Nuestros Desaparecidos

Contributed by Jason Ketola
GEOVISION Production Company

(San Francisco CA) OUR DISAPPEARED/NUESTROS DESAPARECIDOS is the heart-breaking chronicle of director Juan Mandelbaum’s personal search for the souls of friends and loved ones, idealistic young students and activists, who were caught in the brutal vise of the right-wing military and “disappeared” in his native Argentina during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. OUR DISAPPEARED/NUESTROS DESAPARECIDOS will air nationally on the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens, hosted by Terrence Howard, on Monday, September 21, 2009 at 10PM. Find your local listing here.


Mandelbaum’s quest was triggered by a recent and very painful revelation. Through a Google search, he made the terrible discovery that Patricia Dixon, a long lost girlfriend,was among the desaparecidos. Almost thirty years after he left at the height of the repression, to escape the pervasive climate of feat, Juan returned to Argentina to explore her story and the stories of other friends and loved ones who had also disappeared. He learned first-hand of the horrors that befell them and the almost 30,000 people who were kidnapped by agents of the military government, secretly detained without trial, brutally tortured and then killed, never to be seen again.



Although idealistic and involved in community organizing, Mandelbaum was not willing to join the more militant and radical groups that were recruiting many of his friends. Inspired by the Cuban revolution and the election of Chile’s Salvador Allende, the first democratically elected Socialist president in the Americas, many of his fellow students at the University’s School of Philosophy and Letters were willing to support an armed struggle for a cause they believed in passionately -- that former President Juan Peron, who had been exiled to Spain, would lead Argentina on the road of socialism. It was a hope that was quickly crushed when Peron returned in 1973, and disowned the young radicals who had fought so hard for his return. Instead, right wing death squads began to pave the way for the military regime that, after 1976, targeted thousands of leftist activists for annihilation. Over 250 of Mandelbaum’s fellow students are among the disappeared.

In OUR DISAPPEARED, NUESTROS DESAPARECIDOS, Mandelbaum meets with the parents, siblings and children of many of these old friends, piecing together their dramatic stories through reminiscences, home movies and old photos. The film also uses rare and extraordinary archival footage (including an appearance by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1977 endorsing the military president) to bring the energy and tension of the time and place to life. It is a quietly devastating story of young lives viciously ended and the unending pain suffered by their families and their country.



To learn more about the film, visit the OUR DISAPPEARED, NUESTROS DESAPARECIDOS interactive companion website (http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/ourdisappeared/) which features detailed information on the film, including an interview with the filmmaker and links and resources pertaining to the film’s subject matter. The site also features a talk back section for viewers to share their ideas and opinions, preview clips of the film, and more.

Shooting Up in Athens

by Ethan Light*
Pierson College, Yale 2009

I’d like to think of myself as a relatively worldly individual. I will admit I am pathetically mono- linguistic (and still working on English), have one passport, and have lived outside of the United States only once - and very briefly. Regardless, I have spent a good amount of time traveling, have family living in four countries, read the international dailies, and am currently looking for work in Asia. I’d like to think that this global view in some ways contributes to an international understanding and a thick skin when it comes to things that fall out of my realm of experience. This past summer, however, I saw something which absolutely thrust me out of my comfort zone.



I was travelling on the cheap and staying in hostels, generally not located in the most upscale neighborhoods, so I wasn’t expecting my small hotel in Omonia Square, Athens to be the Mandarin Oriental. But what I was unaware of until arriving is that Omonia has a much more popular name for native Athenians: Heroin Square. I first noticed the clumps of prostitutes encircling the group of teenagers and young adults in the middle of the small park. Their numbers were only dwarfed in comparison to the population with needles in their bodies. In the early evening, in the middle of a busy public square, under city lights, scores of people were shooting heroin into feet, hands and arms. I counted to 45 before giving up and paying attention to the ground to make sure I didn’t step on rouge hypodermics.

Perhaps the only thing more shocking were the police, stationed no more than two blocks in every direction, aware of the flood of synthetic opiates down the street but entirely uninterested in doing anything about it. I assume their purview extends only so far as to ensure no junkies wander into the nicer parts of town.

Coming face- to- face with passed out heroin addicts, their bodies sprawled so that their heads rolled into the middle of the street, made me reconsider my position on victimless crime. Before the summer I would unflinchingly support the legalization not only of marijuana but of all drugs. Similarly, prostitution was merely a contractual obligation between two adults in which the government had no business injecting moralizing puritanical legislation.

But as I stood on the street surrounded by a mix of Somali immigrants and junkies looking for a fix, I wondered if the Greek government had some obligation to that 17-year- old with a needle in his arm; an obligation to keep him from throwing away his future. At the very least it is a good investment: by keeping that kid off of heroin Greece has one more productive worker and one less social pariah and fiscal drag.

Wouldn’t those nonchalant police officers better spend their time attempting to drag those addicts out of brutal heroin addiction, rather than allowing the situation to escalate? At the very least, minors deemed too young to vote or serve in the army should not be given the opportunity to be hooked on opiates. However, were police to target minors (or anyone for that matter) the tacit agreement between Athens’ finest and its “victimless” criminals would be violated.

I’ll let you know if I end up reconciling a disagreement with a moralizing government and the importance of a state to protect it’s people- even from themselves.
And here is the rest of it.

*A pseudo-name has been used to protect the identity of this author.