Two identical chalets. They have two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. But they are not attached, but are found in different corners of the Zárate naval base. That is why, when it was visiting day, the logistics had to be well coordinated. Who made the food, who got the drink, in what house they met.
Alfredo Astiz entered into the Alberto Gonzalez like what they were: very old acquaintances. They were classmates from the “100th class”, which began their studies at the Naval Academy in 1968. A few years later they crossed paths again, but in the ENavy Mechanics School (ESMA).
There they were no longer young students, but two central gears of that bloody machinery through which five thousand people passed and only few survived. During the dictatorship they had had sparks: they both fell in love at the same time with the same woman, a 20-year-old girl kidnapped at the ESMA. It was González who prevailed in that fight: not by her decision, who was systematically raped and tortured by him.
Today they have other problems: when Néstor Kirchner took office, the Due Obedience and Full Stop laws were annulled, and trials for crimes against humanity were reactivated. Astiz and González are serving preventive detention for kidnappings, torture and forced disappearances.
Scene
However, the first one thinks as he opens González’s door, Zárate’s base isn’t that bad. In fact, it allows them to receive whoever they want to spend a pleasant evening, like the one you are about to enjoy. That’s what his head was on. when Victoria Villarruel leaves the kitchen and tells him to sit down, that the food is about to come out.
It is the year 2005 and Astiz, while eating, listens to González’s idea of creating a civil association that talks about “the other dead” and telling “the complete memory.” Villarruel, sitting next to the host, silently takes notes.
Identikit
Alberto Eduardo González was born on October 26, 1950 in the Federal Capital, son of Francisco Alberto and Inés Edith Di Lorenzo. “El Gato”, as they called him in the years of lead, He is a retired Navy Lieutenant Commander. and professor of naval history. But that is not his entire biography.
Also He was an intelligence officer of Task Group 3.2.2 of the ESMAwhich was commanded by his crony and godfather Jorge “El Tigre” Acosta, another of the most famous and feared repressors of the years of lead, and which had Astiz among its members. González was in that position and in that place between March 1, 1977 and May 17, 1979.
This group of tasks is not just one more, but has a central place in the saddest pages of Argentine history, being part of what was known as “the flights of death.” In the basis of González’s life sentence for crimes against humanity, Justice describes this group as follows:
“They carried out operations of an offensive nature; that is, going out to arrest people suspected – according to them – of being linked to ‘subversion’ or ‘terrorist organizations’ and processing the data. These offensive operations included the cycle of detention, interrogation, accommodation and final resolution of the case; that is, kidnapping, torture, deprivation of liberty in a clandestine detention center and death or forced disappearance.”
González had a prominent place in this bloody machinery. At least I was convinced of that. Emilio Massera. September 12, 1978the commander in chief of the Navy gave him a distinction in “honor to the courage of combat” to “reward heroic deeds” in “real combat operations.”
It was no wonder. The thing is that although “El Gato” participated in the assembly of the kidnappings and the operations themselves, his terrain was different. His kingdom was “the basement”, the most terrifying corner of the ESMA. That was the first place where the military sent kidnapped people for torture, where there were tiny cells in which the detainees were kept under inhumane conditions. “The basement” It was also the last thing that thousands saw: those who had disappeared were sent back there before being murdered.
ANDIn that piece of hell, the one who pulled the strings was Alberto Gonzálezwho had, as they said at ESMA, “the cases” in his charge. “His specific role cconsisted of obtaining information through torture and planning the use of that information”says the ruling in which he was convicted.
In that place he had the misfortune to fall Silvia Laybarua 20-year-old girl, five months pregnant, who was a member of Montoneros. González and Astiz fell in love with her, a fight in which the former won by force. What Laybaru says It is a chilling story: “The Cat” not only violated at the ESMAbut, in a trance in which he mixed phenomenal violence with the fact that he had developed feelings for her, he kidnapped her from the basement to take her home. There he repeated that operation, but with another macabre twist, which involved his then wife. This happened while their two-year-old daughter was in the next room.
“At first I took it as part of the torture, but I was always clear that the fact of having been forced to participate in this couple’s erotic games made me see very clearly that what these guys were doing had absolutely nothing to do with the anti-subversive fight. Because, what good is being raped by an officer’s wife to the anti-subversive fight? What does this have to do with it? They, so Christian, so ethical… what was the point of being raped by a sailor’s wife?“, she said in a report in the newspaper Perfil, which accompanied the preview of the book that Leila Guerreiro wrote about her and her story, “The Call.”
González today turns three life sentences. In the ESMA II case for his role in the disappearance of 86 people, in the ESMA III case for another 789 victims and, finally, for the rape of Laybarú and two other women. On August 15, 2021, Justice made González the first person convicted of sexual crimes in the entire military dictatorship. But “the Cat” is not only that. He is also the vice president’s mentor.
The dark side. “Of all the former ESMA that Villarruel could have messed with, González is the worst”says the journalist Uki Goñiauthor of “The Infiltrator,” the book about Astiz that was central to the trial in which they were both convicted, and in which “González Menotti,” another of his nicknames, appears quite a bit.
Villarruel met González through another person who was “proud” to have participated in the “fight against subversion,” as he said, and who was also awarded for that work: eEduardo, his father. Villarruel senior and González shared their love for history (in democracy, “el Gato” studied that degree at the University of Belgrano, the same place where, curiously, Javier Milei graduated). They both especially liked naval history. In 1989, says journalist Ricardo Ragendorfer, González was appointed head of research at the Department of Historical Studies of the Navy. González’s influence on Villarruel daughter is great. “He’s like my second father,” she says in her privacy.
Several testimonies also say this. “I met him through Villarruel. “We went to the prison together and he showed me the book he was writing, which Victoria later signed,” she said. Cecilia Pandoanother woman from this military world. Here another story intersects: in off and on, many point out that the books that the vice president published as her own (“They call them young idealists” and “The other dead”) were not her authorship.
“Alberto trained Victoria and wrote the books that she signed as her own,” he said. Second Carafí, one of the leaders of Juan José Gómez Centurión’s NOS party, in which Villarruel had a brief stint and to which his sister and mother are affiliated. This comment on networks was supported by Nicolás Marquéz, one of the President’s favorite ideologues. In private, the writer of the “black book of the new left” is cruder: he assures that the relationship between Villarruel and González was that of a couple.
Another important person in the group of relatives of military prisoners says the same thing, but with the recorder turned off. “Several times I went to visit Alberto in prison, and he was writing those books. Victoria only went when Alberto’s wife was not there.” This person goes one step further. “The Celtyv (the foundation of Villarruel) was the work of Alberto. His idea, who has always had the idea of telling the entire film.”
Close to the vice president they affirm that the books were hers, while they say that they prefer not to make statements about the link with González. It is true that there is one fact that is still curious: Villarruel published two books of hundreds of pages, but he was never known for writing articles.
Present
From the Zárate naval base, González was transferred to Marcos Paz and then to Ezeiza. He is detained there today, in complex VII, with Astiz and other genocidaires.
Villarruel maintains contact with him, even to this day. This is something affirmed by relatives of the prisoners detained there and also by two of her former collaborators. “If you have any questions, about any important issue, Victoria contacts him. “It’s a kind of guide for her,” they assure.
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