17 September 1963
Dr. Arturo U. Illia
Hotel Savoy
Buenos Aires
Argentina
Dear President Illia:
I remember with great pleasure and satisfaction your conversation with me on the afternoon of Friday 22 August, about the great problem of preventing a devastating war and preserving peace in the world, and the contributions that the Republic of Argentina might make. I thank you again for your courtesy in having received me.
I am now writing to you about a different but closely related matter.
During the visit that my wife and I made to Buenos Aires, we talked not only with you and other members of the government, but also with many other men and women who are working for peace in the world. My wife and I have now learned that many of the women workers for peace with whom we talked have been arrested by the government and are now confined in prison.
We have heard that Margarita de Ponce, Aura Fleita, Fanny Edelman, Celyca Capra, Delia Etcheverry, Maria Morano, Noemi Harrington, Nina Borzone, and more that forty other women were arrested and imprisoned on Sunday 8 September 1963, in the city of Rosario.
I find it shocking that the Republic of Argentina should have taken this action. I have been hoping that, after a period during which authorities of the Republic of Argentina suppressed the rights of individual human beings and carried out oppressive actions, your nation would take its place among the civilized nations of the world, would recognize the rights of individual human beings, and would abandon the dictatorial and oppressive policies that are characteristic of governments in the backward nations.
I know that you have not yet been inaugurated as the President of the Republic of Argentina, although you have been elected.
I appeal to you, however, to take immediate action, to repudiate this dictatorial and oppressive deed of the government authorities of Argentina, and to achieve the liberation from prison of these women, whose “crime” is that they are deeply concerned about the immorality of the war and the immorality of the economic exploitation, and who hope that the world can be changed in such a way as to decrease the amount of human suffering.
Again, I appeal to you for action, and I express the hope that your government will be a civilized government, based upon justice, and not a government of terror and oppression of individual human beings.
Sincerely yours,
Linus Pauling:hpg