Argentina's Missing Bones. James P. Brennan

for the “truck,” a death ride to one’s execution; the unexpected occasional acts of kindness by their captors, followed by equally unexpected acts of cruelty, adding to the sense of vulnerability and unreality in La Perla.¹² There were also moments of solidarity, compassion, and even heroism: a shared cigarette, the furtive embrace of comrade or friend, the female prisoner who insisted in accompanying her son and daughter-in-law to a final execution, thereby ensuring her own. Mostly there was just boredom, punctuated by moments of terror and torment. The mass executions generally coincided with the cuadra reaching its maximum number of prisoners, thereby providing the prisoners some degree of predictability of the moment of the final, in the death camp jargon, traslado (transfer). The military’s macabre jargon offered two kinds of transfer: traslado por izquierda (transfer to the left), for the vast majority, meant execution; the traslado por derecha (transfer to the right), for a lucky few, meant transfer to a federal penitentiary or perhaps another detention center, and very exceptionally outright release, though subject to constant vigilance and even house arrest.¹³