In the middle of the neo -fascist advance that the world lives, rebel fiction, resistance. This is one of Netflix’s latest successes, a series that was previously a graphic novel and rescues the Argentine dictatorship and the drama of the forced disappearances. It is not just that there is talk of totalitarianisms in the era of, but that an entire generation is stirring, multiplying consultations on stolen babies to left executions. Citizens in search of answers.
The Eternaluta It is a 1957 story by screenwriter Héctor Germán Oesterheld and cartoonist Francisco Solano López, now taken to the screens by Bruno Stagnaro. A story of blackouts, nine in summer, chemical threat and UFOs that, yes, also goes for losses, lack of answers, and the dictatorship of, because Oesterheld was one of the missing, in 1977.
But what happened and how important is in this series?
Under the yoke of Videla, between 1976 and 1981, Argentina lived years of darkness, censorship and repression, a time when state terrorism was the order of the day to start any sheet of discontent, criticism or dissent. The death of Juan Domingo Perón, in 1974, left the land paid so that the country lost its political and economic course. There would be fractures between the Peronists and a segment of the Armed Forces disapproved of Isabelita’s presidential relief (María Estela Martínez de Perón), the widow of the late president. Several times they urged her to resign, but she screwed into the legality of her mandate as president of Argentina.
With the warmth, on March 24, 1976, Argentina’s military forces took power by force. A coup d’etat headed by General Jorge Rafael Videla.
The real problem came later. For the Military Board it was pertinent to eliminate all those individuals and groups who were traitors to the regime. They did not necessarily have to be Leninist Marxist guerrillas, as the ultra -right, no. Any person on the left, with a communist or simply progressive political thought, was persecuted. Thus, they were assassinated trade unionists, politicians, artists, intellectuals, poets, journalists, teachers … even people who had nothing to do with a political or right political current, for intentional del one, bad information, quarrels of the past … the usual thing when the guerracivilism is installed.
The dictatorship executions model did not accommodate the shooting. The problem of storing corpses in common graves opened a potential international trial of crimes against humanity against the military regime, so that the Board opted for disappearances. Simpler, more hygienic. The military and their henchmen kidnapped those who put in the target, called “traitors”, locked them in clandestine centers, tortured them and killed them.
Many of them ended in the so -called “death flights”, in which opponents were drugged, were put cement on their feet and then threw them from planes that flyed over Mar del Plata. Thus they lost, forever, in the ocean. Impossible to know how many Argentines received this infamous death.
Hector Oesterheld, the screenwriter of The Eternalutahe was kidnapped and missing along with his sons -in -law and four daughters, two of them pregnant. He was pointed out for being linked to the Montoneros guerrilla group during that time and was last seen in one of several clandestine detention centers in which the military illegally stopped tens of thousands of people. The investigations subsequent to the dictatorship argue that the crime against him and his family also had as a mobile the discomfort generated in the military social criticism in his work. While he was living in hiding, Oesterheld worked in the second and last part of The Eternalutawhich could conclude before its forced disappearance and subsequent murder. Everything is impregnated with that anguish.
Hector Oesterheld and his family, before his disappearance in 1977.
On the horror of the dictatorship only his wife, Elsa Sánchez, and two of his grandchildren, of which the whereabouts even in 2025 is survived. That is why the case of the Oesterheld family has become one of the most shudder examples of state terrorism, revived by the series.
According to what Elsa told a documentary about her husband’s work, The Eternaluta It meant “a fresco of everyone’s daily life, of middle class people.” “It was almost like a premonition. It was a parallel of what happened in the country and what happened to me and my family, which destroyed it … That was what happened to the country, which destroyed it,” he explains.
From his first publication in the magazine Weekly zero hourthe novel was consolidated as a story loaded with political symbolism, and its protagonist, Juan unless fighting an invasion in a post -epocalyptic Buenos Aires, became an emblem of resistance. Today, the figure of Eternaluta appears in murals, marches and protests. Its silhouette with protective suit does not represent only a science fiction story, but the constant call to not forget to continue looking for justice.
The work of mothers
As of April 30, 1977, the mothers of many of those victims left by the bloodthirsty repression of the military dictatorship, began to protest. However, all kinds of public-social alteration was prohibited and punished. So they decided to gather peacefully in the Plaza de Mayo, to march in a circle, carrying in their white scarf heads and, in other cases, the paper diapers of their children. Something so simple but so revolutionary complied with the laws and, at the same time, launched the greatest cry of complaint ever heard in the dictatorship.
With the photos of the disappeared, they aroused the indignation of the international community. They have been candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize, they have been distinguished with the United Nations Human Rights Award and with Sájarov for the freedom of thought of European Parliament. Tireless, although few of those grandmothers are already alive, they have fought not only to know what happened with their children, but with their grandchildren: many women were killed with young or newborns, or even in their bellies, children who ended up in the hands of related families with the regime. Grandmothers have used DNA tests, forensic research and information provided by survivors and witnesses of the dictatorship to clarify the truth.
“If you were born between 1975 and 1983, you could be one of the grandchildren or granddaughters that we are still looking for,” he reads when entering the official grandmothers site of Plaza de Mayo, where they have activated a special related to the series that stars Gustavo Darín and actions linked to it. Until now, they have recovered the identity of 139 grandchildren. The first granddaughter recovered, Tatiana, was identified in 1980, at age six. The organization believes that approximately 300 grandchildren are still to find.
Grandmothers have confirmed that the success of the series has led to almost seven requests for information they receive, especially adults who want to know if they are stolen children from the dictatorship. The organization has made a new call so that whoever has information or suspicions helps to fulfill their will “to go underground having truth, justice and repair.”
Soccer and Malvinas
The Videla dictatorship had, like other current crimes, the collusion of the most powerful world of those years. For example, he found in the organization of the World Cup in Argentina in 1978 the ideal vehicle to revalidate the regime against public opinion. The important thing was to win at all costs the contest and thus rekindle the nationalist feeling, thanks to a selection that by then had figures like Mario Alberto Kempes and Daniel Pazella.
However, the pass to the final of the albiceleste selected depended on a triumph over Peru, for more than four goals. Argentina beat 6 goals to 0, a Peruvian team who was known for being a weight rival.
Between corridors, the possible case of corruption of the Argentine dictatorship to the Peruvian leaders and seconded by former Secretary of State of the United States, Henry Kissinger, was latent.
Finally, Argentina was crowned champion by winning the final to Holland. The people vibrated with emotion, under the fear of state terrorism.
In 1982, however, the Argentine Navy invades the Falkland Islands and claims them as southern territory. Therefore, a war against the British is unleashed. London, with Margaret Thatcher in command, was severe and deployed his powerful armed that in a few months overcame the Ansias Sovereign Argentines. In this way, a crisis is caused within the Military Board. Reynaldo Bignone, the last dictator in command of the regime and even in the same ideological wake of his predecessor, was forced to deliver power and call elections.
On October 30, 1983, democracy was restored in Argentina. Raúl Alfonsín was elected president and began to prosecute perpetual chain to the main responsible for those dark years for what the Argentine people went through.
However, today authoritarianism, totalitarianism, toxic atmosphere and human rights violations return. The Eternalutaas much as it is a reelection in cinema of what a director read as a kid, brings us back to the front page.
