The Disobedient Children of Monsters

When they learned their fathers led the reign of kidnapping, torture and murder that tore Argentina apart, their first reaction was disbelief. Their next was to take action.

Photos courtesy Historias Desobedientes | Edited by Shawna Kenney

Analía Kalinec was at home in Buenos Aires with her 1-and-a-half-year-old son when she received an alarming phone call from her mother. “Look, don’t be scared, but Dad’s in jail,” her mother said. Kalinec was stunned. Her father was a police officer, and they were a tight-knit family. Her mother assured her that it was all a misunderstanding, and Kalinec believed her.

But it was not a misunderstanding. Eduardo Emilio Kalinec was accused of kidnapping, murder and torture. His crimes weren’t recent; they’d taken place decades before that 2005 phone call, during the rule of the military dictatorship that controlled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. During that time, the government exterminated political and ideological dissidents: Up to 30,000 victims were “disappeared”; many were sedated and thrown out of airplanes into the River Plate. Many more were taken from their homes, tortured and eventually released. Up to 500 babies wer…