Hebe de Bonafini, leader of Madres de Plaza de Mayo and a longstanding human rights campaigner, has been summoned to appear before a court on 25 October to answer questions on the improper use of funds. Bonafini has responded defiantly, saying she will refuse to attend, while stepping up her attacks on the government led by President Mauricio Macri.
Hebe de Bonafini campaigned on behalf of the “disappeared” during Argentina’s military regime (1976-1983). Admired for her courage at the time, her subsequent campaigning has had a much more mixed reception. Over the last three decades she has become a polarising figure in Argentine politics with loyal supporters, but also with a wide group who question her methods and motives. Largely because of disagreements with Bonafini’s leadership style a dissident group of mothers of the disappeared broke away in 1986, to form Madres de Plaza de Mayo – Línea Histórica. Bonafani is seen as intensely partisan, having been closely associated with both the governments of President Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and Cristina Fernández (2007-2015).
Federal judge Diego García, specialised in economic crimes, has this week summoned her to be questioned on the alleged misdirection of Ar$46.1m (US$2.63m) worth of pension contributions due for employees of Fundación Sueños Compartidos, a non-profit controlled by Madres de Plaza de Mayo. Sueños Compartidos had run housing programme for low-income families, funded by the Kirchner governments. The judge is also looking into “superfluous spending” at the non-profit. Bonafini fired back saying “my only superfluous spending is on double-ply toilet paper” and that she had lived in the same unpainted house for more than 35 years.
This is not the only court investigation she faces. A separate case opened in May concerns allegations of an Ar$206m (US$13.4m) fraud at Sueños Compartidos. Her co-defendants in that case are the Schoklender brothers (Sergio and Pablo). The Schoklenders are no strangers to notoriety (see sidebar). Referring to the latest charges, Bonafini said any wrongdoing was the responsibility of the Schoklenders and José López, the former public works secretary (2003-2015). López is currently in prison facing money laundering charges; he was arrested last year after being caught in the early hours of the morning trying to hide bags containing millions of dollars in cash in a convent.
According to Bonafini, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo face a further threat: what she says is a politically motivated eviction from their Buenos Aires offices. The offices are in the name of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo University Institute, another offshoot of the charity set up in 2014, but which was subsequently taken over by the government in 2015 when it could not pay its debts. Bonafini says Javier Alejandro Buján, appointed by the current Macri government to run the institute, is threatening her with eviction, as part of a plan “to destroy our history, because they are the same as the military”. The government in turn says the institute has failed to present an academic plan or to outline a proper curriculum.
Another human rights activist, Graciela Fernández Meijide (a former member of Conadep, the national commission on the disappeared) criticised Bonafini, along with Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and the leader of the grandmothers of the disappeared (Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo), Estela de Carlotto, for comparing the elected Macri government to the former military dictatorship. She told Radio del Plata “I can understand young people, who might need a heroic narrative and who never lived under a dictatorship, doing so. But for Pérez Esquivel, Carlotto or the Mothers to say we are living under a dictatorship is crazy… it is bad faith or old age, I really don’t know which.”
- Schoklender brothers
The Schoklender brothers were convicted for murdering their parents in 1981; after release from prison in 1995 they worked closely with the Madres de Plaza de Mayo until 2011. At that point they faced multiple charges of fraud and money-laundering, including misappropriating US$280m from the house-building programme; Hebe de Bonafini, who had been very close to Sergio Schoklender, ended up formally accusing him of threats and extortion.