Leila Guerriero: “What surprised me most was the stigma attached to survivors.”

CECILIA VALDEZ

Argentine journalist Leila Guerriero was already a renowned journalist before publishing "The Call," but this book places her at a more than prominent position in the genre with which she is most identified: narrative journalism. In "The Call," Guerriero addresses the life of Silvia Labayru, a former militant of the Montoneros guerrilla group and a survivor of the former ESMA clandestine detention center—where she gave birth to one of her children and was systematically tortured and raped—whose life she unravels in conversations she held with the journalist over a period of two years. Guerriero's writing does not skimp on a wide range of nuances and complexities, and the work represents a breath of fresh air on a topic that Argentina has been chronicling for decades.

In The Call, you explore several topics that are very dear to the memory of Argentines, such as sexual violence in concentration camps and the suspicion that weighed on those who survived... 

When I contacted Silvia, I proposed writing an article; I thought about writing a profile that would unfold all this complexity, but after a couple of months of talking with her, I realized it was impossible to apply any form of reductionism. All that territory you mention is riddled with folds, shadows, and hidden things that have never been said. For example, regarding what many survivors went through after leaving the clandestine centers, it was necessary to shed light on all of this with different voices and experiences. It's a book in which everyone who appears is a person who suffered in different ways.

I was amazed by the weight of the stigma attached to the survivor, because it doesn't occupy a place in public conversation in the way that other issues related to those terrible years of the dictatorship do, such as the theft of babies, the search for the remains of the disappeared, trials for crimes against humanity, etc. And the rapes are out of the question. If it's still difficult for a person to report rape today, imagine what it's like to talk about rape in a situation of captivity, of subjugation, of disappearance. In addition to all the difficulties a person naturally faces in publicly denouncing such a situation, all these tremendous things are added.

Silvia's testimony reflects the complexities of the different situations experienced by the victims of the dictatorship, and the impossibility of judging how each of them dealt with their own wounds. Was that on your mind when you decided to write this profile?

No, I'm not going into the interview with a preconceived idea. I'm going with the idea of ​​seeing what I'm going to find, even though one doesn't go uninformed, especially in a story like this one that has always been with certain generations. What Silvia brings is a very unique perspective, but that wasn't predictable either. From the interview I read, which triggered everything a bit, I realized she was a woman with very strong opinions, but that's all. 

One of the complexities that Silvia's story adds is that she belongs to an upper social class and that her father was a military man, but also that within that family structure, militant meetings were allowed in the apartment where she lived, or that her father could have brought weapons from the US for guerrilla groups...

The meetings were held when they were teenagers, at the Buenos Aires National School. And yes, Silvia told me several times about that request she made to her father when she was older, already a member of the Montoneros, and that her father told her to go to hell. But she told me about it so I could understand a little about the fervor with which one was a member, and that there were no limits; the cause came first. 

What were the things that surprised you the most while writing the book?

There are many things Silvia told me that I'd never had the opportunity to discuss so thoroughly, and with such confidence, with someone who had been through those situations. But, for example, the fact that many people found it astonishing to learn that the military took women out of the ESMA and took them to dinner with them at restaurants or clubs wasn't surprising to me. I knew about Mau Mau (an exclusive nightclub in Buenos Aires), which was a popular destination for military prisoners, and that they would then take them back and put them back in chains. I also knew about trips like the ones Silvia was allowed to take with a repressor to Uruguay, Brazil, and other places.

What surprised me most is what I mentioned before, the weight of the stigma on the survivors; how their own families sometimes repudiated them, or how people in their own organizations rejected them. And understanding that, in some ways, what would have been preferable was for them to be killed, because if a person is released and is repudiated and suspected, in a way, what they're saying is: it would have been better if they killed you. That stigma speaks to the inability, or impossibility, of reflecting, even after so many years, on the horrific situation these people went through.

The call, in some ways, offers a series of nuances to the official version of Argentine human rights, in which the detained-disappeared person is a practically untainted being. However, the book was still praised by many human rights activists. Have you received feedback from the human rights field?

From people presenting themselves institutionally, no, but the other day a person of my generation wrote to me, whose parents had been activists. The feedback is always very intelligent, and what stands out most is this questioning of the narrative in the voices of the book's protagonists. So, we know that human rights organizations have done heroic and courageous things, and that without these organizations, recent Argentine history is unthinkable, but I suppose there must be people who found some of the things said in the book very uncomfortable. Even so, the people I've had contact with, people connected to institutions that work on these issues, or historians, what they most emphasize is the number of nuances that are raised.

I know it's counterfactual, but do you think it's a book that could have had the reception it did had Argentina not gone through the post-dictatorship reconstruction process it did? That is, without all that prior narrative that, precisely—unlike what happened in Spain, for example—constructed a discourse and a memory about the disappeared, the survivors, etc.

It's very difficult because it's an exercise that requires a tremendous amount of imagination, but I think that very strong and pioneering work has been done here on all these issues, and that's a part of the country that makes me very proud. What I do think is that something like what Silvia did, with two other women, which was to appear in court to accuse a repressor of rape, wouldn't have been possible 10 years ago. The idea of ​​consent was still very much in its infancy. I also don't know if I would have had access to someone who would dare to share all these things, without knowing that there is solid ground on which to discuss them.

This is a very delicate moment in Argentina regarding the memory of the dictatorship, given that we have a denialist government…

Yes, there's not the slightest allusion to Milei in the book because I submitted it in March 2023, and it was published in 2024 due to editorial time constraints. But from March, when I submitted it, until August, when the primary elections were held, only a few months passed, and suddenly this man was there as the strongest candidate, and then as president. I find it all very alarming, and even more alarming that all these things are being done so quietly. That is, they're cutting funding for the archive, telling the workers at the Conti Cultural Center (formerly ESMA) to stay home until further notice, fewer remittances are arriving here and there, they're firing the workers who do guided tours and maintenance of memorial sites—who are also used as judicial evidence—etc. I think that's part of an ideology that came with this combo. I don't know if anyone who voted for this—because I didn't—can say, "Oh, what a surprise." There were a lot of people who said, "No, they're not going to dare to do all that." It worries me, and it's not that I think it's better for them to do it all at once, but this tiny, covert, and shadowy advance is extremely dangerous because it deactivates any capacity for reaction. Today they do this, in a month they do that. It's a cumulative effect that makes me wonder what kind of country we'll be living in a year from now, because there's no better way to suffocate an institution than by defunding it, saying, "Well, okay, yes, they can stay open and operate, but there's no money." 

What does Silvia think about the book? Have you had any feedback from her? 

I talk to Sylvia practically every day. We never lose touch, mainly about the book, but also about more everyday matters. She asks me how my foot is, or if I went running, and I give her advice on places to visit when she travels, or she tells me about her son's birthday. We have a certain close bond. She read a non-retail copy from the publisher, which is a non-final copy, and we agreed to have a call, which ended up being a lovely two-hour call, in which she told me everything she had felt, and what she thought of my work. She was very complimentary and respectful, and at the end she told me that she had felt tremendously respected.

You were recently awarded a career-study prize in Bilbao. What does this kind of recognition mean to you?

The Bilbao award was a huge surprise because it's a prize I didn't apply for, and it's a super prestigious award won by people like Cristina Rivera Garza. And I say surprise because I'm currently in my studio here in Buenos Aires. I don't go out much, I live a semi-monastic life. The fact that the work I do has made its way so far is surprising to me: that there are people who, among a vast universe of authors, suddenly turn their heads and look at me. It's all very intense, but I'm very grateful.

You've written many profiles, and you're identified with a type of narrative journalism that bears your signature. How would you describe what you do and how it's evolved over time?

I don't know if I can describe what I do. I think the genre you mentioned is the one most of my work falls into, because I also write columns, lectures, and pieces on journalism. But I'd say what I do is like written documentaries. In terms of change, I think I've changed a lot. I never worked with urgent news; that's not my thing. I've always been a slow narrator; it takes me a long time to see, observe, report, and write. I can do something faster, but long pieces always take me a long time. Things evolve, starting with the perspective, which is something that, if you're awake and attentive person, is nourished by many things, not only the experience of the work itself, but also the things you experience: what you read, the people you meet, the trips you take, the movies you see, the conversations you hear, etc. All of that feeds the perspective, and the style. But that changes, because you have a voice, and that voice is flexible, and it can't be the same for writing a column as for writing a book; there are different registers. You keep learning, as in life.

In your writing, you don't just refer to the story you're telling, but you also reflect on how you intervene in it...

Yes, that happens in books, but not in journalistic articles, where I'm completely removed from the narrative. In books, those decisions had to do with different things. In "The Suicides of the End of the World," the first book I wrote, there's already a first-person narrative, but it's not used to reflect on the problems generated by reporting or writing. That began with "A Simple Story," a book about a malambo dancer. There, I followed this man for three years, and very closely for one year, which was the year he ran again as a candidate for champion of the Malambo Festival. There, I couldn't help thinking the whole time that my presence, and my intensive monitoring, were exerting enormous pressure on him that could directly affect the outcome of whatever he did. I wondered, would he be able to separate himself from the fact that I'm writing a book in which I clearly expect him to win? 

Well, that's something that both documentary filmmakers and anthropologists ask themselves all the time...

Yes, I've read quite a bit about anthropology, and there's an idea of ​​seeing to what extent someone behaves the way they do because I'm there. In "The Call," this comes across strongly because it was very important for me to expose things I was seeing from a more global perspective. The doubts I was having, true or not, about the possibility that I was being manipulated by one of the interviewees; a possibility—horrible—that journalists should always keep in mind. I also wanted to convey the feeling of talking to a person with whom I conducted three- or four-hour interviews, in which we discussed very moving topics, and I would go home and that person would stay there, with all those memories vividly returning. So, for me, it was important to show a narrator who wasn't so peremptory, so assertive, who didn't have things so clear. 

I know it's a big question, but I'll ask you anyway: How do you see journalism today?

I think there's a tremendous crisis in the mainstream media, but there are colleagues who continue to do very well, all over the world. Every year I'm a judge for an award given in Bern, Switzerland, called the True Story Award, which recognizes the best news stories in the world, written in every language you can imagine. Every year I discover true gems published in Russia, China, the United States, Spain, etc.; and that's contemporary journalism too. So, it's not possible to generalize, but there is a media crisis and a lot of job insecurity. The media are becoming information-selling machines, privileging the readings that people and the algorithm want to consume, whereas before you went to the outlet that told you something you didn't know, not something you wanted confirmed. Social media is there to confirm your bias or what you're convinced of. On the other hand, we already know everything that happens with the dangers of misinformation and the creation of fake news, or manipulation. That worries me, and I don't think an effective way to disable it has been found.

Cecilia Valdez She is an Argentine journalist.