“Liberals value the vision of Memory, Truth and Justice, but we start with the truth. It was not 30,000 people who disappeared, but 8,753,” stated Javier Milei, who won the PASO elections in August with 30% of the votes, last Sunday in the Argentine presidential debate.
This is one of the most serious denialist statements since the return of democracy, if we take into account the context: it is made by a presidential candidate with clear chances of reaching the Casa Rosada, and also within the framework of a debate for 20 million viewers and users.
In our country, we are learning something painful, but real: despite so many years of struggle, the genocidal version of the last civil-military dictatorship is still installed in society. And it manifests itself in this way. First by denying an open figure that tries to reflect the true face of the horror. Then slipping in that it was not a dictatorship where the State went out to hunt people, tortured and murdered them, but that it was actually a “war”, bringing back the “theory of the two demons.”
However, it would be a mistake to consider that every Milei voter is a denialist, so it is necessary to lay out some fundamental clarifications and figures.
The genocidaires stayed silent
First and foremost: the true number of disappeared and victims of State terrorism is known by their executioners. That is to say, the genocidal military who carried out the 1976 coup d’état. Many of them are dying in silence, without revealing where they shot their victims or where their bodies were thrown, as well as, for example, where the children who were appropriated after the murder of their parents are.
For this reason, different Human Rights organizations are demanding that the Armed Forces hand over, almost 50 years later, all possible documentation and information. So far, they have not done so.
The CONADEP report cannot close anything
Second point. The number of disappeared that Milei gave during the debate (8,753) is the number confirmed by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) a few years after the return of democracy. It was an official investigation of enormous importance, but it is not possible to take it as definitive.
For simple reasons: it was carried out and closed a few years after the end of the dictatorship. The pressure of the Armed Forces was in the air and the families of the victims themselves did not dare to speak out or denounce.
State terrorism was clandestine
Third and perhaps the most important point. The CONADEP report, as well as Milei’s denialist statements, are misunderstanding something fundamental: during the six years of military dictatorship, kidnappings, tortures, rapes, baby stealing, and extermination in all its forms took place clandestinely. Therefore, it is almost impossible to identify the real number of victims.
If there is no secret documentation of the Armed Forces that compiles the murders in every corner of the country, if the genocidaires die without talking, the final number of the disappeared in Argentina will remain an unknown. And an open source of pain.
Judicial sources specializing in crimes against humanity explain that the number 30,000 is also a result of estimates of the number of people who passed through the 800 Clandestine Detention Centers (CCD) and the numbers or letters given to kidnapped people.
Why we say 30,000
The writer Martín Kohan also reflects on all this: “The discussion is not between 8,000 proven cases and 30,000 unproven cases. In my opinion, what the figure 30,000 expresses is that there is no evidence because the State does not provide information about what happened. The repression was clandestine and illegal, it did not go through any judicial system, it was as clandestine as the clandestine centers of repression and torture. And the figure of 30,000 expresses that we do not know exactly how many there were because the illegal State, which repressed clandestinely, does not open the files, does not give the information of where the disappeared are nor the information of where the kidnapped grandchildren are.”
For all these reasons, Javier Milei’s statements are at the very least ignorant of the history of suffering and genocide in Argentina. But also, as we know, those who take a much lower figure than the 30,000 disappeared only seek to minimize what happened in our country under the last military dictatorship.
This reveals that, in reality, they do not even seek to discuss history. Only to deny it. That is why it is correct to call them “denialists.”
This article first appeared in Spanish at Arg Medios.