Documenting a Tragedy

"We are certain that the military dictatorship produced the greatest, most savage tragedy in our history." These words were the conclusion to 50,000 pages of testimony and evidence issued last week by Argentina's National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons. President Raul Alfonsin had appointed the panel shortly after he was sworn in last December. Its mission: to investigate the so-called dirty war waged against terrorism by the Argentine military from 1974 until Alfonsin's election.

According to the report, at least 8,961 people disappeared during those years, many of the victims vanishing after the military took power in a 1976 coup. Large numbers were tortured to death in "subhuman" makeshift centers that lacked ventilation, plumbing and other amenities, where jailers used methods, such as prolonged outdoor burial up to the neck, that were "unknown in other parts of the world." Alfonsin thanked the commission for its "hard, painful, heroic work" but did not indicate whether he would prosecute or even release the names of those accused of the crimes. The 60,000 citizens who demonstrated outside the presidential palace after the report's release definitely wanted him to do so.