Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean, Population

HUMAN RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Compensation for Exile

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 5 2006 (IPS) - Thousands of Argentines fled the country because of political repression in the 1970s, leaving everything behind. Three decades later, a democratic Argentina is looking at how to compensate them, as it has already indemnified the relatives of the detained-disappeared, those who were abducted as young children, and former political prisoners of the military dictatorship.

The Human Rights Commission of the Chamber of Deputies has just passed a draft law for payment of reparations to those who went into exile. The deputies believe that the initiative, which was approved by the Senate over a year ago, could become law before the end of the year.

The Supreme Court has already ruled five times in favour of treating exile as equivalent to illegal detention during the 1976-1983 dictatorship for the purposes of providing reparation benefits to victims.

The first ruling was in favour of Susana Yofre, who in 1976 took refuge with her family in Mexico, after the murder of her husband, Hugo Vaca Narvaja, and one of their sons, who bore his father’s name.

The Supreme Court decided in this case that although the woman and her family had not been under arrest, they were at risk and were forced to go into exile.

The Vaca Narvaja family, with 12 children, lived in the central Argentine province of Córdoba. One of the sons, Hugo, a defence lawyer for political prisoners, was arrested and killed in November 1975. Four months later, the security forces raided the family home and abducted his father. They dumped him in the boot of a car, and he was never seen again.

“I was afraid that they would kill us all, so I took refuge with my entire family in the Mexican Embassy,” Yofre said. From the embassy in Buenos Aires, 25 members of the Vaca Narvaja family departed to Mexico City, where they stayed for seven years, until the fall of the dictatorship in 1983.

The draft law states that the political violence during the 1970s “jeopardised the personal integrity and the families of thousands of Argentines,” and forced them into exile, where they had to rebuild their lives “under conditions far less favourable” than those they had left behind.

The bill provides that indemnity be paid to each member of the family in exile at the same level as that already granted to former detainees of the dictatorship – about 34 dollars per day of exile.

Potential recipients are those who had to leave the country after Nov. 6, 1974, when the democratic government of María Estela Martínez de Perón (1974-1976) declared a state of siege, until Dec. 10, 1983, when the dictatorship came to an end.

The instigator of this measure, Senator Marcelo López Arias, believes that the new law “will complete the cycle of historic reparations for the victims of human rights violations.”

Since the mid-1990s, thousands of relatives of the “disappeared” and former political prisoners have received indemnification.

Since 2004, the Human Rights Secretariat has also granted reparations to young people who were born while their mothers were held as political prisoners, or kidnapped at the time their parents were arrested. In the last few years, dozens of these young people have been traced by the Abuelas (Grandmothers) de Plaza de Mayo Association, which was formed in the 1970s with the aim of finding the missing children.

However, some of the legislators who are willing to vote in favour of the draft law on reparations for political exiles are reluctant to neglect justice for those they call “internal exiles”, and are using this argument to delay approval of the law.

“Internal exiles” is a term applied to those who suffered political persecution without ever leaving the country, such as those who were forced to resign their posts in public entities or private companies, or who had to flee their homes. Many people think that a different law is needed for these victims, apart from the one under consideration.

“The State is obliged to indemnify us because it violated our rights when it expelled us,” Susana Gabbanelli, of the Commission of Former Political Exiles of the Argentine Republic (COEPRA), told IPS.

“Internal exiles should be granted reparations, but by means of another law,” she said.

Although final approval of the draft law is still pending, the Commission recommends that former exiles go ahead and register, with the documents that certify their status as exiles, at the Human Rights Secretariat or at Argentine consulates. “There are already 5,500 applications on file,” said Gabbanelli, who expects that number to double.

Claimants must produce certificates of refugee status, issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or by the receiving country. Failing this, a sworn declaration of their situation must be made before Argentine federal justice authorities.

Details of the reasons for going into exile must also be given, the central point being the “well-grounded fear” of falling victim to State terrorism if they remained in the country.

In 1975, Gabbanelli was a social worker, active in a left-wing political party, married and the mother of two children. She was arrested by the police, and after a month’s detention at a police station she was put under house arrest. She escaped, and lived underground in Argentina until she managed to reach Brazil with her children and her husband, a journalist.

Gabbanelli and her family lived in hiding in Sao Paulo until the UNHCR awarded them refugee status in 1977. Then the 1964-1985 Brazilian dictatorship made it clear that the UNHCR should remove them from the country or they would face deportation to Argentina. Thus, they travelled to the Netherlands, where they lived in exile until 1986.

Julio Míguez was also forced to flee the country. At the time of the coup, he worked as an electronic technician at a research institute and was active in the Justicialista (Peronist) Party and a trade union. His girlfriend, Susana Rodríguez, was an executive secretary in a U.S. company and was not connected to any political party. “In 1975 I discovered that I was on a blacklist,” Míguez told IPS by telephone from Spain, where he belongs to the Commission of Argentine Exiles in Madrid.

“In May, 40 days after the military coup, I was sacked for my political and trade union activism, and I chose to go to Spain on Jul. 20, 1976,” he said.

His girlfriend quit her job and went with him. They sold their car and some items of furniture to pay for the plane tickets and took with them a cash sum of 10,000 pesetas (at that time, equivalent to about 130 dollars). In Madrid they lived with fellow- Argentines who took them in, and afterwards in a boarding house, he explained.

“We sold handicrafts on the street, and Susana looked after a child,” he said. With their meagre income they bought food. They went everywhere on foot and used plastic bottles as crockery. They bathed at the sink of the boarding house room, with cold water. “At times thing were really difficult,” he described.

“We were glad to be alive and free, on the one hand, but we felt sad to be so far away from our families and friends, and because of the fact that we could not develop our professional careers. Above all we were saddened to hear the fate of friends who were in prison and ‘disappeared’,” he said.

In time, a loan from relatives paid for their keep until they found steady jobs. They had two children in Spain who today are 27 and 22. For Míguez, this law will be an act of justice for his sufferings, which were not of his choice but the only way out when his life was threatened.

“The State is responsible for the violent expulsion of its citizens, and must make reparations through this law,” he said.