Vera Vigevani de Jarach He is 96 years old. He has been living in Argentina for 85 years. He arrived from Milan by boat, fleeing the racial laws of fascist Italy. His grandfather died in Auschwitz. There is no grave to mourn him. Another genocide occurred three decades later. Vera’s only daughter, Franca Jarach, was disappeared by the dictatorship. There is also no grave to leave a flower. Mother of Plaza de Mayo of the Founding Line and activist for human rights, Vera received Argentine citizenship. “I waited a long time and now, in this very sad moment that Argentina is experiencing, I decided that this debt had to be settled,” she says in the anteroom of the federal court where they are waiting for her to swear.
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Vera was born on March 5, 1928 in northern Italy. With his family they decided to come to Argentina to escape fascism. They traveled on the ship Augustus. In second class because they didn’t have money for more. On the trip, the boys – despite the horror stalking them – played. What amused them the most was hiding. “I was still a little girl, but when I arrived my childhood ended,” she says.
He finished primary school in an Italian school. When the time came to enroll in secondary school, he suffered frustration. His father wanted him to go to the National School of Buenos Aires (CNBA) but then they only admitted boys. She admitted to a high school for young ladies. Vera worked as a journalist at ANSA, the Italian news agency. She met Jorge Jarach, an Italian engineer, whom she married at a very young age.
After several years of marriage, Franca arrived, who was born on December 19, 1957. The photos show Franca very similar to her mother: both with a deep smile. She was a brilliant girl who became the standard bearer of the CNBA – from where she ended up expelled along with other students who embraced militancy. She decided not to return and finish her studies at high school.
Shortly after, Franca was kidnapped. They took her away on June 25, 1976, when she was 18 years old. His kidnapping coincided with the fall of a group of graphic militants. Days later, they let her call home. He said that they had her in the Federal Security Superintendence, that she was fine, that they gave her shelter, food and medicine if she needed them.
“Am I going to look for you?” the father asked him.
“Yes, they’re going to let you know,” the girl answered after asking.
Franca, in reality, was not in the clandestine center that operated on Moreno Street but in the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA). According to what Vera was able to reconstruct many years later, she was one of the victims of the death flights.
Vera looked for her everywhere. The first organization that contacted was the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights (APDH), which had been created months before the coup d’état of March 24, 1976. In 1977 it joined Madres. With the passage of time, it formed the Argentine Historical and Social Memory Foundation. She was one of the promoters of the tributes in the CNBA to make “our ‘disappeared’ reappear”, as she said in the prologue of The other Juveniliaby Werner Pertot and Santiago Garaño. Vera also sits on the board of the Memory and Human Rights Space – exESMA – and is part of Memoria Abierta.
Last year, Vera told Eduardo Tavani, lawyer and APDH representative, that she wanted to be an Argentine citizen. He got to work. While he was completing the different procedures, Tavani was receiving messages of affection for Vera. Last Wednesday, the day of the second federal march for public education, he received notification from the federal court of Marcelo Gota: Vera finally had dual nationality.
This Wednesday, she was summoned for noon at Federal Court 8, which is located on the seventh floor of Libertad at 731 – in the same building where the Judicial Council operates. Vera waits, sitting in a wheelchair, for it to be time to enter. On his lapel hangs a pin with Franca’s face.
–Did you see that there is the external debt, the internal debt? I had a debt of honor, and I am paying it off so many years after arriving in Argentina and having always considered myself a part. Here we are saved. I waited a long time and now, in the sad moment that Argentina is experiencing, I decided that that debt had to be paid off – he says.
Her colleagues at the organization table listen to her. After a while, the court clerk arrives and announces that everything is ready for Vera to swear before the judge.
The magistrate’s office is filled with those who accompanied Vera. There are those who sat in the armchairs or chairs that were available, those who sat on the floor and those who settled against the walls.
–We are responsible for this moment. We are living it with joy. The idea is that Vera can enjoy this day – the judge started.
Gota ended up confiding to Vera that his origins were Italian. “My grandfather came on a boat like you; That’s why my emotion,” he relaxed.
The secretary read him the judge’s resolution granting him Argentine citizenship – after so many decades in the country, so much suffering and so much exercise of memory. The judge told her that it was an honor for him what was about to happen and she responded that it was an honor for her to settle an old debt.
“Did you bring me a little closer?” the judge asked him to make himself heard. He leaned on his desk until he was next to Vera who answered: “There are options.”
–Vera Vigevani, do you swear by the Homeland and by honor to faithfully respect the National Constitution and the institutions of the Republic?
“Yes,” she answered with a determined tone.
-Very good.
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Gota approached and took her by both hands. Her colleagues at the organization table applauded and took turns greeting her. He also received a greeting from Taty Almeida, a member of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo-Línea Fundadora, who could not be there but made sure that her greeting arrived.
The farewell with the judge was alone. Afterwards, Vera and Eduardo Tavani went to greet the court workers. The day ended with a joint photo on Libertad Street, where they displayed the flag of the organization table.
After a while, the video of the ceremony was published on the instagram of the Memory and Human Rights Space, from where they congratulated Vera on her new Argentine citizenship. From there they recalled that “his phrase ‘Never again hate, Never again silence’ was adopted by this Space as a message for future generations who visit the exESMA to build memory about what must never happen again.”