Last Sunday, just as every year since 1995, the association Mothers and Family members of the Detained-Disappeared and a long list of other organizations, held the “march of silence” where thousands of people marched down the main avenue of the city to demand explanations about the fate of hundreds of Uruguayan people who were arrested during the military regime and who, to this day, were never found.

This date marks the appearance in Buenos Aires, on May 20th, 1976, of the bodies of Zelmar Michelini and Hector Gutierrez Ruiz, Uruguayan law-makers who were murdered in Argentina by a military command in the context of the "Operation Condor". In this “operation”, Rosario Barredo and William Whitelaw were also murdered. They were members of the resistance to the dictatorship and were at that time exiled in Argentina, as were thousands of Uruguayan men and women.

The date also coincides with the birthday of current Uruguayan President, Jose Mujica, who despite having an absolute majority in Parliament, hasn’t been able to eliminate in his two years in office the laws that protect the impunity of the people responsible for the disappearances.

However, after the recent finding of remains of disappeared people near military barracks as a result of the intense work by university forensic anthropologists who are working without official clues, the pact of secret by the former repressors seems to be starting to break.

In the last six months, the body of teacher Julio Castro was found. Castro was kidnapped when he was 68 years old and tortured to death. In addition, in the same military field, the remains of Ricardo Blanco Valiente, member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, from Mercedes city, were also found.

These findings have triggered new investigations targeted to retired military officers, although a more active attitude by the government with reference to this is demanded.

In this way, one of the challenges ahead is the establishment of a National Institute of Human Rights and the recognition by the State on June 4th of the "institutional responsibility" for the violation of these rights during the dictatorship.

The march was held, as every year, in absolute silence, only broken by the reading of the names of the people disappeared, even those of Castro and Blanco, who are formally no longer disappeared. When arriving to Plaza Libertad, the crowd sang the National Anthem with special emphasis on the lyrics "Tyrants, Tremble". These two words were a metaphor of the resistance against tyranny during the long military dictatorship.

The annual mobilization in Uruguay took place a few days before the beginning of a denunciation work to identify the people responsible of crimes against humanity in Brasil, that also suffered a dictatorship between 1964 and 1985. This prompted President Dilma Roussef to create last May 16 a Truth Commission in charge of drafting a report about state terrorism in the country between 1946 and 1988.

Photos: Nairí Aharonián (FB) and Rebelarte.info