"C ASEROS:" "IN PRISON" "Caseros was inaugurated on April 23, 1979, with a speech by" "Dr. Alberto Rodríguez Varela, Minister for Justice during" "Videla's government." "The 85.000 square meter building with two 22 floor towers, two basement floors and a cafeteria for 240 guards, was the Argentine prison system's pride and joy." "With the inauguration of this prison, Argentina is showing the world its commitment to a judicial and political tradition that goes back to the beginning of its independence and which has invariably aimed towards the greater protection of individual rights and freedoms." "You were committed to the path you chose." "Facing the system without asking for nor offering forgiveness." "And the day you were busted, they locked you up to destroy you." "They took you to Caseros, they cruelly abused you in the years you spent in that sordid prison..." "If someone had told me what I was going to go through, I would have said it was impossible to endure, unbearable." "This film is dedicated to:" ""Jorge Toledo, Eduardo Schiavoni and Hernán Biset"" "THE PRISON" "Basically prisons are intensely painful places." "That's what I felt when I came here last week." "Every wall, every corner, every cranny holds a human being's pain." "It's important that we understand what went on in prison life to be able to understand the kind of society the Argentine people put up with today." "The construction of this prison began during the government of Dr. Arturo Frondizi." "Cámpora's government decided to close the project." "And then the genocidal dictatorship decided to go ahead with it." "They invented an absolutely legal concentration camp and it was even inaugurated with great pomp, right in the middle of Buenos Aires, with a bishop's blessing, while saying how this was a model penal institution." "If penal institutions are meant to destroy people obviously this one is a model institution." "The towers contained 1996 cells, eight by four feet." "1360 cells were designed for the permanent custody of the inmates." "140 of them, with solid doors, were used as isolation cells." "As control and repression systems develop prisons tend to depend on architects for their penal policy." "Someone who was never in jail goes to Sierra Chica and gets really scared." "Sierra Chica is very dramatic looking and evokes the image of the inmates with shackles on." "Someone would see this place, and say: "This is all right"." "But inmates actually have more freedom of movement at Sierra Chica" "The architecture of this prison contributes to a project aimed at destroying the person kept here, be a political prisoner or not." "We saw the new one being built and we knew it would be terrible if we went to jail and this prison was opened, because we saw how it was being done." "Considering how inhumane the prison system is, this was a more humane prison than the new one." "You lived in tunnel vision." "The inmates were locked in a cell with three walls and the fourth wall was made of metal bars." "Wall was made of metal bars." "At that time it looked like a luxurious prison." "You see marble everywhere and everything's clean." "It was presented as a five star hotel." "I remember those words." "Even the guards here said this was a five star hotel." "Everything was stylish, the cells up in the last floor, the 18th floor, have a view of the river on one side and the city on the other." "Many in Buenos Aires wished they had that view." "But when inmates from Caseros started to arrive in Rawson, I was shocked to see they were green." "They were as green as dead men, as if straight out of the grave." "They didn't understand my reaction." "They would laugh at me, I said they looked dead, bloodless." "You could see here how you deteriorated and your face turned white, turned green." "I believe my tuberculosis was triggered by the lack of sunlight." "The situation was debilitating, it was a polluted environment, overcrowded, even though it seemed to be very comfortable, that everyone had their own cell." "There was no sun, no yard, we couldn't share anything with others" "You could spend 10 years here and never get direct sunlight because the yards in this prison are not outside, they're indoors and are partially covered by glass bricks, which let light in but not direct sunlight." "Visitors couldn't have contact, only through the glass." "Because of the plumbing design here, inmates could be observed from incredible places:" "From behind the pipes in the bathrooms, behind the toilets." "In other more primitive jails they didn't have it" "This way, just one guard, walking down that hallway could watch over a group of 30 people." "They could be seen on the toilet, they could be seen when they ate, when they wrote a letter, when they were working out..." "The distinctive feature of this prison is that even if they were close to each other, the inmates were isolated from each other." "You were locked in for 23 hours a day without seeing your neighbor." "The director of the Federal Penitentiary Service at that time was Mr. Dotti, who visited the jails regularly." "He always said that with political prisoners the policy must be to break them, break them, and break them." "It is a way of maintaining the oppression that we live under, within the capitalist system." "This system necessarily has to multiply the number of its jails as it doesn't offer other solutions to the people and social conditions deteriorate, creating more reasons to steal." "We can say it's quintessential:" "It was not adapted to be this, it was designed like this." "To confine, to isolate, to keep the sun out, to keep out anything that could confirm your status as a human being, or supposedly," ""reintegrate people into society"." "ARRIVING" "At one time, being transferred meant the road to a beating or a very serious physical weakening and often the fear you had when being transferred was that they weren't taking you to another prison, but to kill you." "We came in police vans with small windows and for someone from Buenos" "Aires like me, seeing the city again after six years of nothing but fields from the cell at Magdalena was gratifying." "We didn't know where we were going." "We were hooded." "Only now that I walk in again do I get to see the ground floor." "I had never seen it before." "After Sierra Chica, everyone arriving here was happy in a way, knowing there was a situation of stability that hadn't been there before." "This is the "lion's den"." "We don't recognize the place because we used to stumble in." "We were beaten as we came in so we don't recognize this today." "But it's where all the political prisoners came in and where they worked on us." "' The welcome committee..." "' The welcome committee." "Besides, they made us love each other very much, we were like..." "' Show us." "' Like this." "' One here..." "' and the other behind." "This one here and the other hand here." "And we had to crouch down." "'It was like we had come to a dance 'Running in" "I recall a funny anecdote..." "We were on ward C, Calvo, in a big elevator." "Conca, Corregidor and me and a guard started hitting me, just me." "So I asked him why he was beating me. "For being so ugly!", he said." "We mostly worried about avoiding the blows from the two lines of guards standing there to beat us." "They tried the same with the guys from Coronda." "But they had a policy of tough resistance." "They turned around and started beating the guards." "As a result, when I arrived the next day with about 14 other guys, the guards were very polite to us." "When we first got to the prison, we were impressed with the luxury." "In the first weeks we were tricked into thinking we were alright here." "We didn't know where we were." "We'd never seen the highways of Buenos Aires before." "When we saw the highways, we didn't know where we were." "When I realized we were at Caseros, I thought, why me, why me?" "I couldn't understand it." "I felt very down, depressed, angry, and many other things that made me ask myself what was going on with me." "I was crushed." "Just feeling I was inside this prison and remembering the inmates I'd seen arriving in Rawson from here made me despair of the darkness." "The next day at daybreak, I didn't know if day had broken." "I couldn't sleep all night, thinking I was in Caseros." "DAY TO DAY" "It's very difficult to convey how it feels to stand here again and see the place where you lived, or tried to live for 18 months." "And the dictators said this was a comfortable place..." "This is the bed." "This was the cupboard we had for our books, and our food." "We had a very strict regime." "We could only lie down a certain number of hours a day in the cell, and almost the only thing we had was a bed." "You could sit, there was a stool here and a table and you could read" "You weren't allowed to talk with the inmates while you were locked in." "The activity here was reading." "We tried to talk about politics." "And drinking mate was a very intense activity." "The fight for hot water started when we got up in the morning and" "The fight for hot water started when we got up in the morning and was a dispute that lasted all day." "All for a mate." "Only those whose family could bring a thermos drank mate." "It was forbidden to make mate for others or to lend your mate gear." "If you wanted to take a nap or read the notes that came in with the" ""doves" or that an inmate passed on to you, you had to mount guard with a mirror." "We would place it like this to see who was coming from either side." "If your neighbor said "green", the coast was clear and we could work out, sleep or read a note." "If he said "red", you had to hide." "We would prepare mate and with our neighbors on either side we would pass the mate between us." "We drank mate, and he passed it on, someone else drank, and so on." "But this activity was also forbidden." "The inmates could not talk about politics." "If the guard caught you talking about politics, you were taken to an isolation cell." "Sometimes they would take us to the gymnasium." "It was supposed to be once a week." "But it was never once a week." "Either the guard wasn't available or the elevator wasn't working, or just because." "So we wouldn't go." "Anything that could make your life more pleasant was forbidden." "You never had any intimacy or regular social contact whatsoever." "The only thing you saw was a window that looked into the sky." "The window was outside the cell." "So you had to climb up to get to see the city, risking a punishment." "You had no intimacy." "You could hear every noise your neighbor made but you didn't ever see him." "It was a crazy situation." "The toilet was here." "We called it the "biorsi"." "We opened the door so we could take a shit without being seen." "To wake us up they played loud music over the PA system to irritate us, and fray our nerves." "They had a good sound system, and if the guards felt like it, they turned up the music to deafen you." "They played a "Los del Suquía" record, 24 hours a day." "There's nothing wrong with "Los del Suquía", but I hate those guys now." "And it boomed out." "And military marching music... 10 minutes, half an hour, one hour of marching music." "I guess they stopped because the guards themselves couldn't take it." "When we had a visit from some international organization, we could tell because the food got better." "So we had good food, perhaps some fruit." "Christmas in prison made no difference because you were still locked up in your cell, except for the tradition of a family celebration in Argentina." "We celebrated with water in aluminum jars." "I recall holding the jar out through the bars to toast with my neighbor:" "Merry Christmas, brother." "You remembered your family, celebrated Christmas and dreamed about freedom." "Eight prisoners sang in the choir." "We had to put up with the rehearsals for two months of the same song." "We had to ask them to stop." "We had enough with the speakers." "They rehearsed "La Pomeña", "Eulogia Tapia"." "It was great." "Listening to our comrades rehearsing, to welcome our families in such a bleak place." "I think we put some life into it." "This was our yard." "There used to be a couple of Ping'Pong tables and we could walk through the corridors two at a time, never more than two." "It looked huge to us." "After spending all day in a four by seven foot space and then going to the yard." "The guards were up there." "This was covered with glass, there were very little light." "There used to be a small table here." "Let me lead the way..." "Don't you walk around the house when you get nervous?" "Every day we fought to get some sunlight." "We didn't have light." "One of the few good things was climbing up here and looking at the river." "We could see part of the city and the sunrise." "When my neighbor shone his mirror there, we would climb these bars and look out." "We looked at the sunrise or the girls sunbathing on rooftops." "Some of the inmates had such incredible eyesight..." "They could see with unbelievable detail from 900 feet." "At daybreak, as we were on the riverside, I used to climb up the bars to see the sun rise." "One day I was caught there and was taken to an isolation cell." "I was given a punishment slip to sign, and it read: "Punished for climbing up the bars to see the sun rise."" "This prison, with its modern facilities allows the inmate to" "This prison, with its modern facilities allows the inmate to devote his time to work, study, thought or sport." "Without additional suffering to aggravate their confinement." "This constitutes a tangible confirmation of the basic principles of our political organization." "The 96 cells on the ground floor were used for the new arrivals while they were being identified, and also to "work" on them before interrogation." "This is a temporary cell on the ground floor where we were brought in 1980, to undergo a sort of interrogation by the disciplinary committee." "This was formed by a colonel, a priest or two, a psychologist..." "There were some fifteen people." "Their goal was to find repentance in the political prisoners." "Before facing this committee we were brought here where we spent some eight hours without food, water or the toilet." "They meant to break us psychologically and to create divisions between political prisoners." "They asked you to sign a document, saying you gave up your political affiliations, your terrorist activities." "We explained that we were not terrorists, we were politicians." "You were always afraid of making a mistake with your uniform or the way you stood, or how you walked, or what you did." "A good friend, Piraña Salinas and I shared the record of isolation cell punishments from 1975 onwards." "I did 367 days in isolation." "The "pigs", as we called it, was a system where they took our clothes away, they beat us, they didn't feed us, and we weren't allowed to see visitors..." "Then one morning, somebody opened my screen door and another inmate gave me a piece of bread, after a couple of days going without food." "Just a smile from that inmate who called me by my name and said he was from this neighborhood helps me remember today what solidarity means." "They gave out mattresses down the hall, and you had to run for them." "If we didn't run, we didn't get a mattress." "We rebelled and wouldn't run for the mattresses." "This meant more punishment, meaning we got no mattress or blanket, and also they wouldn't feed you." "Within the prison system there is a special police corps that has no daily contact with the inmates but is involved in inspecting everything inside the prison, including, of course, the inmates." "It's called the inspection drill." "They are brutal, they wear shields and helmets:" "As if they were going to battle." "This drill means terror in prison." "They come in beating everyone, so that the rules are clear from the beginning." "First, they would inspect us." "We had to stand with our legs spread." "The frisking usually involved some kind of abuse." "They kicked us out of the cells." "They would storm in, 20 or 30 of them." "They took us out, kicking us one at a time, our heads down." "Sometimes naked." "Beating and shouting..." "They stripped you and frisked you and they stayed in the cells doing all sorts of things, stealing, breaking, stomping..." "They took letters or photos from our families and threw them on the floor, or tore them up..." "In this wing, the inspection drill caught a paralytic guy." "Obviously he couldn't run, he was on crutches." "They kicked him on the floor." "Prison culture turns anyone working here into a repressor, a torturer." "I was here because of my beliefs." "They were here just to make ends meet." "There's a big difference." "There was a young boy who was very cruel with the inmates." "He enjoyed being cruel, a 20 year old boy." "I heard a beating, or something worse was being prepared for him." "So I went to him and told him:" "Listen, you are abusing people, you're going to get killed." "You are going to die stupidly." "A saint said you could catch more flies with a drop of honey than with a keg of vinegar." "Treat people well and things will change." "And the kid changed." "He started treating people so well he was transferred somewhere else." "The guys laughed at me." "They said the kid changed because he thought I was going to kill him." "THE RESISTANCE" "In the severest conditions of repression we always maintained our solidarity." "In a radius of five cells there were inmates giving courses on political or economic issues..." "When I was imprisoned I couldn't walk without mechanical aids." "Today I can go to the bathroom, and take a shower on my own, all without mechanical aids." "That's thanks to my fellow inmates." "I remember inmates who could dream..." "Among them, Isidoro Gelstein, who wrote poems for his wife who was imprisoned in Villa Devoto..." "'We'll meet at five both of us looking to the sky... our eyes, not our hands will go to the meeting... '" "We had an organization based on solidarity and the fight with our enemy, at that time the military." "We knew the way out was to stick together." "We had to be together," "We knew the way out was to stick together." "We had to be together, regardless of political differences." "The enemy didn't differentiate, so we had to be organized." "At the La Plata jail we thought we would all be killed." "They had already killed two of our comrades." "Those of us who were more involved decided if they came to kill us only the person directly affected should protest." "The others would read a book." "If they protested they would also be killed." "To break the inmates' solidarity would be to break each man's beliefs and break us as human beings." "They couldn't do that." "In these difficult years, after defeating subversion we, the" "Argentine people, want to consolidate our peace and guarantee the rights of the people according to the principles of the National" "Reorganization Process." "Some books were authorized and others were not, according to the titles or their ideologies." "I don't recall if we had a bible here." "I do recall that for those of us coming from the La Plata prison it had been forbidden." "Monsignor" "Plaza had given that order because we gave it a subversive interpretation." "In Rawson we went for over a year without books." "Every now and then they gave us the bible." "Francisco Santucho studied indigenous languages." "They wouldn't let him have a Quechua dictionary because they said it could be used for codes, by subversives communicating." "They wouldn't let in chemistry or law books." "I could have devoted myself to literature." "The Federal Penitentiary Service drafted a prison code, not to comply with it, but to show it to the American States Organization, to its human rights committee." "I heard about that code and I asked an aunt for a sociology book." "They brought them." "But I never got them." "Magazines were censored." "I never had newspapers in this hospital." "We would read magazines like "Gente" or "7 Días" and the newspaper was clipped." "We never got pinups or political articles." "Sometimes even the sports section was doctored." "I got upset when we got to see the soccer games and at half time it was turned off so we wouldn't see the news." "The news we read was about airport movements, the horoscope, some comics, not all of them." "At Rawson they were stricter with some texts." "We had no problems with literature here." "Sometimes we were delighted when a political article got through or if in the sports section we read that the Peronist march had been sung at a World Cup match..." "For us, communication was very important." "It made us feel alive and allowed us to get information." "Good and bad" "This hole here goes onto a chamber that goes all the way up to the 17th floor." "We knew that through a grid we could pass what we called "doves", messages to inmates in other wings." "The "candies" were the messages." "Sometimes we wrote on cigarette paper, folded several times and passed them on, or we would leave them somewhere in the yard." "When we got out, we realized the guards used that chamber, and intercepted the "candies"." "They would read them and pass them on." "We also communicated through the toilet." "We drained the water out and we could talk with the guy on top or below." "This required a technique." "It was also a risk, because talking through the toilet causes angina." "In other prisons we had bleach to clean them." "Not here, so we had this throat condition." "But we couldn't stop communicating either." "We were transferred to Unit 9 in La Plata, after a lot of "candies"" "with our reports on the place, had fallen into the wrong hands." "When we were transferred, they sang us some song about "the guard tower not surrendering", and in the same song, they included each comrade's code name, a way of saying they knew all about us." "The "doves" were little packages tied with shoestrings." "And passed through the window from wing to wing." "To throw the "dove" we had half a sausage from the last tuck box that we didn't eat." "We had gone for a month without extra food." "They gave us a very thin soup, with a bit of cabbage and four grains of rice." "We kept that sausage to use as a weight..." "We had nothing else to weigh down the "dove"." "Then one day we sent the dove and an inmate from another cell ate the sausage." "STAND IN LINE" "STAND IN LINE ' WAIT TO BE C ALLED" "MINOR VISITOR" "NO HOODS, CAPS, SC ARVES, GLOVES, WIGS, LEATHER JACKETS..." "Our fight on this front, a purposeful front, was possible because of the solidarity and involvement of our families." "The presence of our families, together with our political convictions made it possible for us to bear many years under awful circumstances." "Our relatives also had to endure all sorts of abuse." "The frisking when they came to visit us, particularly the women" "Many relatives don't visit prisoners because of that." "It's difficult to get used to being naked with people you don't know, show them your genitals." "It's downright unpleasant." "When my mother first visited me here, when I got here, I was in the humiliating uniform and had my head shaved." "My mother had already been visiting me for six years at Magdalena." "When she saw me shaved, in uniform, she almost didn't recognize me." "She stared at me in disbelief." "She hid her anxiety so as not to worry me." "I tried to be strong too." "Among us inmates we tried to transmit joy between us and to the others." "In 1978 my brother was kidnapped and by 1979 my mother had severe arthritis but she still dared to come here." "I remember her walking with great difficulty, with those zimmerframes for people with arthritis." "She came to these very uncomfortable stools to talk with me, making a huge effort." "Right here, on the other side, I saw my dad, my mum, my brothers." "The visiting hour slipped by very quickly." "Women have always been more supportive than men." "Mothers, aunts, sisters, more than brothers, etc." "We got the notes out through our relatives, with little "candies", the size of a fingernail." "We wrote the notes in very small handwriting on cigarette paper, which turned out to be large documents." "To get them out, we had two ways to pass them on to our relatives." "One was to carry it in the mouth and the other was inside the nose." "I tried that once and the paper wouldn't come out until I was freed and I went to see a doctor who took it out." "I would like to commemorate the father and brother of Pepe Bronte, a very dear comrade." "Villanueva's brother." "The father and brother of" "Juan Carlos Dante Gullo." "I mean the mother and brother." "And my then wife, Alicia Nélida Calzetta." "They are all missing today because of the solidarity they showed, not only towards us personally, but also to all of us comrades who were in prison then." "The inauguration of a model prison like this one is an explicit monument to faith in man, to man as made in God's image, individual, rational and free, to the possibility of his earthly and supernatural redemption and his evocation of the eternal." "This is a very painful issue." "According to the message of Jesus, all of us in the church should have been behind the persecuted, the abused and the missing people, and against the violence of the military government." "The hierarchy of the Argentine church was with the enemy." "Monsignor Pio Laghi, ambassador to the Pope in Argentina, came to visit us political prisoners, and gave mass on Christmas day, 1979." "Along with other political prisoners we told him about our concern for some of our comrades who were very psychologically troubled." "He said he was constantly in contact with the military" "Meeting and that he tried to make them more aware of these things and that he regularly played tennis with Massera." "The prison priest was another cog in the wheel." "He was a part of the repression machine." "When our catholic comrades went to confess, he asked them for information which he then passed on to the intelligence services." "He tried to interrogate us when he gave mass to us." "He took part of the interrogation committees in Caseros." "Cascabello was his name, he forced us to go to mass." "Father Cascabello tried to have us confess." "He wanted us to repent, to change." "He wanted us to sign a document to say we had repented." "We must highlight a difference." "We also shared the prison with comrade" "We must highlight a difference." "We also shared the prison with comrade priests." "So we can't talk about the church in general." "These comrades were also the church." "Some of them were also generous and did what they had to do and were sympathetic to the persecuted, the abused and the poor." "I remember Father Joaquín Nuñez, who is still a priest today." "He was just another inmate." "THE WORD OF GOD" "This is the chapel where we came to mass." "We were also under guard here." "The guards were placed around there." "Staying in the chapel was dangerous for the inmates." "I recall a particular mass." "The priest talked to us about Jonah." "He told us how Jonah, who had disobeyed the Almighty command, had sailed as a stowaway aboard a ship." "Then there was a great storm." "The" "Captain found out there was a sinner on board." "The priest said:" "I don't know if he tortured him or what, but Jonah confessed immediately." "So they threw him overboard." "This was said by a priest to a congregation of prisoners." "This is the little chalice that the Pallarolls family made for me so that I could conduct mass." "I was forbidden by the guards from conducting mass." "They said I was a criminal and no longer part of the church." "So I was using a Coca Cola cap." "When they found out, they said they'd make one for me." "Each one had to decide for himself if there was any point in coming to a place where mass was conducted by people collaborating with the repression." "We used to go to mass basically to get out of our cells and meet in a common place and even if we couldn't speak, we got to see each other and communicate with our eyes." "We could get together with our comrades and enjoy the brotherhood, hold hands, and sing." "This connection with the other inmates gave mass another quality." "This is the identification sector, where we had to "play the piano", or get fingerprinted." "And the log book was here, like this one." "Just now we were browsing through these books that Dante found." "He opened this one and said..." "Tell them..." "It's funny, I opened a book and said, "Maybe we're in here"." "I thought so." "And the year was the same." "And believe it or not I had my finger on my own name." "We opened a book and he put his finger exactly on his name." "A book abandoned in an office." "Completely forgotten." "We found all our names, our cells, where we came from." "Cambiasso was here, Orduna." "Gringo Lesca, all of us here." "You can see the changes, the transfers." "Jaime, Martínez. "Crazy" Jaime." "Alfredo Torucci." "Pascual Senda..." "Gullo Juan Carlos..." "Corregidor..." "He was transferred for being ugly." "I shared many hours here with "Old Man" Cambiasso." "He was a great guy and he was killed a few days before the return to democracy." "Becerra was here, a very important scientist with the CONEA." "He really looked the part of the crazy scientist, and one day we went to donate blood and he had a T'shirt full of holes." "The nurse asked him what his job had been when he was free." "And he said, "I was a professor at the Balseiro Institute"." ""I'm a nuclear physicist"." "And she said, "I'm being serious"." "At Rawson, where I spent more time, I was with Menajovsky, who is here with us at the CTA." "There were other guys like Luis Laplace, Humberto Tumini, "Yellow'" "Genoud." "Among the Peronists were Copello, Morales Smith, Sosa" "Padilla, from Tucumán." "Julio Troxler was killed." "Francisco Santucho was kidnapped by the army, and thrown out of a plane in Santiago del Estero." "Valderrama was also kidnapped and killed." "The only survivors from that cell block are" "Lapeña, Hernan Pereira and me." "Many comrades were left along the way." "The President of the Lomas de Zamora University Federation, Julio" "The President of the Lomas de Zamora University Federation, Julio" "Molina, is still missing today." "Cristina Bonposto, militant of the AJUP." "Ocerin, the academic secretary of the university is missing." "Comrade Moncho is also missing." "One of the Musso brothers who studied social sciences is also missing." "My sister is also missing, she studied at the Lomas University" "JORGE TOLEDO" "I shared my cell with inmates who had nervous breakdowns." "One of them, still hears noises in his head today, that isolate him from reality." "This system was designed to turn people crazy in the middle term." "Many people committed suicide here." "Some of them committed suicide, and others were "suicided"." "Some of our comrades were crushed." "They had serious breakdowns." "Like Padilla." "I asked why I was there, and they said nothing." "The day went on and they didn't give me any clothes, it was very quiet." "I was feeling worse and worse." "I thought about comrades who had suffered psychological damage, and I was scared of going through the same thing myself." "In a wing just like this one, we all witnessed the suicide, or rather induced death, or murder of a comrade called Toledo." "The repressors knew he was in a bad state, so they worked on him." "Today, I can remember him in the yard, with his hands inside his jacket, his eyes down, walking alone, and us trying to help him, as much as we could." "We could offer some help, anyone can, based on solidarity, and then there is professional help, which wasn't given, or it was given and then withdrawn." "We felt a great impotence, watching him isolate himself and deteriorate." "Then one day, they were bringing us to the yard in groups of 6, 7, 10, depending on the guard." "They opened my cell, I walked in a line, like we were supposed to, and I saw he had stayed in his cell." "He was sitting there, his back against the wall, eyes down." "So I said, "Come on!"" "Let's go walking or something." "He wouldn't answer." "He turned his head slowly and looked at me in the eyes." "His eyes were full of pain." "He was telling me, "This is it for me"." "We went out to the yard and we were surprised because two hours went by, then two and a half, and we were still there." "Three hours." "When we were taken in, Toledo wasn't in his cell." "Some inmates saw him on their way back." "They were taking his body out on a stretcher." "He had killed himself." "He had hanged himself with a blanket." "That night, probably in a gruesome joke by the prison system, they treated us to a special meal." "Roast beef and potatoes." "With gravy even." "It's so perverse..." "This is the first time I've recalled this in public." "Remembering Toledo's look has been an internal exercise of mine." "This is the first time I've reproduced this." "Now I remember that dinner and everyone in this wing must remember, that through those speakers up there they played the funeral march." "All night long." "The funeral march, all night." "A special meal and the funeral march." "That was the day Toledo died." "I sat on my bed holding my head." "I probably cried for two or three minutes." "And then I remembered you couldn't cry, that it would weaken you." "If you became weak, they hit you." "So you had to get over it, breathe deep and keep on going, to avoid ending up like him." "He was forced." "It wasn't a suicide like the others." "He was manipulated." "Caseros was originally designed as a prison for those still on trial." "Caseros was originally designed as a prison for those still on trial." "People undergoing trials, which should not last more than four months." "But then it was used for inmates whose trials lasted for years, or for those who, during the period of the dictatorship, were left to "the discretion of the Executive Powers that be"." "In other words, arbitrarily imprisoned." "THE ACTIVISTS" "Most of us had been militants with the Montoneros." "The other organization which had a lot of people in jail was the PRT, and then the Peronists, FAL, Peronist areas not integrated with the Montoneros, such as the MR17." "I was detained for being a Peronist University Youth militant which was part of the Montoneros at that time." "I was in Lomas de Zamora University." "I was detained in April, 1970." "I was accused of being a member of a guerrilla group that tried to take a police precinct in" "Rosario." "The group was called the Che Guevara Commando." "I started as a militant in the Peronist Youth in 1972." "I formed part of the Montoneros and was active in many areas." "I was a delegate at the UEF, at the JTP, at the Quilmes brewery." "Once, one of our comrades was wounded in action in Córdoba with a leg wound and couldn't walk because he had lost his calf." "They ordered us out of the showers and I stayed behind with him." "He hadn't got dressed yet and he needed help..." "And besides he was a fighter, not a terrorist, a fighter." "I've been an active militant since I was a teenager in various branches of the Peronist movement." "I was a leader at the Bank Worker's" "Labor Union." "I was committed to the Montoneros Movement, and I was in the Peronist Working Youth movement." "I was lifted on March 20, 1975, when Rocamora, a Minister in Isabel" "Perón's government said there was a subversive movement in the Paraná" "River industrial area, going from Zárate up to San Lorenzo, and that it was based in Villa Constitución." "They said it was full of guerrillas." "They detained over three hundred of our comrades, during an operation that closed down the whole city." "They busted all the union leaders, delegates, activists..." "The people reacted." "The metalworkers staged a two month strike which ended in a bloodbath." "Many of our comrades were kidnapped and killed." "The Triple A was there." "I was imprisoned because of my political activism." "Because I embraced the cause of Perón and Evita, the cause of revolutionary" "Peronism." "The Montoneros cause, and basically the cause of the" "Argentine worker, through the fight of our fellow metalworkers, at the factory in Quilmes." "I was a militant in the Workers Revolutionary Party." "I never regretted that, and never will." "A great part of those imprisoned were with the Montoneros like me." "I told the military at the time I wasn't innocent, and I still maintain that, I never was." "Perhaps it is not morally right but it was better than doing nothing and when I had to take a truckload of milk or meat to a slum, I had to carry a rifle, and I did it with pride." "And I carried it until the day they took me in." "I was a union leader, a Peronist, also a Montonero." "I spent over seven years in jail for belonging to the ERP." "I fought proudly for the people's cause, was a union militant for a long time, a militant in the Peronist movement." "I was a militant in the Peronist Youth most notably with the" "University Peronist Youth." "I was 18 then and I aspired to what many of us wanted at that time:" "A better country for everyone." "This was the Army Sanitary Center, and this is where I was caught in 1973, when, with the ERP, we attacked this military barracks." "We took it but things didn't go as we expected." "We were surrounded by military forces all over the place." "They asked for our surrender, and considering we were in the middle of town, at dawn, we came out with our hands up and surrendered." "I was then imprisoned." "Paradoxically I was taken at these barracks and years later I found out I was in that prison over there and now I'm here again, visiting." "To be able to look up into the sun, after having been in this dungeon" "To be able to look up into the sun, after having been in this dungeon was glorious for me, and I was in the Rawson jail." "They cut my hair and my mustache and I said:" "I'm staying in then." "I was staying in but it didn't seem too bad." "I was happy, I was returning to La Plata, after all." "I signed a paper, and they said, "You can go"." "I had been in jail for 12 years, seven months and ten days, and they said, "You can go"." "They took me to the judge and set me free." "Being free after seven years and three months in prison is very nice, but when I got out of here I think I felt the same as when I walked out of La Plata." "They took me in a car to Paraná where the governor met me, before I went home, in the government buildings, where he handed me over to my "last prison guard", my wife." "I got out after the Falklands War, when the Pope was here." "I was one of about 130 set free as a result of the Pope's visit." "The liberated comrades and their families organized a demonstration in Devoto." "We looked out of the windows in Devoto and waved flags." "We saw many familiar faces, just a few meters away." "Lifetime friends, relatives." "The military remembered May 25, 1973 and they got scared." "As of February 1st, 2001, Caseros stopped receiving inmates." "It was recommended for demolition." "The noise you hear, is a jail being destroyed." "This will cease to exist." "The city will reclaim this land." "These noises remind me of the sound of prison bars closing, and today it means the prison is being demolished." "To be brief:" "I am happy that this will be destroyed." "This demolition..." "This prison is a piece of shit." "We endured it, we got out, and we're here telling our story and celebrating the destruction of this jail." "I AM..." "When I was lifted, I worked for the ENTEL phone company." "When I was lifted, I worked for the ENTEL phone company." "When I got out, they took me back and then I left." "I went to work in" "PAMI and drove an ambulance for a few years, and now I'm studying law at the Lomas University." "I'm happy to be back there." "I'm Secretary General of the Argentine Musician's Union." "I am still a labor union leader." "I am still a militant in my life." "I'm an officer at the Consumer Rights office, in Buenos Aires." "I'm a Parliamentary secretary in the Chamber of Deputies, in the Province of Salta." "I am the Secretary General of the Quilmes Metalworkers' Union." "I'm a congressman and the President of the committee for urban planning" "I'm a student." "I study journalism and work as a cab driver." "I belong to a neighborhood support society, and I work with the" "Quilmes Remembrance Commission, working to regain our cultural memory." "Nothing that attacks the interests of the people" "THE EXPERIENCE" "The extreme experience of prison, torture, the depression, the anxiety we suffered in borderline situations, and to survive to do this, to testify and tell the tale." "Survive with dignity, not taking anyone down with me." "I can't just neatly lay all that on the table, nor can I be neutral about it." "I was 22 then." "Most prisoners were 22, 23 or 24 at the most." "We were all kidnapped in 1975." "There were no more prisoners after that." "We had our own utopia, fighting for the people." "I hope we can reverse this defeat by the enemy, and reach the utopia and dreams we pursued in the seventies." "I never condoned violence but also, I never condemned violence when it came from below." "The violence of the poor is a reaction to the violence of the ones on top, which nobody talks about." "This will continue as it started, it will go on unnoticed." "Good only for imprisoning Argentine people for dividing and destroying whole families." "Of course mistakes were made." "But at least in the seventies most of us popular militant fighters believed we could transform the society and the world." "We ought to look around and see where those military men are now, those priests, doctors and psychologists who accused us, and where those of us who were in prison are now." "At least we could survive that experience, thanks to our comrades and friends." "And today I can say that many of my best friends and..." "Perhaps one of the most valuable experiences I've had, regarding human behavior, love, faith, solidarity, came from inside this prison." "Today I want to tell you you are my brother and I won't forget your fight in the sordid prison..." "My name is Julio Mogordoy, I'm Uruguayan." "My name is Marcelo Vencentini." "My name is Martín Jaime." "Juan Carlos Dante Gullo." "Everybody calls me "Barba" Gutierrez." "I am Nestor Alberto Rojas." "I am Hugo Soriani." "Former militant in the PRT and the ERP." "I spent nine years in prison, one and a half of them in here." "I am Antonio Puigjané, a priest." "I am Carlos Miguel Kunkel." "I am Alberto Piccinini, labor union leader." "My name is Hugo Colaone, I'm from Quilmes." "My name is Hernán Invernizzi." "My name is Pascual Reyes, I was also in this prison." "I'm Ramón Corregidor." "I'm Ernesto Villanueva." "I was in prison during the whole military government." "My name is Valentín Mastrángelo." "I spent a year in this prison." "My name is Luis Iglesias Barbeito." "My name is Manuel Justo Gaggero." "I'm from Entre Ríos and I'm a lawyer." "I am Pedro Avalos." "I was born in 1955." "A black year for the Argentine people." "I had polio in 1956, a black year for the Argentine people." "1029 political prisoners passed through Caseros." "Jorge Toledo spent two years and ten months in this prison." "Jorge Toledo spent two years and ten months in this prison." "He hanged to death here on 06'26'82." "Eduardo Schiavoni spent a year and ten months in this prison." "He hanged to death here on 07'10'80." "Testimonies by:" "The following architects designed this prison:" "Nowadays Alberto Rodríguez Varela is:" "Consultant on Constitutional" "Affairs at the Estudio Ymaz." "VP of the National Academy for" "Moral and Political Sciences." "VP of the Institutional Affairs Committee" "Defending lawyer of the former dictator, Jorge Videla." "The interviews took place in 2001."