Almost 50 years on, French families still seek answers about relatives disappeared in Argentina

Annie Domon never found the body of her sister Alice. But she has seen the person responsible for her sibling’s disappearance during the dictatorship in Argentina in 1977 sentenced in court – justice which other French families of the desaparecidos (“disappeared”)  still await.

"I have no desire for revenge, simply for justice to be done ... Justice is indispensable," Annie, 84, says from her home on the outskirts of Vierzon in central France, plagued by memories. 

A black-and-white photograph of Alice hangs in her kitchen, showing ‘Lisette,’ as she was known, drinking mate a few months before her arrest in 1977 at the Santa Cruz Church in downtown Buenos Aires.

Alice was taken along with Esther Ballestrino, Azucena Villaflor and María Ponce, co-founders of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo human rights group, among others. 

Two French nuns – Alice Anne Domon and Renee Léonie Duquet — became a symbol in France of such disappearances. According to the court reconstruction of events, both were tossed into the sea in a so-called "death flight" on the night of December 14, 1977, along with 10 other activists.

“Alice was somebody who took her convictions to the finish," assures Annie. 

Her sister was born in 1937 in Charquemont in eastern France, and in 1967, moved to Argentina as a nun of the Congregation of Sisters in Foreign Missions.

There she worked especially in shantytowns and low-income neighbourhoods but in 1976, noticing that people she knew were beginning to disappear, she decided to return from the northern provinces to Buenos Aires City, where she worked with the Madres de Plaza de Mayo until her arrest.

‘France does not forget’

Her story returned to the headlines after French President Emmanuel Macron – on a trip to Buenos Aires to meet President Javier Milei – visited the Santa Cruz Church last Sunday. There, at the request of the families, he reiterated the state’s traditional official position: "La France n’oublie pas” (“France does not forget”).

Almost half a century later this phrase resounds with more force. Milei, Argentina’s current president, has been accused of  revisionism as to what occurred during the 1976-1983 dictatorship. His government has called for a “complete memory” of the conflict.

Macron’s words are "comforting for us but also for the Argentines who suffered," assures Annie, who attended the trial in Argentina in which former naval officer Alfredo Astiz – known as the “Angel of Death” – was sentenced to life imprisonment in the case of the French nuns.

Although the traditional consensus puts the number of those disappeared during the military regime at 30,000, the current authorities defend a figure of under 9,000. 

At least 22 victims were French. Despite the time that has passed, their families expect action, such as France and Argentina naming people "to take charge of the search [for them]," assures Jean-Pierre Lhande, president of an association grouping relatives of victims together.

Although that task might now seem impossible, various unidentified bodies have been able to be identified well into the 21st century, among them that of Duquet, who was washed up from the sea in 1977 and then buried in a common pit. 

"Disappearance is worse than death," underlines from Argentina journalist Éric Domergue, 68, for whom his "great satisfaction" was the identification of the body of his brother Yves in 2010 so that his parents could close up this "open wound."

‘Liberty, memory, justice’

When his family decided to return to France in 1974, Yves Domergue decided to stay on in Argentina. He had moved to the country aged four, in 1959, and wanted to continue his university studies. 

Yves was also a militant in the far-left Marxist-Leninist group Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT).

In 1976 he went into hiding, informing his brother that he would be leaving Buenos Aires for a few days, but he never returned. His body and that of his Mexican girlfriend Cristina Cialceta were only identified 34 years on in Melincué, 300 kilometres away from the capital.

Despite the discovery of their remains and the conviction of the person who ordered their murders, Éric fights on. Last Sunday he delivered a letter to Macron expressing his "fear" of an "amnesty" in Argentina for the convicted repressors.

"When I speak of Yves, I’m also referring to the 30,000. The combat for liberty and for memory and justice for the 30,000 continues," he underlines.

In France the battle is also ongoing in the courtrooms. In 1990, a court sentenced Astiz in absentia to life imprisonment in the cases of Domon and Duquet, and since 1998 an investigation has been opened into 11 other French citizens who went missing, according to a court source.

To conclude the investigation, it remains to be established "if there are people who have already been convicted for the same crimes" in Argentina in order "not to duplicate the trials," assures a lawyer for the families, Sophie Tono, detailing that this "difficult point needs a certain time."

Meanwhile the families of the missing, especially their parents, the witnesses and the repressors are all growing older and dying off. 

With their deaths the latter are taking with them "the memory of what they did, saw and heard" and "the possibility of being punished for their crimes," Tonon warns.