The Catholic Church and Argentinaʼs Dirty War

Gustavo Morello

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190234270.001.0001
Published: 2015 Online ISBN: 9780190234294 Print ISBN: 9780190234270

CHAPTER

5 The long night 

Gustavo Morello, SJ

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190234270.003.0005 Pages 87–107

Published: April 2015

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/2671/chapter/143095256 by Stockholm University user on 14 November 2022

Abstract
This chapter details the illegal procedures that led to the kidnapping, detention, and internment of the
La Salettes. It describes the chaotic “interrogation,” where they were accused of being members of the
CIA and Marxist guerrillas at the same time. The police were concerned by the books they read, the
music they listened to, their acquaintances, and the money they had in the house. The chapter
describes the harsh living conditions in prison and the exclusion of the seminarians from any religious
rite. They were banned from attending Mass, reading the Bible, or receiving Communion. Meanwhile,
their friends on the outside were working hard on “legalizing” them and securing the intervention of
the U.S. Embassy in Argentina.

Keywords: kidnapping, police, internment, political prisoners, antisecular Catholics, military vicariate
Subject: Sociology and Anthropology of Religion

The Disappearance and the Internment

The gang that attacked the seminarians in their house took them away in two vehicles, the victims lying
down in the back seats. “We went out to an avenue [ . . . ], waited at a few tra c lights, and I had for the rst
time the unfortunate sensation of nding myself in a parallel world. Just a few feet away there were other
cars, other people living a normal life, absolutely untouched by our tragedy. I was helplessly sinking into
another dimension” (Dausá, Manusc). In one of the cars, those who were driving said: “Is the ditch ready?”
and the other one said: “Yes, yes, it’s ready.” They took us directly to the old city hall, and made us enter still totally
blindfolded and tied up (Interview with Alfredo). The La Salettes were at the D2, the intelligence headquarters
for the police of the province of Córdoba, who were then working out of the historic city hall. The CLA was
based there; as we have seen, the CLA was created during the federal intervention of Lacabanne and later,
maintaining a certain autonomy, was coordinated by the III Corps. At the D2, the abductors kept the
prisoners handcu ed and blindfolded constantly, and most of the time seated on cement benches, which
was called “The Tram” (Interview with Daniel). It was a passageway that opened onto a patio, and the cells
faced it too. The prisoners were seated at 90 degrees, with handcu s, straight in that position, without letting us
go to sleep, but blindfolded, and if they saw that your body drooped, they hit you in the ankles (Interview with
Alfredo). From time to time, they took one of the prisoners out to the patio so that the spring drizzle would
sharpen the torment. Sometimes, they would lie us down . . . and afterwards another would come and yell,
p. 88 “What did I tell you?” all night long . . . “Get up!” (Interview with James). In June 2011, I accompanied a
group of priests of the La Salette community to visit the place. Weeks and Velarde were returning there for
the rst time since the kidnapping. Alfredo could not enter the building. At one point, when I was taking a
group around explaining the places we were seeing, I stopped in a passageway without making any
comment, waiting for the group to come back together. James entered a minute later. He looked at me and
said, “It was here.” This was “The Tram.” Almost thirty- ve years after having been there, blindfolded, he
recognized the place.
 In “The Tram” they met others who were tortured (Interview with James). Alejandro remembered a
“woman who seemed old by the sound of her voice, who cried out in despair for them not to ‘put more bugs’
into her; a frequent practice in torturing women whereby they put insects into the vagina. They brought her
to that passageway repeatedly, until [ nally] she returned no more” (Dausá, Manusc). While some could not
remember the names of those who were there (Interview with Alfredo), others remembered Susana Canela,
a student, and Carlos Dreisyk, a union leader who “repeated time and again the phrase ‘The night is long,
father,’ as a litany to inspire our resistance” (Dausá, Manusc).

They kept them in that passageway until the night of August 6, but the kidnapping victims had lost their
perception of time. I had calculated some times, and they weren’t the same, they were di erent . . . time runs
di erently, because you don’t have days or nights. You eat when they give you something. Since you have your eyes
blindfolded, you don’t see if it’s day or if it’s night, you can only suspect that it’s day or night. I don’t know how
much time I slept or didn’t sleep, and where I didn’t sleep [ . . . ]. That’s a part of the torture [ . . . ]. The whole
situation is entirely subhuman and totally abusive (Interview with Daniel).

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All of the interrogations began with rigorous recordkeeping: They took photographs of the victims, took
their ngerprints, and made them sign papers (Dausá, Manusc). These materials have been recovered and
p. 89 have become forensic evidence in the judicial process. According to the trial order, those who
participated in the interrogations were the same people who kidnapped them, to whose names occasionally
are added “Ítalo Bossina (deceased), Miguel Ángel Serrano (deceased), Herminio Jesús Antón, Marcelo
Luna, Antionio Mateo Garay (deceased), Juan Eduardo Ramón Molina, Carlos Alfredo Yanicelli, José
Idelfonso Vélez and Jesús Raúl Ochoa” (Orden, 2009:4). Another occasional interrogator was Colonel Raúl
Eduardo Fierro. The kidnapped were not all interrogated by the same people, nor did they receive the same
treatment.

Weeks’ statement to the U.S. Congress is of special relevance in reconstructing this stage of the narrative,
since it re ects what the interrogators asked in the D2, given that they never managed to take him to the
clandestine La Perla center. Weeks remembers having been interrogated by the police and military (Hearing,
1
1976:2). Some sessions were directed by Tissera (Moore, 1980:52), who accused him of being with the CIA;
other sessions were directed by Colonel Fierro, who accused him of belonging to the Montoneros
(Meschiati, 1984:41, 72). Weeks maintained that the search for subversive materials (arms and literature)
was a pretext: What they asked him about during the interrogations was his work with the poor. They
believed that all who worked with the poor were communists. Weeks a rmed that “It is a persecution of the
whole church, not only of the more progressive members of the hierarchy but also of the most committed
Christian laypeople” (Hearing, 1976:3). The suspicion of Weeks was consistent. Remember that the years
1974 and 1975 had been especially violent ones for those sectors of Catholics who were committed to the
poor. For the terrorist state, those Catholics were enemies who misinterpreted Catholic doctrine and
pursued false conclusions. According to then-director of the Superior War College, General Juan Manuel
p. 90 Bayón, power owed from God to the authorities, and not to the people, because the people were
incapable and inept in its exercise (Novaro & Palermo, 2003:35). To a rm explicitly or implicitly the
contrary, that God granted power to the people, was a subversion of order. This ideology considered “Third-
2
Worldism” an in ltration that introduced Marxism into the Church. The same accusation would be leveled
at Jesuits Francisco Jalics and Orlando Yorio, who were also tortured during that time at the Escuela de
3
Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA, the Navy’s mechanical school).

The interrogations of the La Salettes were chaotic. In general, the victims all remember the verbal,
psychological, and physical violence. The victims were handcu ed, blindfolded, and seated before a desk.
They were before someone who directed the process, but they were also aware of the presence of people
behind them in the room. The principal accusation was that they were not seminarians. In fact, the
Archbishop’s o ce had to write a letter saying that we were members of a religious congregation, but one of their
strong arguments was [that they were not real seminarians], then the treatment was worse (Interview with
p. 91 Alejandro). In the D2, they dealt with the religious topic very awkwardly [ . . . ]. They made the rst collection
of the books that had been taken from the house, recordings, records, they put everything there in an immense bag,
and it was all the same to them (Interview with Alejandro). They asked everyone about a book of “para-
liturgies,” which evidently they didn’t even bother to ip through. (A para-liturgy, in Catholic practice, is
the celebration of a religious rite without the presence of a priest. Rosaries, pilgrimages, communal
readings of the Bible, and so forth fall under this classi cation.) “It was a simple practical guide for the
celebration of para-liturgies led by lay people” (Dausá, Manusc). The person who interrogated them
insisted that the title “para-liturgical” sounded “paramilitary” to him (Interviews with Daniel and
 Alejandro) and I said to him: “What is paramilitary and para-police?” (Interview with Alfredo). In any case, the
suspicion faded after reading the book a little, which is what they did in the III Corps, where the text was not
listed as sequestered material.

The interrogators focused on a record, Bolivia Canta y Lucha (“Bolivia Sings and Fights”), which they
considered proof of the seminarians’ connection with a terrorist group from Bolivia [ . . . ]. They wanted to see
who they were and where their meetings were; they were convinced that there was something there (Interview
with Alejandro). They wanted us to con rm that Santiago was a guerrilla and that we were being indoctrinated by
him (Interview with Alfredo). In some cases, while Weeks could see them but the seminarians couldn’t, the
torturers began to accuse him of being the ideologist of the group (Interviews with Alfredo and James). The
proofs they o ered for this were twofold. The rst was the refrain of one of the songs on the con scated
record: “Be careful, Colonel, be careful, General, bullets run out, but the people are immortal” (Los Montoneros
de Méndez, “Cuidado,” track 7 on Bolivia Canta y Lucha). The other was their appearance: the type of
clothing they wore and the length of their beards, “calculating and asking how long he had let it grow”

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(Dausá, Manusc). They repeated their accusations based on a last name: [they asked] if I was French [ . . . ]
something without foundation (Interview with Alejandro). They asked if the seminarians knew what the
p. 92 Triple A was (Dausá, Manusc). They in icted psychological torture: looking for Joan (Interview with
Alfredo), this guy [yells insults] at me: “I don’t care if you see me because I’m a goner, they condemned me to
death . . . ,” and then with the blindfold on again he began to interrogate me (Interviews with Alejandro). All this
was done without any speci c objective. In one of the interrogations, one o cial suggested to one of the
seminarians: “I don’t know, I don’t know what I have to ask you. Look, I wrote this, do you think you could sign
it?” And we spoke for a while . . . (Interview with Daniel).

The night of Wednesday the fourth the kidnappers permitted other members of the congregation to bring
them food, although they were not allowed to see them. A box came in [ . . . ] with food [ . . . ] but they had
written [on it] in English with an “up” arrow [ . . . ], in other words, “cheer up,” “don’t give up.” Then instead of
putting “Seven Up,” they put “six up” (Interview with Alfredo). Someone from the archbishop’s o ce must
have visited them, probably Eladio Bordagaray (a friend of one of the seminarian’s families), and then a
police o cer called us by name and we each stood up (Interview with Daniel), even though we remained
blindfolded and cut o [from each other]. The e orts that their companions were making on their behalf
outside the detention center were aimed at “legalizing” them—that is, requiring the state to o cially
recognize their detention. The status of someone in the process of legalization was not the same as that of a
“disappeared” person. Being a political prisoner implied certain guarantees: Recognition by the
government made a clandestine disappearance di cult and allowed for judicial resources and demands for
freedom that increased the possibility of survival. It was also useful for the government, because it would
use these legal prisoners to show that those who had been detained were in jail and had not been
disappeared (Actis et al., 2001; Bondone, 2005; Guglielmucci, 2006; Marchak, 1999).

4
Between November 1975 and September 1979 there were 8,275 prisoners in the “custody of the PEN.”
p. 93 There were ten principal detention centers, four in the metropolitan Buenos Aires area, three in Córdoba,
and in the prisons in Santa Fe, Chubut, and Chaco. The prisoners in the custody of PEN during the
administration of Martínez de Perón were never taken before a judge, nor was any o cial process against
them ever initiated; their situation became even harsher after the coup. Despite existing prohibitions in
Argentina, even formal prisoners were humiliated and tortured with little concern for the complaints this
5
treatment might generate (CIDH, 1980; CONADEP, 1984; De Ípola, 2005; Familiares, 2001; Sillato, 2008).

In the case of the La Salettes, the pressure of the North American government was decisive in their
“legalization.” At one point on Thursday the fth, the Chief of Police came and said, “I have the U.S.
Ambassador on the phone and he wants me to tell you, while he listens, that the President [of the United States] is
behind this case” (Interview with James). From that intervention forward, the La Salettes would pass “to the
jurisdiction of Area 311” (Dausá, Manusc). While the judicial decree that the PRN itself designed established
three reasons for arrest (in fraganti, judicial order, and at the disposition of PEN), many were detained in
Córdoba “at the disposition of Area 311,” a measure classi ed as illegal by Amnesty International (1977:29).

On Thursday, August 6 (p. 11), the newspaper La Voz del Interior reported that “A North American priest and
ve seminarians were detained.” The story read as follows:

Church sources con rmed that a North American priest and ve seminarians were detained in this
province, one of these a Chilean [ . . . ]. First reports of the case were obtained through information
 coming from the North American press, where the superiors for the novitiate of the Order of
p. 94 Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette are located, to which the detainees belong [ . . . ]. According
to what was learned, the detention of the religious men was the reason that led to yesterday’s
meeting of the auxiliary bishop of the province, Cándido Rubiolo, with government representative
Colonel Miguel Ángel Marini [. . .]

The publishing of the notice in the newspaper, a public recognition of the detention, was an important step
in protecting the lives of the kidnapping victims. Also, the fact that the source was from the United States
6
shows where the pressure was coming from. On the other hand, the cable con rmed that they had not
kidnapped Montoneros. The last sentence, naming the provincial executive, implies the involvement of the
police, just as had actually occurred.

The night of Friday, August 6, the prisoners were moved to the penitentiary. During the trip they told us, “we
are moving you to kill you. Take advantage and escape now; if you escape now, good, and if not . . . we’ll kill you

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either way!” It was the “Ley de fugas” [runaway “law”], an informal procedure that the military applied: They
would tell the prisoners, “you have a chance now, run away, if you make it, you’re free”; but when the
prisoners ran, they killed them. The next day the newspapers would report “prisoners killed when
attempting a prison break” or something similar. We said amongst ourselves, “we’re not going to make a move
to either side.” They had made us sign a book upon leaving the D2 and from there they put us in cars. On the oor
again . . . (Interview with Daniel). Handcu ed but not blindfolded, they again had the ambiguous sensation
of “parallel worlds: the patrol car crossed a portion of the city center, and I could see through the window
people or families walking peacefully, completely unaware of the horror” (Dausá, Manusc).

When they arrived at the penitentiary, they were seized in such a way that all remember as humiliating:
They stripped them and made them stand there for enough time that various prison guards went to see
them. They asked us all the questions they wanted to, they made us get dressed again and there was a [colleague]
p. 95 of my father [ . . . ]. This guy asked me various things [ . . . ] very, very privately in a hidden way. And . . . as if
saying, “Well, I’m going to do what I can, but I want you to assure me that I’m not being foolish, you have to assure
me that you were never involved in anything.” And so while he looked me over, he asked me all the questions, four
or ve. Afterwards I knew that this man was going to follow us around everywhere [ . . . ] and he was passing
information on to my father (Interview with Daniel).

In the penitentiary they placed them in the wing for political prisoners. And it was totally overcrowded, but the
solidarity and the support of those folks were incredible [ . . . ]. They did everything so that we were all together
(Interview with Daniel). There were hundreds of people in the wing, political prisoners of di erent kinds:
“doctors, workers, students [ . . . ], a judge and a psychiatrist” (Dausá, Manusc)—people whom they had
“lifted” from street corners, “disappeared.” The overcrowding made it so that they could be together and
talk among themselves for the rst time since their abduction.

The political prisoners, more accustomed to the prisons and to strategies for surviving in them, gave us all
the news they had. They knew already that we had been taken prisoner, they didn’t know who we were but . . . We
had more information than in the street! [They were isolated but] They had all the information! (Interview with
7
Daniel). There they learned of the assassination of Bishop Enrique Angelelli. When they heard this,
“Humberto sat on the ground and began to cry. The others felt an enormous sense of angst” (Dausá,
Manusc). Besides their own kidnapping and the assassination of Angelelli, there was the raid of the parish of
Goya, Corrientes, where Father Miguel Ramondetti worked, the Secretary General of MSTM and editor of the
bulletin Enlace, who was able to escape into exile. Days later, on August 17, Vicente Zazpe, the bishop of
Santa Fe, and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a Christian leader, would be detained in Ecuador at a meeting called by
p. 96 Leónidas Proaño, the bishop of Riobamba. When they returned to the country, Pérez Esquivel (winner of
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980) was jailed by Argentine security forces.

The prisoners of the penitentiary moved their mattresses and let the La Salettes be together because upon
learning that they were “priests” and realizing that they had been kidnapped the same day as Angelelli’s
“accident,” they thought that they were going to kill them too. The prisoners’ suspicions were based on
what they themselves had seen and su ered. They said to us [ . . . ], “They have left prisoners to die here on the
patio” and others said, “They let some people leave, told them that they were free, and in front of all of us they
8
killed them.”  And here I realized that whenever I listened to the radio they said, “There’s been a confrontation
between guerrilla forces and [security forces] when transporting [prisoners] from one prison to another . . .” and
it was always the guerrillas who died! (Interview with James).
 Their stay there was not long. After a few hours they came to tell them that they were going to take them to
the Encausados prison, in the neighborhood of Güemes. When they informed them of the transfer, one of
the prisoners told them how to act: that they should never say that they had beat them [ . . . ]. Any bruise, any
mark, whatever it was [we should say], “I fell going to the bathroom” [ . . . ]. Because if someone was taken from
one place to another, when they arrived at the destination and were seen to have been beaten where they had been
held before, they sent them back. And there they killed you for squealing on them [ . . . ]. So one always said, “I fell
going to the bathroom.” And sure . . . handcu ed and blindfolded, look, I’m telling you, it’s an art form to be able to
p. 97 urinate! (Interview with Daniel). While they were being transferred, in Córdoba residents were reading in
the Saturday paper (LVI, August 7, p. 11) about the detention of “a priest and six other people” from whom
they had con scated books and other “subversive” material. The communiqué of the III Corps claimed that

[ . . . ] based on reports by members of the population of presumed subversive activities, forces

from Area 311 raided the house Boulevard Los Alemanes 851 [ . . . ]. In said house was con scated a
large amount of Marxist-Leninist literature and a record containing subversive songs. It’s being

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investigated whether the citizens named are seminarians, and the whereabouts of an ex-religious
woman who occasionally stayed at the house is being sought.

With this press release the Army o cially took charge of the operation. On top of it, it established the
causes: suspicions by members of the population, Marxist literature, and protest music, as well as the doubt
about whether they were seminarians. Moreover, they level suspicion at McCarthy without explaining how
she eluded capture. We note that Area 311 had no formal authority to detain people. But it did exist as a war
zone—that is, the La Salettes were “prisoners of war,” a war against a particular way of understanding
Catholicism.

On Saturday, August 7, the La Salettes were housed at the Encausados jail, where they would remain until
their release. Upon arriving there, they had to pass through a new medical exam, as humiliating and useless
as the previous one. Despite the evidence of beatings, the doctors who examined them found no
contradiction in the wounds they showed and the “falls” reported by the seminarians. They were housed in
pavilion number 3. The level had “double bars on the entry, and a hallway with the doors of various cells on
either side” (Dausá, Manusc). Beyond the bars on the entry way were the bathrooms, and the rst cell that I
stayed in was right next to the bathrooms (Interview with Daniel), where they were allowed to go only once a
day, for a few minutes, to attend to their needs and wash up. The cells had high ceilings, with no lights or
p. 98 beds, and in some cases only an old bedframe with no mattress. And at the back there was a small night
table made of cement [ . . . ] and space for the bed next to it [ . . . ] but there was no bed (Interview with Daniel).
Each was in a cell that had nothing, on the clean oor, without a piece of cardboard, without anything (Interview
with Alfredo). The doors were of wood, without any opening that would have permitted them to look out.
Opposite the door was a window with bars, without glass, which practically exposed them to the weather. All
of them mentioned the cold they had to su er. During that winter, the average temperature was about 50
degrees F, with a high of 71 degrees at the end of the month and lows below freezing, including some snow
in the city (the last in thirty years). All they had was the clothing they were wearing at the time of their
abduction and a blanket they were given at the jail. “Despite those conditions, I admit that I enjoyed being
able to sleep lying down, without handcu s or blindfold” (Dausá, Manusc). They were always in the same
cells, but two of them were moved, one for having made visual contact through the window with visitors of
other prisoners, and the other presumably due to the deterioration of his cell. They were all in the same row,
except one who was right across from one of his companions. Between them they were able to communicate
a little more than before.

Since the La Salettes were “incommunicado,” they were placed in individual cells and strictly prohibited
from having contact among themselves. The measures taken included delaying the visit of functionaries
from the U.S. Embassy, who tried to talk to Weeks. According to reports in LVI (August 15, 1976, p. 6):

The United States [ . . . ] reiterated to the Argentine government its concern for the state of solitary
con nement in which Weeks was held [ . . . ]. Representatives of the State Department [delivered] a
memorandum [to the Argentine Ambassador in the United States] to stress that the United States
and Argentina are signatories of the Vienna Convention which [ . . . ] stipulates that a prisoner from
another country has the right to free access to the consular authorities of his country of origin and
to the council of a lawyer. In the case of Weeks, these facilities have not been provided.
p. 99 Daniel commented We found out later [ . . . ] that the Executive Authority kept us incommunicado until the day
Santiago [Weeks] was freed [August 17], but Menéndez himself decided to keep us in the dark. With the passing
of days, to the extent that the guards relaxed a bit, the other prisoners of the cellblock began to talk from
one cell to the next. This gave the La Salettes the ability to learn who was being kept at that place. Among
their companions in the cellblock were functionaries of the deposed government and some unionists. These
political prisoners were not in isolation and, until the arrival of the religious men, they were able to chat
among themselves and take walks in the hallways of the cellblock. “Since our group was supposed to be
absolutely incommunicado and in solitary con nement, they put the [others] in groups of two, three, or
four people in di erent cells, with no possibility of moving throughout the cell block” (Dausá, Manusc).
These political prisoners devised methods of conversing among themselves: Pastorino would leave to clean
9
the hallway [and] he passed news door to door (Interview with Daniel). In a short time, the seminarians
began to communicate in various ways: knocks on the wall (Interview with Alejandro); a simple system of
alerts, consisting of one, two, or three knocks to indicate anomalous situations, unusual entries to the
cellblock, or a return to normal conditions, respectively (Dausá, Manusc); brief and rare verbal exchanges

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through the window near the patio, with a circumstantial visit; and, in some cases, they learned to use
10
prison language to send hand signals. The closest possible thing to a normal conversation was what two
p. 100 young men in facing cells were able to maintain using much caution. So, if I stood the bed frame [ . . . ]
against the door I could use it as a ladder, stand on the back of the bed, the window came up to here, and then I
would whistle and Alejandro did the same. And we could talk on our ladders, and we spoke for a little, but with
terrible caution, so that the guard couldn’t get us (Interview with Daniel).

The prison guards continued at the command of the Servicio Penitenciario de Córdoba (SPC, Penitentiary
Service of Córdoba), but now under military jurisdiction and supervision. They were prison guards, quite at
odds with the Army (Interview with Daniel). The prison system, like the entire government, was
11
“intervented.” The III Corps took charge of the prisons on April 10, 1976. The head of the penitentiary
service was General Juan Bautista Sasiaiñ, who, according to witnesses (Familiares, 2001:123), threatened
the prisoners, saying that they would die slowly, wishing that they had never been born. The employees of
the SPC were set aside, having experienced numerous con icts with the new directors. The treatment by the
guards was cold, it wasn’t harsh (Interview with Alejandro). It was hostile and distant, in general, although
there were also ones who showed no mercy (Interview with Daniel), a cruelty that consisted of prohibiting
them from bathing, waking them up at each changing of the guard by banging on their doors with their
police batons, sabotaging their meals, and searching them frequently. This type of humiliation was typical
of political imprisonment. While the argument that justi es common imprisonment is reeducation, political
imprisonment is aimed only at the punishment of the dissident, humiliating him as much as possible
(Ambort, 2011; De Ípola, 2005).

p. 101 The political prisoners in Córdoba had restrictions on all their activities. They were not allowed newspapers,
books, conversations with guards, or access to the radio. They were limited to letters and, as we said,
communication among themselves (Bondone, 2005). The daily conditions in the Encausados prison were
frightening. We were kept like animals, animals with clothes (Interview with Alejandro). The life that I had
there, was [ . . . ] worse still than the life of an animal in a cage [ . . . ] totally inhumane! (Interview with Daniel).
The cells had a tin can that served as both a toilet and a water cup. It was worse than an animal, maintained
Daniel, because an animal at least had separate little cups, it has a place to go to the bathroom, and we didn’t have
that (Interview with Daniel). The food was nauseating, remembers Alejandro, a stew that could contain
anything, but they ate it with pleasure because of the hunger that one had . . . In the morning a hard roll, and all
12
day, a roll like that and a cup of brewed “mate” (Interview with Daniel). At times the food was more grease
than soup; other times they found rats in the bowls (Interview with Alfredo), and also they discovered that
the guards urinated in the mate (Interview with Daniel).

Although they were isolated and until a few days before their release they couldn’t receive visitors, they
could receive things that were sent to them. So other La Salettes went to the Encausados prison and they
endured the cold from 9 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon because they made them wait to leave us di erent
kinds of things that were necessary (gloves, biscuits, soap), but above all the visits served as a testimony
that there was concern on the outside for their situation (Interview with Alfredo). They remembered
especially Renato Biron, a La Salette who had been a missionary in Burma. The Burmese government had
thrown him out [ . . . ] in other words, he knew what repression was [ . . . ], re ected Daniel. And daily he brought
us things at Encausados [ . . . ]. Biron brought a little package of ve pairs of socks and the guards received only
p. 102 four, at one point they began to receive three and they returned the other socks because two of us were at La
Perla. What slyness! [ . . . ] And Biron kept track, he didn’t know the names (Interview with Daniel), but this
 strategy helped him learn who was at that prison and who wasn’t, although without knowing that the others
had been taken to La Perla. In that situation of poverty and abandonment, any object was valuable.
Alejandro got a small piece of wood, nails, an old oor mop. Daniel, through neighboring prisoners,
obtained three sheets of cardboard this wide [about 12 inches]. And afterwards they explained to me how to put
them on the frame of the bed in order to be able to lie down on top of all that [ . . . ]. Then you wrapped yourself up
with the blanket and you weren’t touching the frozen cement [ . . . ]. I slept like a fakir! (Interview with Daniel).

One of the cells was below the bathrooms of the oor above it. Because of the deterioration of the building,
the toilet water ltered onto the oor below, practically ooding the entire cell of one of the seminarians.
That is to say, there was a lake of excrement and urine, it was impossible to be there [ . . . ]. I lived on top of the
table, it was the only dry place. The situation was so bad that it got the attention of the guards. Menéndez
came. He opened the door and [ . . . ] his question was, “He’s dry, where is he if not here?” Daniel remembered, I
was standing because they made me stand, I was in the puddle. And they said, “he’s sitting on the table” and he
said, “ok, then he’s dry, let him stay there.” Unlike the other prisoners, they were prevented from bathing.

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They were only allowed to wash up and cut their hair the day before they received their rst visitors, at the
end of September. In that prison they were not hooded or handcu ed, nor were they interrogated. There was
psychological pressure, threats, but nothing physical nor beatings (Interview with Alejandro). “One lived in
absolute and permanent uncertainty” (Dausá, Manusc). This pressure in some cases pushed them to the
edge of suicide since it wasn’t known with any certainty how, and for how long, one could tolerate that
(Interview with Alejandro).

The Religious Exclusion

The prisons in Argentina relied on chaplains, priests in charge of providing spiritual comfort to the
p. 103 detained. The jails continued to be served by the ordinary chaplains, but upon being taken over by the
Army, they came to depend on the military vicariate. The vicariate is to some extent a remainder of the
“established” Church and its special relation with the Argentine state. It is an institution of the Catholic
Church that takes care of o ering religious services to military men. The clergymen who served that
mission were paid by the state and had a military rank but were appointed by the Church hierarchy.
Moreover, in Argentina in the 1970s, that service could only be o ered by Catholic priests.

The head of the vicariate was Bishop Adolfo Severando Tortolo. He worked between 1941 and 1956 in the city
of Mercedes (province of Buenos Aires), where he formed connections with the families of General Jorge
Videla and Brigadier Ramón Agosti (Andersen, 1993:219; Seoane & Muleiro, 2006:221). Named auxiliary
bishop of the diocese of Paraná (1956, titular in 1962), there he brought together right-wing groups from
di erent parts of the country, especially Buenos Aires (Gutman, 2003:267–269). The bishop, according to
Mignone (1999:22), stood in frank opposition to the Second Vatican Council. One interviewee who requested
anonymity (f.4) told me that when he was in Peru he met Bishop Eduardo Pironio, who had already ed to
the Vatican. There Pironio told him that he had secretly visited Argentina to investigate what had happened
in Paraná. The suspicion of Paul VI was that Tortolo supported Marcel Lefebvre (the French bishop who had
broken with Rome because of the conclusions of Vatican II). Between 1970 and 1976, Tortolo was president
of the CEA. Besides that, beginning in 1975, he replaced Antonio Caggiano as military vicar. The auxiliary
vicar (a type of “vice-bishop”) of Caggiano and Tortolo was Victorio Bonamín.

On August 6, 1975, Tortolo had warned of the gravity of the moral crisis; on December 19 he invited the
beginning of a process of puri cation of the country during a public service. A little later that same day, he
met with Martínez de Perón to tell her that the commandants-in-chief demanded her resignation
(Mignone, 1999; Yofre, 2006). More than a prophet, according to Seoane and Muleiro (2006:222), Tortolo
p. 104 seemed to be the voice of the coup. Verbitsky (2006:64) a rmed that he accused Angelelli of
encouraging the subversive guerrillas. Tortolo’s proximity to schismatic bishop Marcel Lefebvre and his
opposition to John Paul II’s mediation in a border con ict with Chile (1978) were probably the reasons why
the Vatican refused to make him a cardinal. He is, to date, the only president of the CEA who has not been
named cardinal.

Paid by the state, with social and health bene ts and retirement pensions, the chaplaincies were positions
that attracted many priests. The vicariate had around 250 chaplains who served more than 130 chapels,
distributed in neighborhoods, barracks, and military hospitals. Their mission, according to Mignone (1999),
was to exhort the soldiers to ful ll the Ten Commandments and the Gospel. However, what they did was to
 develop a pseudo-theology, called by Rubén Dri (1987) the “theology of domination,” that justi ed the state
terrorism and torments, manipulating the Christian message with the goal of generating a doctrinal
foundation for the de facto government.

In Córdoba, the bibliography and the testimonies record the actions of Chaplains Horacio Astigueta (Fuerza
Aérea), Sabas Gallardo, and Julio Mackinnon (III Army Corps), Miguel Regueiro (General Paz Military
Lyceum), and Mario Pellanda López (Penitentiary Service of Córdoba). Weeks received a visit from
Mackinnon, but it was a visit of much formality; I don’t know what his objectives were; he didn’t return
(Interview with Alejandro). Another chaplain, Father Francisco Luchesse, accompanying Nadeau, would
appear only when, at the end of their detention, they lifted the solitary con nement of the seminarians. The
La Salettes were excluded from pastoral attention, something that, according to a complaint that Primatesta
made to Menéndez (APM, Primatesta, Memo), appeared to be an habitual practice with political prisoners.

The La Salettes were also not permitted to attend the Mass that was celebrated in the jail for the common

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inmates. Not only that, the doors and windows were closed so they couldn’t even see the celebration of Mass
taking place on the distant patio. The guys spent no less than three days soldering metal on all the bars [ . . . ] so
that no one could participate in the Mass. It was a sick extreme, knowing that we were religious. Denying us even [ .
p. 105 . . ] visual contact (Interview with Alejandro). Outraged with these measures, which also a ected the other
prisoners on the cellblock, they implemented a peculiar “liturgical” protest. Alejandro remembered that one
of the prisoners said, “We have to sing, we are going to sing,” the guy shouted but we couldn’t see, and we sang
one of those traditional things in the middle of that Mass. An absurdity, something surreal, because that was taking
place far away, on the patio.

In this context of spiritual need, and facing the depersonalization imposed by the solitary con nement and
the plundering of the religious rites (Moreno Feliú, 2002), Weeks thought up a strategy to be able to have a
daily Mass and to preserve the characteristic that identi ed them and was debated by their oppressors: their
Catholic membership. That practice helped them to feel the presence of Christ (Interview with Alfredo) and to
a rm the identity of the group; “we are Catholic seminarians, victimized for living out a way of being
Catholic,” that of a commitment to the poor. In the Catholic religion, participation at Mass (the rite in which
bread is shared) is a sign of belonging to the same universal community. The “clandestine” mass challenged
not only the imposed silence but also the exclusion from the common Mass, the “excommunication”
imposed by the terrorist state. Santiago was very spiritual, a rmed Alfredo, with a fairly classic spirituality,
con rmed Alejandro. That religious conviction moved Weeks, who proposed, “Every day, at 5, let’s say, we are
going to celebrate Mass,” they gave us [ . . . ] a big piece of bread every day, and . . . “I have water and bread, we are
going to make a miracle [happen].” Alfredo added that the instructions were, “Put a little bit of water in the
window, and if Christ converts that water into wine, I have here a little piece of bread, I will celebrate mass [ . . . ]
and consecrate your bread so that you can receive communion.” Since they had no access to a Bible, they
proposed Gospel passages that they remembered: “Today we are going to meditate on the Beatitudes,” or
choose a Gospel . . . (Interview with James).

The political prisoners had access to the Bible (Bondone, 2005). In the clandestine center La Perla, Oscar
Liñera had a copy of the New Testament, an edition of the Biblical Societies entitled “Dios llega al hombre”,
p. 106 (God reaches out humanity), very widespread in Catholic parishes and evangelical groups in those years.
Gustavo Contepomi, who shared the prison with Liñera, commented:

I never found out if Oscar was religious. I wasn’t. But in those circumstances in which our lives
hung by a thread, and death and pain were daily realities, a certain mystical hope was within the
reach of all [ . . . ]. I remember having discussed with Oscar some passages from the Gospels.
Oscar’s Bible was one of those books deposited at the back of a sty or in the bathrooms. (Text
13
displayed at La Perla, at the exhibition “(Sobre)vidas,” November 3, 2010)

14
Paradoxically, the religious workers detained were prohibited from reading the Bible. The La Salettes were
able to read the Bible beginning just days before their release. I understand, stated Daniel, that Rolando
[Nadeau] had a meeting with Tortolo [ . . . ]. Rolando’s request was that they allow us to bring in the Bible [but
Tortolo] said that [ . . . ] if it was up to him, he wasn’t going to authorize it [ . . . ]. He was a man [ . . . ] who would
deny a prisoner awaiting the day of his execution the Sacred Scriptures and a priest to confess! (Interview with
Daniel). In any case, Nadeau took other actions and they were able to get copies of the Bible in their cells, but
it was at the end. I read the whole Bible, recounted Alejandro, it was a time of intense Bible-reading [ . . . ]. I
15
remember that it was already the last weeks and Daniel and I shared some Proverbs,  some are funny, and made
 us laugh a while (Interview with Alejandro). Another frequent reading was the Letters of Paul, where the
Christian Apostle narrates the vicissitudes of his stay in Roman prisons. The experience in prison was a
retreat, a time of introspection during which they re ected deeply on their religious commitment and on
16
p. 107 their lives because we knew that any day . . . they had killed Murias  and . . . they were going to kill us!
(Interview with James).

The religious di erence between the victims and the victimizers was evident, and the ethical consequences
of these di erent religious ideas were discussed at various times. One afternoon, a police o cer came and
17
said to me [ . . . ], “Is it a sin to kill? [Because] I [o cer] kill in the name of God.” So I [Weeks] said, “Our God is
the God of life and not of death.” And then, next to me was a trade unionist from the wholesale food market, and he
[unionist] began to cry, “Father, that’s the best sermon! [ . . . ] I’m not a believer, [but] that’s the best sermon I’ve
heard in my life!” (Interview with James).

The denial of pastoral services in prison, the impossibility of o cially celebrating Mass, and the censure of

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the Bible were essentially an expulsion of the La Salettes from the Catholicism upheld by the state. As Weeks
claimed (Hearing, 1976:6) in front of Congress, “we evidently did not t in their de nition of what a
18
Catholic should be.” This de facto excommunication not by religious authorities, but supported by the
military vicariate and sanctioned by political powers, shows the di culties that some Catholic sectors had
in recognizing the diversi cation that was happening in Catholicism. State authorities decided,
independently of the ecclesiastical hierarchy but with support from Catholic sectors, who was or wasn’t
Catholic.

Notes
1 While Weeks was listening to this accusation, the North American Embassy was informed that Humberto Pantoja was
detained for having recordings that criticized the United States and the CIA (Desclasificados, Telegram, August 9, 1976).
2 In those years in Argentina, the international landscape was divided in three worlds: the First World, the United States and
its allies; the Second World, the USSR and the Soviet bloc; and the Third World, comprising the undeveloped countries or
the “nonaligned” ones: Yugoslavia, Algeria, and the like. Since the Third World countries were closer to socialist positions,
for the Argentine military they were communist proxies. As I mentioned before, “Third-Worldism” (Tercermundismo) was a
derogatory name for committed Catholics.
3 Yorio claimed that his torturer, whom he never saw, had some theological knowledge and accused him of uniting the poor
and of a literal interpretation of the Bible. According to Siwak (2000:94, 145) it was Pernías, who participated in the
assassination of the Pallottine fathers and of the French sisters, who tortured the Jesuits. He maintained that the ESMA
had the objective of making of their prisoners “Western, Christian” people (Diana, 2007:152, 257) and that Jesus was on
their side (Diario del Juicio, 149). Jalics and Yorio, remember, were kidnapped in May 1976 and like the La Salettes were
freed in October 1976, just days before the meeting of the Permanent Assembly of the Bishops. Another coincidence is
that also in the case of the Jesuits, Norma Kennedy and the ALN are suspected to have played a role in their handing over.
Available at http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/subnotas/143710-46187-2010-04-11.html (accessed April 12, 2010).
4 Due to the “state of siege,” the government was allowed to detain people suspected of terrorism without prior judicial
process.
5 According to Amnesty (1977:24), the brutality toward the prisoners in the custody of PEN was alarming: They were
isolated, with no possessions and nothing to read, and were subjected to physical mistreatment and execution.
6 The news appeared in the Boston Globe and the New York Times on August 6, citing “diplomatic sources” and the
“Argentine Embassy,” respectively.
7 Enrique Angelelli was traveling from Chamical to the city of La Rioja. While he was driving, another vehicle caused the
accident that cost him his life. The other vehicle was never found, despite having been identified, and the body of the
bishop was found some thirty feet from the accident site, with signs of having been dragged.
8 In UP1 penitentiary, between March and October 1976, twenty-eight legalized (that is, not “disappeared”) political
prisoners were assassinated (Amnesty, 1977; Familiares, 2001). On July 5, Raúl Bauducco was killed on the patio of the
prison with a shot to the back of the neck; on July 15 Julio René Moukarzel was stretched out on stakes until he died. On
August 12 Hugo Vaca Narvaja, Higinio Arnoldo Toranzo, and Gustavo Adolfo Brueil were assassinated during a “transfer.” In
December 2010, Jorge Videla, Luciano Menéndez, and others were convicted of these murders.
9 Political imprisonment is characterized by the attempt to keep the prisoners ignorant. In that context, grapevine rumors
were comforting, a phenomenon of “discursive nomadism” (de Ípola, 2005:17), because they gave the prisoners some
idea of what was happening outside.
10 “Lucho” Bondone (2005:49–51), a lawyer and member of the Communist Party of the city of Bell Ville, Córdoba, was
detained in the Villa María prison and relates that along with two of his sons, also prisoners, they invented a system of
communication through the peephole of the cells, drawing in the air inverted letters so that they could be read correctly
through the other peephole.
11 On Sunday, April 11, the general humiliation and violent searches began. The political prisoners su ered methods of
 detention, captive conditions, and torments similar to those who were disappeared until 1978. According to the Inter-
American Human Rights Commission, CIDH (1980:227), the penitentiary service of Rosarioʼs city prison provided better
treatment of the prisoners, and, while in the Villa Devoto prison in Buenos Aires prisoners were allowed to read, in the
prisons of Córdoba they werenʼt (CONADEP Cba, 1984; Diana, 2007; Familiares, 2001; Sillato, 2008).
12 Mate is a traditional infusion in the Southern Cone, made from the leaves of a tree called Ilex paraguariensis. It looks like
green tea.
13 Roughly translated as “Surviving.”
14 Other priests held at the Villa Devoto prison in Buenos Aires confirmed this (Kratzer, 2007).
15 The Book of Proverbs contains sayings and statements used in the court of Solomon. It comprises the collection of
wisdom literature that had its origins in the oral teachings of Israel and Egyptian and Hellenistic influences.
16 One of the murdered priests in La Rioja, a friend of the La Salettes.
17 They asked the same question of another Catholic militant who was a prisoner in Buenos Aires. In that case he was a
militant guerrilla, who, recognizing him as a religious leader, asked him about the burden he felt for having killed. For
many militant prisoners it was an unresolved issue (Interview with Bitín).
18 The canonical sanction of excommunication (CDC, #1331) prohibits the punished from having access to the sacraments,
including Confession and Communion. In Argentina, the best-known case of this was that of Juan Perón in 1955, who was

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given this punishment by the archbishop of Buenos Aires for burning down houses of worship. In 1973, Angelelli imposed
a similar sanction upon political leaders of the Anillaco zone. During the dictatorship, the bishop of Viedma, Miguel
Hesayne, prohibited those who were oppressors from approaching the sacraments in his diocese, and a pastor in
Neuquén, Father Rubén Capitanio, did the same thing at the beginning of the eighties.