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Esther Ballestrino de Careaga, Teresa, (born 20 January 1918 in Encarnación, Paraguay; died 17 or 18 December 1977) was a teacher, biochemist and social activist. She was one of the founders of the Association of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, dedicated to seeking the "disappeared" during the period of state terrorism in Argentina, and this was the reason she was kidnapped, tortured and killed.

Life
Esther Ballestrino was born in Paraguay where her family moved when she was little. There she received her masters and PhD in Biochemistry and Pharmacy at the National University of Asuncion.

In Paraguay Esther identified with the ideas of the Febrero Revolutionary Party, a movement of socialist ideas in the '40s founded the Women's Movement of Paraguay, which was its first general secretary. Pursued by the military dictatorship of Hyginus Morínigo she took refuge in Argentina in 1947, where she married Raymundo Careaga, with whom she had three daughters.

On March 24 1976 there was a coup in Argentina that installed a regime based on state terrorism. Her two sons, Manuel Carlos Cuevas and Yves Domergue were kidnapped and disappeared, and her daughter Ana Maria Careaga, three months pregnant, was kidnapped on June 13, 1977, to be taken and tortured in secret detention center Athletic Club.

Esther then began to organize with other families of missing persons and participate in the Plaza de Mayo originated Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Association and collaborate with Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained for Political Reasons Argentina and the League for the Rights of Man.

In October 1977, Ana Maria was released and both Esther and her three daughters sought refuge first in Brazil and then in Sweden. However, she returned to Argentina soon after. The other mothers tried to persuade then it was too dangerous to stay and they should return to Sweden. Her daughter Ana Maria says her mother replied. "No, I will continue to appear all"

Disappearance, kidnapping, torture and murder
Between Thursday 8 December and Saturday 10 December 1977 3.3.2 Task Group under the command of Alfredo Astiz kidnapped a group of 12 people linked to the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. [2] Among them was Esther Ballestrino, along with the other founders of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Azucena Villaflor and Maria Ponce, and the French nuns Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet.

Esther was kidnapped on December 8 with most of the group at Holy Cross Church located in the district of San Cristobal de Buenos Aires, where they used to meet.

She was taken directly to a secret detention center in the School of Naval Mechanics (ESMA), under the control of the Argentine Navy, where she was detained in the area called "Hood". She remained there about 10 days, during which time she was constantly tortured. In the report NUNCA MAS (Never again) Maggio and Cubas, survivors of the ESMA, reported what they knew about their fate:

Probably on 17 or 18 December 1977, Esther and the rest of the group were "transferred" to the military airport located on the south end of Aeroparque Buenos Aires, uploaded sedated to a Navy aircraft and thrown alive into the sea off the coast of Santa Teresita, dying when they hit the water.

Identifying her body and burial
December 20, 1977 bodies from the sea began to appear on the beaches of the province of Buenos Aires at the resorts Theresa and Tuyú Sea. Police doctors who examined the bodies at that time showed that the cause of death was "the clash against hard objects from height" as indicating the type of bone fractures constatadas, happened before death.4 No further inquiries were carried out by local authorities who immediately arranged that the bodies were buried as NN in the cemetery of the nearby town of General Lavalle.

In 1984, as part of the investigation of the Commission on Disappeared and the Trial of the Juntas, excavations were made in the cemetery of General Lavalle. A large quantity of bones were recovered and identified as belonging to the the bodies found on the beaches of San Bernardo and Lucila del Mar. These remains were used in the trial of members of the Junta and then stored in 16 bags.

Thereafter Judge Horacio Cattani started collecting information on missing cases. Although the laws of Full Stop and Due Obedience restricted investigations, Cattani was able to put together by 1995 an archive covering 40 square meters to house all the items.

In 2003 the mayor of General Lavalle reported that they had located new NN graves in the cemetery of the city. A judge then ordered Cattani make new excavations with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), discovering two lines of graves, one above the other. Thus skeletons discovered in August, 5 for women, 2 males and one correspondioentes classified as GL-17, which was defined as "probably male".

Cattani had the bones sent to the Laboratory of Immunogenetics and Molecular Diagnostics (LIDMO) of Córdoba, belonging to EAAF. Laboratory results determined the remains belonged to the group of kidnap victims taken between 8 and 10 December 1977. On July 8 2005 Judge Cattani received a report stating that one of the remains had been identified as belonging to Esther Careaga Ballestrino .5

On July 24, 2005, 28 years after she was murdered, Esther Ballestrino Careaga was buried in the garden of the Holy Cross Church in Buenos Aires, with Maria Ponce de Bianco, one of the three mothers abducted with her. Later Léonie Duquet and Sister Angela Auad were also buried there.6 Activist Azucena Villaflor's ashes were scattered in the Plaza de Mayo.