In a landmark trial that heard, for the first time, about horrors suffered by transgender people, a judge in Argentina has convicted 11 former military, police, and government officials of crimes against humanity committed during the country’s last dictatorship.
The three-year trial focused on the murders, forced disappearances, and homicides that occurred at or were connected to three covert detention and abuse facilities located on the periphery of Buenos Aires. They were known as the Banfield detention center, the Quilmes detention center, and “El Infierno” – or “hell” – by the officers who operated them.
The verdict was delivered on Tuesday to a packed courtroom in La Plata, located about 60 kilometers from the capital. There were 605 plaintiffs, including high school students, young pregnant women who gave birth in captivity, and their children who were taken from them and not returned.
Many of the women themselves remain disappeared. The trial was also the first time transgender women, who had been tortured, sexually abused, and forced to work in the detention centers, were heard in a courtroom during more than 300 dictatorship-related trials.
The panel of three judges classified the offenses as crimes against humanity, with the presiding judge, Ricardo Basílico, stating: “These acts, in addition to being crimes against humanity, were committed within the framework of a systematic extermination.”
The convicted officials watched the verdict via video link from their seats or from their homes, where they have been under house arrest. Ten of the accused received life sentences, one received a 25-year sentence, and one was found not guilty.
“It’s very significant,” said Ana Oberlin, one of the prosecutors in the case, of the verdict, stating: “It’s the first time, not only in Argentina but in the world, that we address the violence [trans women] suffered during state terrorism.”
Paola Alagastino, one of the five transgender individuals who testified during the trial, said: “It was hell, what we experienced there.”
The trial also examined forced contraception and sexual crimes committed against cisgender women who were in custody.
Although Argentina has been praised worldwide for its efforts to bring justice to the victims of the military dictatorship’s horrors between 1976 and 1983, President Javier Milei’s current administration has sought to challenge the societal consensus established during that time, particularly by downplaying the crimes of the dictatorship.
His government released a film on Sunday that once again disputes the estimate of 30,000 people who disappeared, coinciding with a large march to commemorate the 48th anniversary of the coup that shook Buenos Aires.
Five decades before the dictatorship fell, the defense itself cited alternate estimates, one of which was based on classified documents, claiming nearly 22,000 deaths between 1975 and 1978, five years before the dictatorship ended.
According to Oberlin, the trial revealed just how much remains unknown about what occurred during that bloody period. It also shed light on the names of five unidentified individuals who disappeared, as well as evidence about a detained woman whose maternity had previously been a mystery, in addition to the experiences of transgender women.
“We’re also learning about new cases that we knew nothing about,” said Oberlin. “Even if it was only one person, what happened is truly horrifying.”
The verdict evoked mixed emotions for Julieta González, one of the transgender women who passed through the Banfield detention center and testified in court about the conditions, physical abuse, and hearing the cries of a child.
“Justice delayed is not justice,” she said.
Regarding the convicted officials, she remarked: “Forty-eight years have passed now. Such a lengthy trial, and they didn’t even flinch.
“I’m not sure if justice was served. But now it’s in the memory of Argentinians, so that this never happens again – not here, or anywhere else in the world.”
