SANTIAGO VACA

The last surviving prisoner to visit the ex-prison

In March 2004, at the age of 89, he visited the Ex-Presidio after 63 years, where he shared with sinister characters like Santos Godino ("El Petiso Orejudo") a 5-year sentence for having shot a corporal in the army.

The memory of the yellow and black striped suit and the exhausting days is still alive in his memory and, he says, "I don't want to die without going through the cells and corridors that brought me so much suffering when I was just a 20-year-old boy." His eyes are moistened, his voice trembles but he does not stop looking at the ceiling of the cell, as if trying to find the ghosts of yesterday. "He was just a little boy when he was doing his military service there in Campo Los Andes, in the province of Mendoza" - he says. It was barely four months before I was discharged. Corporal Robles was arrogant, ill-mannered and arrogant. One day we argued over an order that I considered unfair. The result of that discussion was that I took a gun and fired. Fortunately, I did not kill him, I would have carried that crime all my life. "A War Council tried him and sentenced him to five years in prison in the darkest prison in Argentina at the time: this prison for highly dangerous repeat offenders. Here Vaca, who was born in Salta and, according to his daughter, "was an innocent little monkey", must have shared his days with people who were damaged.

A Navy ship brought him to Ushuaia. Santiago remembers when the ship was moving away. He looked out over the bay and said: "Señor de los Milagros, don't forget that here is a person from Salta who has to come back." "They assigned me a number, 21, they gave me the yellow and black striped prison clothes. I still feel in my ears the noise of the bolt when they closed the cell door. That night I did not sleep. I just walked and cried remembering me mother, who imagined suffering like me. Santiago, tall, thin, and gray-haired, walks in his cell in the same way he did 60 years ago. He shakes his head as if denying what he had experienced so long ago. A Uruguayan couple approaches him with A group makes the excursion to the prison. They cannot believe they are in front of an ex-inmate. They both look at him as if he were from another planet. Santiago feels a bit ashamed and leaves the group without saying a word. That time was very long. In winter they got up at 7 o'clock, emptied the "Sambuyo" (container where they relieved themselves) and then made breakfast. Their first job was that of a wire fence: he repaired and wire the fence of the prison. welder and finally machinist's assistant. The prisoners ate in their cells, never in groups. The only entertainment was, twice a year, each one to bring their own wooden stool and sit at the door of the building to look at the mountain or the bay. "From the first moment I entered the jail I felt the need to escape. I just had to wait for the opportunity. That opportunity came a year later. They sent me and a group to cut firewood in the mountains. Faced with an oversight by the guards, With Cáceres, the pavilion companion with whom we had planned the escape, we gained the mountain and escaped. We wanted to reach the border with Chile. Six days later we found an Indian who went to town, according to him, to look for vices. We asked him That he did not tell anyone that he had seen us, and he showed us a way to get to the border. The next day they caught us with dogs. The Indian had sold us. " For Carlos Vairo, director of the Maritime Museum, Vaca's is a visit to keep the memory alive and is part of the "Encounters with a Memory" program, a UNESCO program. "We do not want to highlight the figure of a former prisoner. We only seek to keep alive the memory of those important events in our history," says the researcher.

Text extracted from the Clarin newspaper, Tuesday March 23, 2004 Year VIII N ° 2912 by Wilmar Caballero.

POLITICAL PRISONERS

Political and social prisoners were also sent to Ushuaia. This happened in 1905, 1911 and especially in the 1930s, after the military coup. But both the circumstances and the life they developed in "jail" was very particular.

To reflect we will see some cases.

The radical deputy Néstor Aparicio, after the revolution of September 6, 1930, which overthrew Hipólito Irigoyen, traveled to Montevideo, where he spent three months. In an interview with the newspaper "El Nacional" he accused the de facto government of defending US oil interests.

Within days of returning from his hometown of Dolores, where he planned to resume his legal profession, he was arrested and taken to the National Penitentiary of Buenos Aires. The reason was the accusation that the deputy had formulated in the report in Montevideo. He stayed five months until in April 1931, he was taken, on the Chaco steamer, to Ushuaia from where he escaped in August and was exiled in Chile. He returns to the country in March 1932. He did not rejoin politics. He will tell about his experience in his book "The prisoners of the Chaco and the escape from Ushuaia" (1934).

But he was not the only political prisoner. On March 7, 1931, they were embarked on the "Chaco" transport, together with Néstor Aparicio, Pedro Bidegain, Benavídez, Carlos Montes, Mario Cima and Dr. Emir Mercader, a doctor who left very good memories among the inhabitants, for his wisdom and humanity, he attended to the settlers without charging them.

The political prisoners were put into cabins under threat that there was an order to shoot them "as soon as the heads of the cabin appeared." In the warehouses some prisoners were in shackles .