Nearly 50 years ago tens of thousands of people were seized off the streets without a trace by Argentina’s right wing dictatorship. The search for justice never stopped. In 2011 Marta Dillon was finally able to lay the body of her mother to rest.
I knew that Marta Taboada’s body had been found, because her daughter, also named Marta, had written about it in the newspaper where we both worked. I’d learned the details in an article published on the back page of Página/12 on November 24, 2010:
My mother was murdered on February 3rd, 1977, at 2:05 in the morning, on the corner of Santamarina and Chubut, Ciudadela. Her death certificate says: “Multiple bullet wounds. Jane Doe, thin, 5’4″, dyed blond hair…” My mother is now, concretely, a skull with a few teeth, a morphologically designated jaw, tibias and femurs, radii and ulnas, clavicles. I’m sure I’m making mistakes in this listing of bones, but I do know that her torso is still missing. She, however, is not.I remember that I sent Marta an email with a subject line that read “Uf.” The body of the email was only: “Martita, your back page today is extraordinary. Extraordinary. I don’t have much else to say, I’m still in shock.” I don’t think I ever spoke directly to her about her mother’s reappearance.
I did know the details, though. How Marta (mother) had lived clandestinely, a militant member of the Frente Revolucionario 17 de Octubre, in a house in Moreno on Calle Joly, near the train station, with her four children (Marta, Andrés, Juan, and Santiago), her boyfriend, Juan Carlos, and Gladys Porcel. How a squad had burst into that house, taken away the adults, and left the children behind, all witnesses to the kidnapping.
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