Reflections

– About the kidnapping of a baby by the military dictatorship in Uruguay
– About that ‘sometimes horrible things have to be done’
– About assuming institutional responsibility for human rights violations committed in times of dictatorship
– About moral courage
About the kidnapping of a baby by the military dictatorship in Uruguay

A plaque where there once was a clandestine detention center reads: ‘María Claudia, Argentinean citizen and at the time pregnant, was kidnapped along with her husband, Marcelo Gelman, in Buenos Aires, on August 24th 1976. Transferred to Uruguay in the context of Operation Condor (Plan Cóndor), she was held prisoner and gave birth to Macarena in Montevideo, presumably on November 1st 1976. Taken apart from her mother, Macarena was subtracted and deprived of her identity, remaining a missing person until she knew her story 24 years later’.

Plaque erected at the former Service of Information and Defense headquarters, Montevideo.

About that ‘sometimes horrible things have to be done’

A terse and clear-cut phrase a soldier heard one night of November 1976 when two comrades escorted a young argentinean woman and her baby out of the clandestine prison they were illegally brought to in Uruguay. They were going to kill María Claudia García, daughter in-law of writer Juan Gelman, and to deliver the newborn girl, in a small basket, to a police officer.

Testimony of former soldier Julio Barbosa

About assuming institutional responsibility for human rights violations committed in times of dictatorship

In the name of the Eastern Republic of Uruguay as a collective entity, and in the context of State continuity and succession principles, regardless of the time and material frame in which facts occurred, the Uruguayan State acknowledges its institutional responsibility for the enforced disappearance of María Claudia García Iruretagoyena de Gelman, for which it violated her rights to be recognized as a person before the law, to life, to personal integrity and individual freedom.

José Mujica, Uruguayan President, incarcerated in 1976 for guerrilla actions.

About moral courage

What a paradox! A victim of the military dictatorship had to acknowledge its victimizers’ responsibility; it takes moral courage to do so.

Juan Gelman