Since the vague announcement of their “layoff”, the government has not officially communicated what would happen to the employees of the Conti Center. Some, who had not received this message, learned of their dismissal when they showed up at their workplace and were prevented from entering the building by police officers. “There is a brutality, something informal in the government’s method, which makes the situation even more cruel,” denounces Paula Eugenia Donadio, representative of the ATE union (Association of State Workers) at the Human Rights Secretariat.
Paula Eugenia Donadio works at the National Archives of Memory, the body responsible for preserving evidence of state terrorism and places of memory. The institution, whose headquarters is also located within Ex-Esma, which plays a fundamental role, particularly in providing evidence during trials, is de facto paralyzed following around thirty dismissals.
Insults, invectives, trolls: a political discourse in tension in Milei’s Argentina
Wave of layoffs
The closure of Conti comes in the context of an offensive led by the Milei government against public policies in favor of human rights and memory. It first resulted in a salvo of layoffs within the Human Rights Secretariat (SDH). More than 400 people have in fact been dismissed from the various organizations that depend on it. Under the leadership of the Ministry of Justice, the SDH’s mission is to apply public policies known as “memory, truth and justice”. This involves searching for the bodies of the 30,000 missing but also the 500 children that the soldiers stole from them, supporting the victims on a legal and psychological level, protecting witnesses and guaranteeing the prosecution of the victims. trial for crimes against humanity, started in 2005.
Added to the waves of layoffs is what the unions describe as “forced retirement plan” (giving employees the choice between retirement or dismissal without compensation). Result: in one year, the SDH lost half of its payroll. The Ministry of Justice on which it depends has also lost a quarter of its staff, or more than 2,000 civil servants.
Argentine President Javier Milei receives Italian citizenship
-“These measures endanger access to justicewarns the Franco-Argentine lawyer Monica Zwaig. We must remember that it is not just about preserving the past: there is also a short-term emergency. We are in a race against time“Crimes against humanity cannot be prescribed, but the dictatorship’s executioners are not immortal. However, the slowdown in proceedings works in favor of the latter, already too many of whom have taken their secrets to the grave.
The call for help from the “Grandmothers of May Square”
“We call on the world to watch what is happening in Argentina […]. It is essential to stop any regression, to defend the democratic values and human rights that we have acquired with so much difficulty.” implored Estela Carloto, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, during a press conference on December 18. To find the children stolen by the military dictatorship, the “Abuelas” have been collaborating for twenty years with the National Commission for the Right to Identity (CoNaDi), a government agency whose investigation unit was dismantled by the government in last June and whose access to the archives was considerably limited, under the pretext that it was about “whims of an activist organization.”
Javier Milei and his vice president, Victoria Villarruel (a lawyer who has devoted her career to justifying the crimes of the dictatorship) have regularly denied the existence of state terrorism. In July 2024, deputies from Milei’s party visited senior regime officials convicted of crimes against humanity in prison, even going so far as to pose, all smiles, with them for a group photo. A shocking gesture, from which the president weakly tried to distance himself, without announcing the slightest sanction or investigation. In this deleterious climate, on January 22, the “abuelas” claimed a victory: the “restitution” of the 139th child stolen from the dictatorship. “We never wavered. Our task will not be complete until we find them allEstela de Carlotto reiterated.
Crisis between Madrid and Buenos Aires: “Argentina will no longer have an ambassador”
