It was 30 December 1983, and the National Commission on the Disappeared had been set up by Presidential decree a few days earlier. Ernesto Sábato, Ricardo Colombres, Magdalena Ruíz Guiñazú and I were sitting at an unusually large table in an office in downtown Buenos Aires. All the adjoining offices were deserted, with the exception of one in which four young civil servants from the Ministry of the Interior, sent 'to give us a hand at the start', were talking nervously. They were frightened; democracy in Argentina was only twenty days old, following the removal of Galtieri.

LRB 27 January 1994 | PDF Download