The mass killings
Upon assuming power, the military proceeded with extreme ruthlessness to kidnap, torture, and in most cases kill not only suspected leftist terrorists but also anyone who in their minds was politically liberal or left-leaning or seemed to care for the welfare and rights of poor people, and even people who were accidentally associated with intended victims – for example, happened to be in the same home when the victim was kidnapped. In the end they also tortured and killed for a variety of purely personal motives.
The abductions, tortures, and murders were committed with the help of three major paramilitary forces. The organization was loose, but with leadership from the highest authorities in the military. Each branch of the military and local units enjoyed broad discretion in deciding the fate of captured persons.
As early as 1975, the military established secret detention centers – in army barracks, old prisons, and police stations. It is at these centers, starting in 1976, that torture and sometimes killings took place.43
The military’s practices were guided by the attitude expressed in the Institutional Act of June 18, 1976. The junta assumed the “‘power and responsibility to consider actions of those individuals who have injured the national interest,’ on grounds as generic as, ‘failure to observe basic moral principles in the exercise of public, political, or union offices or activities that involve the public interests.’”44
While the junta’s defense was that it had been forced to fight a “dirty war” in which certain “excesses” and “errors” had been unavoidable, the pattern of repression followed far more closely the statement of Buenos Aires Governor, General Iberico Saint-Jean, at the time of the military takeover: “First we kill all the subversives; then.. .their sympathizers; then.. .those who remain indifferent; and finally we kill the timid.”45
As Ernesto Sabato wrote in his proloque to Nunca Mas:
All sectors fell into the net: trade union leaders fighting for better wages; youngsters in student unions; journalists who did not support the regime; psychologists and sociologists simply for belonging to suspicious professions; young pacifists, nuns and priests who had taken the teachings of Christ to shanty areas; the friends of these people too, and the friends of friends, plus others whose names were given out of motives of personal vengeance, or by the kidnapped under torture.46
Nunca Mas clearly shows that there was a plan: procedures of the perpetrators varied in many details but clearly were based on a shared design.
Some leftist guerrillas were killed when found or killed in the course of fighting, but most of the “disappeared” were abducted by groups of armed men in civilian clothes who drove in unmarked cars to the homes of victims, blindfolded them, and took them away. The kidnappers usually maintained that they were acting under military authority.
When a victim was sought out in his or her home at night, armed units would surround the block and force their way in, terrorizing parents and children, who were often gagged and forced to watch. They would seize the persons they had come for, beat them mercilessly, hood them, then drag them off to their cars or trucks, while the rest of the unit almost invariably ransacked the house and looted everything that could be carried.47
Usually the gang of kidnappers arranged a “green light,” or a free zone of operations, by calling the local police beforehand. They sometimes came in small numbers, but sometimes in huge force with helicopters hovering over the victims’ homes. They looted (sometimes on another day) and at times destroyed the home of the abducted person.
When witnesses attempted to report kidnappings to local police, they were usually told that the police were unable to intervene. Victims were rarely informed about reasons for their arrest. When relatives tried to obtain information about the whereabouts of victims, from the police or through the courts using writs of habeas corpus, the authorities usually claimed that the person was not in detention.
The blindfolded or hooded victims were placed on the floor of the back seat of the car and taken to the military establishments, prisons, or police barracks used as secret detention centers. Here they were kept under horrible conditions. Constantly blindfolded, they were totally disoriented and helpless. They received starvation rations in a manner designed to contribute to their degradation and helplessness. For example, they would be given soup on a flat plate, with a fork. They were repeatedly tortured and interrogated for as long as weeks, months, and in some cases even years. One purpose of this was to force confessions and get the names of other “subversives.”
Electric prods were applied to all parts of the body; victims’ heads were immersed in water while covered by a cloth; they were beaten with fists, rubber, and metal; put into pens with vicious dogs until they were almost dismembered; put into a sack with a cat. There were mock and genuine executions in front of other prisoners and relatives. Pregnant women were also subjected to torture, resulting in miscarriages and sometimes death.48
In most of this book, I have discussed the mistreatment and murder without providing a vivid picture of the suffering. I hoped this would allow a more careful analysis of the psychology and culture of perpetrators. However, this suffering and the perpetrators’ will to inflict it are the core of our concern. Nunca Mas quotes the testimony of victims extensively; I present some fragments here:
Everything happened very quickly. From the moment they took me out of the car to the beginning of the first electric shock session took less time than I am taking to tell it. For days they applied electric shocks to my gums, nipples, genitals, abdomen, and ears....
Then they began to beat me systematically and rhythmically with wooden sticks on my back, the backs of my thighs, my calves, the soles of my feet. At first the pain was dreadful. Then it became unbearable. The agonizing pain returned a short while after they finished hitting me. It was made still worse when they tore off my
