Kriti Mehrotra
If there’s one thing absolutely nobody can deny, it’s that Netflix’s ‘ARA San Juan: The Submarine That Disappeared’ lives up to its title in every way to give us a docuseries unlike any other. After all, it comprises not just archival footage but also interviews with experts and relatives alike to really shine a light upon the 2017 vanishing of an Argentine Navy vessel that shook the world. Amongst them was actually none other than crew member Daniel Alejandro Polo’s half-sister Isabel Vilca — so now, if you simply wish to learn more about her, we’ve got all the details for you.
Who is Isabel Vilca?
It was on the evening of November 16, 2017, when Isabel’s entire world turned upside down as she came to work and learned from her little sister that her brother had gone missing alongside ARA San Juan. However, she didn’t initially worry because her brother had told her that “sometimes, at a certain depth or certain distance, they could have communication issues, but those would be sorted out in the next few hours.” Yet she still made her way to his base at Mar del Plata in the Buenos Aires Province, just for her calmness to be shattered once she learned it’d been over 24 hours since the last contact.
But alas, what ended up bothering Isabel more in the ensuing days was the complete lack of empathy military as well as government higher-ups displayed to her and fellow worried family members. She did initially give them a bit of grace since they weren’t used to civilians surrounding their area, yet it changed once she realized they were actually consciously not revealing any details to them and even lying about what they knew. Hence, she became one of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit against officials in terms of their alleged responsibility for the submarine’s vanishing.
Isabel also continued taking part in the families’ vehement requests for the search for their missing loved ones to be continued, going as far as to chain herself with them to a railing bar outside the Pink House for weeks on end as a form of protest. Their requests were heard in the summer of 2018 before Ocean Infinity was ultimately given a contract in September, and she reportedly stayed in the city until then, until ARA’s smashed debris was found in the South Atlantic Ocean on November 16, 2018 — a year and a day from when the vessel first went missing — it’d reportedly imploded.
Where is Isabel Vilca Now?
Despite the fact Isabel has at least some sort of closure since she now knows her half-brother died doing what he loved, she’s determined to keep moving ahead with the case and uncover those responsible for the ship’s sink. “I want the truth about what happened to them to be known,” she said in the series. “I want to leave this world knowing that their deaths were not in vain.” Coming to her personal standing, from what we can tell, she’s a proud family woman based out of Argentina even today, where she seems to be dedicating her entire life to her partner, youngsters, and late half-brother.
