It is known that football is an unobjectionable passion. But not everything revolves around the ball. Life itself must be a permanent fight against oblivion. And in line with tributes already made by Racing, Huracán, Banfield, Ferro and Deportivo Morón, among several clubs, this Thursday Boca also returned cards to relatives of members detained-disappeared by the last dictatorship.
In the month of Memory, Truth and Justice, Daniel Lázaro Rus, Benjamín Isaac Dricas and José Luis Lucero (the latter’s family could not attend because he was suffering from dengue) were more present than ever in the Filiberto hall of La Bombonera, where They were reminded at a large meeting.
The event was formally opened by Xeneize pro-secretary Alejandro Veiga, who assumed that “the club wanted to compensate the families for the imbecilic violence perpetrated in the last dictatorship.” And he especially thanked the fans, because “if Boca were a public limited company, this act would not have been able to take place,” which unleashed the thunderous chant of “the club belongs to the members.”
Next, Gustavo Veiga, journalist from Página/12 and author of the book Deporte, disappeared y dictadura, of which an eight-chapter miniseries of the same name was also made, highlighted that “this systematic extermination that was carried out in the “Argentina tried to erase all traces of identity. And it is very important that Boca, due to its own volume and call, can offer this act of restitution, as it did last year, in this context of clubs.”
Along these lines, the son of the remembered Boca speaker Bernardino Veiga hoped “that the dynamics that this new subjectivity acquired continue to grow around human rights issues. Because all the clubs in Argentina are the identity card of our popular culture and “massive.”
“El Pato Fellini”
Dricas, a Boca fan and notable student, attended high school at the Colegio Nacional Buenos Aires and was founder of the Union of Secondary Students (UES). Everyone knew him as “El Pato Fellini” (because of the way he walked and because of the admiration he felt for the Italian filmmaker who signed La strada and Amarcord).
On August 20, 1976, military forces raided his parents’ home and searched it. The mother saw him for the last time two months later. The truth was that Benjamín was surrounded by an operation on top of a bus that was traveling through the western area on October 30, 1976. Since then they do not know what happened to him. He was just 19 years old. His partner Marta Elina Libenson, “Maca”, was pregnant. Ana Victoria, their daughter, was born in exile and her father never met her. The writer Martín Caparrós – who first set foot in La Bombonera with the help of Abraham, Benjamín’s father – dedicated his novel No velas a tus muerte to Dricas.
After receiving the card and a blue and gold jacket with the name Benjamín on the number, Débora Dricas recalled that “as a child she played goalkeeper with her brother and had to dodge his balls.” She also highlighted that although “her father and Benjamín had differences, they were united by her love for soccer and Boca.”
Rus, for his part, also stood out as a student. Evidence to the point: he graduated as a nuclear physicist at a very young age and was researching the effect of atomic energy on various materials. He had a whole future ahead of him. Until July 15, 1977, he was kidnapped on Avenida de los Constituciónntes and Avenida General Paz, at the door of his work at the National Atomic Energy Commission. He was 26 years old. Three days after the kidnapping, Daniel was fired from his job: he had been illegally detained at the CCD Club Atlético and the ESMA before his murder. Already missing, his mother Sara Laskier from Rus, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, joined the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo rounds. Her helplessness was such that she once recalled: “It seemed to me that it was impossible to lose this son. One day I went up to the terrace of my house and screamed so loudly, calling him, thinking that he might be listening somewhere.” “He always told me ‘you are so strong, mom’. And I couldn’t do anything for him.” Sara passed away at the age of 96, on January 24, 2024. Almost 47 years had passed and she never stopped thinking about her son.
In turn, Natalia, after also receiving a license and t-shirt, said very excitedly that “her brother Daniel would have been very proud to see his entire family here.”
A few days before commemorating a new anniversary of the coup, Veiga concluded by remarking that “denialism is defeated in the street.” And we will be there this Sunday. Like all years.
2024-03-22 03:01:00
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