"No me basta," says Haydee Gastelu. Often. Literally, it translates from Spanish to mean "it's not enough for me." But the dicho could also be interpreted as "it never ends." For Mrs. Gastelu, both are true.

A member of the "Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo" wears a scarf bearing the name of her missing son. (Photo: The New York Times)

    During the last 32 years, Mrs. Gastelu has relentlessly pursued the suspected murderers of her son Horacio, who was "disappeared" by the repressive intelligence services of Argentina's last military government in 1976. On August 7 of that year, he and his girlfriend, Ada Victoria Porta, were dragged from Porta's house by a small unit of plain-clothed men in the middle of the night. Porta's family reported seeing the couple forced into a Ford Falcon, hogtied and hooded, as they were driven away. Two weeks later, a predawn blast rocked the small town of Fatima, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. When the sun rose, workers found the remains of 30 bodies, scattered as far as 60 feet in diameter, incinerated by dynamite. Horacio was amongst the victims of the blast, though Mrs. Gastelu did not know it at the time.

    Initially, the perpetrators of the incident walked free. The military government didn't bother to launch an investigation into the incident because the massacre was part of a larger repressive apparatus.

    Mrs. Gastelu had high hopes of seeing justice done, however, in 1983, when Raul Alfonsin was buoyed to the presidency in the wake of the military's collapse on a platform of demanding accountability for the "Dirty War." Between 1985 and 1987, the government launched a series of successful prosecutions against high military officials for their involvement in the repression of Argentina's last military government. But, as prosecutions threatened rank-and-file policemen and soldiers, the military rebelled, and the government was forced to pass an amnesty to prevent civil war. Horacio's murderers again walked with impunity.

    But a generation later, in 2005, the Supreme Court handed down sweeping decision to revisit Argentina's dark past, declaring the amnesty laws unconstitutional, null and void.

    On July 18, Mrs. Gastelu finally saw justice done. A federal courthouse in Buenos Aires sentenced two former police officers, Juan Carlos Lapuyole and Carlos Enrique Gallone, to life in prison for the murder of Horacio Gastelu and 29 others.

    But Mrs. Gastelu had mixed emotions. She is frustrated that justice is "incomplete." The court absolved a third defendant Miguel Timarchi, lacking evidence that he was with the group of 30 on the night of the murders. Time has also robbed the case of some of its central protagonists. Of the ten policemen suspected of being involved in the incident, only three were alive at the time the case was reopened in 2003. Gallone and Lapuyole were both on the lower rungs of the police hierarchy.

    Mrs. Gastelu is also frustrated that the focus of the trial was too narrow. Prosecutors and the court investigated her son's murder, but perhaps left out hundreds of others. The 30 prisoners were all held at the superintendencia of the federal police, a small police station in the heart of downtown Buenos Aires, where the government housed a torture center on the third floor. "They've judged those who were responsible for the site that night, but this was a torture center. There were many other victims and others who participated."

    The incident, known as the "Fatima Massacre," was emblematic of the brutality of Argentina's last military government, which ruled from 1976 to 1983. On August 21, 1976, 30 drugged and illegally detained prisoners were transferred from the superintendencia onto a truck. Guards drove the prisoners several kilometers outside of the city, near the small town of Fatima. They were walked into the woods, strapped with dynamite and summarily executed. The press, under heavy censorship, was not given access to the site and reported on only the general outline of the incident. But the minimal coverage provided one of the first glimpses into the extent of military repression, and forced the government's highest officials to publicly condemn the incident, while at the same time sitting atop a repressive apparatus that made such incidents possible. By the time the military government collapsed, some 15,000 people had been kidnapped by the government.

    The specifics of the incident continue to remain elusive. Bodies were quickly whisked away from the site, and only five victims were identified at the time. The 25 others, some just pieces of scattered incinerated bodies, were marked "NN" - no nombre, "no name" - and buried in individual graves. They were exhumed by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology team in 1985, when the commanders of Argentina's military government were brought to trial by the nascent democratic regime, but they could not be identified. With advances in genetic technology, however, 11 more were identified in the 1990s.

    For months after Horacio's disappearance, Mrs. Gastelu searched desperately for her son. She asked every official who would listen at the Libertador armed forces command in downtown Buenos Aires. (Horacio was a recent conscript. The armed forces claimed he must have been a deserter. "So then look for him," she chided). She went to the local police. She asked friends and family if anyone had seen Horacio, but nobody gave her an answer, and nobody knew.

    She met other women with the same dilemma: their children, too, had "disappeared." By 1977, nearly a year after Horacio went missing, individual pleas with officers and government officials were going nowhere. Together with 14 other women, Mrs. Gastelu helped form the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group devoted to finding the whereabouts and the truth of the "disappeared" and bringing attention to the repressive detention practices of the military government. The mothers' organization was courageous, perhaps suicidal. At the time, most opposition to the government was met with arrest, beatings or death. Indeed, one of the 14 founding members, Azucena Villaflor, was herself "sucked up."

    When Democracy returned in 1983, Mrs. Gastelu continued to march, originally in support of the government that promised to prosecute military and police officials responsible for the disappearances. But Mrs. Gastelu's march soon again turned into protest, rallying against the amnesty law that blocked further prosecutions. She and the other mothers marched (and continue to march) every Thursday for 25 years. But it may be too late. "We're 80 years or older. We'll keep fighting; we'll keep marching, but it's sad. It hurts. "No me basta."

www.truthout.org/article/the-fatima-massacre