A campaign for the collection of signatures for the referendum to repeal the law, known as the impunity law, has taken place over the past two years. The law was passed in an atmosphere of fear in the first years after the reinstatement of the democratic rule in Uruguay. The campaign came to an end on April 24th, with a total of 340,043 signatures, which is very significant considering the country’s population is around 3 million. We interviewed different people involved in the process to repeal the law, who told us from their perspective, a part of the story. Both the recent story, which started with collecting the signatures, and the other story, so many times silenced in the recent years.
We interviewed Sara Mendez. She has always been a political activist focused on human rights issues. During the dictatorship she had to flee to Argentina, where she was later jailed – since the dictatorships of the Southern Cone worked together as a bloc. While she was in prison, the military took her son, Simon Riquelo, away. This is what Sara told us:

The repression would not discriminate between children, that is the children of the kidnapped people, or even pregnant women, who were also kidnapped. The children were taken by the repressive forces and the pregnant women would give birth to their children. They would wait until the moment of birth, and then they would forced-disappeared them and would take their children - born in captivity- away from them. My son was 20 days old when they [the military] came to my house and kidnapped me. He disappeared and I was only able to find him 26 years later. 26 years of intense and long search. That is a summary of my personal story. An this is my motivation to talk about the time we are going through now. The search for my child for sure, but also having been part of the repressive forced-disappearance, having tens of colleagues, friends, fellow activists, who are disappeared today. Most of them were in their twenties. All this led me to get involved in the human rights field, since I was released from Punta Rieles jail until today, I have been a human rights activist.

Sara explained why she thought it was important to repeal the impunity law.

A constitutional reform has been promoted to repeal this law, which is still in force in Uruguay. Regardless of all the progress made in some cases that were particularly difficult because they took place abroad, or because the perpetrators of the executions were civilians, most of the cases still fall under the impunity law. Even the case of my son. It’s impossible to move forward in finding out who kidnapped him, in knowing the facts. He could only be found through a private investigation, but the facts remain silenced and secret. I mention this as an example of facts in which perhaps even more serious things happened, like when a person is still disappeared. This constitutional reform proposed today I think is a great challenge, because of the years that have gone by, and because it shows there is still a certain civic sense of responsibility in our people, who questions that an abhorring law like this one, which gives immunity to people who committed crimes against humanity, can still be part of our civil code. And which allows, not only for these people not to be punished, but also for the facts to remain unknown, because the truth has also been kidnapped. We think that it also shows us as a country in a very important stage. Perhaps it is important to make this known abroad, as peoples always have a space for hope when they go through experiences as hard as this one.

We also interviewed writer and playwright Ignacio Martinez. At the time of the military coup in Uruguay, Ignacio was a very young activist. He was persecuted and had to suffer the exile, like many other activists and artists of that time. Ignacio has worked on the campaign to repeal the impunity law. He explains that he is doing so in order to make sure the people who committed the crimes, will stand trial. He said the repeal of the law will also have the effect of preventing something similar from happening again in the future.

I feel I have the moral obligation of working for the ones who were my friends, my brothers, my sisters who died, who disappeared, who suffered, but also, and most importantly, for my children and for my grandchildren, and for my great-grandchildren, and those who will come after that. I would feel terribly sorry if 30 or 40 years from now someone said the Uruguayan people in this first decade of the 21st century was unable to repeal a law that will damage the future generations so much.
And why is it so damaging? Because it sets a precedent that the State can finally create laws that create different kinds of citizens.

Ignacio Martinez was referring to the fact that the law creates different types of citizens: some who are liable to be tried for their crimes, and others who are not. And the repeal of the law is also a statement against that. This vision of the future might explain a little bit why thousands of young people, who were not born during the dictatorship, decided to commit with the process for the repeal of the law. They were the ones who, on the day they reached the number of signatures needed, organized a party to celebrate outside the University of the Republic. It was there where, in the years prior to the coup – when repression was already taking place –Hugo de los Santos and Susana Pintos were murdered during a student protest. Although most of the people who were there celebrating last month, were not alive at the time, they feel they are part of history. That leads them to change today’s reality, which grants impunity to the guilty.

We’ll now listen to Mariana Licandro, student activist of the Federation of University Students of Uruguay, and member of the national coordination for the repeal of the impunity law.

The organization was created to gather the country’s main movements for the repeal of the law. On the one hand, the process was quite difficult as we started by collecting signatures and with the initiative of the constitutional reform in 2006. It was then when we created the Coordination, and it has meant hard work in this final stage, because the signatures were coming on the last minute. 80,000 signatures were collected in the last month. It was a lot of work, it implied good organizing skills, and fortunately, at the Federation of University Students, many young people joined, which is gratifying because we are not few young people interested in ending the impunity. Also, the day of submitting the signatures we were all really moved, because we ended on April 24th with a celebration at the University where over 5,000 people gathered. We were there surrounded by 5,000 young people, with different artists who were there in solidarity, where Susana Pintos and Hugo de los Santos were shot. That was a very moving moment. And it was very exciting to think of us as - 18 to 23 year-old- young people, who, despite having a limited freedom, have the right to free speech. And to think that our colleagues who were part of the students’ federation, in the students movement in the 60s and 70s, could never do that.

The demonstration mentioned by Mariana, where thousands of young people celebrated for hours, was similar to the march held on May 20. The march takes place every year to mark the murders of MPs Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz, and of Rosario Barredo and William Whitelaw, perpetrated in Argentina in 1976. The demonstration took place on 18 de Julio, the main avenue of Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo. It consisted of a silent march, where, every year it is possible to see the relatives of the forced-disappeared holding the pictures of the faces of their loved ones, who were murdered by the military rule. The demonstration, called “the March of Silence”, ended with the reading of the names of those who were killed by the repressive actions of the military dictatorship, after which the silence was broken with an applause. Among the applause the voice of the recently deceased writer, Mario Benedetti, could be heard. His voice came out of the loudspeakers reading a poem he wrote for the disappeared, where it says they should be somewhere “there, in the South of the soul”.

Finally, we will listen to Mariana once again. She tells us about what steps will be taken from now on:

Now in Uruguay we are in a time when this stage is over, and a new one begins, that is the one to vote ‘Yes’ in October. The reform will be put to vote together with the national elections. Beyond this initiative that aims to reform the constitution, we have to continue the fight. Beyond the legal and institutional tools we may have to try to break the impunity, we have to keep up our work from other arenas, from social organizations, by mobilizing, exposing the practices that took place and the ones that are happening again today.