Brazilian musician identified as victim of 1976 killing by Argentina military
In the beginning of 18 March 1976, Francisco Tenório Cerqueira Júnior, A Brazilian pianist He disappeared from the streets of Buenos Aires, playing with the largest musicians in Latin America.
For nearly 50 years, fate remained as a mystery, desperate searches, government guilt increased suspicions and inspired international documentaries. Now the mystery has been solved, the judicial scientists have officially described the body of Tenório Júnior, and confirmed that Argentina was the victim of the bloody dictatorship.
The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) Carlos “Maco” Somigliana said, “He left his hotel in the center of the city and the world ate it”. “Nothing else has been known so far – so far.”
Tenório Júnior, mostly known as Tenorinho, was accepted as one of the leading figures of the Bossa Nova movement – Brazil’s famous samba and jazz fusion. One critic He praised him as a pianist with “Golden Hands” and “an enormous future”.
During the South American tour on March 17, 1976, he performed with Brazilian legends Vinícius de Moraes and Toquinho at Gran Rex in Buenos Aires. The next morning around three o’clock, 34 -year -old cigarette and Aspirin left his hotel in the city center and never seen again.
In the following days, the musicians scanned the hospitals and morgues by searching crazy. Moraes, a girl’s songwriter from Ipanema, opened a Habeas Corpus article and applied directly to the Brazilian ambassador. Until then, Tenorinho, a husband and father of four people, had already died: he was captured and executed by the Argentine army, his body was thrown into the land 30 km away.
His killing came to a military coup that dived into a dark part of a dark fear, torture, torture, and forced disappearance.
For seven years, tens of thousands of political opponents, student activists, journalists, intellectuals – and countless spectators – would be missed, hired in secret detention centers, tortured, to be tortured and killed. Some were thrown live from the aircraft, others were thrown in mass graves. Human rights groups estimate that about 30,000 people disappear.
Dozens of years after Tenorinho disappeared 2014 National Truth CommissionWidow wife Carmen Magalhães Tenório Cerqueira responded to her husband. “Where is Tenorinho?” pressed. “Tenório was a person who never participated in politics. He was a person who lived for music… And what happened to him is really a ridiculous thing”.
Toquinho channel his pain into a song called Lembranças or Memories: “Tenório came out alone / disappeared / nobody explained.”
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Over the years, various witnesses came to the fore; A man working in a newspaper dealer near the hotel said that Tenorinho was taken in Green Ford Falcon – – The famous preference car used by Argentina’s death squads.
Finally, the official confirmation of what happened, first of all, thanks to an Argentine judicial team who has lost and defined the disappeared by the military regime.
The group was initially founded by Argentina’s return to democracy after the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele’s skeleton was founded by Dr Clyde Snow of the Famous Texas Anthropologist Dr Clyde Snow. At first they made an unusual team; Many Argentinean, who could not find willing colleagues, was still afraid of turning to dictatorship, Snow, instead of an anthropology student collection.
Mercedes, one of the founders, Mercedes “Mimi” Doretti, “None of us was jumping with joy to do it, because if we started to work on it and if we started to work on it, we will be on the list of people who could disappear if we occur. last year. “But we couldn’t say no.”
For decades, he continues to search for victims of the group dictatorship, examine the archives, talk with witnesses, support time schedules, and excavations in suspicious mass graves. Today, technological developments have also made it possible to make mass fingerprint comparisons – the technique that led to the discovery of Tenorinho. More than 1,500 bodies were rescued and more than 840 people were detected.
“At the same time, they protected the bureaucratic ways of work, they have protected the bureaucratic working roads, they have tortured and threw people from the planes, they recorded the fingerprints of the bodies, Som Somigliana said,“ In most cases, the state tried to escape by cutting their hands and capturing the documents in others.
While the team has been looking for Fingerprints of Tenorinho for several years, the case in 2024, the Prosecutor’s Office against humanity on March 20, 1976 in the Tigre Region, gained momentum that he found an old file containing the details of a murder victim.
Somigliana, “Death Certificate ‘about 30 years old, many bearded men with bearded’ he said.
“We compared the fingerprints with all the people kidnapped in Argentina and there was no match.
Tenorinho’s anonymous body was buried in the Benavídez Municipal Cemetery on 22 March 1976, but later he was dug and put into a common grave. Currently, there is no plan to start the graves of the common grave.
Although the identity did not prove that the army killed Tenorinho on its own, the murder and the way the body was thrown away, eliminated the fate of numerous others.
The ruins were discovered in the same area where the victims of other secret detention centers were thrown, and then the cases were proven directly to the regime. In addition, the typical way of killing the victims of the army was hit more than once. Typical recording of death – while taking the body’s fingerprints and photographs – the identity was not completed, another distinctive feature of state crimes. EAAF said that Tenorinho had no reason to doubt that the state was a victim of terrorism in the days before the military coup.
Tenorinho, born in Laranjeiras in Rio de Janeiro, 11 Brazilians He was kidnapped in Argentina during the dictatorship. They had no political relations, and for a long time he was taken about how he looked, he wore glasses and had a long beard, the features that the dictatorship was associated with the leftists.
He left his wife Carmen and the other four children, who were eight -month pregnant women at the time of disappearance. For years, the family looking for answers to the place where their son died around the 10th anniversary of the murder. His surviving family was informed about the identity this week.
Tenorinho’s identity opposes a denial climate in Argentina.
At the end of 2023, Argentina has chosen Javier Milei as the president. Previously, “30,000 people” disappeared and questioned the scope of the army’s crimes. His party has also begun to dismantle the Human Rights Secretariat, to reduce the body and to extend hundreds of recently. employee.
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Last year, six deputies from Milei’s La Libertad Avanza Party visited a prison to cover crimes against crimes against humanity, including Alfredo astiz, which was called “Angel of Death ında under the dictatorship of 1976-1983. Politicians later claimed that the detainees had reviewed the living conditions.
Nevertheless, the Prosecutor’s Office Against Humanity continues to work during the dictatorship and is currently reviewing the discovery of unidentified corpses on the public streets in Buenos Aires between 1975-1983.
María ángel Ramos, one of the chief federal prosecutors of the country’s dictatorship crimes, said, ık We have identified approximately 600 files under the analysis of 475. ”
EAAF, which operates as a non -profit organization, is determined to continue its work. The team remains world -famous, finding and defining the genocide victims in Darfur and the Chilean President Salvador Allende and the guerrilla icon Che Guevara’s bodies.
