The story spread in Casa Rosada shortly before March 24, 2004: a group of cadets had kidnapped the original paintings of Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone from the Military College. The paintings were not. The version handled by the presidency also indicated that one of the originals had been taken by a person close to Videla. There was a summary. And the director of the Military College, General Horacio Gallardo, was regarding to lose his job.
–Even if it’s a birthday photo, we’re going to take it –They say that Nestor Kirchner said when he found out, according to the chronicles of the time. On March 24, 2004 the paintings were hung. And everything happened as it is remembered. Kirchner ordered the Army Chief of Staff Roberto Bendini to take down the portraits of the dictators that were in the directors’ gallery of the Military College. proceed, said. And Bendini climbed a little ladder and lowered the paintings. The gesture became one of the symbolic acts of the State’s commitment to the process of memory, truth and justice and was remembered last Thursday in Bendini’s death. But what is the story behind the paintings? Were they copies or originals? And also: what happened to the pictures taken down? Where are they?
A retired Army general, an academic and a former minister believe the version of the stolen paintings. “They confirmed that it was: it was like this – says Sabina Frederic -: one night before the 24th, or several nights before, it is not clear, a group of cadets seized the original painting and used the photographic archive that exists in the College Military to reproduce the image of Videla”. In the days prior to Wednesday the 24th, the general now says, perhaps during the early hours of Monday through Tuesday, a group of cadets who were sons of generals who did not want the painting to be taken down, entered the Pavilion and took the paintings. The next day, the Director of the Military College, General Gallardo, urgently went out to find a way to make a copy of the photos: “It wasn’t the officers, it was Gallardo directly -he says– because otherwise they would cut off his head.”
In those days, the academic says now, there was a stir between the cadets and the officers who even sent to guard the perimeter of the property because all kinds of rumors were going around: that an invasion was coming or directly the closing of the school. In this context, some explained that a group of fourth-year cadets kidnapped the cadres and kept them in the deposit of the Infantry or Cavalry Company. When the director of the school and the academic director found that the paintings were missing, they had to go out and do them once more.
In these versions the cadets might not do what they did alone. The paintings were hung in a gallery on the second floor of the Study Pavilion, a monumental construction with a Courtyard of Honor on the ground floor and classrooms. Circulation was totally restricted for students who might not pass from one side to the other without authorization. And at night, the galleries on the second floor were closed with doors and also with a key. “To get there, where a cadet cannot go -says the academic-, they had to have the permission of a sub-lieutenant or a sub-instructor”. They mightn’t have hidden anything without that permission either. The warehouses of all the companies are together at the back of the property: they are all locked and the accesses require crossing internal streets that are usually guarded.
Already in April 2004, Nora Veiras writes that the paintings had been stolen and that an investigation had been initiated. What happened to that? Where are the paintings? It’s a mystery. Originals or copies, the paintings that were downloaded on March 24, 2004 should have been kept in the Military College or in the Historical Archive of the Army, but apparently they are not. At the request of this newspaper, the Army press area sent three messages on Friday. “We do not have official information related to what was done with the pictures that were downloaded,” said the first. “Many years have passed and those who were present are no longer,” they wrote later. “I confirm that there is no record of what was done with the paintings when they were downloaded,” they said at the end. Maybe it was the only thing that might happen: what pictures might appear?
The ladder and the generals
The old inhabitants of Casa Rosada say that copies were in no way taken down, but the details allow us to understand that they might have been.
Kirchner decided to lower Videla’s painting at the request of Cels. The human rights organization had already asked Ricardo López Murphy and Horacio Jaunarena, Ministers of Defense in 1999 and 2001. They refused. March 24, 2004 fell on a Wednesday. The previous Sunday, March 21, Page 12 anticipated what the commemorations would be like: recovery of the ESMA and pick-up of the paintings with all the details. Did the cadets know at the time? When did Bendini find out? The army chief was unenthusiastic, the chronicles said. He had said it wasn’t time yet; He proposed taking down all the directors’ cadres, which was another form of resistance, and finally he suggested stealthily removing them, but the government did not accept. Wednesday the 24th arrived. Bendini met early with the staff of 26 generals at the Military College to discuss who would lower the cadre. Kirchner had asked him to be an officer. The generals did not want. Bendini might not convince them until José Pampuro arrived, he convinced them to go down to the Patio de Honor and agreed that an orderly was going to climb the ladder to get him down. In the end, everything changed: Kirchner arrived and insisted that he be an officer.
“Not a fly flew,” says Oscar Parrilli. That day he was with Alberto Fernández, Julio De Vido, Ginés González García and, among others, Carlos Tomada. “The air might be cut with the hands. All the soldiers were there. It was not a very friendly environment towards us. And Nestor, serious, said: proceed. They thought that he was going to lower the painting, nobody wanted to do it. And Nestor gave the order to Bendini because it had to be the Army itself that took him out.” What happened to Bendini? Did he hesitate? “There was a deathly silence. Imagine that immense building. Big. Wide. It was a gallery where all the paintings were, we walked until we went up to the second floor. the atmosphere: they weren’t exactly applauding us. Nestor had told Bendini what he was going to do, but he told him to do it right then and there. Bendini thought that Nestor or the minister was going to pick them up”.
The climate with the military front was not favorable. Congress had annulled the laws of impunity, the trials were restarted and Parrilli had just finished arguing at the ESMA with the marines who appeared with a group of parents who were complaining regarding the transfer of the school to another property. “They had ambushed us,” he says. The head of the ESMA was there dressed in a gala suit and other sailors. I kicked them out. Ibarra was there, it was a few days before the 24th, during the tour with survivors. I had to call Pampuro to tell them to leave us alone because it was a provocation.” Then came the 24th. The painting. Parrilli is convinced that the robbery is not true. “We lowered Videla’s painting. No doubt. Later they said that the painting had disappeared. They generated any number of false things, the military, the right and Clarín, La Nación and Infobae caught fire. The objective was to say that we were protecting Videla because we had not downloaded the true picture. I don’t know what happened to the painting. Where was it? What I am saying is that they generated false news and some said: we are going to put it back on.”
Julio de Vido was at the Military College and years later he spoke with Bendini. “The atmosphere was cut with a knife,” he says. “There were some gestures that did not amount to shouting, but it was a half-deaf complaint. The officers resisted, operated by the generals and the colonels”. In March 2020, before the pandemic lockdown, he saw Bendini for the last time. And they talked regarding the painting. “He told me the subject in great detail, it was like this –he says–: Nestor usually made the decision regarding something, but he acted like he asked you first and then he did what he wanted. You might never help but recognize that he had asked you. In the case of the Military College, he told Bendini: We are going to take out the paintings of Videla and Bignone, as if he was going to take it out but not in an act. He told him: “I am going to go and I want you to lower it at my request.” He put Bendini in a very tense situation, of stress, it is clear that he had not put those pictures, but at that moment Bendini told him:
“We’re going to get them out.”
“No,” Nestor said. If we are going to take them out, I want to be there.
Nestor always stood to your left, and something like that happened. We had to be giving Pampuro coramine, the stuff they gave you when you had heart problems. Today both are dead, if not he asked them. But what I know is that Nestor redoubled the bet and ended up making a public act of lowering the paintings that has had a resonance until today.
