Enriqueta Rodríguez de Maroni

Madre de Plaza de Mayo - Línea Fundadora(Founding Members)

Enriqueta is the mother of four children. On April 5, 1977, two of her children, Juan Patricio Maroni and María Beatriz Maroni, were kidnapped together with their partners. Juan Patricio’s wife was released a few days later. Juan Patricio, Maria Beatriz and her husband, Carlos Alberto Rincón, are still missing.

Her moving story appears reflected in this letter, written in 1998:

‘I’m a mother of four children, two of them are detained-disappeared. I belong to Madres de Plaza de Mayo - Línea Fundadora (Founding Members). Twenty two years have gone by since the 1976 coup d’etat, but the claim for Truth and Justice is still present today and it is important to vindicate ‘the Detained-disappeared’ since they didn't have the right of defence. What was the meaning of the kidnappings then and now? The intention was to establish a horror plan together with an economic plan of growing social marginalisation. Those who thought differently were punished and the security forces were the? saviors’ who would save the country.

Our country has experienced a sinister plan performed by people who carried out the kidnappings, detentions, tortures and then disappearances as a “way of living” during many years, the most somber years of Argentine history and a generation who was committed to the history of their time and people’.

And she continues:

‘The ‘Detained-disappeared' category is still valid and it acquires a different dimension when that category is personalised, it has a name and surname, it is not a John Doe and it is even more when it is your son’s name. At an official level, no one has told us what happened to them, how, why, who and when. The serious problem of the disappeared has struck the conscience of a whole community. Those who were deeply affected by this were the relatives and among them, their children. For twenty one years, children and now adolescents have suffered this. We, the Madres, constantly claim for Truth, Justice and punishment for all those who are guilty.

We have the lawful right to know what really happened to our beloved ones. From the world of silence they were condemned to inhabit, they knock at the door of our conscience. We tell them that we will never abandon our claim for Justice, our search for truth, our collective memory and all our love for them.

Juan Patricio, and María Beatriz and her husband, were kidnapped in their houses in the wee hours of night by security forces belonging to the First Army Corps whose general in charge was Suárez Mason.

We knew that they were detained in Club Atlético, one of the many clandestine detention centres’.

MARÍA BEATRIZ AND JUAN PATRICIO’S MEMORY

Enriqueta introduces her children in this way:

Maria Beatriz went to primary school at ‘San Francisco de Sales’, did her secondary school at ‘María Auxiliadora’ and she graduated as a social worker at the University of Buenos Aires. She worked in a health Centre in ‘Mataderos’. She was married to Carlos Alberto Rincón (with whom she was kidnapped). She was 23 years old when she disappeared.

Juan Patricio also attended primary school at ‘San Francisco de Sales’, he went to secondary school at ‘Colegio de los Hermanos Lasalle’. He was a student of Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires. He was working for ‘Aerolineas Argentinas’ (the Argentine State Airline). He was married and had one daughter, Paula.He disappeared at the age of 21.

María Beatriz and Juan Patricio were very religious young people. They wanted to put into practice the lessons they had learnt from the Bible, not just to preach the word of the Lord. They participated in Catholic youth movements and they cared about the big social injustices in Argentina. This is why they were taken.

WITH THE MADRES

Currently, Enriqueta continues her struggle for Collective Memory, Truth and Justice from her place in Madres de Plaza de Mayo - Línea Fundadoraassociation. Her story, together with the stories of other sixteen fellow madres, is present in the documentary called ‘Madres’, created by Eduardo Félix Walger. In it, he tells the stories of these mothers and their fight for Human Rights, justice and equality. About this work, Enriqueta states that:

In this material, we want to show the real story of the State terrorism and its cruel consecuences.It is a story told from the perspective of the truth, by the real people who suffered it. It isn’t the official story, but we hope it survives as the true story, made by us along these 30 years.

Margarita Maroni, María Beatriz and Juan Patricio’s sister, has accompanied Enriqueta in her struggle and currently she is a member of Agrupación Herman@s de Desaparecidos por la Verdad y la Justicia (the Siblings of the Disappeared for Truth and Justice Association).

ALWAYS TOGETHER

‘I’m Margarita, María Beatriz’s sister, her twin sister. She was 23 when she was kidnapped, together with her husband, from their home. I’m also Juan Patricio’s

sister, he was kidnapped from our parents’ home at the age of 21. Being a twin sister, I live all this as a form of mutilation. I shared everything with her, from the womb till the games, friends and the same classroom desks from first form till the end of high school. That sensation of mutilation and horror is one of the reasons why, for many years, I lived all this in silence, being by my mother’s side, but torn into pieces because of the anguish. I devoted myself to creating life, I had four beautiful daughters, in a compulsive need to give life. I think that is what helped me to survive. I was three-months pregnant when they were kidnapped and I remember quite vividly today how hard my belly was because of so much anguish. The night before María Beatriz was kidnapped, she had been with me because she wanted to give me the nappies that later my daughter Valeria would wear when she was born. I used to wake up in the middle of the night with the feeling of dying, too. The relationship between siblings is a symmetrical one, it is the most even relationship. I think it is the reason why we haven’t been able to react, we have been paralised by the anguish and the suffocation of pain.