Looking for Simón: An emblematic story of impunity
Delgado, María
Sara Mendez's story has all of the necessary components for a film about the military dictatorships of the Southern Cone: arbitrary arrest, torture, baby theft, a clandestine Operation...
...so Thus began a long, Kafkaesque jour- ney through Uruguay's legal system...
...After four years, MVndez was freed...
...Today, they live under the same sky, in the same city with their victims, enjoying total freedom and total impunity, and no one, not even the President, dares to demand that they take responsibility for their criminal acts...
...The criminal courts threw out the case, arguing that it was covered under the 1986 impunity law In the civil courts, two judges and the public prosecutor ruled in favor of M~ndez, but after sev- eral appeals and nine years later, the "Supreme Court ruled in favor of another judge's prior rejection of M6ndez's request to determine the true identity of n's photograph Gerardo V~zquez...
...In 1973, Sara Mendez took refuge in Argentina, fleeing political repression in Uruguay Her son Simon was born in June 1976 in Buenos Aires...
...and, primarily, the military men who kidnapped and "disappeared" Sim6n...
...In 1986 she received information about a boy from Montevideo named Gerardo VAzquez, whose age and description led her to believe he might be her son...
...Thirteen years lost, 13 years of pain and impo- "tence, and several responsible parties: the Vizquez fam- ily, who systematically refused to administer the blood test...
...She lived in Buenos Aires, where she collaborated with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and followed various leads about her missing son Sim6n...
...For 13 years, these military men witnessed the very pub- lic drama surrounding MIndez's search for her son, knowing that she was following a false lead, but they remained silent...
...Sara Mendez's story has all of the necessary components for a film about the military dictatorships of the Southern Cone: arbitrary arrest, torture, baby theft, a clandestine Operation Condor border crossing, a timid judiciary subject to military pressure, press censorship, and anonymity and impunity for the criminals involved...
...It is unique in one aspect, however: The relative Sara Mndez with her searching for her disappeared child is actually the mother, who, against all odds, managed to survive her detention...
...Unable to confirm the boy's identity, Mendez remained certain that she had found her son, but she had been denied all legal recourse to prove her case...
...After 13 years of waiting to know the truth, MSndez found herself again at ground zero in the search for her son...
...Shortly thereafter, the President called on Gerardo Vazquez and urged him to take the DNA test...
...Mendez was tortured in the secret detention center Automotores Orletti, and was later taken secretly to Uruguay with 25 other prisoners, many of whom subsequently disappeared...
...When he was 21 days old, a commando unit made up of five Uruguayan soldiers burst into her home...
...The young man, now 24, agreed to do so The test results were unequivocal: Gerardo Vzquez was not Sara Mendezs son...
...the judges who backed this decision, refusing to grant Mendez her maternal rights...
...The soldiers, operatives of Operation Condor, a transnational network of state terrorism in which Southern Cone dicta- torships cooperated in fighting "subversion," arrested Mendez and took away the infant Sim6n, who was never seen again...
...Last April, Sara Mendez joined the delegation of Mothers and Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared that met with the new president, Jorge Batlle, who affirmed his desire to help uncover the truth...
...After two years of fruitless negotiations with the adoptive parents to conduct a DNA test on the child, Mendez and Mauricio Gatti, Sim6n's father, finally turned to the legal system to get a court order for the test and to investigate the circumstances of the boy's adoption...
Vol. 34 • July 2000 • No. 1
