My aunt knew two people but she never talks about it. Her husband was in the military during those years. She had to disappear for a while after his murder.
Yes. Cousin of my mother was disappeared. His family was officially told he had an accident during training, they didn’t allow the family to see his body.
Years later the truth came out as one of the cowards confessed out of guilt and shame. My mother’s cousin was in the navy and refused to follow orders to torture political prisoners.
Got killed for his principles and not following the orders of the cowards and human trash that were in our army, navy and air force at the time.
Last thing I heard, his family were still involved in legal proceedings against the government.
Grandparents on my father’s side were detained for a while as well.
My brother in law’s family has a detenido desaparecido. I also have a couple friends with relatives who were murdered by the Pinochet regime (though not disappeared; we call them ejecutados políticos)
One of my great uncles was an interrogator. That’s what he himself described as his job. If the police picked someone up, they’d call him in to extract info. I never met the guy, but I’ve been told he would brag about torturing people and getting rid of them so… he was the one doing the disappearing. All this was going on in the late 60s up to the 70s.
My first girlfriend’s mom was taken alongside her husband and toddler. After a while they stopped the car and dropped the child by the side of the road, luckily he was found quickly and taken to his grandparents. The parents were put in clandestine detention centers. She was released after a couple of weeks (I think but I’m not 100% sure) but he was kept much longer.
My granduncle was seconds from being snagged by the police, my father got to the taxi stand where he worked and warned him that the police was coming.
Later my father harbored my granduncle at our home (I wasn’t born yet) for months, he lived in a windowless room at the back of the house leaving only to use the toilet.
We have a friend whose father was taken by the Argentine dictatorship and another friend who lost an uncle and a couple of cousins to them.
On the flip side, several of my wife’s relatives are very “nothing happened and Brazil had a kinder, gentler dictatorship.” They were also Brazilian military officers during the ’70s and ’80s, so I’m sure you can figure out how they came to that conclusion.
I have 2 cousins that were disappeared when violence blew up around 20 years ago. They were brothers, one of them might have been involved in bad stuff while the other one might have been innocent, we will never know for sure.
Not because of the government, more cuz of the narco, but in my city (which gets a lot of internal migrants for being the safest city in the country), 9 out of 10 people I meet from Michoacán, Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa or Jalisco have had a close family member or friend dissappear, like, may sound bad but I dont know anyone from Michoacán who hasnt had a brother or father killed or dissappeared, I’d think that if you are migrating here you likely already had a close encounter with the narco so I’m likely just seeing the worst cases tho
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My friend from Nicaragua once told me his grandpa was out late one night and never came home.
The police told his family the guy got so drunk, jumped off a bridge and drowned.
His grandmother thinks it’s a lie and the dictatorship k*lled him.
Yes, they told me about him. He was a university student. They haven’t found his remains yet.
My aunt knew two people but she never talks about it. Her husband was in the military during those years. She had to disappear for a while after his murder.
Yes. Cousin of my mother was disappeared. His family was officially told he had an accident during training, they didn’t allow the family to see his body.
Years later the truth came out as one of the cowards confessed out of guilt and shame. My mother’s cousin was in the navy and refused to follow orders to torture political prisoners.
Got killed for his principles and not following the orders of the cowards and human trash that were in our army, navy and air force at the time.
Last thing I heard, his family were still involved in legal proceedings against the government.
Grandparents on my father’s side were detained for a while as well.
My brother in law’s family has a detenido desaparecido. I also have a couple friends with relatives who were murdered by the Pinochet regime (though not disappeared; we call them ejecutados políticos)
Yes
One of my great uncles was an interrogator. That’s what he himself described as his job. If the police picked someone up, they’d call him in to extract info. I never met the guy, but I’ve been told he would brag about torturing people and getting rid of them so… he was the one doing the disappearing. All this was going on in the late 60s up to the 70s.
My first girlfriend’s mom was taken alongside her husband and toddler. After a while they stopped the car and dropped the child by the side of the road, luckily he was found quickly and taken to his grandparents. The parents were put in clandestine detention centers. She was released after a couple of weeks (I think but I’m not 100% sure) but he was kept much longer.
My granduncle was seconds from being snagged by the police, my father got to the taxi stand where he worked and warned him that the police was coming.
Later my father harbored my granduncle at our home (I wasn’t born yet) for months, he lived in a windowless room at the back of the house leaving only to use the toilet.
Yes, direct knowledge. In fact my wife is named after a disappeared aunt.
We have a friend whose father was taken by the Argentine dictatorship and another friend who lost an uncle and a couple of cousins to them.
On the flip side, several of my wife’s relatives are very “nothing happened and Brazil had a kinder, gentler dictatorship.” They were also Brazilian military officers during the ’70s and ’80s, so I’m sure you can figure out how they came to that conclusion.
I have 2 cousins that were disappeared when violence blew up around 20 years ago. They were brothers, one of them might have been involved in bad stuff while the other one might have been innocent, we will never know for sure.
Not because of the government, more cuz of the narco, but in my city (which gets a lot of internal migrants for being the safest city in the country), 9 out of 10 people I meet from Michoacán, Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa or Jalisco have had a close family member or friend dissappear, like, may sound bad but I dont know anyone from Michoacán who hasnt had a brother or father killed or dissappeared, I’d think that if you are migrating here you likely already had a close encounter with the narco so I’m likely just seeing the worst cases tho
Not that I know of. But I do have relatives who had to flee Uruguay so they wouldn’t end up being detained and disappeared.
They weren’t even left-wing – they were from the democratic centre-right that opposed the military running the country.
My aunt was kidnapped while pregnant 😬