“Like every other Monday morning I was on my way to campus, where I was supposed to attend a boring-to-death two-hour lecture on applied economics. I already knew that wasn’t what was going to happen: as I put foot in the main hall, I would meet Ana and Miguel, and we would head straight to the canteen in the Philosophy faculty where we would talk for hours on end on what really mattered: Videla and the military junta had just risen to power, and the college campus, as the streets of Buenos Aires, was still trying to digest the change, bursting with counter activity. In fairness, I had never been that interested in politics, but Ana’s face would light up the moment the conversation turned to the topic. It was something I struggled to understand at the time, but I had come to accept it was part of her. And it was basically impossible not to be attracted to that whirlwind of a woman I had met on my first day at college.
At some point I had even gone with her to the meetings of the student union and those other leftist organizations, where she would listen captivated, and where sometimes she even dared to speak up her mind. It had been weeks since we attended one of these meetings for the last time, as we were well aware that the simple fact of being on one of them would put us on the spotlight. Again and again, we had listened the same disturbing story: a friend of someone we knew from the student union had disappeared overnight without a trace. And all these stories had one thing in common: the soon-to-be hostage would be walking around, minding his own business, when a car with tinted windows and no license plates would slow down to a crawl by his side, then stop. From one of those dark green Ford Falcons (because it always was a dark green Falcon), three or four men would get out wearing the classic aviator sunglasses, and the all-too-familiar outline of a revolver under the jacket. A minute later it was over: you could ask all you wanted, no one knew where to find him or her. They were gone forever.
That’s why my heart had skipped a beat when I saw it: one of those damned green Falcons had just turned around the corner. My mind was racing: maybe someone I had met in one of those assemblies had been himself kidnapped, and had dropped my name during the endless interrogatories in a vain attempt to stop the pain the torturers were inflicting on him. Now that symbol of what could come next — torture, perhaps death — was slowly approaching. Are they looking for me? Perhaps Ana? What do I do if it stops by my side? I could try to run, but they will surely catch me, and I don’t think they will be too pleased at having to sprint to get me…”
This could have been the start of a story that repeated itself thirty thousands times during the time general Jorge Rafael Videla ruled Argentina after he came to power in a coup d’etat in 1973, deposing Isabel Peron. That mind-blowing figure corresponds with the estimated number of people that disappeared during the dictatorship at the hands of the secret services and other paramilitary groups backed by the army. In any case, the protagonist of this particular story is not a person, but that dark green Ford Falcon, unmarked and with tinted windows, that would send chills through the spine of thousands of Argentinians during the reign of terror of Videla, becoming the embodiment of kidnappings, torture and death.
And yet, during its first few years of existence the Falcon represented very different values. Launched in 1962 with the idea of providing a reliable and affordable car to the emerging middle class, the Falcon would be in production for almost 30 years, becoming in the process the best-selling Argentinian car in history. Just shy of half a million Falcons were sold, many of them being used regularly by the police forces and taxi drivers in Buenos Aires, what made them on the eyes of many people a symbol of the country, just like maté, football, or tango could be.
On the other hand, for even more people the Falcon would become the personification of the fear, the violence and death the military junta led by General Videla would bring to their lives. The repression focused on that part of the Argentinian society that could hold any tie with the left, which would be considered to have “subversive” intentions against the nation.
Even before the 1973, the always reliable Falcon had already started being used by the secret service and other groups, like the infamous Argentina Anti-Communist Alliance (or triple A), as a means of transport in those abductions, or to transfer detainees from one secret detention center to another. A fact that reinforced the symbolism is their preference for a specific model and color of Falcon: while regular police vehicles were usually painted in black and white, the secret services opted for unmarked cars, using a discreet dark green paint-job combined with tinted windows. Before long, the vision of one of these cars, occupied by several burly men wearing sunglasses, started bringing fear to the minds of all those considered enemies of the country, ranging from union leaders to journalists, students, and in general, any person that under could be considered a political enemy for the regime.
An example of this kind of secret operations is the kidnapping of Nelva Méndez de Falcone, who later became one of the leaders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo movement. In September 1976, her daughter Maria Claudia had participated along with other high school students in a protest against the high student bus fares in ciudad de la Plata (approximately 60 kilometers north of Buenos Aires). Maria Claudia, like almost every other student who took part in the protest, disappeared shortly thereafter, kidnapped by the military in what was later known as the “night of the pencils”. It’s then when Jorge, the other son of the Falcone family, decides to go into hiding, fearing for his life. In one of the trips that Nelva was doing with her husband, senator Jorge Falcone, to provide their son with food and other provisions, both were captured by the secret services, which transported them in one of those already infamous green Falcons to one of the dozens of secret detention centers run by the military. During their captivity, Falcone would be forced to watch how his wife was tortured in several occasions with a cattle prod. Two months after their capture, the Falcone couple was released. Unfortunately, Jorge Falcone died shortly afterwards of a heart attack, possibly the consequence of his time in detention. Meanwhile, Nelva would join shortly after the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo movement, becoming one of its most recognizable faces. The Mothers would fight for years to recover the missing at the hands of the Videla regime, and would try to bring to justice those responsible of their disappearance.
Unfortunately, this is not the only case where the Ford Falcon is related to the crimes of the dictatorship in Argentina. The Ford factory in General Pacheco where the Falcon was assembled also became a center for torture and repression: dozens of workers, and specially union leaders, where detained and tortured there by the military. One of these union leaders was Pedro Troiani, who testified in court against the board of directors of Ford’s subsidiary in Argentina, accusing them of colluding with the military that captured and tortured him in April of 1976. According to his testimony (obviously denied by Ford executives), the military had even built and maintained a temporary detention center inside the factory facilities. It’s worth mentioning that not only Ford was involved in such dealings with the military: it’s suspected that Mercedes Benz was also implicated.
In the last few years, some nostalgics have tried to restore the honor and reputation of the Falcon. And yet, for many Argentinians, this car will remain being the embodiment of the pain and suffering that the dictatorship brought to the country.
“… in the end, the Falcon went past me, turning on the corner and disappearing from sight. Just in case, I rushed into the first café I could find and sat down, trying to forget what has just happened. I asked for an americano to the waiter, who brought it right away. Without me realizing it, the moment I held the cup in my hand, it started rattling against the plate: I was feeling sick with nerves. “Take it easy, man. Have you seen a ghost or something?”, I heard the waiter say. He didn’t know how accurate he had just been.”
