Leila Guerriero is Argentina's most renowned journalist, and in 2024 she released her latest book, The Call, in which she profiles Silvia Labayru. It’s a lengthy and intense book that, years ago, might have caused a major stir. However, it has been met with rave reviews. Times are changing in Argentina.

In the 1990s, the impunity imposed by President Menem (who pardoned both repressors and guerrilla fighters) created fertile ground for former left-wing militants—now unafraid of imprisonment—to recount their experiences in the '60s and '70s. This led to the publication of books like Mujeres Guerrilleras by Marta Diana and the emergence of the organisation HIJOS (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Oblivion and Silence), representing the children of the disappeared.

Today, under a government that praises Menem’s legacy, it seems that something is indeed changing. President Milei doesn’t appear very interested in debates over the past. It is his vice president, Victoria Villarruel, who occasionally makes gestures and statements that irritate some but haven’t translated into concrete actions. For example, in October of this year, she visited and presented an award to former president Isabel Perón, a controversial figure.

Although she was a constitutional president, it was during her administration that the paramilitary Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance (the Triple A) intensified its actions, and in 1975, she signed decrees for the "annihilation of subversion," initiating an exterminarion that spread across the country following the coup that overthrew her on March 24, 1976. Villarruel’s actions trouble progressive (or "woke," if you will) sectors, but the media's focus on other issues has relegated the matter to oblivion.

From my perspective, this attitude of Milei’s administration, oscillating between right-wing provocation and disinterest, has enabled certain new discourses about the recent past to emerge. In this context, Guerriero’s book appears, introducing decidedly novel elements.

Guerriero interviewed Silvia Labayru for almost two years at various locations during and after the pandemic. The author describes details such as her interviewee’s clothing, her travels, the vicissitudes of her return to Buenos Aires, and her reunion with her high school sweetheart, now her current partner. In The Call, Guerriero not only creates a biography but also reveals her working method, the behind-the-scenes of her research. She presents a polyphonic profile by interviewing many people from Labayru’s circle—ex-partners, study and militant comrades, her children, and even her father, who is in a care home and suffers from a neurodegenerative disease.

Silvia Labayru was 20 years old and five months pregnant when she was kidnapped on December 29, 1976. She was taken to the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), where she was held for a year and a half. Her daughter Vera was one of the first children born in captivity and one of the few returned to her biological family. The book takes its name from a call made by the repressors from ESMA to Labayru’s father, who answered angrily, blaming Montoneros for his daughter’s disappearance. The military, surprised, thought, "the Labayrus are on our side."

And it was true. Labayru is the daughter of an Air Force officer and commercial pilot, from a wealthy family. She attended the National School of Buenos Aires, where the Argentine elite studies. She was (is) a stunning blonde with blue eyes, what we would now call hegemonically beautiful, who traveled the world and spoke several languages. Like so many other young people from similar backgrounds but with social and political concerns, she joined Montoneros, the armed left-wing Peronist faction.

Irony has it that ESMA, as a clandestine detention centre, was emblematic for many reasons—primarily for being located in one of Buenos Aires’ most affluent neighbourhoods. The property is vast, bordering stately buildings where the wealthy reside; in fact, the Labayru family lived not far from where Silvia was held captive.

The survivor’s figure in any extreme experience is uncomfortable, always haunted by suspicion—“she must have done something to survive.” Labayru not only survived ESMA but also reclaimed her daughter born in captivity. However, during her detention, she was raped, forced to collaborate with repressors on intelligence tasks within ESMA, and, most appallingly, had to accompany Alfredo Astiz in his infiltration of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which led to the kidnapping and murder of several members of that first group. But what blame can Silvia bear? What resistance or choice does a person have in the hands of those who control her life and death?

With great pride, Labayru consistently insists that she “didn’t betray anyone,” neither during torture nor during her prolonged captivity. However, once she left ESMA and went into exile in Spain, her former militant comrades there labeled her a traitor, ostracising her from the exile community. Her experience and testimony are uncomfortable because they shed light on the limits and contradictions of established narratives about the past.

It’s not my intention to judge; we all create fictions to survive. But I do want to point out that this book, today reaching a mass audience, sharply presents left-wing militants in a negative light. The idea of glorious, idealistic youth fighting side-by-side for a better world, especially popular during Kirchnerism, does not hold up here. The militancy of the ’70s is depicted as militaristic, insensitive, and clearly sexist. Moreover, Labayru mocks former militants who make a living giving talks about their past, calling them “memory professionals” who have done nothing else with their lives.

I’m not trying to write a review, as each reader can read and draw their own conclusions, especially now that the book is available in multiple languages. But I do want to reflect on how Labayru’s testimony brings us closer to a more realistic, just, and human construction of truth. It expresses emotions that are neither beautiful nor pride-worthy and shows contradictions inherent to humanity. For example, when she recounts episodes in which she was raped by a repressor and his wife, she clarifies that one can feel physical pleasure, yet it remains rape because consent was impossible. Labayru was one of the first survivors to denounce sexual abuse in clandestine detention centres.

Labayru does not remain in a suffering victim’s role; she narrates her story with forgetfulness, small lies, and contradictions, clarifying that the most important way to honour her disappeared comrades is to live life intensely and to enjoy it. Ultimately, as Guerriero says, everything can be true, but what is real?