The premiere of the Iosi series It caused such a fascination in me that it raised many questions regarding the intelligence agency to which the spy who infiltrated the Jewish community during the post-dictatorship period and at the time of the attacks on the Israeli embassy and the AMIA belonged. What was the Information Corps of the Argentine Federal Police (PFA)? Since when did it work? Were its members dedicated to infiltrating? To answer some of those questions and write a journal entry, I started calling people who might give me those answers. The sources mentioned some more recent cases, such as that of Américo Balbuena –infiltrated among militants of popular communication– and someone told me regarding the history of the infiltrated in Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.
It is true that the story had once been told to me. Many years ago, my interlocutor –an official from the Public Ministry– harbored hopes that the Justice would advance in that investigation and she preferred that it not be leaked. When the story reached my ears once more, I called her to ask if we were talking regarding the same case. I started looking for: the Elizabeth’s story was lodged in the form of a file in a judicial office.
The file gives an account of his life. It is from the document with her photo as a child to the photos of recent years, before the file was moved from a Federal Police building to the courts of Comodoro Py. Why does a person dedicate his life to spying on others? It is an exciting question but it exceeds me.
From her file it was clear that she had infiltrated the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. Actually, in Mothers of Terrorists – as the PFA called them then. I don’t say it. says one service certification.
There was another element that also pointed along that line. In December 1982, her boss asked to be transferred to Mar del Plata because she was mentioned in a complaint by a former member of an intelligence agency as being linked to the anti-subversive struggle.
What complaint was he talking regarding? From that of Luis Alberto Martínez, another member of the PFA who had stepped on several clandestine centers and gathered a lot of information from the subsoils of humanity. Martínez had been arrested in Europe while trying to collect a kidnapping for ransom. There, they asked him, of course, why the disappearance of the french nuns –which was a case that had generated an important international mobilization–. Martínez said that the PFA had been part of that operation and that they had a woman, Isabelita, infiltrated that group of relatives.
A certification of services, a complaint from another intelligence agent and a mention of that complaint in his file. There was little doubt that the woman was infiltrated among the Mothers during much of the dictatorship.
The courts will have to say if what Martínez said can be credited -which was part of the kidnappings of the Mothers and the nuns in December 1977–. In 2013, federal judge Sergio Torres tried but might not advance. He did it following Nilda Garré set up a Special Documentary Survey Group (GERD) to search for documentation that might help identify those who participated in the repression. Those who analyzed the files found the file and Garré denounced it.
Judicial investigations often stall because there are no witnesses who can identify a person in connection with a clandestine center or an operation.. Can this be the case? What if you only collected information that others used? What if he was loitering on the Santa Cruz but wasn’t part of the Navy action? Because if there is one thing we have no doubt regarding, it is that the twelve from Santa Cruz were taken to the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), tortured, put on a plane and thrown into the sea.
Is it useful to tell the story of an infiltrator even knowing that the courts may not be able to adjudicate criminal responsibility? I asked my editors Javier Lorca and Felipe Yapur a few times. And the answer is yes because We cannot do without the search for truth – a search that cannot be exhausted in court and that requires active public policies such as those that led to the discovery of that file. And because, following all, it is part of the history of human rights organizations. As Graciela Lois, a reference for Relatives and wife of a detained-disappeared man, says, they infiltrated them, kidnapped them but they mightn’t stop them. Organizations are the sound foundations of our democracy. If they always held up a flag that is of justice but also of truth, why should we lower it?
