The Case Against Ford
Karen Robert
June 3, 2006
On March 19, Judge José Bournissen of Argentina’s 35th Civil Court gave the green light
to a historic lawsuit against the Ford Motor Company.i A group of former workers and
union delegates is alleging that the company collaborated with the military dictatorship
that terrorized Argentina from 1976 until 1983. The legal brief describes the actions of
Ford managers as a form of calculated “corporate terror” against the strong union
committee that represented 5000 workers in the plant.ii It goes on to accuse Ford of
“execut[ing] a precise and concrete plan, using violence to rid itself of all union activity”
at its factory in General Pacheco, an industrial suburb of Buenos Aires.
The accusations against Ford are dramatic and allege the company’s direct involvement
in serious crimes including murder. Twenty-five workers were ‘disappeared’ in 1976:
abducted, detained in secret, interrogated, and tortured, some of them killed. All of them
were elected union delegates. According to the suit, roughly half were seized from their
homes by armed men carrying the i.d. cards from their Ford personnel files. The others
were taken right off the assembly line and paraded through the factory at gunpoint.
Soldiers were present in the factory even before the coup of March 24, 1976. After that
date, an entire military compound occupied the factory grounds. Most shocking of all is
the testimony by fourteen survivors that Ford “allowed [military authorities] to operate a
detention facility on Ford premises.”iii Workers detained in this rough jail were beaten,
tortured, and subjected to mock execution before being transported in Ford vehicles to a
nearby police precinct.
At that police station, several witnesses saw a list on Ford letterhead with the names of
the detained workers. Antonio Francisco Molinari, the soldier in charge of the operation,
showed this list to the wife of one disappeared worker when she confronted him: “He
said, ‘Here are all the names that the company gave us of workers it wanted us to
disappear.’” Her husband’s name appeared on the list; most of the other names were
already crossed off.iv
This lawsuit against Ford, currently being pursued in both criminal and civil court, marks
the first legal challenge to a private corporation for its role in Argentina’s notorious ‘dirty
war.’v It builds on nearly 1000 pages of evidence and sworn testimony that have been
compiled over the past three and a half years through the office of Federal Prosecutor
Federico Delgado.
Tomás Ojea Quintana, the lawyer representing the Ford workers, specializes in human
rights law and has argued cases in Argentina and at the Inter-American Court of Human
Rights.vi If Ojea Quintana is successful in Argentina, his colleague Paul L. Hoffman will
take the case up in the United States, using the Alien Tort Claims Act to hold the Ford
Motor Company accountable for the actions of its Argentine counterpart.vii Hoffman’s
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involvement attests to the seriousness of the case. A member of Amnesty International’s
nine-member International Executive Committee since 1999, he is one of the world’s
most respected human rights lawyers and an expert on issues of corporate
accountability.viii
Ford & the Generals
The relationship between Ford and the military went well beyond the disappearance of
twenty-five union delegates. Sworn testimony by both Ford survivors and former soldiers
points to an ongoing and friendly collaboration.
 Soldiers used military helicopters to help install new machinery in the General
Pacheco plant.
 The army staged an exhibition of weapons on the factory’s sports grounds.
 Ford even provided daily free lunches in the cafeteria to soldiers engaged in
surveillance and terror operations throughout the surrounding neighbourhoods.
Former soldier Jorge Ernesto Berguier testified that his commanding officer
ordered the men to show the company their gratitude: “He would say to us,
‘We’re going to detain subversives, and we’re going to eat lunch at Ford. This is
the company’s collaboration with the armed forces. You have to be thankful.’”ix
Recently declassified documents from the U.S. and Argentina even reveal details of
Ford’s exclusive contracts with the military – a business relationship that made the Ford
Falcon the death squads’ vehicle of choice. One of them is a secret order from Interior
Minister General Albano Jorge Harguindeguy, dated October 3rd, 1977, for the purchase
of 90 unmarked Ford Falcons. It specified that the cars should “not be identifiable” and
that the registrations must not be traceable to any state agencies.x Why would the
purchase of common sedans require such secrecy? Because they were going to be used in
death squad operations across the country. xi
The Accused
The Ford plaintiffs are calling for the arrest of four former Ford managers and one
military officer who are accused of coordinating the repression in the factory. Here is
some of the evidence presented in the court documents:
Hector Francisco Sibilla:
 Chief of Security at Ford in 1976. Retired from the Armed Forces.
 Survivors testify that Sibilla participated in more than one interrogation/torture
session at the Tigre police precinct. Whereas the soldiers and police asked
questions about the workers’ supposed links to armed guerrilla groups, he
interrogated them about matters of interest to Ford –internal union business and
cases of theft from the plant.
 Though retired from active military duty, Sibilla won a promotion to Lieutenant
Colonel in 1978 while he was working at Ford – presumably as a reward for
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imposing order in the factory. Sibilla then went on to work in security at the
United States Embassy in Buenos Aires until his retirement in 2004.
Guillermo Galarraga:
 Industrial Relations Manager at Ford in 1976. He had control over the personnel
office and had the closest dealings with union delegates.
 Galarraga threatened union delegates in ways that suggest he knew about their
imminent disappearance and torture. The junta leaders announced the suspension
of all union activities in the country as part of their seizure of power on March
24th, 1976. Galarraga immediately called a meeting with several union delegates to
inform them that the company would no longer negotiate with them. He left the
men with a cryptic threat that made no sense to them at the time: “Be sure to give
my regards to an old friend of mine. Do you know who I mean? Camps.” The
reference was to Ramon Camps, an obscure Army Colonel whom the junta had
just named chief of the Buenos Aires provincial police. Several of the men did
indeed encounter Ramon Camps just a few days later, during their secret
detention in the Tigre police station. After the return to democracy, Camps was
sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in 600 murders during the
dictatorship.xii
Nicolas Enrique Julian Courard
 President of Ford Motor Argentina in 1976.
 In 1980 Nicolas Courard made a public speech at the inauguration of a new Ford
truck factory with leading members of the military government in attendance. He
used the speech to applaud the armed forces for their leadership and to vaunt
Ford’s own decisive actions since the coup: “As of March 1976 we faced a
challenge. Argentine society had begun a process of transformation that
threatened its core beliefs and philosophies…It was time to change that mentality.
For us [at Ford], it meant making a business decision. And with our actions we
demonstrated what that decision should be.”xiii
But why?
Why would the Ford Motor Company associate itself so openly with one of Latin
America’s bloodiest regimes? And why would the company go to such extreme lengths
to wipe out union activities in its factory? To understand these questions it is crucial to
know the context of the early 1970s and the pitched labour struggles taking place both
inside and outside the Ford factory on the eve of the coup.
Argentina’s national auto industry had exploded in the 1960s as Ford, Fiat, Mercedes
Benz, Chrysler, VW, General Motors and Kaiser/Renault all built new factories on the
outskirts of Buenos Aires and the provincial city of Córdoba.xiv The car makers generated
thousands of new jobs and ushered into existence a whole generation of auto workers.
Argentina had a powerful – though conflict-ridden – history of union organizing dating
back at least to the government of populist president Juan Domingo Peron. Though the
official Peronist unions were deeply corrupt in the 1960s, the new auto workers’ union,
3
SMATA, grew so quickly that even its own corrupt and conservative bosses could not
always control activism at the grassroots.xv
By the early 1970s the auto industry faced powerful union commissions that challenged
management’s control of the factories. In 1973 national production hit an all-time high.
But union gains meant that the share of wages in the industry had also risen by 40% since
1965, and workers had successfully resisted the companies’ attempts to speed up the
assembly lines.xvi
At the Ford plant, the union won several powerful concessions that had management
clearly alarmed by 1976:




The 1975 collective agreement brought Ford workers some of the highest wages
and benefits in the industry, as well as an employer contribution to a union-run
social welfare fund.
The workers won the right to conduct independent time studies of the assembly
line process and have input into the pace of production.
They proved that lead levels in the factory were dangerous and won improved
safety measures.
In 1975 the plant’s cafeteria workers and white-collar employees won the right to
join SMATA. Ford was especially alarmed that accounting employees would
provide the union with inside information on the company’s finances.
Significantly, after the coup these ‘new’ delegates seem to have been singled out
for some of the worst punishment. The cafeteria delegates were the first Ford
workers disappeared, and the two white-collar delegates were the only ones
subjected to torture by electric cattle prod.xvii
In 1976 Ford managers anxious to regain control over their factory found natural allies in
the military faction that planned the coup. The wave of disappearances from Ford began
the day of the coup and wrapped up within a few weeks. And they worked. All union
activity ceased at Ford until after the return to democracy in the 1980s.
The years of the dictatorship brought crisis and reorganization to Argentina’s automotive
sector. General Motors, Citroen, and Chrysler all withdrew from the country, Fiat and
Peugeot merged, and Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz scaled their factories back to
assembly operations using Brazilian parts.
But Ford Motor Argentina survived and thrived. It was the only major auto manufacturer
to keep its plants running as before.xviii
4
Notes:
i
The civil suit joins a criminal investigation against Ford initiated in November, 2002 by
Judge Daniel Rafecas of Argentina’s Third Federal Court. For a sampling of news
coverage of the case, see “Ford Sued over Argentine Dictatorship Kidnappings of Union
Members, Workers” AFX News Limited, Feb. 23, 2006; “Demandan a Ford por el
secuestro de gremialistas durante la dictadura” Página/12 Feb. 24, 2006; Alejandra
Dandan, “Ford Falcon, modelo 76,” Página/12 Feb. 26, 2006; Kelly Hearn, “Ford’s Past
in Argentina” The Nation, May 8, 2006.
ii
Pedro Norberto Troiani, “Solicitud de declaraciones indagatorias,” in case 18.018/02,
Molinari, Antonio vs. Ford Personnel, pp. 4-5
iii
Pulega, et al. v. Ford Motor Company,
United States District Court, Central
District
CV04-0411AHM, p. 1. This is the original English-language Claim of Relief
filed against Ford Motor Company in January 2004. See below for a summary of the
case’s unfolding in the U.S. and Argentina.
iv
Arcelia Luján Portillo, cited in Troiani, “Solicitud de declaraciones indagatorias”. In
the original, she quotes Molinari as using the verb ‘chupar’ – to suck up – rather than
‘desaparecer’ – to disappear. ‘Acá están todos los nombres que nos dio la empresa con
los trabajadores que querían que chupáramos. ‘Chupar’ is just one in a whole lexicon of
slang terms that emerged in the new culture of terror. See Marguerite Feitlowitz, A
Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture New York: Oxford University
Press, 1998.
v
Argentina’s recent Truth Trials (Juicios por la Verdad) included a detailed inquiry into
similar events at Mercedes Benz. Yet the Juicios have functioned only as a truth
commission and do not have any judicial power. For information about the repression
against unionists at Mercedes Benz, see Gaby Weber, La conexión alemana: El lavado
del dinero nazi en Argentina Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2005 and “Juicio por la Verdad (La
Plata): www.nuncamas.org/juicios/laplata/laplat01.htm
vi
Diego Rodríguez Pinzón, Claudia Martin, and Tomás Ojea Quintana, La Dimensión
Internacional de los Derechos Humanos: Guía para la Aplicacíon de Normas
Internacionales en el Derecho Interno. Banco Interamericano de Desarollo, 1999.
vii
The case against Ford got its first start when lawyers Paul Hoffman and Benjamin
Schonbrun filed Claims of Relief against the Ford Motor Company on behalf of the
Argentine workers in United States District Court on January 22, 2004. At the time, a
blanket pardon decreed by former Argentine president Carlos Menem in 1990 made it
impossible to pursue human rights cases within Argentina. Unfortunately, the U.S. case
stalled in late 2004 when a legal precedent set in an unrelated case forced Hoffman and
Schonbrun to withdraw their claim from U.S. courts until it had first been heard in
Argentina. Yet this avenue was still blocked. The Ford workers’ hopes revived in June
2005 when Argentina’s Supreme Court struck down the country’s so-called ‘impunity
laws’ and reopened the doors to human rights cases dating back to the dictatorship. It is
within this new legal context that the Ford case can finally go forward.
viii
The original English-language Claim of Relief is attached. The American lawyers’
resumes appear on the website of lawfirm Schonbrun, deSimone, Seplow, Harris, and
Hoffman: www.sdshh.com
5
Jorge Ernesto Bergier in Pedro Norberto Troiani, “Solicitud de declaraciones
indagatorias,” case 18.018/02, Molinari, Antonio vs. Ford Personnel, folio 712.
x
María Seoane, “La orden que dió la dictadura para la compra de Falcon verdes sin
patentes” Clarín, March 23, 2006.
xi
Thousands of accounts of disappearance have been collected by official government
commissions, courts, human rights organizations, and individual researchers. Most of
these accounts mention the Ford Falcon as the vehicle used to take away victims. For a
sampling, see Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared. Nunca Mas: The
Report of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared New York: Farrar,
Strauss, and Giroux, 1986. The online version is available at www.nuncamas.org.
xii
This testimony first came to light in the official hearings of Argentina’s National
Commission on the Disappeared that took place soon after the return to democracy in the
1980s. It was published in the Commission’s report, Nunca más. An English translation
of the relevant testimony can be found at: www.nuncamas.org
xiii
Cited in Pedro Norberto Troiani, “Solicitud de declaraciones indagatorias,” case
18.018/02, Molinari, Antonio vs. Ford Personnel, p. 13. Courard used the dictatorship’s
own evasive language to suggest the threat that Argentine society had faced at the time of
the coup. The original and complete wording is more convoluted: “En la República
Argentina se había iniciado un proceso, un cambio de sistemas, un cambio de filosofía
integral, que abarcaba los comportamientos individuales y colectivos de toda la
sociedad.” There is an abundant literature about the dictatorship’s far-reaching efforts to
‘reorganize’ Argentine society and to conceal its intentions through elaborate
euphemisms. A few key titles include Marguerite Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror:
Argentina and the Legacies of Torture New York: Oxford University Press, 1998;
Marcos Novaro and Vicente Palermo. La dictadura militar, 1976/1983: Del golpe de
estado a la restauración democrática Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2003; Diana Taylor,
Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’
Durham: Duke University Press, 1997.
xiv
For an explanation of the changing economic policies that drew foreign manufacturers
into Argentina during the government of Arturo Frondizi (1958-1966), see Rhys Jenkins,
“The Rise and Fall of the Argentine Motor Vehicle Industry,” in Rich Kronish and Ken
Mericle,eds., The Political Economy of the Latin American Motor Vehicle Industry
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984), pp. 41-73.
xv
See Daniel James, Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working
Class, 1946-1976 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
xvi
See Jenkins, “Rise and Fall,” pp. 65-66; Rich Kronish and Ken Mericle, “Latin
America: Wheels, Deals and Class Struggle” NACLA Report on the Americas Vol. XIII,
no. 4(July-Aug 1979), pp. 14-16.
xvii
This information is drawn from the testimony in Pedro Norberto Troiani, “Solicitud de
declaraciones indagatorias,” in case 18.018/02, Molinari, Antonio vs. Ford Personnel, and
from interviews with plaintiffs Pedro Troiani and Carlos Alberto Propato and lawyer
Tomas Ojea Quintana.
xviii
A number of factors seem to have provoked this crisis, including the junta’s own
economic liberalization policies, severe recession, and changes in the international motor
industry. See Jenkins, “Rise and Fall,” pp. 62-63.
ix
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