Victoria Abdenor is a compulsive cleaner. But her home is perpetually dirty.
Every morning, she opens her bedroom windows and beats her sheets and blankets. Dust and dirt fall onto the working class street where she lives.
It does not matter the day, her linens are always dirty. It is like clay and dirt are a renewable resource, in her home. Recharging overnight. Always reproducing. Ready to be tossed out into the morning air, regardless of the cold, the wind or the weather.
And in a way, it’s true. The dirt is being reproduced. She, her husband, Héctor Eliseo Martínez, and friends are building a basement just behind their home. 30 feet underground. Some of the dirt, Victoria tosses out into the morning air. More of it is loaded into the bed of a Ford F100, and under a blanket of night, driven down to the river to be dumped.
This is not just any basement. It’s to house printing machines that will make books and leaflets. Flyers and pamphlets. Materials for the cause. And not just any printing press. The largest clandestine printing press in the country. This is the social media of the 1970s.
But no one can know. Not their neighbors. Not their relatives.
Argentina is dancing amid dictatorship. But in 1973, elections are held. Socially minded presidents elected. The country’s iconic President Juan Perón returns to power, and then his third wife, Isabel, after he passes in 1974.
Victoria Abdenor’s basement printing press is a success. It’s named the Roberto Matthews People’s Press, after a companion who was disappeared. During one month of political upheaval in May 1973, they print more than 120,000 copies of revolutionary books. Some books are even sold at kiosks on street corners.
The whirl of the machines rings in the basement chamber behind Victoria Abdenor’s home. Gears grind. Typeset. Pages flip. They churn out viral and banned books. Prohibited pages to be read, and hidden and shared, and read, and hidden and shared.
The printing press runs.
Until it stops.
One morning, the bedroom windows do not open.
Three months into the country’s new military dictatorship in 1976, officers discover the basement.
A year later, Victoria and Héctor are kidnapped and disappeared.
Their children still demand justice and the truth.
This is the third episode of Stories of Resistance.
Stories of Resistance is a new project, co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
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Written and produced by Michael Fox.
Today, the location of the “Roberto Matthews” People’s Press is a site of historical memory in Cordoba, Argentina. You can follow them on Instagram, here.