]

"Montoneros: el mito de sus 12 fundadores", de Lucas Lanusse

[gregor-samsung]

Argentina, 1985 (Santiago Mitre, 2022)

[ortoysangre]

[cumbiamurguera]

Acabo de rendir Historiografía argentina así que comparto por acá una historieta que utilicé para el final, publicada entre 1973 y 1974 (números 10 al 46), en la revista "El Descamisado" de Montoneros. La historieta se titula "450 años de guerra contra el imperialismo" y, como su nombre lo indica, su objetivo apuntaba a la enseñanza de la "verdadera historia", la de la resistencia popular contra el imperialismo de ayer y de hoy. Como fuente es muy interesante (y entretenida) ya que Montoneros deja muy explícita la línea historiográfica en la que se inscribe (San Martín-Rosas-Perón, pero también la resistencia indígena, la revolución del 90 y la resistencia peronista después del golpe del '55).

Por lo que sé la historieta se encuentra compilada en el libro "Latinoamérica y el imperialismo. 450 años de guerra" pero si quieren leerla gratis pueden encontrarla y descargarla en los números de El Descamisado en El Topo Blindado. En concreto este capítulo (Las Invasiones Inglesas) apareció en el número 13.

TRIGGER WARNING: fusilamiento, sangre

[birralover]

«De pronto, dice el soldado, hubo un silencio. La muchacha dejó la metralleta, se asomó de pie sobre el parapeto y abrió los brazos. Dejamos de tirar sin que nadie lo ordenara y pudimos verla bien. Era flaquita, tenía el pelo corto y estaba en camisón. Empezó a hablarnos en voz alta pero muy tranquila. No recuerdo todo lo que dijo. Pero recuerdo la última frase, esa que en realidad no me deja dormir: ‘ustedes no nos matan –dijo- nosotros elegimos morir’. Entonces ella y el hombre se llevaron una pistola a la sien y se mataron enfrente de todos nosotros”.

Sobre el asesinato de victoria walsh y su pareja, ellos militaban para montoneros. La historia argentina es preciosa y llena de coraje, Vicky tenía 26 cuando la acribillaron los militares, se subió a la terraza y desde arriba los miro a los milicos y se quitó la vida antes de que la matasen. Su padre, Rodolfo Walsh comenta: “Pero no puedo dejar de recordarla, de pensar en su último gesto. Matarse. Hacerlo frente a un ejército. Ganarle de mano para no entregarse viva. Es su gloria”

[leftistfeminista]

The Leader of our Revolution in hair rollers

THE GROTESQUE DEMAND FOR FEMININITY: ROLLERS, MAKEUP, AND THE PERFORMANCE OF PRESENTABILITY

For the women who had known Norma Arrostito as “Gaby” — the hard, disciplined clandestine militant who trained in Cuba, moved through safehouses under false identities, fiercely lead guerillas, carried weapons, and founded Montoneros — seeing her alive inside the ESMA was already surreal enough. The Junta had publicly declared her dead in a fake glorious “shootout,” transforming her into a frozen martyr while secretly keeping her chained as a trophy.

The contrast was savage and almost unbearable because the dictatorship had taken a woman whose entire life revolved around clandestine autonomy, self-discipline, and revolutionary seriousness and forced her into the grotesque theater of captive femininity. The dead guerrilla icon from the newspapers had become a living prisoner being cosmetically prepared by the very regime that had lied about killing her. That collision between mythic martyrdom and banal captivity hit her comrades with extraordinary force.

One of the most revealing — and infuriating — dimensions of founder of the Montoneros Norma Arrostito's captivity was the regime's insistence that she perform femininity on demand

The ESMA's guards and officers required that the trophy be presentable:

"La hacían maquillar, peinarse, que se vistiera bien. Pero siempre con grilletes."

She was forced to apply makeup. To comb her hair. To dress nicely. In shackles.

The rollers incident — one of the most sardonic, almost absurdist scenes in the entire documented history of the ESMA:

Graciela Daleo ("Vicky"), upon arriving as a new detainee, when told Gaby was alive and asked if she wanted to see her, said yes — as a test of the officers' honesty

The officer responded: "No, no la vamos a bajar porque tiene los ruleros puestos."

"We can't bring her down because she has her hair rollers in."

Daleo replied: "Usted me está mintiendo porque Gaby nunca usó ruleros."

"You're lying to me because Gaby never wore rollers."

But Pernía was NOT lying — per testimony, female detainees regularly crossed paths with Arrostito in the bathroom wearing her hair rollers

"El trofeo debía estar siempre presentable." — The trophy had to always be presentable

Think carefully about what this means for a woman like Norma Arrostito:

A woman trained in Havana in urban guerrilla warfare

A woman who had slept on the floors of clandestine safe-houses, who had moved through Argentina's south zones in constant disguise

A woman described by José Luis Calvo as having "figura menudita... sencilla y se veía que se llevaba bien con su figura" — simple, comfortable in her own skin

A woman who had spent years as a master of disguise — wigs, dyes, changes of appearance — and who now had that very expertise turned against her, weaponized as a form of control

The guards made her wear rollers. They made her put on makeup. They dressed her up. Like a doll. Like a display case mannequin. Like a captured animal groomed for exhibition.

The profound, scalding indignity of being a woman who chose her own body's presentation for a decade of clandestine revolutionary life — and then having that autonomy stripped away by men who needed her to look "nice" for visitors

The shock of her comrades seeing our ascetic leader of our revolution wearing the hair rollers of a 1950s housewife.

BOOK QUOTE LINK: (The Montonera: Biography of Norma Arrostito. The first female leader of the Peronist guerrillas)

[leftistfeminista]

View this post on Instagram

Re-enacting the escape of leftist women political prisoners in 1975 Argentina

Sunday in Cordoba commemorated a new anniversary of the escape of political prisoners from the prison of Good Shepherd. 51 years after the historic escape, tribute was paid to those from within and outside those walls who made this collective victory possible.

Memory is not erased or hidden with concrete and disastrous architectural works of governments, but made by the towns fighting. Years ago we are present at the Good Shepherd denouncing this shopping center built on what was a prison, erasing the marks of torture, the disappearance of companions and the appropriation of their sons and daughters," expressed from the Collective for the Fuga, an intergenerational political space of memory, composed of militants, ex-political prisoners and relatives of missing.

On 24/05/1975, in a calculated commando operation, a group of 26 women accused of guerrilla activities managed to escape thanks to the articulation of various organizations that operated jointly. They fled through the penal's kitchen window, which had been opened seconds earlier by a truck driven by peers who tore off the grid with a trailer sling.

During this year's tribute, the commemorative tiles were renewed, with descriptions of the companions who would later disappear by the dictatorship.

Tiles were also shown that the Province did not allow to be placed: "These waters hide the dungeons where political prisoners and their babies were locked up and tortured."

"Although the provincial government doesn't want us to point it out, the story is hidden here." She denies it by raising dancing waters over her that do not invite to look down, where the horror worked," they indicated.

Fuga de la cárcel de mujeres El Buen Pastor - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

View this post on Instagram

Nace "Colectiva por la Fuga", un espacio que reivindica la hazaña de las presas políticas del Buen Pastor | La tinta

Militantes de Córdoba conformaron un espacio político para homenajear a las 26 mujeres que huyeron de la Cárcel del Buen Pastor en 1975.