17-12-2007 No fue dia de fiesta
Last December, some of us were sitting for final exams, grading papers, and preparing for the holidays, while our colleagues, more attuned to current historical cycles and the dockets of international and national courts, reported some extraordinary news.
From reporters and young photographers in Montevideo, we learned of the arrest on December 17, 2007, of self-appointed Uruguayan President Gregorio Alvarez (1983-1985) and about subsequent public demonstrations in support of the court’s call for the ex-dictator to face justice. Media estimate that about 2,000 people spontaneously congregated in the centrally located Plaza de La Libertad.
Alvarez has been charged with illegal imprisonment, torture and murders committed outside national borders as well as implicated in crimes orchestrated internationally that resulted in substantial financial gains for the perpetrators. After reviewing his appeals, the Supreme Court determined that the crimes of which Alvarez is accused are not exempt by Uruguay’s Ley de Caducidad. That law forms part of the general amnesty extended to the military involved in the years of repressive government between 1973 and 1985.
Finalized in 1986, the amnesty agreements include the Ley de Caducidad and the complementary Ley de Amnistia. Together the laws represent an extraordinary compromise put in motion by members of the military then still in power and the various political factions aspiring to the presidency of the reestablished democratic government.
The amnesty provided immunity for military excesses as well as for the acts of guerillas and insurgents. Many guerillas were imprisoned during the early 1970s for their involvement in bank robberies, kidnappings, and bombings as well as for committing as many, if not more murders than the military. The amnesty also proved helpful in freeing several key political figures jailed for their opposition politics or more seriously abetting the radical tactics of the insurgents.
According to recent reports, Alvarez has joined ten other high-ranking military and police officials from the military dictatorship that ruled Uruguay between 1973 and 1985. All of them now are held in Domingo Arena, a prison specifically constructed to house military detainees. Ex-Navy Captain Juan Carlos Larcebeau and retired Colonel Carlos Calcagno are similarly charged. Extensive documentation and testimony collected over the last thirty years has connected each of the accused with the disappearance of specific individuals.
Already held at the Domingo Arena facility are José Niño Gavazzo, Gilberto Vázquez, Jorge Silveira, Luis Maurente, Ricardo Medina, José Sande and Ricardo Arab who were arrested in 2006 in connection with the elaborate transport to Argentina and eventual disappearance of various Uruguayan insurgents including militant communist party leader Adalberto Soba Fernández.
The abstract of the legal brief indicting the now aged and ailing Uruguayan ex-President may be found at the foot of the relevant article in La Republica 21. For the full text of the plaintiffs’ case refer to La denuncia de Izurralde y Santana contra el ex-dictador Gregorio Alvarez .
Gregorio Alvarez has repeatedly affirmed his innocence and lack of knowledge about any coordinated activities with neighboring countries.
I suppose that this assertion captured my attention as not too long ago, while browsing through the stacks of the Benson Latin American Collection, I came upon a book labeled “El rol de las fuerzas armadas en el proceso político uruguayo : texto de las conferencias pronunciadas por el Sr. presidente de la República Oriental de Uruguay.” The book, published in 1984 by the Instituto de Estudios Latinoamericanos in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is supposedly authored by one Gregorio Alvarez, born in 1925. Unfortunately, our book was miscataloged and the text that is bound within the covers is something else of a similar nature but published by the same institute several years later.
Thirteen other research libraries in the United States listed in the OCLC Worldcat indicate that they hold copies of the Alvarez book, so I have requested a copy through my library’s interlibrary loan service. You might try to do the same.
