Testimonio de Cristina Comandé / 09 de octubre 2017

Cristina Comandé. She was born in 1954 in the City of Buenos Aires. Upon entering the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, she began to participate socially in university activities, and in 1974 she joined the Guevarist Youth, the youth wing of the PRT-ERP (People's Revolutionary Army). At 22 years old, on the night of September 16, 1976, in the early morning hours, there was a knock on her door and a group of Federal Police officers, dressed in civilian clothes and heavily armed, entered. Cristina was kidnapped and taken to a police station near her home, information she would later obtain. After a few days, they moved her again, in the trunk of a car, on a long journey. In the concentration camp—as Cristina is certain to specify—she remained until December 30 of the same year, when she was released. With the return of democracy, Cristina spent years without mentioning her status as a survivor, until 1996 when she approached human rights organizations to give her testimony. From that moment on, she was an active member of the Vesubio and Puente 12 Commission, where, together with relatives of victims and survivors of those concentration camps, she conducted a meticulous investigation into the atrocities and inhumane conditions to which hundreds of people who remain disappeared or were murdered were subjected. Her sustained work, based on testimonies, photographs, and minimal information, became key to securing the arrest of perpetrators in the trials where Cristina was a plaintiff, driven by her unwavering pursuit of Memory, Truth, and Justice. She passed away on February 7, 2022.