To speak of crimes during periods of military dictatorship, generally refers to those who committed torture and assassination. This omits the economic interests and industries involved even though they were the ones who took advantage of such coups.
At the beginning of the 1970’s, trade unionists and students in Argentina had won considerable political space. The workers advanced their struggles, including in the Mercedes Benz factory in González Catán, a suburb of Buenos Aires. While the official union of the automotive industry - SMATA - gambled on cooperation with the company management, an independent internal commission was elected in the Mercedes Benz factory. In March 1976 the coup took place and the generals assassinated around 30,000 adversaries of the regime. The management of many firms took advantage of the situation to hand over left wing trade unionists to the military.
Nine months after the coup, in the Mercedes Benz factory the internal commission, of a leftist tendency, was still very influential.
María Luján Reimer recalls that many comrades, fearing for their lives, abandoned work in the factory and that her husband, Esteban, continued as the spokesperson for 3,000 workers.
María Luján Reimer, who is now 55, was known as the “Joan of Arc of Mercedes”. In 1975, before the coup, her husband and 118 comrades were dismissed without opposition by the SMATA union. The factory went on strike for 24 days and the wives, led by María Luján Reimer, organised canteens at the site entrance and blocked the road, in order to raise funds for the union. The firm was eventually obliged to abandon the dismissals because the Montoneros guerrilla group had kidnapped the company director, Heinrich Metz, sent over from Germany. Daimler-Benz had to pay millions in ransom for his freedom, and was obliged to ask forgiveness for its “anti-worker policy” through adverts in the international press. A few weeks later, the military took power.
The two spokesmen of the internal commission - also known as the “Group of Nine” - Esteban Reimer and Hugo Ventura, were summoned to appear on 4 January 1977 at the company headquarters in Buenos Aires, in Libertador avenue, recalls Mrs. Reimer. They brought with them a long list of demands: “That night my husband told me that the conversations with the directors had a harmonious character. All the demands were accepted. This is suspicious, he told me. Why, after such fierce battles, should they suddenly concede the workers’ demands without resistence?”
Esteban Reimer put his one year old daughter to bed, while his wife, five months pregnant, washed the dishes. At 1 a.m. there was beating on the windows: “Police”. They had barely opened the door when nine armed men burst into the house. “We come in the name of the First Army Command,” they said. A list appeared and they asked if he was called Reimer. When he said yes, they ordered him to dress and accompany them. Ransacking the house, they threw books and records to the floor and tore up a photo of Eva Perón. Before withdrawing they crossed the name “Reimer” off the list.
Reimer’s wife looked for her husband in the local police stations. But no-one would admit to having seen him. In the morning she went to the bus stop, where his work colleagues were waiting. That day an assembly had been called to inform them about the previous day’s discussions on wages. “They did not want to go to the factory,” said Mrs. Reimer, “because several workers had already been detained, and they were not to be found anywhere. The company management promised to give priority to the fate of my husband and the other member of the internal commission, Ventura, who had also been kidnapped during the night.”
Ventura’s sister confirmed this account of the facts. After the kidnapping of her brother, she went to the company management in Libertador avenue. There, she says, she met the same people who had negotiated with her brother over wages and shifts the previous day. She asked them to go to the authorities to petition an inquiry into her brother’s whereabouts, a demand for habeas corpus. Rather than concern themselves with the fate of the kidnapped workers, they questioned her about her brother’s contacts. Hugo Ventura and Esteban Reimer continued as “disappeared”. Nevertheless, Mercedes Benz paid their salaries to the families for almost ten years. María Ester Ventura never obtained an official explanation of these payments. In her opinion the firm in this way assumed part of the responsibility for the workers’ assassination. “I am not saying that it was hush money. But Mercedes was responsible! Who handed over the names and addresses?” And she relates how the military first tried to arrest her brother in the neighbouring house, because that was the address which he had given to personnel. Furthermore, the military were asking for “Victor Hugo”, but his friends called him “Hugo”. Only in the company was he called “Victor Hugo”.
Not all the relatives of the Mercedes Benz “disappeared” want to talk about the events now. They say that much time has passed and those responsible go free. The financial generosity of Welt AG - World Ltd.- as Daimler-Chrysler is known today, could be another reason for their silence. There is, for example, Juana Vizzini, who now lives in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. After insistent bell-ringing, she appears in the grilled door of her modest house. She does not want to give an interview, and refuses to come out. But she says that she was pregnant when her husband was detained. Her son Fabio was born without a father. Mercedes Benz not only continued paying the salary for years, but also financed Fabio’s studies. Her son works for the company. I would have to understand.
During the military dictatorship 30,000 people “disappeared” in Argentina. The military not only wanted to wipe out the guerrillas but also to destroy the workers’ movement. “The personnel offices worked hand in glove with the military,” says Héctor Recalde, a labour lawyer in Buenos Aires. “Troublesome trade unionists, who persisted in supporting their fellow workers, were declared ’subversives’, which meant they would be done away with.”
The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Conadep) describes the “exemplary case” of Ford; within the factory area members of the internal commission were tortured and transported in the firm’s vehicles to torture centres. Later they were sacked for “unauthorised absence from the workplace”. After the dictatorship, Ford was sued and had to pay the wages due.
The military saw the workers’ movement as a “fifth column” of international communism, whose elimination, just like the assassination of trade unionists, would serve - in its opinion - to defend Western civilisation from the “agents of the evil empire”. After the coup, strikes were declared “illegal”, and anyone who stopped the job was a “terrorist”. It is not known how many Mercedes Benz workers were kidnapped between April 1976 and August 1977, and taken to torture centres and murdered there. At least 13, probably more than 20. Everything indicates that at the time the firm could identify precisely which of its workers were not at their jobs having been detained and murdered, and which had gone into hiding or fled. Where did they get this information?
For example, there is Richard Hoffmann, who was a contact for the Revolutionary Workers Party. He now edits the party newspaper, El Combatiente, a small mimeographed publication: “Not one of the Mercedes disappeared was a guerrilla,” he says; “they were members of the internal commission.” Hoffmann’s last day of work was 18 May, 1977. Afterwards he was, following “the party’s instruction”, in exile in Italy. For security reasons, he spent his last weeks in the factory. His house was ransacked, and they wanted to arrest him at the factory gates. After he fled, he was dismissed and payment of his salary was suspended for “unauthorised absence from the workplace”.
Shortly before going into exile, Hoffmann recalls, his comrade Martín was arrested at his place of work. Three thousand workers demonstrated for two days and nights in front of La Tablada barracks, demanding his freedom. This saved his life.
A few days later, on 12 August 1977, Héctor Ratto was supposed to be detained. In order to avoid a disturbance, as has happened in the case of Martín, the arrest was to be made at the entrance to the factory and not at his workplace. But the police did not arrest Héctor Ratto, but Juan José Ratto, whom they kept hooded and handcuffed until they realised their mistake. Héctor Ratto had already gone into the factory. “The company director, Juan Tasselkraut, called me into his office, where there were two civilian police waiting. In my presence the director gave them the address of Diego Núñez. It was clear that Tasselkraut wanted to avoid disturbances in the factory and delayed my detention. At night two Army vehicles came and took me away.”
The worker Núñez was arrested that same night in his house; they took him to the Campo de Mayo where he was murdered. His case was raised in 1985 during the trial of the Junta commanders, the so-called “trial of the century”. For the first time Latin American military figures had to answer for their outrages before a civilian court. World public opinion was present at the trial and the press gave it wide coverage. Héctor Ratto and various work comrades were called as witnesses for the prosecution and submitted affidavits regarding Ratto’s detention.
Mercedes Benz did not contradict what was said. Ratto’s case appears on page 470 of the document describing the prosecution’s arguments; the case of Diego Núñez is on page 471. The judges considered that Ratto’s declaration was credible and used it - and many others like it - as the basis for the commanders’ conviction. That Héctor Ratto survived was due to the fact that the military had arrested him publicly at his place of work. The other union members disappeared at night and were kidnapped in their houses by men in civilian clothes. Mercedes Benz did not know Ratto’s address because he had been married shortly before and had not told the company his new address. “Certainly this is what saved me,” said Ratto.
Ratto was freed in March 1979. He is now 52. His friends from the factory were murdered and he suffers from feelings of guilt for having survived. He did not claim financial compensation for unlawful detention as he was entitled to do.
Although not as well as before, he can now move his arms which remained paralyzed after the electric shocks which he received in Campo de Mayo. For six days a week he works in a small metallurgical factory which is threatened with bankruptcy. He was not able to resume his post at the German auto firm. Once again a union compliant with the owners prevails there.
The boss of the company, Juan Tasselkraut, is again in charge of the production of lorries. Those years, says Tasselkraut during an interview in the offices of Mercedes Benz headquarters in Buenos Aires, were turbulent times. Worried that he was going to be killed, he called on the services of bodyguards. “It is easy to imagine what Ratto stated” (in the trial of the commanders). He has not seen anything of Ratto since then. In Argentina chaos reigned, and for that reason the coup was necessary. Two executives, sent from the parent company, were kidnapped and in the factory there were armed workers. But, says Tasselkraut, the detainees should have been brought before a court, perhaps a military court, but they should not have been murdered.
Tasselkraut denies vehemently Ratto’s statement that he had given the police the address of the worker Diego Núñez. That is “crazy”, he says, “that young man is absolutely mistaken. Those conversations were deliberately held in the presence of the head of personnel.”
Mercedes Benz did not cooperate with the military: “but if Mr. Ratto wishes to affirm that the factory managers were opposed to having armed workers in the factory, then I have to respond with a categorical yes.”
I ask Tasselkraut: then did he know that the military were torturing and murdering detained workers for being “subversives”? “Yes, for anyone who knew anything about Argentina, it was clear that human rights were being violated and people were being eliminated.” The fact that the salaries of the disappeared workers went on being paid is not an acknowledgement of guilt: “as a company, we very much want to be an example in human terms”.
