Long memories of a continent's shallow graves still fester

In his first interview for two decades the man known as Argentina's blonde angel, former navy captain Alfredo Astiz, regretted nothing. "I am technically the best prepared man in the country to kill a politician or a journalist," he said. He admitted kidnapping new-born babies and infiltrating the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo organisation during Argentina's dirty war era - from 1976 to 1983 - when 30,000 people were "disappeared" by state security forces.

He claimed his navy colleagues wanted him to lead an uprising. In 1996 his superiors agreed that he merited promotion but there was an obstacle: an international arrest warrant by France, that sentenced him to life imprisonment in absentia for kidnapping and killing two French nuns.

Under pressure from Jacques Chirac, President Carlos Menem retired Astiz before a state visit to France but he was rehired as a navy intelligence assessor.

The Astiz case highlights the uneasy relationship between civilian and military rulers in Latin America, where democracy was restored only after torturers were guaranteed immunity from prosecution and allowed to keep millions of dollars' worth of property stolen from victims of repression.

Former military leaders are now enjoying wealth, influence and even electoral success, notably in Bolivia, where Gen Hugo Banzer was elected president last June. Banzer's military rule, from 1971 to 1978, was marked by 39 deaths, 65 disappearances, 3,059 political prisoners and 663 people forced into exile.

"I ask pardon only of God should my conscience demand it," Banzer said on his election day.

In Argentina's Tucuman province, former Gen Antonio Bussi was elected governor despite 600 deaths attributed to his rule. This week Swiss bank accounts linked to Bussi were uncovered. In a manoeuvre worthy of Al Capone, Bussi may be impeached for illicit enrichment after walking away unpunished from 600 assassinations.

Argentina's post-junta president from 1983 to 1989, Raul Alfonsin, opened investigations into military crimes, conducted trials and imprisoned prominent army leaders, but stopped when army pressure grew too great. The laws of due obedience - a legal get-out for people claiming to have just been obeying orders - and full stop - effectively a statute of limitation - led to a full pardon under President Carlos Menem.

Before the Astiz interview, relatives of the disappeared were denounced as "insane" by President Menem but public opinion polls have since shown 78 per cent of Argentinians in favour of ditching the due obedience laws. They question the forgive-and-forget laws that allow army terror structures to remain intact.

All over Latin America the moral right of the victims to know at whose hands their loved ones died was annulled by the state's fear of upsetting the army, which still wields considerable power. When the army raised its voice presidents trembled and caved in to their demands - even their granddaughter's demands.

In Paraguay, where Alfredo Stroessner presided over 35 years of iron-fisted rule from 1954 to 1989, Napoleon Ortigoza served 34 years in jail - 25 of them in solitary confinement. Mr Ortigoza was invited to talk to pupils at a school last May but a Stroessner ally stopped the visit, claiming that the dictator's granddaughter, who attended the school, might suffer harm if it went ahead.

In coming to terms with the past, a breakthrough occurred when former Argentinian navy captain Adolfo Scilingo confessed two years ago to tossing drugged prisoners from planes in so-called death flights (2,000 people died that way) and agreed to testify. As he prepared for the trial, Scilingo himself was kidnapped and had the initials of three investigative journalists carved into his forehead.

Judges from Spain, Italy and France have begun hearings into the disappearance of hundreds of European citizens in Argentina and Chile during the 1970s and 1980s, with international arrest warrants issued against prominent military figures who now risk capture by Interpol should they leave their home countries.

In post-war Germany, Hollywood epics like Schindler's List have helped preserve the memory of the Holocaust. Surviving Nazi war criminals are still pursued to the end of the earth, which often turns out to be a mansion somewhere in South America.

After the collapse of East Germany, access to Stasi secret police files was granted to anyone, who could also then request to know the identity of their informer. In this way, people were able to confront the informer or let matters rest - the choice was theirs. In Latin and South America, the closest citizens come to confronting their torturers have been occasional fisticuffs in the street.

In Mexico, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), in power for 70 years, has begun to release secret archives on the events of October 1968, when hundreds of peaceful protesters were massacred in a public square. The official version insisted that snipers fired first at the army, but no evidence was ever found to support the official story.

In Colombia, relatives of the victims of the 1985 Palace of Justice siege scored a significant victory last month when the courts finally gave permission to exhume a shallow grave containing 261 bodies. Colombia's M-19 guerrillas had seized the building in November 1985, taking dozens of hostages.

The Colombian army rejected desperate pleas for negotiation and stormed the building, killing most of the people inside. A handful of survivors were escorted from the building and disappeared into a common grave.

It took 12 years to win the right to re-examine the corpses and challenge the state version of events, which insists that the guerrillas executed their hostages.

The failure of democratic governments to rein in military power has had a negative impact on the region's electoral process. An estimated one million Chileans stayed away from the polls last October, protesting against Augusto Pinochet's continued interference in the political system.

Before he left office, Pinochet implemented a series of measures establishing parallel power for himself, permitting him to select his successor as head of the army, fill designated senate seats with army loyalists and hold on to a lucrative armed forces perk - 10 per cent of the profits of state copper company Codelco.

A Chilean judge has accepted the first case against Pinochet, who stands formally accused of genocide, illegal burial, kidnapping and criminal association. The Chilean Socialist Party, a government partner, has demanded a referendum on whether Pinochet should take up his seat in the senate, an institution he closed down 25 years ago.

One of the main demands of relatives and human rights groups is that torturers and collaborators be identified and banned from holding office or public service posts.

The attitude of Astiz, Pinochet, Bussi, Banzer and many more military hard-liners has vindicated the position of the mothers, grandmothers and children of the disappeared, once accused of fomenting division and obstructing reconciliation. In Latin America's democraduras (part democracy, part dictatorship), remembering the past is still an urgent task if it is not to be repeated.

"F--- bastard killer" was the stark message held up by the Mothers of the Disappeared when Alfredo Astiz arrived in court two weeks ago, a reminder that when memory and grieving are denied, only the bluntest message conveys the pain.