As a result of my investigations into the crimes of Argentina's dictatorship, I have been called twice to testify in the trials regarding the human rights crimes committed in Argentina in 1976-83. In the ESMA trial currently under way in Buenos Aires, regarding crimes at the ESMA death camp where some 4,500 people were murdered, my first book, El Inflitrado, formed part of the prosecutor's accusation against the death camp defendants. In the story below, former Herald editor Robert Cox writes about my latest ESMA testimony and his own testimony against Argentine human rights offenders in other trials.

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Uki Testifies at ESMA Human Rights Trial
Buenos Aires Herald, 20 February 2011
by Robert Cox

Robert Cox and his family at Ezeiza airport the day of their forced departure from Argentina in December 1979.

The most glorious years of the Buenos Aires Herald were when this newspaper spoke out against violence and, even more importantly, reported the violence from the left and right that was tearing Argentina apart. They were also the most heart-breaking years because in vain the Herald warned the nation about the unfolding tragedy in the early 1970s and then tried to wake the Argentine people to the hideous hidden horror of the military dictatorship's policy of extermination and its embrace of torture and obscene cruelty.

When I look back over those years, I am proud of what the Herald achieved, because some lives were saved from the military's killing machine, but any pride is totally overwhelmed by sadness and anger. There was no reason for Argentina's descent into depravity and no justification is possible.

It is only possible to try and understand everything about that terrible past and ensure that justice is done, and seen to be done - so that there can be no return. The current trials of military officers charged with horrendous crimes, with the convictions of the insolently unrepentant ex-dictator Jorge Rafael Videla and, ironically, Benjamin Menendez, the former general who wanted to replace him, hold out the promise of a cleansing process. They should be followed by legal action that takes into account the terrorism that the military claimed they were fighting.

I have given evidence, so far, in three trials and until I became ill (I am better now), I planned to testify in the current trial of the naval officers who tortured and murdered thousands of people at the Navy's Mechanics School, the notorious ESMA.

That duty was assumed last Friday by the man I consider to be the greatest Argentine journalist in two generations, Uki Goñi. We worked together at the Herald during the dictatorship and when I was forced to leave, Uki continued to investigate the crimes against humanity committed by the military. He went on to uncover the Nazi connection with the Peronist regime while continuing to report for Time Magazine and The Guardian. You can read his brilliant journalism at ukinet.com

Uki writes:

Uki Goñi still at the Herald in 1982.

‘I thought that my testimony, the inevitable long stream of words, would be easier to grasp with a visual reference, so I spent a couple of days at the Biblioteca Nacional with a digital camera photographing the stories from the year 1977 in which the Herald reported disappearances. It was a sobering moment. Turning the old pages I realized that almost every day we were visited by mothers who had their sons or daughters plucked from their homes. Even in the safe Biblioteca in 2011 the daily succession of accounts made me sick to the gut.’

‘It brought back the pervasive smell of fear at the Herald. I remember everybody shaking. I remember the mothers shaking, holding back tears, as they fought to get the words out for us to publish. I remember husbands trying to hush their wives even as these brave women spoke, begging them to think of their other children. Right there, these tortuous husband-wife dialogues, as we jotted down the details to report. I remember Bob Cox shaking badly as he typed up the accounts the mothers brought him. I remember the clammy sweat of fear still clinging to my clothes riding home on the colectivo after putting the paper to bed each midnight.’

‘What I didn't expect was for the court to project the stories I brought on big video screens. It was the hardest part of an already emotionally exhausting three hours of uninterrupted testimony.’

‘The court asked me to provide a brief translation of each report going up on the screens: Maria Sadowski, a 70-year-old widow taken from her home at Castelli 207 in Once, reported by her sister Dina; Ethel Dematti, another widow who begged Cox to publish a picture of her, plainclothes men had been hunting her down since her son had vanished a few months earlier, the terror-stricken woman was living in hotels, playing hide-and-seek with her would-be-abductors; up went the photos we published of missing couples, of abducted pregnant women in their 20s, almost all still missing 34 years later.’

‘I stumbled, voice breaking, when the judges asked me to provide a word-for-word translation of the Herald's report of 10 December 1977, titled "15 people grabbed" on the kidnappings at the Church of the Holy Cross, when two French nuns and three founding mothers of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo joined the thousands of others already disappeared.’

‘I was there to provide witness testimony on these mothers and human rights activists who visited the Herald in 1977. I remember Esther Careaga vividly. Her pregnant daughter Ana Maria had been kidnapped. Cox published her story. Ana Maria was promptly released but Mrs Careaga was afterwards kidnapped at the Holy Cross.’

‘The court wanted to hear about Horacio Elbert, a young university activist, and Julio Fondovilla, a middle-aged man whose son was missing. They were taken a block-and-a-half away from the Herald. They were scared of coming directly to the newspaper, so I had worked out a system with them: they would go to the nearby Comet Bar and call from the Comet's pay phone, where I would go meet them. On the evening of December 8, they were supposed to call. The call never came. Elbert and Fondovilla, abducted at the Comet, became two of the 12 missing in the Holy Cross case.’

‘I was there also as author of "El infiltrado", a book about these people who came to the Herald. It had been quoted repeatedly by the prosecution in their accusation against the 18 Navy officers under trial, so I expected a tough cross-examination from their defense. It never came.’

‘One defense lawyer asked me instead for copies of all the Herald reports on terrorist activity previous to the 1976 coup. I told the court the old Herald copies were available at the Biblioteca Nacional. Another obsessively demanded if Cuba had financed terrorist activities. They wanted to convey the notion there had been a "war" in Argentina. I said I was aware of one single ESMA casualty, Captain Jorge Mayol, killed on the corner of Santa Fe and Oro, against the estimated 4,500 people murdered by the ESMA. It didn't look then, still doesn't look now, like a war to me.’

I think that it is past time for the Buenos Aires Herald to blow its own trumpet. Throughout the years of terror, the Herald talked truth to power. I was touched when its role was recognized by a young law student who was an intern at the Herald in 2002 and 2003. He began to read back copies of the newspaper and devised a timeline of the newspaper's coverage of events that other media hushed up, distorted or ignored. It is now widely used by journalists and academics. (unglued.org/timeline)

Jeremy Peterson, who is now an attorney with the U.S. Justice Department, has also written the story of this newspaper from 1975 to 1983, which he calls ‘The Lonely Herald.’ May the sound of the Herald's trumpet recall the past and act as a reveille for a better future.

Cox Ciudadano Ilustre
Robert Cox es nombrado ciudadano ilustre de la ciudad de Buenos Aires el 3 de noviembre del 2009. El honor es concedido por el legislador Sergio Abrevaya con la participación del luchador de derechos humanos Patrick Rice, Estela Carlotto de Abuelas y el director de Editorial Perfil, Jorge Fontevecchia.

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Guerra sucia, secretos sucios
La biografía de Robert Cox
por David Cox

Cox en su oficina del Buenos Aires Herald circa 1979.

La historia de Robert Cox ‘La prensa tiene el deber de decirle la verdad a la gente. Los familiares de las personas desaparecidas no pueden seguir siendo ignorados como si fueran leprosos.’ De esta manera Robert J. Cox se despedía de sus lectores del diario porteño Buenos Aires Herald antes de partir hacia el exilio, el 15 de diciembre de 1979. Guerra sucia, secretos sucios es la historia (íntima y pública, doméstica y política, relatada por su propio hijo) de un periodista único que iluminó los años más oscuros de la Argentina.

El autor David Cox, periodista y escritor, ha sido corresponsal de numerosas publicaciones, entre ellas el Miami Herald, el Sunday Times, Clarín, La Nación y Perfil. Trabajó para el Buenos Aires Herald y el International Herald Tribune, entre otros diarios. Su primer libro fue La segunda muerte -sobre el robo de las manos de Perón- escrito en coautoría con Damián Nabot. Actualmente trabaja como periodista para la CNN en Atlanta. Es además hijo de Robert Cox.

Presentación El martes 27 julio 2010 se presentó la biografía del valiente periodista inglés Robert Cox, escrita por su hijo David Cox. Hablaron Robert Cox, David Cox, los periodistas Nelson Castro, Jorge Fontevecchia y Jose Ignacio López, el legislador porteño Sergio Abrevaya y el autor Uki Goñi. Martes 27 julio 2010, 19.30hs Libros del Pasaje Thames 1762 (Palermo SoHo - entre Costa Rica y El Salvador) Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Uki Goñi habla sobre el Herald
Uki Goñi habla sobre el Herald para el programa Lo pasado pensado, de Felipe Pigna.

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From the "Foreword" of The Real Odessa. Uki Goñi was a journalist at the Herald in 1975-83.

The mothers came daily Under the military the silence became asphyxiating and present everywhere, all the time. Only the Buenos Aires Herald, a small English-language newspaper read by Argentina's mostly conservative British community, dared report on the bloodbath. I gravitated to its offices in the port of Buenos Aires, first as a cub reporter, then as editor of national news. Daily the mothers of the victims would come in to report their tragedies. Men in green uniforms had broken into their homes in the middle of the night and taken their children from their beds to an unknown destination. They were never to be seen again. The abductors returned to steal their TV sets and refrigerators, sometimes they even unbolted the doors and loaded those on their trucks too. I asked the mothers why they didn't report their stories to the big Spanish-language dailies. Why bother coming to a tiny newspaper published in a foreign language? 'Don't be naive,' the mothers almost laughed. 'We went and they wouldn't even let us in the door.'

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Cox recibe el Premio Perfil
Robert Cox recibe el Premio Perfil por su labor como director del Buenos Aires Herald durante la dictadura militar argentina, de manos del Juez de la Corte Suprema Eugenio Zaffaroni, el 19 de mayo 2009.

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Extraído del prólogo de La auténtica Odessa. Uki Goñi fue periodista del Herald en 1975-83.

Diariamente acudían las madres Bajo el régimen militar, el silencio se hizo asfixiante y presente en todo momento y en todo lugar. Sólo el Buenos Aires Herald, un pequeño periódico editado en inglés para una comunidad británica mayormente conservadora, se atrevía a dar noticias de la carnicería. Yo frecuentaba sus oficinas, en el puerto de Buenos Aires, primero como periodista junior y luego como editor de noticias nacionales. Diariamente acudían las madres de las víctimas a explicar sus tragedias. Hombres con uniformes de color verde habían irrumpido en sus hogares en plena noche y habían arrancado a sus hijos del lecho, llevándoselos a un destino desconocido. Ya no se les volvía a ver. Los secuestradores retornabanan a veces al día siguiente, pero solamente para llevarse televisores y heladeras; a veces incluso arrancaban las puertas y las cargaban también en sus camiones. Pregunté a las madres por qué no llevaban su historia a los grandes diarios de habla hispana en Buenos Aires. ¿Para qué molestarse en acudir a un diminuto periódico publicado en una lengua extranjera? -¡No sea ingenuo! -me respondieron casi riendo-. Ya fuimos, y ni siquiera nos dejaron pasar de la puerta.

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Argentina Belatedly Celebrates a Journalist Hero by Uki Goñi When the generals began murdering thousands of young people in the late 1970s, only one journalist dared stand up for the rights of the "disappeared." And then Robert Cox seemed to vanish from history.

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Uki Goñi testifica en la causa ESMA

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