Argentinos Juniors 0 Lanus 0
They don’t play a lot of mid-week evening matches in the Argentine first division – and perhaps this game was a good reason why. It was cold, wet and goalless. But perhaps cold, dark and miserable with nothing much to celebrate was a fitting way to mark the International Day of the Disappeared – a day which resonates throughout the week in Argentina where an estimated thirty thousand people were detained and made to disappear under military rule between 1976 and 1983.
Most of the perpetrators of those crimes were never jailed and still walk the streets of Argentina. I often wonder when I encounter a particularly obnoxious taxi driver or a security guard of a certain age whether I should ask him what he did during the dictatorship. It’s quite possible that there were former torturers and killers in the crowd, cowering with the rest of us under the rain.
In the absence of much judicial activity, there’s a strong movement trying to keep the memory of those victims alive. There’s a group of Argentinos Juniors fans who display banners at games and ensure that former fans among those thirty-thousand are not forgotten – the names Gregorio Nachman, Ernesto Szerszewicz and Guillermo Moralli are displayed on web-sites and at games on the anniversary of the days on which they were last seen alive.
Brutal Street Art
A book has just been published called Memories in the City which lists the 240 sites in Buenos Aires which one way or another remember the victims of state terrorism. One of the most colourful is on the wall of the Argentinos Juniors stadium, a mural which looks like a cross between Picasso’s Guernica and Munch’s The Scream.
Football played a big part in the dictatorship, mostly notably with Argentina hosting and winning the 1978 World Cup.
That victory was a huge boost to the military, with hundreds of thousands of Argentines celebrating on the streets. Many here feel that the country has never really fulfilled its political and economic promise on the international stage. But here they were, the focus of the world was on them, Argentina were the champions, at least in footballing terms.
Former prisoners told how their guards took them from their cells and drove them out to witness the celebrations. For many who survived the dictatorship, it’s a World Cup tainted by blood.
If Argentines had to name the top five cruellest, most hated men from what was a particularly long list of very cruel and hateful figures, I can pretty much guarantee that Carlos Guillermo Suarez Mason would be among them.
He was an army commander and military intelligence chief responsible for the running of several clandestine detention centres. He was charged with more than six-hundred human rights abuses, including stealing babies from prisoners. He was also a former goalkeeper in the youth ranks of Argentinos Juniors and an honorary club member.
Like so much from that period, his association with the club is murky, blurred by denial and cover-up. A former official said that Suarez Mason ‘opened doors and got things.’ It’s reported that he was involved in the club’s sale of Diego Maradona to Boca Juniors in 1980.
Suarez Mason
When the dictatorship fell, he fled to the United States. He was extradited but then benefitted from a controversial mass pardon given by the nervous civilian governments that followed the military. He was arrested again for crimes not covered by the pardon and, while under house arrest, it was reported that he celebrated his eightieth birthday with a big steak meal at the Argentinos Juniors ground.
In 1999, the club voted in a late night meeting to revoke his honorary membership. With angry human rights protesters outside, Suarez Mason escaped out the back door. He died four years ago, aged 81 never having gone to prison.
Questions are still asked of the current club president, Luis Segura, about his association with the man nicknamed ‘The Butcher.’ He retreats behind that old adage ‘that football and politics shouldn’t mix.’
Football, as it so often does, provided essential escapism for many during the dictatorship and in the years of recovery afterwards. It’s woven into the fabric of Argentine life so it’s inevitable that those who run the country will use, and often abuse it.
So a dark and miserable night, with no goals to cheer us up, provided an ideal setting to ponder probably the darkest period in Argentine history. But that’s just me. The spirit among the fans was good. The team played well and were perhaps unlucky not to snatch a win. Three games into the season and still unbeaten, but still three games without a victory.
Tags: 1978 world cup, argentina dictatorship, disappeared, luis segura, moralli, suarez mason
