Leila Guerriero, the writer who made Argentina cry with the poignant story of a victim of the military junta

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Portrait The great non-fiction writer recounts the ordeal of Silvia Labayru. In 1976, this far-left activist was kidnapped and tortured by the military junta. An exceptional story.

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Something is happening in South America. After Walter Salles' Oscar-winning film about the dictatorship in Brazil ("I Am Still Here"), a film that had a huge impact in her country, Leila Guerriero, Argentina's greatest non-fiction writer, published in 2023 a masterful, exhausting, terrible, and moving text, the French version of which is out today from Rivages. "The Call" tells the story of Silvia Labayru, a young woman kidnapped on Christmas Eve 1976 by the military who had just seized power. Silvia was part of a small, far-left Peronist group advocating violent action, the Montoneros. At 20, five months pregnant, she was held captive at the Naval Mechanical School (Esma), the largest detention center in Argentina, out of approximately 700 scattered throughout the country. "Between 1976 and 1983, approximately five thousand people were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered there . Fewer than two hundred survived. The total number of those who disappeared during the dictatorship is thirty thousand."

Silvia Labayru is about to escape after a year and a half of torture and abuse. She gave birth to her daughter Vera on a table at the beginning of her captivity. She was raped by a high-ranking military officer and by his wife, who participated in the sessions. At the end of her detention, Silvia thought she could...