Global Courant
Paulo Guardati disappeared in 1992 after leaving a dance in Mendoza. They believe that he was murdered after a fight with a plainclothes policeman and that the case was covered up.
The disappearance of Paulo Christián Guardati (21), on May 24, 1992, after a dance at a school in the Godoy Cruz municipality, continues to be an unresolved case. This Thursday, a specialized forensic anthropology team from the University of Buenos Aires arrived in Mendoza to exhume a body from the Capital Cemetery and reveal if they are remains of the young man who was last seen three decades ago.
31 years have passed and his mother, Hilda Lavizzari, is still looking for him like the first day. The judicial case had nine judges, 15 accused, a government minister resigned, two police chiefs were relieved and 10 officers received sanctions for irregularities and interfering in the investigation. His body never appeared, nor did those responsible for making it disappear.
All the suspects were dismissed, including four policemen from the La Estanzuela neighborhood detachment who would have been involved in the alleged initial arrest of Guardati. This conclusion was reached by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States (OAS).
Paulo Christián Guardati was 21 years old when he disappeared three decades ago in Mendoza.
For this reason, the Mendoza government had to pay compensation to his mother. A similar procedure was followed with the disappearance of two bricklayers, Raúl Baigorria and Adolfo Garrido.
Guardati was a painter and had an open case for the theft of a car stereo. His presumed arrest at midnight on May 24, 1992 was due to personal issues with a man, apparently a police officer off duty, who ran him through the streets of the neighborhood firing his weapon.
Judge Estela Garritano de Cejas denounced in 1995 that there was a “chain of complicity” in the police that had to be discovered. However, nothing was ever known.
They exhumed a body to try to determine if it corresponds to Christian Guardati, who disappeared 31 years ago in Mendoza. Photo: Orlando Pelichotti/Los Andes
Exhumation
The exhumed body was in niche 8403, on the upper line of the ground floor of pavilion M Este, of the Mendoza City cemetery.
A surprising fact: the same niche had already been investigated and that body exhumed in the year of Christian’s disappearance, 1992.
According to the lawyer Enoc Ortiz, representing the Guardati family, at that time there was no current technology in genetic engineering to determine if the body that was in the cemetery belonged to Christian. There were several matches in clothing and body structure, but no definitive forensic study to confirm the finding.
In the middle, the federal prosecutor Daniel Rodríguez Infante who at the request of the mother of Christian Guardati (21) exhumed a body in the Mendoza Cemetery. Photo: Orlando Pelichotti/Los Andes
In 2021, at the request of the defense, the case went from the provincial Justice to the Federal Courts. The case was reconsidered as a forced disappearance and a crime against humanity. Now the investigation into the possible homicide and disappearance of Guardati is in charge of federal prosecutor Daniel Rodriguez Infante.
“We have moderate expectations since we are exhuming a body that is identified as belonging to another person. They are remains that have been suspected in the case,” said prosecutor Rodríguez Infante, from the Office of the Prosecutor for Lesa Humanity headed by Federal Prosecutor Dante Vega.
As explained by Rodríguez Infante, about 30 years ago experts were carried out on that corpse and it was identified as another person but with technological advances in genetic engineering, and some elements that are in the file, underpin the measure.
His mother Hilda, who is 80 years old, does not lose hope of finding the truth and being able to find an answer to what happened to her son. And she can calm that immense pain.
Mendoza. Correspondent.
D.D.
