Martha Pelloni, the portrait of a nun who makes evil tremble

And you're not afraid of being killed? The question is Liliana Viola , author of The Sister , winner of the 6th Anagrama Chronicle Award from the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation. A brave, necessary, and urgent book . A must- read , as gripping as it is painful. A book that makes your blood boil.

The sister in question, and the one who will answer the question, is Martha Pelloni , “the sapucai nun” who led the Silent Marches in Catamarca 35 years ago , when a teenager named María Soledad Morales was found dead in a ditch, after having been drugged and gang-raped.

An emblematic and precedent-setting case for several reasons. The three main ones: one, an entire town, the entire press, and an entire country rose up en masse for the first time to demand justice. Two, the case exposed an entire network of corruption entrenched in the province's power that reached all the way to the national executive branch. Three: impunity .

And aren't you afraid of being killed? "Just a few seconds between my first question and your elusive answer are enough to imagine the scenes that must be passing through your mind, just as they say the snapshots of a lifetime run at the moment of death ," Viola writes in The Sister.

What follows is an almost cinematic flashback -style description, focusing on the main events of the case:

“When, on September 10, 1990, she is informed that a student has disappeared from the school she runs in San Fernando del Valle, Catamarca; when the girl's father tells her he has just identified the body in the morgue ; when her classmates want to go out into the streets to demand justice; when the police chief, whose son will be on the list of suspects, detains her at the principal's office, accusing her in advance of what might happen to her students. When she goes out into the streets with them. When one, two, countless witnesses seek her out to confess key details that they will later deny in court . When she makes the decision to accuse the culprits, knowing that they are all relatives of the most powerful families in the province and the country. When she realizes that she is confronting the President of the Nation himself and, even so, she continues to march, two, three, a hundred times. When President Carlos Saúl Menem is pressured to intervene in the province governed by the strongman Ramón Saadi , son of Vicente Saadi, a key figure in the development of his political career and the alliance that brought him to power.”

This is the entire book, a narrative of an escalation of moving, horrifying events, which do not end with the aforementioned case but rather establish bridges with other equally aberrant cases, many of which have remained unresolved to date. A tight, compelling chronicle that provokes in the reader an upward spiral of feelings that demand an urgent cry.

“No one knows what a sapucai is until they shout it,” they say and Liliana Viola takes this phrase to establish the obligatory contrast with the silence of the Marches.

And you, aren't you afraid? The author of The Sister herself will answer now, in an exclusive interview with Viva .

–Yes, I'm afraid, and I'm so afraid that, on second reading, I must admit and warn readers that I've mentioned the many names Pelloni mentions. In my defense, I can say that everyone is afraid, maybe not of a shot in the back of the head, but of libel suits, which she herself has had and won, and when she spoke too much, she apologized publicly.

–Are they the same familiar names or did you find something else?

–These are all things I found on the internet, in the media, both local and national. They all give voice, they give space to Sister Pelloni. All these accusations and these names are online. What I'm doing is taking some of the many news stories out there, but I'm not going to risk listing all the names she denounces, in many cases of very important officials, many of whom have been imprisoned.

–Although your previous books are also biographies, The Sister is your first approach to a social issue, and you chose one of the most pressing topics. How did you shift toward journalistic reporting?

–Since the María Soledad case, 35 years ago, I've been following Sister Pelloni because I always found her to be an interesting figure. Seen from the perspective of the latest feminism, which emerged in 2016, I certainly make a direct connection between the feminist mobilizations and the silent marches. I followed her after what happened in Catamarca, in the newspapers, each of the cases that were appearing outside of Catamarca, especially in Corrientes, where they told her to keep quiet, and exactly the opposite happened: requests began to appear from all over.

–You were gathering information…

–Yes, I already had the research. I'd been gathering information for years without knowing what I was going to do with it, always thinking I had to do something with this, and wondering, "Why is it that no one is doing anything with this? Why haven't I done anything with this until now?" And I answer for two reasons: first, because I don't know how to write it so it doesn't become something yellow or bloody, and second, it's the truth that I say in the book: I'm not a chronicler.

–You're not a columnist, but you're getting an award for a column...

–Precisely, I was interested in the contest because, in the rules, they specifically said that they were going to pay more attention to work that tried to break the boundaries of the chronicle or go outside, so I, who have always considered myself not a chronicler and I still consider myself that way, because the truth is that it is difficult for me to do interviews, I don't go to the territory, not even crazy, as I told you, I don't know Catamarca, I haven't been to the places where the nun points out atrocities, so, that figure of the half-phobic chronicler, of the clumsy chronicler who interviews and says what she doesn't want to say...

–And then he sends this article that kidnaps you from beginning to end…

–Although I know that this thing about the chronicler who doesn't move, who doesn't go to the scene of the events comes from modernism - José Martí did that: he read a newspaper and wrote a chronicle as if he had been there - it is not the chronicle that I admire but rather that of the people who go and put their bodies on the line, but this also seemed interesting to me because we are in a time where everything is online, when I edited the Soy supplement I didn't allow anyone to do a written report, at the very least it had to be a video call and today things are not like that, so before Artificial Intelligence and absolute mediation win us over, I wanted to do this experiment, where there is a mix, it is not just internet theft.

–But in the end, you moved. Twice. And in the first one, especially, your critical stance toward the Church comes across strongly. What is it like for an atheist to interview a nun?

–Well, it was another of the conflicts I knew was coming. Although I went to a convent school, I lost my faith. The habit fosters respect and mysticism, and it prevents me from treating her as if she were just another lady. Sister Pelloni, who managed to win over atheists and non-atheists alike, especially in the 1990s, built a figure that does what the Church promised it would do. So, that part of the institution's promise—I respect it, I love it, and I think it works because it's the work on the ground, the work with the grassroots, the work with human beings.

–In fact, she confesses to you that if she hadn't been a nun, she would have been a Social Worker.

–Of course, but the whole other part of the Church, which is the relationship with the dictatorship, the relationship of priests with pedophilia, the machismo within the Church with the nuns themselves, the relationship of the Church with feminism and with sexual diversity, well, they are all tremendously nefarious things that I am completely against and, kind of like a kind of tail of straw, also, I want to be clear about what my position is, even if it is inevitable to fall in love with the character, as usually happens.

–Returning to the initial question, why do you think Pelloni wasn't killed?

–She told me about the number of dead witnesses in the María Soledad case, so if they killed the witnesses, how could they not kill her? Well, there we go to the habit, to the church, that I really believe that having killed her would have been, at that time, a major scandal, Menem himself would have had to resign, but also, I would tell you that they didn't kill her because her accusations didn't quite stick, so it's not a nuisance either. Of course, with her help, the culprits were found (they imprisoned the informant and one of the murderers, but there were many more people involved). Also, missing children were found, a landowner who was polluting water was arrested, which is no small thing, but she's not as dangerous as she should be.

–Could it be that they didn't kill her because she has God's protection?

–I could say Amen to you, but I say: no comments.

• He was born in Buenos Aires in 1963. He studied Literature.

• She is a journalist and editor. She directed the SOY supplement and numerous literary collections for the newspaper Página/12.

• She is the author of Migré, the master of soap operas who revolutionized the sentimental education of a country ( 2017); This is not me (2023), a biography of Aurora Venturini, and The Sister (2025).

The Sister , by Liliana Viola (Anagrama).