Nora Morales
LIFE PATH

VIDEO

Transcript

First we are going to ask you to introduce yourself. Who are you and how would you present yourself? I am Nora Morales of Corti Carlos Gustavo, who has been desaparecido since April 15, 1977 until now, it's going to be 41 years, I do not know what happened to Gustavo, until now we keep demanding that the archives be opened we want to know what happened to all the desaparecidos we want the judges to say what happened to the appropriated children of those years, we want the whole truth, we want all the justice. I belong to the Madre de Plaza de Mayo L with Azucena Villaflor de Vincenti, with other mothers who have already died and 41 years ago we started going to the Plaza, more than 30 that we separated from the first initial group with Hebe of Bonafini and we formed this group that is It is called L In what year and where were you born? In 1930 in Buenos Aires, I am from Buenos Aires, very porte In the center of Buenos Aires, I lived until I was 19 years old in that part of Buenos Aires, I never knew what neighborhood it was... near Constitution, near Monserrat, it And then I got married, first I went to live with my father and in 1952 with Gustavo, who was small, was 5 months old, we came to live here in Castelar and since then, well, we are here in Castelar. My husband died 25 years ago, and ... but well, my son Marcelo lives here too, who is younger than Gustavo and now we have formed the family nucleus here, I have some relatives too, so well, we live here What memories do you have of childhood, if you think about your childhood, what images do you have? Well, we were a typical family in the neighborhood, many sisters, five of us, five sisters and very hard-working parents, Catalan, very hard-working my father and my mother, both of them, at the same time Well, they raised their children working hard, middle class, at first it cost a lot, then the work paid off, we were a middle class In other words, we were always middle-middle class. I got married, my husband was very hardworking also, a public employee, but also always looking ... sometimes people complain about having to look for extra work, but in my house there was always an extra job in addition to public employment but well hopefully now times allow us to have jobs, we lived when it was welfare state and was the welfare state that had work, which could be chosen, also, at that time Also, at that time, my husband wanted to work but didn't want me to work. He was striving to complete everything you can have, the ambition of ... the roof, the car, the television, the holidays ... the minimum that we wish for everyone in this country. What school did you go to? I went to a public school. After elementary school, I started high school and I had trouble following it because at that time at home my dad had a numbering workshop in the printing industry and we were older and we were ready to help so, well, I did not finish high school. But then over the years I'm a social psychologist, and then one ... did you see? Haute couture teacher It was typical of those years, learn to sew the girls, there, well... Did you teach at home? I taught in my house, I taught sewing, and some time I sewed a little, I also had clients, I sewed but always with that care because my husband did not like it, he did not like me to dedicate myself to that, always the house, terrible those times (laughs) Did you frequent clubs or go somewhere ...? No, no, no, no, with my dad, my dad was a very conservative man, right? To take care of the daughters, You know? I tell you, I think it's like it was used to. Not going to dance when I was dating going to dance either, well, but no, you know what? I have beautiful memories of those years and that time but we were a family with old customs. My dad was very protective of his daughters and then my husband I can When you talked about the welfare state ... do you have memories linked to politics? Look, I do not have... my father was radical, he was very anti-Peronist and he was radical, Catalan and Yrigoyen, but not politicized. It was his feeling, but not having ever participated in political activities, he was less partisan. And my husband did not participate politically either. He lived very close to Eva Per and when the country advanced, right? But in my family like that, partisanship, do party politics, no When Gustavo grew up and wanted to participate at first he almost had to do it not saying much because my husband did not like it, he was afraid and said 'and then things happen', and they passed. In other words, things happened: they passed but Gustavo participated like everyone else, like all those who are now disappeared, like those who were imprisoned and like those who today participate who also "put the body" and also risk their lives. It is the same in all times political participation when it is done with vocation, with conviction, it is a way to participate with commitment And Gustavo participated with commitment. We wanted him to go abroad, he and Ana did not want to, but he did not want to because he said 'we didn't do anything wrong, we are participating to change the world, so there is a country for everyone' so he never agreed to leave, and Ana neither. What was your look about the '70s when he starts to participate in politics? how did you understand that? Well, I can tell you, we had our fears he had a partner, Antonia, who worked in the ministry with Gustavo and he first asked his uncle, who was a radical uncle to take him to some political meetings. Why not? but he knew that we did not want Gustavo to be involved like that in politics, so he never took him either, so well But Gustavo was looking to be involved in politics. And he had that colleague who worked in Villa 31, she was very solidary so he asked her to take him to the Villa, and see ... there are very special anecdotes that Antonia has with Gustavo, right? Who takes him, then invites him to go on a Saturday to the Villa, to Villa 31, a sector, now I do not remember... stop Salad and from there all the help went to the neighborhood, right? Then someone would give him a bag of sugar or flour and tell him 'you have to make small bags, tie them well' and sell them to the people. They bought in large quantities and then sold for little money. And he says this is being an activist? make bags to sell to people, is that what it means being an activist?' (laughs) That's why I say, well, that's the beginning, right? Then when they kill Carlos Mujica the group dissolves, there in the Villa there was a group of activists, from different places, and well, the day they kill Carlos Mujica That moment was so tragic, for the young boys it was terrible, terrible, I saw Gustavo cry on that day We did not know at that moment where he was helping, but it was really painful seeing him suffering with immense pain, so I believe in being an activist. Those young kids, those years of the '70s, were if you want even more dramatic in the sense that they had just started and had their ideals there fresh, boys of 20, 22 years old Here I have a photo of Gustavo in the Villa, here I have ... look if these guys are not the kids today, they are the same, did you see? They do something. And today is the same, you go to the villas and you see those guys, with that look on their faces and surrounded by the people who were going to help, who were committed Last week we put the tiles, with the names of the desaparecidos from there, in the villas, in a square and with that emotion, right? because the people who had also known them were coming closer Today in that place still lives people who knew the boys. So it was a really special time because I also believe in utopias.... I believe in they, all the dreams they have, all utopias, now is the same, you speak with young people and although it is different they were organizations, they were not parties, he started in the Peronist youth. I was going to ask you, where did he participate? Sure, he started in the Peronist Youth there was a place here. When he went to the villa he wanted to help with the support of the political group And here in Mor Montoneros when was almost decay, right? For so much repression that there was, but with very big illusions And I see it now, I see it in the left parties and I see that in the activists full of illusions that they could fix everything if they fight, if they "put the body", and we see it now with this government especially that is this provoking the activism, the youth, with these measures that are taking, that make us go back 20, 30 years, 40 years, all measures that were achieved with the people's struggle, and now it is like going backwards I see that activism is the same. The '70 were remembered because every day the people went out to protest The people were not so politicized in the '70s, it was the youth was enrolled in political parties or in organizations. but the rest of the population did not participate as much I believe that after 1976 and the bloody and cruel dictatorship that we had, the people started to woke up to participate. They faced the dictatorship, because the dictatorship ended, civic - military - ecclesiastical and economic it also ended not only because of the failure of the Malvinas war, it ended because the people were already out on the streets And when it was the Malvinas war, the people also went out into the street first to cheer on the hierarchs these drunks, infamous and genocidal, even the kids who went to the Malvinas did not know that the same genocides that had tortured and killed a generation or almost a generation was carrying them and now it still costs, after 35 years of that war, that the families of the kids who died in the Malvinas think they really took them in the same way Compulsively, without informing the relatives, they have to go and the government gives the orders, did you see? because until now they lived disappeared in those NN tombs that the same families did not want to recognize that they were just like our children NN it was another generation that was, I don't want to say cheated because the boys would seem to be zombies but they went without knowing where they were going, without have instruction, without having the right clothes, without having the food, and it were the same genocide that tortured them, that beaten their own soldiers, when the kids were hungry they were going to steal a can of pate or whatever they did, they were beaten they were put under 15 degrees below zero, by the same genocidal! terrible, and buried as NN too! When they had the name of each of the kids who died! What infamy!, what infamy, but hey, this .... Do you remember the day of the military coup? Yes, I remember, I do not remember precisely, that day For example, I remember the day that Plaza de Mayo was bombed in '55. I remember because that day I lived here in Castelar and that day after my husband had gone to work, that he worked in the Ministry of Economy that was bombed too, I went to the center, he did not want me to go with the kids downtown because I was traveling alone, well, but that day I went and I was pregnant with Marcelo and Gustavo was a little boy. And when I went by bus, that bus at that time take down the street Avenida de Mayo, on my way to Plaza de Mayo we to get off at a certain place we lived in that area that I said before, that it was Monserrat, Constituci I saw everything cloudy, but it was smoke from the bombing of the Plaza de Mayo and I don't know how but we arrived at my parents' house my dad was like crazy wanting to protect us because they could see what was happening, it was an old house with a backyard, you could see planes, you could see the bombs falling and my dad grabbed us, put us in the bathroom, because it was a safer area, with a desperation and I remember that when I called Carlos to the Ministry they were hurt, all the colleagues had bullets wounds everywhere, there are still some damage there. And we went back home the trains with everything covered, well I remember that. Now of the day of the coup, I remember that day, I remember the communiqu from time to time a statement. Well, also at that time we had, Gustavo's brother-in-law was a prisoner, he was a political prisoner and he had been taken prisoner in that they had entered all the cells that night and brutally punished all the political prisoners who had already been tortured when they had been taken away, and that was ... already terror, and terror. I remember my in-laws when they could, and they gave them permission, they went to see him and they had punished them all. And that perhaps also in the case of Gustavo and the activists, they did not imagine what it would be like. I believe that the activist and the young people did not imagine, nor we the people, because there had always been military actions whenever they were called revolutions The revolution and the revolution, were not revolutions, were those assaults of the military that took power the house of government then for a few years we had dictatorship and well, always with those delays and everything But the coup of '76 changed everything. Because it was so brutal, so brutal Also at the beginning we did not realize, the deaths in the streets, in each house came and took one, two, children, parents they tortured the parents in front of the children, the children in front of the parents, all that horror was unimaginable nobody in the people thought it could be so brutal. But in every attempt and in every uprising there were dead, there were prisoners, but disappearance, the forced disappearance of people, which is the crime of crimes, we did not imagine that In the beginning, they were taken two or three days to the jails or to a places where they were taken them, but then they appeared. I remember my mother-in-law and friends who were going to the courts to find out where they were, where they were, and in the end they showed up in a prison. They were desaparecidos from those early years, and from '75 there are also desaparecidos but it was not massive and systematic and that persecution of every day. So I say this also showed later, when the mothers started to get together through FEDEFAN with mothers from other Latin American countries that it was a very planned methodology and that Argentina was through those visits of Kissinger that they did to program How was repression going to be? Here it was clear that they were not only military, in fact they were the civilians that instead of using as in other occasions the military, they were partners. Because before it was the armed arm of the oligarchy, the Armed Forces, in this coup of the year '76 they were the partners of everything and they took power with everything and it was the great massacre, the great genocide, in addition it was the Nazi methodology of appropriating the newborn babies, to take away their identity, all copied from the Nazi methodology. then it changed and it was not like other coups, that was the difference and it took us many years to realize it, right? that was another methodology and a system also really combined with the economic. It was to take power, but economic power and all its consequences How was your personal and family daily life before the disappearance of Gustavo? We were a typical family, with the two children that when they grew up they studied. I used to teach sewing because I liked it a lot, so I had my students, I really liked preparing everything I had a nice little room, I had students of various ages who separated them as a group; the teenagers, who made their dress of 15 the older ones, young women with children and afterwards had my older students who had decided to learn how to sew when they were 70 years old, right? Nice, I remember those times, they were very nice. It was sharing with the coffee machine with the coffee, with the cookies, well it was nice, it was playing mom (laughs) with a hard working husband with a normal house and with a lot of family, sisters, my husband's family too that to this day is my family too. So we were all family, we are family, nothing more than the circumstances caused me to leave so many years to enjoy the family, to accompany them, I recognize that they suffered a lot my struggle that was endless, without limit, nothing. There was no anniversary date, birthday, vacation, I was always here, there Now I do a little more family exercise. did you see? because now I have great-granddaughters. And I could not enjoy my grandchildren as I dreamed when I was young and said 'the day I have grandchildren' and the day I had grandchildren I was like the monster of the family. but I have the satisfaction that everyone is aware and helps me. Because it is all ours, the pain is ours so, my granddaughters also understand, when the date of March 24th arrives they live in Col they go to put flowers in the river knowing, right? and it was very hard, very hard How did you find out about Gustavo's disappearance, how was it? we had traveled, it was Easter of the year 1977, my in-laws had a summer house in Mar del Tuy Later, in that area, the bodies of the mothers and family members kidnapped in the Santa Cruz Church appeared and this year there was a very strong tribute there. And they had their little house was very nice, we were all vacationing together and to spend the Easter also Armando was imprisoned in prison. So someone was missing in the family already Well, Gustavo was there, also Marcelo with his girlfriend, and Gustavo's girlfriend Ana with her little boy and on Easter Sunday we had lunch and after lunch ... until today that scene is terrible. We went to take them to the bus station because they went home on Monday both worked and we were going to go two or three days to Mar del Plata and we went to say goodbye that day in the morning they had played ball Gustavo and Marcelo, before lunch and ... and ... we went to say goodbye without imagining that it was the farewell. That we were not going to see Gustavo anymore with his smiling face and without imagining, right? that this was a stage and that it was marked there and well, we stay. The following week we called every day, and the one who was worried was my husband, he said 'this is so bad, this is wrong' 'do not look, I think that repression has stopped' 'this is not bad'. And we called on Thursday Saturday morning we returned from Mar del Plata with my mother, and with the little boy Dami And on Friday we did not call, we said 'they already know we're going back tomorrow morning'. When we returned on Saturday morning we arrived home, everything was very quiet, my house was always a house that the radio was always on Everything very quiet, everything very neat, a strange order, and from the beginning there were Marcelo and Ana who lived with us. And my husband says, and Gustavo? no Gustavo went to play football...'how strange' but he immediately caught: it was all very strange. and well they said that Gustavo had gone to work in the morning she was a teacher and he worked in a company and in the afternoon they had to meet to go out Gustavo and Ana, as he did not call her, she sensed something, she calls to the work and they tell her that he did not go to work and she was surprised because in the morning they had said goodbye and they had organized that in the afternoon they got together and because of that, she started to wait for him for dinner they were Marcelo and Maria Rosa and she said 'no, I'm not going to eat, I at work he had not gone, he did not call her again and then after dinner Marcelo went to take Mar and Ana was waiting sitting in front of the window, as if she were here like that, she was waiting to see if Gustavo called her and saw several Ford Falcons that were turning around the block. It was a street like this where we lived that did not pass many vehicles and passed and then saw that the plants of the backyard moved, there was a strange movement, then they rang the bell it was a young policeman who carried as if it were a card and under the gun, pointing to her, the entrance was just like this She looks over there, was the fence, and says 'I come to say that Gustavo had an accident is in a hospital', she says 'yes, well, I'll go' and he says 'no. she has to go outside' and then she did not open the door, the door of bars, right? and he said 'well the house is all surrounded, if she does not open the door, they were going to enter somehow' so she had to open, and they went in they searched everything, they stole things, I don't know what, first the jewels of her, she put everything on a shelf when she came from school like all the girls, they took everything, and checked all the closet if they found something else we did not have jewelry, I had some bracelets, and some medals that were given to my husband gold medals, everything was taken, everything they found. And well, Ana was handcuffed, they asked her questions Ana answered and the guys said 'yes it's match'. That was, the good, the bad, all the tricks that they had and showed that they had Gustavo, but all with dissimulation. Well that was Friday night just the day we did not call. When we returned, she told us that this had happened and we went there first to the cathedral, from here to Mor To make a habeas corpus, then to the court, and well we started with all the paperwork. From there without stopping until today. We didn't tell anything to my mother, when my mother came, she got sick right away she had cancer and she got worse and worse, and she did nothing but ask for Gustavo, and we said 'Look Gustavo is working' 'no, no, no, no, tell me what happened to Gustavo'. Then one day we said 'Look, it seems that Gustavo is being detained' 'No, no, where is Gustavo arrested? Where is he?' and well, and she could imagine what was happening, and a few days later my mom died But it was like that because those who had also been his companions in those days also arrested them and his brother-in-law, who was also a prisoner, made the whole situation very bad for him. My mother-in-law accompanied me a lot, she accompanied me a lot, the first days of the Plaza she took turns with me because my mother was very bad, so I took care of my mother and she went to the square and after another day she stayed with my sisters and me, I went to the plaza. That were my days lately But we did not imagine what was going to happen How did you meet the other mothers? when I started doing the habeas corpus that was April 15th. On the 30th the mothers began to get together but I had not met any mother in those 15 days. I was going to the courts, but then one day I started to meet Maria Adela, with Azucena, and there they told me that they met in the ... No. In the Plaza a brother-in-law who was from San Fernando was a neighbor of one lady who was part of the PC in the League and told him 'look they started to meet in the Plaza de Mayo mothers who kidnapped their children so tell your sister-in-law' then my brother-in-law called me and said 'Well, there is a group of mothers who are already ... it were the first 30 days, this would be a week after or maybe two weeks. Then I went to the Plaza and there was Azucena Mar And it grew every week, a mother would come every week, or we would meet when we did the habeas corpus in court and we would say 'look, go to the plaza'. Each one was being the communicator of another and of another and so the group was forming in the square, little by little. First we sat on the benches and then the police began to say to us 'that we had to walk because there was a state of siege and we could not sit, we have to walk in pairs' the state of siege was already there. That's how we started. And the movement was growing in a way that when you think that each ... first they had started, the first week, they had been quoted on Saturday the mothers, those 14 mothers, then the following week on Saturday everything was closed, the Cathedral, the Ministries, the House of Government and what they wanted that first group was to be seen, right? Then on Friday, when I went it was Friday it was just starting on Friday and a mother who was Catholic but superstitious said 'Friday, it's the day of witches' as not becoming aware of gravity, right? 'No, it brings bad luck' and then it was decided to do it on Monday and Thursday. This is a very domestic anecdote And then it was Monday and Thursday. And what's up? Monday is the day of washing, did you see? It was when you did not have a washing machine, so on Monday you began to organize so you could go the whole week of searching and running, and then it was on Thursday, from there it was established on Thursday. And after 3:30 that was the schedule suggested by Azucena, because it was the schedule of the banks, the stock exchange, the entire mercantile movement, the whole movement of the Plaza Well, in those years crossed the Plaza Alzogaray. Until we realized that it was Alzogaray, and poor man, he could not cross over there again. But it was all very hard, very hard. In addition, every mother who came close to the group renew the story, the pain each case was different but the same, they were all the same. Although the mother said 'no, my son did not participate anywhere' because you see? it was the preservation 'better if I do not know anything' did you see? and they had always acted that way. There were houses where mothers said 'no, no, my son, my daughter, I do not know anything absolutely'. For many years. Afterwards the mothers themselves realized that if you wanted to hide their activism it was worse, because then it was less understood, why did he disappear if he did not do anything, if he was not at all? It was worse this. That was the transformation, many years 'yes, he participated but I do not know where'. Then came the friends of the PRT, of the ERP of Montoneros, who got close and said 'look I knew your son'. Then it was transformed into understanding that something had been, yes. and the handkerchief? And the handkerchief when we were in the square, the first year, I think it was the second year that we were in the square, I always say that we have to sit down because each one has its history. You saw in psychology, when they give you a figure and each one says 'I see this', with the mothers the same 'I remember that such a date we did such a thing'. The other says no. One of these days I'll give you the book we made, then I'll find if I have one, I do not think, we made a book with the same scene, a divine girl who did everything with memories of a scene. Then the same scene, do you remember when such a thing happened? then the people who read that book do not cry, they laugh because each one says 'not because that day was such a thing'. We were not together, and the book was a personal report to each one, things that do not coincide until today. But what is so, we were going to the Luj to ask for our children, but to ask to walk with the people, to go talking with everyone, to tell them that we had our children disappeared, then it was planned and each mother was going to leave a place. For example, the caravan of people that leaves Flores, the church of Flores, passes Liniers and then goes through Rivadavia and goes through the western stations. After Liniers passes through Ciudadela, and Ramos and Mor was in that part of the route. As the procession begins at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, four or five, it was getting dark, then we said 'later when it is night on the road how we are going to recognize each other' because the mothers did a bit like the activists. We did not want to record the face, we did not write down the name, everything was seen wanting to imitate and not. We used nicknames and then we did not remember. By phone 'who speaks?' 'Blanquita' 'who?' and Blanquita was Mar So 'where are we going to meet?' 'Do you remember? in the boat' 'where?' She spoke softly, and it was La Fragata. It was a confectionery that was in Corrientes and Reconquista that is now but very changed, another confectionery was Las Violetas. Well 'look today we are going to meet in the flower' 'the flower, what is the flower?' 'shhh, slowly' by the phone 'che, Las Violetas' There was no hiding possible. Then we did all that and we met. So, to go to that procession, how are we going to recognize ourselves? and one of the mothers says, 'Look, we can put a white handkerchief on our heads.' Since it was Thursday and the march was on Saturday, we all had grandchildren who wore diapers, square gauze diaper, folded into a triangular and finished in a handkerchief, then we all went with our diaper. I remember that to find us in Luj then it stops, you stop, you have to do massages on your legs, what do I know, then you follow, then we went in pairs, we could not go all together. So how do we meet in Luj that the end I'm going to end up doing one of those, which was a broomstick and in the support we had put styrofoam and a cloth tied so as not to hurt our hands . So what we do in the cane we put the diaper, we raise it and we warn that we are there. When Aramburu noticed, he ordered the priests not to give us the ostia, the communion, bah. That they did not give us communion to the priests who were suffering when we got close and they had to say no, put their hands down and they turned red as tomatoes and with glassy eyes of sorrow, of seeing that we were wanting to receive communion. Because there Jewish evangelists, mothers were all the same, when we had to go to DAIA or an act of the Jewish religion we all went, when we had to go to the churches we all went, there was no difference, then well, but there the truth is that it was also unforgettable. That Plaza with all the mothers that were arriving and that the church refused, not even to comfort us, nothing, these reactionary, disgusting bishops hated us. So those were the first marches and it was the diaper, it was the handkerchief. After one day the diaper was wearing what I know and we already did the handkerchief with the cloth. I want to tell you that the handkerchief disturbs many people. The judges have been disturbed to the point of putting them in a bad mood, and not allowing us to enter a trial or an audience with the handkerchief. I remember when it was the trial of Etchecolatz that the judges were very nervous because they had to tell us 'ladies cannot put on the handkerchief because we cannot do the trial' how an inmate, a genocide will determine that there is no trial if we are with the handkerchief? since when? Do they begin to dominate them? Well, yes, when he was the one who ordered that Julio L We have gone for example when an embassy has invited us on its anniversary, enter three, four mothers with the handkerchief and when they go the military delegations disarm and be uncomfortable. And we notice that also many people, in a mass too, well, it is always a reason to call attention 'attention, here there are 30 thousand disappeared'. And it had that cost, and it had the cost of taking the mothers who were looking for their children. That is, that corollary of terror where they appropriated the babies of the captive and pregnant mothers but also later took the mothers who looked for those daughters and those little girls. Then it is all a synthesis of what is state terrorism and what is the forced disappearance that is the crime of crimes, which is when a person really stops being a human being, becomes a number, passes from being to not to be, it is the Nazi methodology, when you lose all your rights absolutely. That's why when you keep looking for the memory the truth, justice, is that this is a crime that cannot be forgiven, that cannot be forgotten, that we cannot reconcile with the genocide, ever and that we can say it to the four winds. There is no reconciliation, there is only justice, perpetual prison, jail forever and that there was never negotiation. Never many mothers, thousands and thousands of mothers, who said 'well if you tell me where my son is, I forgive him' never, that did not exist. They tried, they tried many times, the governments tried 'well, and if they say ...' no. Besides, there is no justice, which I do not remember now, what is his name... Transitional? transitional. Here no, here there is no transition, here they have to say what happened to each one. If someone is repentant, he has to go to a judge and tell him what he knows. But there is no possibility. There is in Colombia, in Peru, in some countries and here it was tried sometime. Even one of the policies that justice wanted to bring, that brought a woman living in Haiti, who tried, right? and he brought it once here, poor woman, we took it from the Plaza de Mayo, from all sides, that came to tell us that it was the best. It tried, yes, but here it did not work. Going a little way back, I do not know if you used this word but you said that for your family you were the monster, did you use that word? I was the little monster How did it change, what look did you start to feel about neighbors of family members from ...? Well my grandchildren were growing and, of course, Damian I arrived at night, late, from the meetings of the whole search, was the grandfather worried, bad, of course then when I arrived he had endured his grandfather who was not well, what do I know I felt that I was never there. Then I noticed that, of course he was 8 years old, 7 years old, he still did not understand anything, he was young, and of course the grandmother arrived and where had he been? Did you see? as much as one explained and everything. But afterwards, that is why when they say 'such a date, when such a thing happened' we do not know when the change happened, because like, no, no, everything was ... just like the neighbors everything. The neighbors crossed the street not to pass in front of our door, to find you and not ask you anything. I understand that a neighbor, how was he going to ask you 'do you know something about your son'? They did not dare. Because as well as in the first years the military said 'lady, do you know where your son is?' Now I read that a German film that has that methodology was released, that in Germany, well here they did the same, then the neighbors said 'and maybe he left', he did not say anything to the parents. Maybe he is abroad 'when the earthquake was in Mexico I think it was the year '81 people ran, people interested, right? That there had died those we were looking for as missing. That is, each time they ran for other things. And then 'for some reason it happened what just happened, and 'How know what he was involved'. They were times, neighbors that maybe, I already tell you, I think some neighbors were not to cause you pain, because you say 'I do not know', the word disappeared was not said, because there was also terror, because state terrorism comes to that, it comes to scare people 'better I do not get together'. I had a neighbor who came to learn to sew my house, next to my house, and a neighbor who was always attentive, but had a fascist husband and I noticed that she, the last time she came, came with a guilt that something was wrong. Until she told me that her husband told her 'I do not want you to go anymore because that woman talks to you about politics'. I did tell her that I was looking for my son, that is, what mothers were going to talk about. first we talked about fashions, what does a woman who teaches sewing speak? you talk about what happens, what is used, until later you are sewing and you say 'I do not know anything about my son'. 'We did such a thing, we went to such a place' and the husband says 'she talks to you about politics'. because the woman told her and she would say 'poor Nora, look they went to that place, they chased them, they threaten them' right? Then the husband said better you do not go. And everything happened, in addition to threatening us by phone, I remember that once I traveled to Brazil, I went with Chicha Mariani to a trip, at night they called my house and said 'is Mrs. Nora Irma Morales of Corti my husband answered and says 'she is busy now, she cannot answer', 'Okay because I want to tell you that now we are going to paint the front of her house, but I am the good person, and I want to let you know'. They put terrorist mother, terrifying mother, put terrorist, I changed it and they put terrifying because so that when they read it again the adjective had changed it. And my husband says' aahh but bring bricks, sand, because there is no wall left. 'The others painted it all' then the guy hung up because he said 'I did not scare him', things like that, of calls for many years the phone call, the threat. And enter for example in a apartment house, where Maria Adela lived and ask the doorman to open the door and paint the entire hall of the door of the house 'mother terrorist', the name of Maria Adela, why? so that the neighbors in the morning rejected it and said 'we moved we do not want this anymore' to put fear for people to say, from my neighborhood 'Nora wants us to paint it, we bleach the wall' 'and I said stop, leave it because it's my bus stop, when I come in the bus I say 'stop at the corner of the terrorist mother please'. Of course that same one says it with a smile and all, but the fact, the fact was terrifying. It was that the neighbors would repudiate you and throw you out and tell you I do not want the mother of a terrorist living here. In those first years of Mothers what events do you remember as singular? First the idea of Azucena that the vicar of the Navy would set up an office to assist us in Retiro in a church, and they put up a desk to assist us with a man in a cassock but with boots. They put it there in '76 where we were going to ask to look for our children. The guy was from the Navy, it was Service, Monsignor Graselli, who still say that the old man lives giving catechism classes to the students of a First Board school that I do not remember what his name is, I do not know if he will still being there, and in that place at the beginning, at the beginning in the month of April, on April 30 they gathered there, then there after going a few days they realized the mothers who were going, I was not at that moment, they were going to ask if they were looking for their sons. The bishop was a hypocrite, a cretin, and told you 'look lady, I do not know, here is doubtful, come within 15 days' you went to the 15 days, grabbed the file of a locker and said 'look, here I see a red cross', as if he had nothing to do with 'I think he's dead', like that. Well sometimes, instead of telling you that, they told you 'madam, do not worry, your son must be marking people, someone have take him in a car, he will have fed him clean him and he has to mark colleagues, people who know and they will give him better food', other times he told you 'being a woman your daughter did not like doing housework and left' 'but my daughter has a baby' 'what does it matter to young people babies, not family or mother, stay calm one day will come back'. Everything like that, all that route that we made in that Marina vicious office and there, after receiving all those answers, Azucena, one day the mothers were gathered, few mothers, and said 'keep coming here ... why do not we go better to the square and we show ourselves that people see us, we enter the house of Government and we finish with this that is so unpleasant and it does us so much damage?' and that's when it was that they went first on a Saturday, then Friday and then Thursday. But like that, it came out that way. 'Instead of coming here and listening to these hypocritical things that make us so bad, better we do not come any more'. There some mothers kept going but then it was over because it was knowing that it was really shameful. That is one of the participations of the church. The other brutal participation of the church was that they made a bridge to deliver the babies of pregnant mothers that the police gave to nuns, I do not remember the congregation, nothing to do with our nuns that we have loyal and really good religious. And they made a bridge to give to unknown families of policemen. The other question: they blessed the weapons with which they killed and tortured our children; the other: they blessed the flights of death, there was always a chaplain there at the moment when they took flight with the prisoners who were going to be thrown into the sea, into the river. All so copy of the Nazi system, so equal, all taken from the worst of what were the repressions in the world. How did you live the transition to democracy? Well, we lived it in a special way, the mothers had gone to see all the politicians when they were campaigning, before the dictatorship ended, at the moment of the transition and we listened to things that made us hope, especially in the Alfonsin case. We are going to open all the prisons, there will not be any more prisoners, blah, blah, we are going to give all the information. 'A phrase of Jaroslavsky that was unforgettable was 'we are going to make a justice so special that it will even look like revenge'. We believed all that. In the first moment the transition that of Alfonsin did seem like hope came, they formed the CONADEP, and the trials began, it was important, we did not realize at that moment, over the years I at least realized something special: He made a judgment with honest judges, who could condemn, that it will have cost them that they also probably received threats, surely, and a trial could be made demonstrating that here in Argentina a path of justice could be made. But what happened? that the military officers when they really began the sentences and began to see that they were going to go to jail began to make a noise of arms, and there began the issue of the Punto Final y Obediencia Debida (final point and due obedience). Because the government of Alfonsin first thing he did was to annul the self-amnesty that the military had made before leaving that space, which was important. That's why I say, at first you wanted everything, then everything seemed little, to those who wanted all that was given, and I speak now after many years because we fought for a bicameral instead of the judgments, we wanted the bicameral, instead of everything that they were giving us, we wanted to go to the congress so that everything went well, right? However, it was condemned as it was possible to the first three meetings but then the noise of weapons made them have to present to the congress the laws of final point and due obedience, and the same ones who had made the trial, the same ones who had given us hope, the same ones who said that there was going to be a justice that was going to look like revenge, voted in favor of those laws, with disgust, as we heard some voices, but they voted those laws. And there all the illusions that we had were broken down, of course the struggle continued, and in principle many mothers believed because many mothers had been from a radical family, and well they believed. And I believe over the years, I think that Alfons because CONADEP served for that purpose, that all the denunciations that were made in the APDH, in the Argentine League of Human Rights, in human rights organizations, they were legalized with that testimony from each relative at the official level. The book of Never Again, despite that unfortunate prologue that S the two demons, but that was Sabato, even though many people felt admiration and still speak of S the theory of the two demons. But we fought a lot and each stage of each government we were always on the street, then when Menem gave the pardons, to a few soldiers who had been convicted, but he also to the popular fighters who had conviction and everything equaled them and He granted a pardon as well as the genocides. Well, we fight everything, by street force, by force of mobilization. That's why today, the only thing that will save us is that we continue on the street saying 'I do not like this, we do not want this' because that's the way it is. We all went to throw down the laws of Punto Final and Obediencia Debida, it was the street, it was a government that listened to us after having passed cretins, Duhalde, De La R listens to us, he won by very few votes, we must also say it, he was advised to listen to the voices of the organizations claiming that truth and that justice. And we were able to reverse, we were able to throw down those infamous laws that hurt us so much. So everything was like that, I believe that this tour of ours, of thousands of families and not only, I want to tell you that it was not only the relatives of the mothers, of the grandmothers, around us we had people who were not touched, but in the people as a whole, who did not have a missing son, nor a prisoner son, and who accompanied us to achieve those achievements we had from the trials. And I tell them something that I repeat a lot, all of them were achievements that we had with the Kirchner government but the success until the day we die is that we could have embraced our children see them grow with their children, with their grandchildren, today Gustavo has granddaughters, every mother has her son, her daughter who today would be grandma, grandpa. That would be success. But the achievements are very good also to be able to continue. The achievements of the trials, to see and hear the sentences, not all the sentences are as is necessary, it is not as we want but as they would have to be for the horrendous crimes that were committed, that are unforgivable, that we do not conceive or reconciliation or forgiveness. But the sentences that were produced so far give us the push to keep going and know that if there is a trial where they condemn the disappearance of a number of detainees - disappeared, men and women, that my son Gustavo is not, but there is a condemnation of my touch and it comes to me, it is as if Gustavo had been in that trial, in that cause. We had such important achievements and we must value them because otherwise we would be very ungrateful with life because we got everything on the street, we got everything fighting, many mothers who died without knowing what happened to their children, their daughters, fathers that at the same time, because the fathers had that silent participation, we could scream, bitch, go out, scream, the fathers could not do it like that because first the Judeo-Christian religion prevents, now not so much, but always prevented the father who could not cry, did you see? and the fathers have cried a lot. Then everything was won fighting it, some more some less, there can be no dispute if you did, or if you went or if you stopped doing because here having a disappeared is horror, having one is the same as having four, but a mother who has four missing children is terrible. But the one that has one, if it was the only one worse yet, there is no competition here, it is impossible. That is why one comes to this age and to this time of struggle and when there are differences it is always because there is partisan politics in between. And that is what hurts this force to keep fighting, sometimes we are separated by an opinion that is the bad thing, but afterwards everyone got and everything is, and still what is missing. Because now we are backing down, for everything that is happening these days with this government is incredible, one could not believe it, have advanced with the trials and that every day they give you a slap and let a policeman free and if not the domiciliary for to do what they want and to persecute everyone. But what I appreciate from all this struggle is that each one had their voice as best they could, each mother, each father, each child, each grandchild is now the grandchildren and I think it is the courage that we have here in this town, to put the body go out to the street, fight it and walk this road that I say and I repeat that we were not alone that the people who surrounded us until now are the ones who but what luck to be able to get emotional yet, and that we do not lose this way of recognizing that we were not alone and that we are still accompanied, that so many people who dedicate themselves to work for human rights do so voluntarily, do it spontaneously and when they want to distort my anger, when they want to distort the struggle for human rights. Because it was all very difficult, very hard. And it's 41 years, 42, 43 for a lot of people of inclaudible struggle that we continue, and we continue to give headaches to the government. This one even more because he does not love us. And we are going to continue giving them, we are going to screw their lives, we are not going to let them sleep in peace and this government, this man has a little girl who soon is going to question the father 'were you the president that brought so much sadness to this people?', is going to interpellate, because this girl is not being raised like the older brothers who lived in the bubble world next to this father, rich. This girl has everything but she will miss that touch, when she is with her classmates who will not be able to defend the father completely, I have that hope, that the girl says' Dad, but did you do this?, Did you fire people from their jobs? Did you want to know anything about human rights?' I have hope that the ipad and the phone cannot be in a bubble, they cannot erase it from the phone what comes out, right? you have to have a little bit of hope, I have hope, I have my idea that we will be able to get there, I do not know if it will end all impunity, but we will continue fighting without losing our arms. And that the day we are not there are you, two generations, three generations, there are little babies, there are boys who go to school and they ask, the secondary students are already like the boys of the night of the pencils, so I think. Thank you, excuse me...

MAP

BIOGRAPHY

BIRTH

Birth place: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Birth date: 1930