August 2 marked another year since two Argentine girls, aged 11 and 12, were murdered in Paraguay. Liliana and Maria Carmen Villalba were killed by the Paraguayan Army’s Joint Task Force in 2020 during an operation against the insurgent group Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP). To this day, the matter has not been clarified and no one has been arrested for the murder of the two girls.
Liliana, María Carmen, and other family members had traveled to Paraguay to spend time with their parents, who belonged to the EPP. COVID-19 pandemic border closures caused the girls’ return to Argentina to be suspended and they had to remain in Paraguay in an EPP shelter. On September 2, the Joint Task Force of the Paraguayan Army carried out a military operation against the EPP and attacked the shelter, killing Liliana and María Carmen. Family members of the two girls have denounced that the minors were tortured, raped, and dressed as if they were guerrilla fighters killed by members of the Paraguayan Army.
The rest of the group managed to escape. However, on November 30, the military wounded and captured 14-year-old Carmen Oviedo Villalba (also known as Lichita), and she has never been seen again. To this day, the cousin of Lillian and María Carmen is still missing, and no Paraguayan institution has given any account of her whereabouts. Moreover, according to several journalists, no investigation has been conducted to find out what happened to Lichita. Her mother, communist leader Carmen Villalba, served a 17 year prison sentence in the Paraguayan capital Asunción, for having belonged to the EPP, but was given another charge in an attempt to keep her in prison. Carmen’s other son, Nestor, was also murdered in 2010 when he was 12.
The trial of Lichita’s aunt, who is the sole witness to the crimes, took place at the beginning of August. Laura Villalba was convicted on charges of terrorism and terrorist association and sentenced to 31 years in prison (25 year sentence plus six years of security measures).
In an interview with Claudia Korol for Página 12, Carmen Oviedo Villalba reflected on the tragic fate of her family members and her daughter: “Lichita is a Paraguayan girl, part of the Villalba childhood, who suffers a real martyrology: forced into exile when she was 4-years-old, where she was compelled to leave the country with part of her family to protect her life, political refuge – which her family is in til this day, the murder of her brother Nestor when he was 12-years-old, the shooting of [her cousins] Liliana Mariana and Maria Carmen, girls of 11 and 12 years old, the aberrant imprisonment of Laura, her aunt. Lichita is part of that suffering childhood, she is part of a people that fights. For three years we have been demanding Lichita’s appearance alive, in the hands of the [Paraguayan] State, of the Joint Task Forces, armed forces used to forced disappearance, to murder, to the physical elimination of their political enemies since the dictatorship. They did it for 35 years, leaving in absolute impunity this genocidal practice of the Colorado Party installed in power 70 years ago.”
In several countries, different social, political, and human rights organizations have launched several international campaigns “¿Dónde está Lichita?” (Where is Lichita) and “Eran Niñas”(They were girls) to pressure the United Nations to speak out on the case and to demand clear answers from the State of Paraguay about the death of Liliana and María Carmen, as well as about the forced disappearance of Lichita. Humanitarian campaigns have also called for the girls’ families to be allowed to be part of the search and investigation of the alleged state crimes. In early August, an Argentine and Paraguayan delegation arrived in Asuncion to accompany the trial of Laura Villalba and continue demanding justice and action in the cases of the crimes against the young girls.
For now, it does not seem that the crimes against the Villalba girls will be solved soon, even less if we take into account the sepulchral silence of the Paraguayan and international media, as well as the passivity of Paraguayan authorities who do not seem to be interested in the crimes being clarified. According to Lichita’s mother, “The case of [my daughter] is a case in which the State and its institutions not only do not search for Lichita, do not implement the protocol of forced disappearance indicated by the United Nations committee on forced disappearance, but also criminalize the campaign for Lichita, those who search for her and denounce her forced disappearance…We have elements that point to those materially responsible, to the joint task force, to high police chiefs.”
