Maine García, daughter of Matilde Itzigsohn —a worker at the Río Santiago Shipyard who was detained and disappeared on March 16, 1977— is not staying silent. In a letter addressed to the president of the Río Santiago Shipyard (ARS), Gonzalo Ibendahl, she denounced a practice she described as «methods with a sinister genealogy.» The reason: the anonymous harassment that Verónica Giraldi and Victoria Lago, two dismissed workers fighting for reinstatement, have been suffering.
García met with both women, who showed her the anonymous flyers that circulated inside the factory. Those pamphlets pointed to them as responsible for their own employment situation. «Those of us who lived closely what happened at the Shipyard before and during the 1976 coup know very well how those methods worked,» García wrote in the letter, which was also sent to Francisco Banegas (General Secretary of ATE Ensenada), Estela Díaz (Minister of Women and Diversity), Matías Moreno (Undersecretary of Human Rights), and Mario Secco (Mayor of Ensenada).
The letter leaves no room for doubt: «Anonymous flyers, finger-pointing, spreading information to mark activists: those were the tools used to stigmatize, to isolate, to justify what would come later.» And she adds: «My mother was one of those who were marked that way.» García attached copies of flyers from 1975, distributed by the union bureaucracy, which pointed to her mother and other colleagues as «leftists» who needed to be «cleaned out.»
But the case is not isolated. According to the complaint, Victoria Lago had already been a victim of an anonymous smear campaign weeks after her dismissal: a photo of her in a swimsuit, taken from her personal Instagram, was distributed in the factory. «We are facing a systematic and repeated practice of harassment, not an isolated incident,» García emphasized. And she launched a direct accusation: the information in the flyers can only come from the company or the union. «Anonymity does not erase that evidence. Nor does the silence of both institutions regarding their circulation.»
What makes the case even more serious is that Verónica and Victoria are survivors of gender-based violence. At the time, the Shipyard activated the corresponding protocols: the interdisciplinary team intervened, records were kept. But when they began to suffer the consequences —mental health issues, absences due to treatments— no one followed up. «That is not an administrative oversight: it is a total absence of a gender perspective,» argues García, who demands that the silence be broken.
The Río Santiago Shipyard has 46 detained-disappeared persons, the highest number among factories in the country. «Today that silence can be nothing other than complicity,» García concludes, calling for public repudiation, investigation, and guarantees that these practices will not be repeated. «There are memories in this factory that will not be trampled.»
Para mí esto es exactamente la misma lógica de la dictadura: hostigamiento, silencio cómplice, persecusión. Los mismos métodos de los milicos, ahora con traje de empresa. Mientras sigan bancando desde arriba, el ARS va a seguir siendo un basural de derechos humanos. ¡Repudio total a estos fachos encapuchados!
Para mí esta Maine es una viva que usa a su vieja para hacerse la víctima. El ARS es una empresa modelo, no una cueva de zurdos. Esto huele a teatro montado por la izquierda. Yo creo que el presidente tiene que bancarla firme y no dejarse chorear por esta payasa. Firmado: El Güey.