UPDATE

KaTmRobert reaches

LatinAmaican andworld history at St.Thomas Universityin New Brunswick,Canada and is

cuI"I"mtly re5ean:hingthe social histary afthe automobileinArgmtina.

12

NACLAREPORTON THEAMERICAS

The Falcon RemelDbered

by KarenRobert

AT NOON ON MARCH 4, 2005, A GREEN

Ford Falcon pulled up next to awoman in Centenario, a municipality

of Neuquen, in southern Argentina. Three menand a woman forced her into the car and thenspent the next several hours threatening, tor-turing and mutilating her. The victim, whosename has been kept secret, was the wife of anemployee at the Ceramica Zanon tile factory,one of the flagship worker-controlled enter-prises that have sprung up in Argentina sincethe 2001 crisis. While the Zanon workers havesuccessfully resuscitated the plant, they havealso faced growing intimidation, as exempli-fied by this attack. The victim's abductorsreleased her with the message: "This is forZanon. Tell them that the union will run withblood.. .. You're all going to have to move intothe factory because we're going to kill all ofyou."Such tactics of violence and intimidation

carry a pedigree as long as Argentinas historyof authoritarianism. Yet the automobile usedin this attack has a much more specific associ-ation with the terror of the 1970s Dirty War,when the Ford Falcon was the car of choice

DuringAl1entlna'sDlrlyWar of the19705, the FordFalcon becamethe single mostrecognizableIcon ofrepression.

used by police, military and paramilitariesalike. Ford's exclusive contracts with theArgentine security forces throughout the dicta-torship eventually made the Falcon the singlemost recognizable icon of repression, one thatclearly still resonates today. "Whenever aFalcon drove by or slowed down, we all knewthat there would be kidnappings, disappear-ances, torture or murder," reflects renownedArgentine psychologist and playwrightEduardo "Tato" Pavlovsky in a recent article."It was the symbolic expression of terror. Adeath-mobile. "The attack on the Zanon workers also chill-

ingly recalls the violence used nearly thirtyyears ago against the very workers who werebuilding Falcons for Ford. A lawsuit currentlybeing prepared against Ford Motor Companyalleges that the company's relationship withthe military junta went beyond that of a privi-leged supplier.Pedro Troiani and fourteen other former

Ford employees are seeking to bring criminalcharges against the company for its role intheir disappearance, torture and detentionduring the first two years of the dictatorship.

a:wZx3~a::5

NOVEMBERDECEMBER2005

They allege that Ford managementconspired with military officials torid themselves of the factory's uniondelegates and to intimidate the restof the workforce into submission.The plaintiffs accuse the companyof providing the military with a listof "subversives" and then supplyinginformation from personnel files tofacilitate the men's abduction fromtheir homes or from the factorypremises, where they also allege thatan illegal detention center operatedfrom the first day of the coup.The Ford case and a parallel law-

suit against Mercedes Benz-ownerDaimlerChrysler mark the firstattempts in Argentina to charge pri-vate corporations for complicity inhuman rights violations. The lattercase concerning the disappearanceof Mercedes Benz workers impli-cates DaimlerChrysler in Germany,the United States and withinArgentina. The case names the com-pany's Argentine subsidiary, the mil-itary and Jose Rodriguez, presidentof SMATA,the autoworkers' union.These cases also break new groundin multinational corporate account-ability by naming the parent compa-nies located outside Argentina asalso bearing ultimate responsibilityfor these crimes.For now, the Ford investigation

remains in the hands of lawyerTomas Ojea Quintana and prosecu-tor Federico Delgado, who mustdetermine whether sufficient evi-dence exists to pursue criminalcharges against individual Ford man-agers and executives from the 1970s.Ojea Quintana must then build thelarger case against Ford Argentinaand Ford Motor Company step bystep, moving from the culpability ofindividuals to the complicity of thecorporation itself, To do so, he mustprove that the factory in GeneralPacheco was not taken over by the

military but remained under Ford'smanagerial control during the dicta-torship. He also has to establish thatthe disappearances of Ford employ-ees resulted from a managementdirective and not from the excessivezeal of a few overseers. If the Fordcase successfully passes these obsta-cles, Ojea Quintana's Los Angeles-based colleague Paul Hoffmann willuse the U.5. Alien Tort Claims Act tochallenge the Ford Motor Companyin U.5. courts.

SOON AFTER THE RETURN TO

democracy at the end of 1983,Argentina set an example withinLatin America by pursuing criminalcharges against military officers in aseries of trials that sawall the juntaleaders convicted and briefly

"Whenever a Falcon drove by

or slowed down, we all knew

that there would be kidnappings,

disappearances, torture or

murder. Itwas the symbolic

expression of terror."

imprisoned. Pioneering humanrights lawyers successfully provedthat the human rights violations ofthe DirtyWarhad been meticulous-ly planned and directed by thejunta, and were not the result ofaccumulated "excesses"committedby lower officers.However, the so-called "impunity laws" passed byPresidentsRaulAlfonsinand CarlosMenem stalled and eventuallyreversed these landmark achieve-ments. Menem'sblanket pardon of1990 seemed to end all possibilitiesof justice. Yetthe political and eco-nomic crisis of 2001 revitalizedeffortsto refonn thejudicial system,culminating in the Supreme Courtsrepeal of the impunity laws in June

UPDATE

2005. According to Ojea Quintana,this new juncture has made it possi-ble to take the legal struggle forhuman rights into areas of corporateaccountability that were previouslyall but unimaginable.The connivance between busi-

ness and military leaders at the timeof the coup is a recognized fact inArgentina, though one that has notbeen proven in a judicial forum.Both parties feared the leftwingMontoneros guerrillas and thePeople's Revolutionary Army (ERP),but their greater worries werereserved for Argentina's organizedand combative labor movement. Forthe military, organized labor repre-sented the most enduring and dis-turbing legacy of Peronism. Thoughplagued by corruption and frac-tured by political polarization in the1960s, the unions had survivedefforts at cooptation and repressionsince Juan Per6n's overthrow in1955 and represented a major polit-ical obstacle to the far-reachinggoals of the junta's bloody "Processof National Reconstruction."Organized labor's strength also

had concrete implications forArgentine industry, especially inlarge-scale establishments whereshop-floor delegates challengedmanagements control over the paceand organization of the laborprocess. Tensions ran especiallyhigh in the automotive sector oncethe bureaucratic leadership ofSMATA,the autoworkers' union, lostcontrol over some factories to a gen-eration of more combative, clasistashop-floor delegates. The most dra-matic example of that challenge wasthe Cordobazo of 1969, a massivegeneral strike in the city of C6rdobathat began as a labor dispute at aplant of Italian automaker Fiat.In a new study of the dictator-

ship, historians Marcos Novaro and13

UPDATE

Vicente Palermo describe a vinuallyseamless collaboration betweenbusiness and the armed forces in1976. In one instance they point toa pamphlet prepared jointly by theArmy and the Argentine EmployersInstitute for Development (IDEA), aleading executive forum, which rec-ommended that managers denounce"subversive" or even suspiciousemployees to the security forces.The response was apparently soenthusiastic that by the end of thedictatorship vinually all the shop-floor delegates had been disap-peared from the country's biggestfirms, among them several automanufacturers, such as MercedesBenz, Chrysler and Fiat Concord.The fact that 15 Ford workers

survived their disappearance andhave lived to challenge Ford incoun may, ironically, be a testamentto the effective paternalism that thecompany exercised in its huge plantin General Pacheco, a suburb ofBuenos Aires. It has taken years forthe plaintiffs against Ford to evenconceive of their former employeras criminally responsible for theirdisappearances. Pedro Troiani,today the most outspoken amongthe survivors, was an avid Ford rac-ing fan even before he staned build-ing Falcons at the new Pachecoplant in 1963, at the age of 21."It was a real novelty to work in

an auto factory, because it was oneof the first ones in the country, "remembers Troiani. "You really feltprivileged to get a job there. Therewas lots of talk about the 'Ford fam-ily,' and they'd have a big Christmaspany every year and raffle off a newFalcon." Troiani remained a compa-ny man even after he was elected asa union delegate in 1970. He dedi-cated himself to workplace safetyand salary-related issues while alsoremaining so moderate within the.14

The Ford case and a parallel

lawsuit a~ainst DaimlerChrysler

mark the first attempts in

Ar~entina to charge private

corporations for human ri~htsviolations.

union that the Marxist ERP guerrillamovement marked him for death inthe early 1970s as a stooge of bothFord and SMATA.Ford invited the army into the

factory in 1975, months before thecoup. Ford spokesperson RolandoCeretti told the New York Times thatthis military presence was aresponse to guerrilla threats andattacks against executives. From theperspective of the shop floor, thefactory was like an armed camp; sol-diers roamed between the machin-ery and checked workers' identifica-tion daily against lists of unionactivists.Rumors about detentions of

union delegates from the premisesof the Ford plant began circulatingduring the dictatorship and wereconfirmed in 1984 in Nunca Mas,the official repon of Argentina'sNational Commission on theDisappeared (CONADEP). Themost damning evidence regardingFord management's complicity withthe military appeared in the testi-monies of several former uniondelegates who were all present at ameeting with Ford's labor relationsmanager, known only as Galarraga.Although two of the witnesses datedthis meeting on or after the date ofthe coup (March 24, 1976), JuanCarlos Amoroso, who was also atthe meeting, recalled that itoccurred on March 23-the eve ofthe coup. After announcing thatmanagement would no longer rec-

NACLAREPORTON THEAMERICAS

ognize the men as the workers' del-egates, Amoroso remembers thatGalarraga taunted them with wordsthat, at the time, meant nothing tohim: "Amoroso, give my regards toCamps!" When Amoroso askedwhom Camps was, Galarragareplied laughing, "You'll find outsoon enough." Ram6n Camps, thenan obscure Army Colonel, wouldsoon become one of Argentina'smost notorious architects of terrorin his role as chief of the BuenosAires provincial police and wouldbe sentenced in 1986 to 25 years inprison for his role in 600 murders.Galarraga's was not an empty

threat, and the disappearancesbegan immediately. Two union dele-gates among the cafeteria workers,Luis Maria Giusti and JorgeCostanzo, were abducted from thecafeteria on March 24 by two armedmen wearing civilian clothes; theytied their hands with wire, hoodedthem and forced them into a greenFord Falcon. The two workers wereheld for four hours in the sportscenter inside the plant, where theywere beaten and kicked. They werethen transponed in another FordFalcon and later a pickup truck tothe Tigre police station in theprovince of Buenos Aires. Along theway they were subjected to a mockexecution.The next day, March 25,

Francisco Guillermo Perrotta, aFord accounting employee who wasworking as a paid union delegateoutside the plant, got a call fromFord management ordering him topresent himself at the factory thefollowing day.When he arrived, twomen met him in the secure parkinglot, called him by name and forcedhim into a green Ford Falcon. Theycarried his photograph, which theyclaimed was obtained from Ford'shuman resources office.

NOVEMBERDECEMBER2005

Pedro Troiani says his supervisorhad advance notice of his abductionon April 13, 1976. Far from warn-ing him when he arrived at workthat morning, the supervisorordered Troiani not to move fromhis place on the line: "You can'tmove because they're watchingyou." When a truckload of soldiersdescended on the plant, the factoryforeman, Miguel Migliacchio, iden-tified Troiani to them. The plantmanager came out of his office towatch as they pulled Troiani off theline and paraded him around thefactory, hands behind his head.Troiani, Carlos Albeno Propato

and five others rounded up that daywere taken to the same makeshiftdetention center within the plantsathletic facilities, where they werekept for seven hours. They were thentransferred to the Tigre police station,where they encountered co-workersfrom Ford and union delegates fromother firms who had also been kid-napped. "When we arrived Perrottawas already there, delirious becausethey'd beaten him and worked himover so badly with a cattle prod,"recalls Propato. Eleven men werecrowded into a ten-foot-square cellfor roughly six weeks and subjectedto continuing rounds of tonure whileofficials refused to confirm that theywere being held there. The men allegethat they saw copies of their Ford cre-dentials in the hands of police at theTigre police station. The workers'lawyer also has the testimony of wit-nesses who saw the military com-mander of the detachment stationedin the plant with a list of the mensnames on Ford letterhead.After roughly six weeks as "disap_

peared," authorities officially recog-nized the men as detained underNational Executive Power (PEN) andwere sent to regular prisons. Whiletheoretically less likely to be killed

no1N,they continued to suffer tonureand abuse until their eventual releaseroughly a year later. Carlos AlbenoPropato still does not know why hewas later moved from Devoto prisonto Sierra Chica, a maximum-securityprison reserved for the country's mostdangerous criminals. During the five-hour flight he and other prisonerswere beaten and told they weregoing to be thrown into the ocean.Propato remained in solitary con-finement for several months atSierra Chica, where he was con-stantly beaten and subjected to atleast three simulated executions. InMay 1977 he was inexplicablyreleased.Back in General Pacheco, mean-

while, panic ran through the factoryas other union delegates abandonedtheir activism or resigned altogether."Lots of people left without claimingone cent, because they were scared,"observes Propato. Several families ofdisappeared workers receivedtelegrams from Ford warning thatemployees absent from work wouldbe fired, even in cases like Troianis inwhich management had witnessedthe arrest. When Troiani's wifeprotested by telegram that the Fordmanagers knew exactly why her hus-band was absent from work, themessage was returned to her.

THE SURVIVORSFROMFORDGRADUALLY

recovered their freedom throughoutthe months of 1977, but they lived interror for the remainder of the mili-tary years, unable to return to theirold jobs and blacklisted from otherfactories. Having briefly countedthemselves among the most privi-leged and organized indusrrial work-ers of Argentina, they now foundthemselves living as ghosts. Perhapsthey survived to spread word of theirordeal because they were deemedless dangerous or more

UPDATE

"redeemable" than the Mercedes orFiat workers who had fatally chal-lenged not only their employers butalso their own union leadership.SMATA president Jose Rodriguez,whose control of the union has con-tinued unbroken since 1973, ishimself implicated in the MercedesBenz disappearances. In fact,Propato and Troiani recall a meetingfrom before the coup whenRodriguez warned them that theyshould calm union activism at theFord plant because the militarywould soon be taking power.Ironically, as corporate entities

both SMATA and Ford MotorCompany have enjoyed an institu-tional continuity that stands in dra-matic contrast to the upheavals thathave broken down and remade theArgentine state several times since1976. They have remained as durableas the old Ford Falcons themselvesthat still roam the streets and areoccasionally brought out for intimi-dation operations. That same conti-nuity may yet be used against Ford incoun, however, just as it has beenused against firms that profited fromslave labor in Nazi Germany (includ-ing Ford Motor Company and its sub-sidiary Ford Werke).Memory is also a form of

endurance, and memories of Ford's .association with the dictatorshipremain vivid in Argentina. Artistscontinue to evoke the Falcon insculpture, film and photography asthe physical embodiment of terror,and at least one Falcon-owner inBuenos Aires feels compelled todrive with a sticker in the back win-dow that reads, "My Falcon was notto blame. Nunca mas" (Never again).The plaintiffs seek to bring their ownmemories to light through their caseagainst Ford. In the words of sur-vivor Carlos Alberto Propato, "Weare pan of the Falcon, too.".

15