Uncovering the Crimes of Argentina’s Junta

Two former Argentine military rulers have been found guilty of overseeing the systematic theft of babies from political prisoners in 1970s. Robert Cox, the editor of the Buenos Aires Herald was among the first to uncover the role of the Argentine military in stealing the babies.

“This awful thing of killing mothers, giving away their babies and taking away their identity has really captured the soul of Argentina,” Cox tells host Marco Werman. “And I hope it will help the country to cure itself, to get back to, you know, humanity. Because this country went through a time of incredible horror which most people appeared to ignore.”

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Marco Werman: Robert Cox testified at the trial of the Argentine dictators. Cox lived in Argentina in the 1970s and was the editor of the Buenos Aires Herald newspaper. His stories were among the first to uncover the military’s role in stealing the babies of political prisoners. Cox says he was pulled into the story because the relatives of disappeared political activists sought out his paper’s reporters.

Robert Cox: People started to come to us. Of course first of all came the mothers whose children had disappeared. This terrible word [Spanish] ‘desaparecido ‘. And then the grandmothers. Then I heard about the grandmothers getting together to form, because they had to operate secretly in those days. And I went to one of their very first meetings and there were something like six or seven grandmothers. I was so impressed about them. So I wrote the first story to say that these grandmothers were searching for their children. They knew when their daughters were taken away, roughly when they were likely to give birth, and so they were just desperate to find out what had happened.

Werman: How dangerous was it for you to begin to explore the story and conduct your own investigation?

Cox: I just decided it had to be done. I know it sounds ridiculous but I did expect to be killed at any moment so I went out and started doing my own reporting. I tried every way I possibly could. I would go government house and I would give them a list of names. They’d say, ‘You can’t publish these stories.’ And I said, ‘I’m not interested. I’m just interested if these people are brought to trial if they’re guilty of something. So I’ll give you a list of names. I won’t publish them.’ And one of the men I had to see, and I got to like him in a way, he said to me, ‘But you don’t understand, Cox. You don’t understand the situation. All are men,’ and they used to call these men who would go out and do it, which I think was pretty broadly across all the armed forces, centurions. And he said, ‘These men, they have to do such terrible things that when they get back they can’t kiss their wives or touch their children.’ And I thought that’s exactly what the SS were told. ‘We do terrible things but we can never let people know what we do and that makes what we do even more glorious.’ And I think that’s how they managed to go through it. I think that’s how Videla’s managed to do it.

Werman: Now you’ve met former Argentine dictator Jorge Videla several times. What was that like to see him on the witness stand?

Cox: To see him there I can’t explain it but this man was such a hypocrite. He pretended all the time that he was trying to stop what he called excesses. Actually what I believe the whole thing was out of control. I mean they had this plan he’s now admitted to having drawn up a list of he says fifteen to sixteen thousand people who they marked off to kill. And he’s said it openly. But for years he denied everything. He just kept everything quiet. And then he gave an interview to a friend of mine. Which was strange that he was allowed to give it and that gave it. And there he told him, ‘You know, God was holding my hand all this time.’ He believes what he did was right. And he was praying to God and he was doing it against communism, he was doing it for Christianity.

Werman: Robert, what about the consequences of ths verdict for the abducted babies who are now adults? Does it deepen an already presumably profound identity crisis?

Cox: No. It helps them enormously to realize. I mean, what is a wonderful about them, and about the [Spanish] ‘abuelas’, they’re the grandmothers, is the sense of community that they have. The children of the disappeared work. A lot of them, a lot of them work for the grandmothers voluntarily. In some cases they have jobs. Because the mothers managed to set up these wonderful DNA banks to the establish identity. Argentina has gone very deeply into this. There’s a theater of identity. The realization and importance of identity. It’s extraordinary how this thing, this awful thing of killing mothers, giving away their babies, taking away their identity has really captured the soul of Argentina I think. I hope it will help the country to cure itself. To get back to, you know, to humanity because this country went through a time of incredible horror which most people appeared to ignore.

Werman: Robert Cox was the editor of the Buenos Aires Herald in the 1970s. It was the first newspaper to break the story of the orchestrated theft of hundreds of Argentine babies born to political prisoners in the 1970s. Robert, thank you very much.

Cox: No, thank you for this opportunity.

Werman: Robert Cox also spoke with WGBH-TV’s Maria Hinojosa about Argentina’s dirty war and his work during that period. We have the video at theworld.org.

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