Relatives and colleagues “The 12 of the Holy Cross”human rights leaders and officials paid homage this Thursday to that group of detainees disappeared by the dictatorship in that church in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of San Cristóbal 45 years ago and stressed that currently “before the same powers” “the same fight” is taking place.
The collective was made up of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Azucena Villaflor, Maria Ponce and Esther Ballestrino; the familiars Angela Aguad, Remo Berardo, Julio Fondevila and Patricia Oviedo; political militants Horacio Elbert, Raquel Bulit and Daniel Horane and the French nuns Leonie Duquet and Alice Domonall of them assassinated by the dictatorship.
“With the courage of the 30 thousand and the audacity of the Mothers, before the same powers, the same fight” was the motto of the call in which the traditional floral offering with red roses was made on the commemorative plaques with the names of the victims.
They were the Buenos Aires governor, Axel Kicillof; the Minister of Culture, Tristan Bauer; the Vice Minister of Justice, Juan Martin Mena; the Secretary of Human Rights, Horacio Pietragalla Corti; the Buenos Aires Minister of Government, Maria Cristina Alvarez Rodriguez; the Buenos Aires Chief of Advisors, carlos white; public defender, Miriam Lewin; the Buenos Aires Ombudsman, Maria Rosa Muinos; the senator of the FdT Oscar Parrilli; the official legislator Victoria Montenegro; the former vice president Beloved Boudou; the president of Nuevo Encuentro, Martin Sabbatella; the general secretary of ATE Capital, Daniel Catalanoand the reference of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Founding Line Taty Almeidaamong others.
The Mothers, Grandmothers and Children never gave up their arms, that is why the commitment that we renew is to follow their path, with the flags held high and without stopping for a day in that fight.
45 years after the kidnapping of the 12 of the Holy Cross, we continue to ask for memory, truth and justice. pic.twitter.com/2RykdBUAeM
— Axel Kicillof (@Kicillofok) December 9, 2022
“Despite how ruthless they were in that attempt to instruct and discipline, they did not succeed; the Mothers redoubled the fight despite having lost their companions, they themselves who were looking for their disappeared sons and daughters ended up as victims of the same repression Kicillof said to Télam.
Regarding the motto of the call “before the same powers, the same fight”, the governor considered that today “there is a continuity between those powers that generated the repression and the fights that resisted them”.
“The fight that our political force led by Cristina (Kirchner) is carrying out today is exactly the same fight for which the 30,000 were disappeared and they are exactly the same powerswhich at that time were part of the military party and today take another form as a judicial party with other methods,” said Kicillof.
The governor said that “the people know very well that it is a task force between sectors of the Judiciary, the media power, the intelligence services and business sectors that want to carry out their design of the country as if the people did not exist. “.
During the meeting, they were presented with the distinction “Scarves in struggle” for their commitment to human rights to the vice president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner -Parrilli received it on his behalf- and to Kicillof, who affirmed gratefully that in the face of “the same powers on one side and the same struggle on the other” he will continue with a “total commitment to this handkerchief that they gave me.”
Likewise, the daughters of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and hostesses of the event cecilia de vincenti Y Mabel Careaga They read an excerpt from the note that they send to the Vice President along with the distinction where they express that in it they see “the dream of the 30,000 fighting for a homeland with memory and justice, free and sovereign.”
After remembering “Los 12 de la Santa Cruz” through music, videos and heartfelt words, a floral offering was made at the Solar de la Memoria, where family and friends hugged and said words of encouragement in one of the most mobilizers of the day.
Minister Bauer highlighted to this agency that he is moved by “returning each time to this place where the tragedy occurred but where the example of struggle was born and how in the most difficult moments where everything seemed impossible, those women and those men left us their example that remains forever.”
“Those who continued to fight despite their disappearance, did not shut up, they continued marching and fighting with that emblem that represents the three words memory, truth and justice, essential to advance today as a society,” Bauer emphasized.
Coincidentally, Muiños expressed that one of the testimonies of the Mothers that “came to him a lot in one of the videos that were shown is when he added two concepts to the motto Memory, Truth and Justice: Never again hate, never more silence” and pointed out that this “is key to our current history and reading the present”.
Careaga recalled that “here they tried to deal a mortal blow to the nascent group of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and what we strongly claim today is that despite such a tremendous blow the Mothers returned to the Plaza de Mayo the following Thursday.”
“They had a conception of politics and militancy, of putting their bodies and getting closer to the other and I relate that to Cristina, whom we distinguish today for being a bastion of human rights and for her way of doing politics.”
about the recent denial of parole to repressor Alfredo Astiz (who had infiltrated as Gustavo Niño, an alleged relative, and handed over the victims), Careaga maintained that “everything he did, approaching and gaining the trust of a group of women, coming to a church and gaining the trust of a group of relatives and nuns, is unusually perverse and what he is doing now is also perverse”.
“We remember life, joy, struggle, he has no place here, he has to remain silent in jail and not leave until he dies”sentenced.
The daughter of lily villaflor He pointed out that “we must remember so that there is justice and that those who have to be imprisoned remain imprisoned like Astiz, who always asks for freedom and the only way for there to be justice is for him to remain imprisoned.”
“I feel that that militancy, today has to return. We have to be more aware and transmit it to our young people so that they stop thinking about the right and think about rights,” De Vincenti completed.
The kidnappings of “Los 12” began on the night of December 8, 1977 and ended on the 10th of that same month, when the request was published in the newspaper La Nación with the signature of more than 800 people under the slogan “We only ask for the truth”.
“The 12 of the Holy Cross” were taken and tortured in the ESMA and then, on December 14, 1977, they were thrown into the sea as part of the “flights of death.”
The bodies of the three Mothers, Ángela Aguad and Leonie Duquet appeared on the coast of the Santa Teresita resort and were buried as NN in the General Lavalle cemetery.
In 2005, work by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team allowed them to be identified and today the remains of María, Esther, Leonie and Ángela rest in the Church of the Holy Cross while those of Azucena lie in the Pyramid of Plaza de Mayo.
Between 2011 and 2017, those responsible for the disappearances of “The 12 of the Church of the Holy Cross” were convicted by Justice.
