nunca más

I've just finished reading extracts of the report on the disappeared written in 1984, immediately after the end of the military dictatorship in Argentina. I was suppose to read more than I did but I confess I was unable to continue. The report is online in English here.

Every other week I wait at the gates of Avellaneda Cemetery on my way to a meeting. And today I read:

File N° 7316

The municipal administration of Avellaneda decided on 19 January 1983 to start legal proceedings to determine whether there had been irregularities in the burial of unidentified bodies in the town cemetery...up to May 1976 there had been few unmarked graves and these belonged to old people. From that date there was an abrupt increase, and the average age of the dead was much lower, about twenty-five. This continued until 1978, when the number went down again and things returned to normal, including the age of the dead. The director of the cemetery himself cannot be sure that all the burials in the common graves in the morgue area were registered in the appropriate records, and he explains this by the fact that the morgue was totally under police control, with entry confined to their personnel.