The Memory of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay

The Memory of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone 9780230110144_01_prexviii.indd i 1/28/2011 4:36:38 PM 9780230110...

Author: Francesca Lessa | Vincent Druliolle

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The Memory of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone

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The Memory of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay

Edited by

Francesca Lessa and

Vincent Druliolle

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THE MEMORY OF STATE TERRORISM IN THE SOUTHERN CONE

Copyright © Francesca Lessa and Vincent Druliolle, 2011. All rights reserved. Cover art copyright © 2011, Senza Titolo by Giuseppe Lana, photograph by Claudio Cocuzza An earlier version of chapter 5, “Chile: Dilemmas of memory,” by Elizabeth Lira, was published as “Xile: Dilemes de la Memòria Política” in Polítiques Públiques de la Memòria. I Col·loqui Internacional Memorial Democràtic, ed. Jordi Guixé Coromines and Montserrat Iniesta (Barcelona: Eumo Editorial and Memorial Democràtic, 2009). The chapter is published with the permission of the publisher. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–11014–4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The memory of state terrorism in the Southern Cone : Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay / edited by Francesca Lessa and Vincent Druliolle. p. cm. ISBN 978–0–230–11014–4 (alk. paper) 1. State-sponsored terrorism—Southern Cone of South America. 2. Political persecution—Southern Cone of South America. 3. Disappeared persons—Southern Cone of South America. I. Lessa, Francesca. II. Druliolle, Vincent. HV6322.3.S63M46 2010 363.325098—dc22

2010037488

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: April 2011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

List of Illustrations

vii

Preface

ix

Acknowledgments Contributors Introduction Present Pasts: Memory(ies) of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone of Latin America Emilio Crenzel

xiii xv

1

1

Remembering and Its Places in Postdictatorship Argentina Vincent Druliolle

2

The Slogan “Complete Memory”: A Reactive (Re)-signification of the Memory of the Disappeared in Argentina Valentina Salvi

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Queering Acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina’s Dictatorship: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and Los Rubios Cecilia Sosa

63

3

4

Justice and Its Remainders: Diamela Eltit’s Puño y letra Michael J. Lazzara

5

Chile: Dilemmas of Memory Elizabeth Lira

6

The Traces of “Postmemory” in Second-Generation Chilean and Argentinean Identities Alejandra Serpente

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87 107

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Contents

Private Transmission of Traumatic Memories of the Disappeared in the Context of Transitional Politics of Oblivion in Uruguay (1973−2001): “Pedagogies of Horror” among Uruguayan Families Gabriela Fried Amilivia No hay que tener los ojos en la nuca: The Memory of Violence in Uruguay, 1973–2010 Francesca Lessa

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Afterword The Politics of “Memory” in the Long Present of the Southern Cone Vikki Bell

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Index

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Illustrations

Photo 1.1 Photo 1.2 Photo 1.3 Photo 1.4 Photo 1.5 Photo 8.1 Photo 8.2 Photo 8.3 Photo 8.4 Photo 8.5

Ex-CCDyT El Club Atlético. Photo by Vincent Druliolle Baldosa, Buenos Aires. Photo by Vincent Druliolle Parque de la Memoria. Photo by Vincent Druliolle Monumento a las Víctimas del Terrorismo de Estado. Photo by Vincent Druliolle “Never Again look the other way” painted on a zebra crossing. Photo by Vincent Druliolle Punta Carretas Shopping Center, Montevideo. Photo by Francesca Lessa Memorial to Disappeared-Detainees, Montevideo. Photo by Francesca Lessa Voto Verde, Museum of Memory, Montevideo. Photo by Francesca Lessa March of Silence, Montevideo, May 20, 2010. Photo by Francesca Lessa Sí Rosado, Montevideo, October 2009. Photo by Francesca Lessa

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Preface

T

he idea behind this book began to take shape on the second day of the 45th Annual Conference of the Society for Latin American Studies, (Re) Invasions and Inventions: Latin America confronts the 21st Century, held at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, on March 26 and 27, 2009. On March 26, our panel at the conference saw two inspiring sessions, with six papers presented on the topic of “Memory Struggles in the Post-dictatorial Southern Cone: Remembering, Commemorating, Protesting,” and an ensuing enthusiastic discussion between the panelists and the audience. This lively and inspiring atmosphere is what prompted us to continue to critically explore the politics of memory in the Southern Cone, and invite a wider range of scholars to take part in this discussion, through a publication. Our fellow panelists in Leeds (Vikki Bell, Valentina Salvi, Alejandra Serpente, and Cecilia Sosa) enthusiastically supported what was then an exciting—and a bit ambitious—“book project.” It was eventually submitted to Palgrave at the end of 2009, after we decided to invite some scholars whose work has inspired us over the years, to contribute to our publication. We are extremely grateful to them for their enthusiastic responses and for believing in our “book project” like the panelists did. Interest in memory and publications on this subject are, of course, not a new area of academic interest. Let us just think at the wealth of literature that exists on the commemorations of the two world wars and, in particular, the Holocaust. In the past two decades, publications on memory have, however, increased exponentially, taking stock of the global trend that Andreas Huyssen labeled societies’ “obsession with memory.” The study of the memory of traumatic events such as conflict, human rights violations, and state repression in particular has attracted academic interest and produced a burgeoning scholarship lately.

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Our book exists against this background and contributes to this body of scholarship; we believe it to be particularly innovative and original for a number of reasons. First, despite the significant development of the memory studies literature, a relative lack of high-quality scholarship published in English on memory struggles in the countries of the Southern Cone can be identified. This is quite surprising, given their high profile around the world and the increasing interest paid to these issues in general by academia and beyond. Second, the innovative perspectives provided by the chapters of this volume, and the original contribution of the book as a whole, derive from the profiles of the international contributors, both emerging scholars and renowned experts on memory struggles in these Latin American countries. Thus, we hope that the book will appeal and be of interest to a large public, including scholars of Transitional Justice, Human Rights, Memory Studies, Politics, Sociology, and Latin American Studies. This edited volume explores the contested aspects, realms, meanings, goals, and the challenges associated with the struggles relating to the construction and preservation of the memories of state repression in the Southern Cone countries of Latin America, namely Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. To capture these experiences and practices and to reflect memory’s dynamic and multifaceted character, it is necessary to draw on a range of fields and perspectives, bringing them together. This is the reason why the contributors to this collection come from a variety of academic disciplines, including Sociology, Politics, International Relations, Psychology, Drama, and Latin American Studies. The ambition of the book is thus, through their authors’ perspectives and backgrounds, to illuminate the richness and complexities of what is often referred to as “the politics of memory,” a notion that the book also questions. Finally, we would like to spend a few words explaining the reasons behind our choice of book cover, given the significant symbolism of the selected image. Giuseppe Lana’s work Senza titolo (Untitled) produced in 2010 embodies a conceptual opposition. In the artist’s words, it reflects the search for the longed-for balance “while being alone, at the wrong place, at the wrong time.” For the artist, his creation constitutes “a trial of strength between opposing energies that reject one another . . . just like everyone does, on a daily basis, beginning with ourselves, and then also with the others.” The words of the author relating to his artwork apply well to our book, in which we expose several tensions, different understandings, and manifestations of memory at the social, cultural, and political levels. We believe this artwork to be extremely unique and challenging. It is an image that does not go unnoticed; on the contrary, it provokes the readers, making them wonder, making them think. The image is directly connected

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to the themes that are closely discussed and examined in the book. The darkness, in the background, reminds us of the terror and fear that characterized the years of the military dictatorships in the Southern Cone. The light breaking through reminds us of hope, of various kinds of hope, opposition to the dictatorships, the denunciation of their crimes, the hope associated with the recovery of the stolen identities of appropriated children, or when advances in terms of truth and justice are achieved, like General Pinochet’s 1998 London arrest or the overruling of the Full Stop and Due Obedience Laws in Argentina in 2005. The opposition between the fan and the heater recalls the tensions of the past, the disagreements and differences between the ideology of the Armed Forces and their plans for society, and the opposition to their proposed ways of life; the diverse beliefs and projects for organizing society, and the conflictual character of social interactions. These antagonisms continue in the present, as Vikki Bell reminds us, in which past tensions and conflicts are continuously played out. These encompass the different memories and the various ways of remembering the years of military rule and political violence that clash with each other on a daily basis in the social, cultural, and political landscapes in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. In sum, this image perfectly combines several of the organizing concepts of the book, and illustrates the “politics of memory” analyzed in this volume. The “Politics of Memory” in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay are like a never-ending memory mosaic. Each colorful piece tells us a different story, provides us with a new perspective, challenging, provocative, disturbing, interesting, that we may not like or agree with. Still, if we are to ever come close to comprehending the unfolding memory practices and struggles in these three countries, we need to look at each piece, with tolerance and “fresh eyes” every time, in a continuous learning process. This collection of essays provides some of the many pieces of the memory mosaic in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, rather than an all-encompassing and definitive assessment. This mosaic has no end in sight: we hope this remains so, as a crystallization of memory would be a deeply troubling event.

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Acknowledgments

T

he editors would like to thank a number of people whose advice, support, encouragement, and work has been essential to the creation of this book. First, we would like to express our most sincere gratitude to our eight contributors. All of them produced outstanding chapters and enthusiastically believed in our project from the very beginning. Second, Giuseppe Lana who allowed us to reproduce his artwork Senza Titolo as our book’s cover art. Third, Professor Chris J. Brown (London School of Economics) who supported our idea and provided us with insightful advice in the initial stages of the project. Fourth, Robyn Curtis, our editor, for responding to our numerous questions throughout the preparation of this book. Vincent Druliolle wishes to express his gratitude to Francesca Lessa whose unwavering motivation, determination, and faith in this book project were decisive. Giving birth to and coordinating this book with her took a lot of time, it was at times stressful and exhausting, but working together was always a pleasure. Francesca Lessa would like to thank Vincent Druliolle for believing in what was initially a “crazy idea” and then turned out to be a difficult but always rewarding endeavor. The preparation of this book would have been impossible without our joint efforts as a team, and I do hope this is only the beginning of a hopefully long-term collaboration.

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Contributors

Vikki Bell (Ph.D., Sociology, Edinburgh University) is Professor in Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where she convenes the taught M.A. programs. Her books include Feminist Imagination: Genealogies in Feminist Thought (Sage, 1999) and Culture and Performance: The Challenge of Ethics, Politics and Feminist Theory (Berg, 2007). In addition to the interest in social and cultural theory, she has been working of late on sociocultural aspects of transitional justice in Argentina and in Northern Ireland, and has published articles on this topic in journals such as Cultural Politics, Social & Legal Studies, Journal of Visual Culture and Theory, Culture & Society. Emilio Crenzel (Ph.D., Sociology, University of Buenos Aires) is Researcher at the National Council of Scientific Research (CONICET), and Professor of Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is the author of La Historia Política del Nunca Más: La Memoria de las Desapariciones en la Argentina (Siglo XXI Editores, 2008), Memory of the Argentina Disappearances: The Political History of the Never Again Report (Routledge: New York, on contract) and “Argentina’s National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons: Contributions to Transitional Justice” International Journal of Transitional Justice 2, no. 2 (2008): 173–191, and other articles on social memories of political violence in the Southern Cone of Latin America, in journals in Brazil, Canada, Europe, Israel, Mexico, and the United States. Vincent Druliolle (Ph.D., Politics, University of Essex) is an Independent Researcher. His doctoral research, on which his contribution to this volume is based, analyzes the idea of remembering as a set of political practices in postauthoritarian Argentina and the relationship between these commemorative practices and the construction of democracy. He is also interested in the debate about the memory of the Civil War, Franco’s dictatorship,

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and the transition to democracy in Spain, about which he has published “Democracy Captured By Its Imaginary: The Transition as Memory and Discourses of Constitutionalism in Spain” Social and Legal Studies 17, no. 1 (2008): 75–92. Gabriela Fried Amilivia (Ph.D., Sociology, UCLA) is Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology at California State University Los Angeles. She has also been a Professor and Researcher in the M.A. Program of the Faculty of Psychology, University of the Republic of Uruguay between 2009 and 2010. Her recent publications include “Remembering Trauma in Society: Forced Disappearance and Familial Transmissions after Uruguay’s Era of State Terror (1973–2001)” in Sociology of Memory: Papers from the Spectrum, ed. Noel Packard (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009); and “Piecing Memories Together. The Female Political Prisoners’ Testimonial Project after State Terror and Policies of Oblivion in Uruguay (1997–2004)” Social Identities 12, no. 5 (2006): 543–562. Giuseppe Lana (Academy of Fine Arts, Italy) is artistic director of the exhibitions gallery BOCS (Box of Contemporary Space), in Catania since 2008. Principal exhibitions and projects: “Pietralavica,” DNA Projectbox, Venice; “Sweet sheets” (moves to modica), palazzo della cultura, Modica; “Persona in meno,” Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Guarene, Palazzo Ducale, Genova; “Titolo Grosso,” CRIPTA 747, Turin; “Kataunas,” Balta gallery/ Meno Parkas gallery, Kaunas (Lituania); “Sprigionie,” Galleria Franco Marconi, Cupra Marittima (AP). His works can be found in both private and public collections, and special projects such as Fondazione Volume!, Rome; Brodbeck Foundation, Catania; Horcynus Orca Foundation, Capo peloro (ME); MACC MuseoArteContemporanea, Caltagiorone (CT); Complesso Museale Del Vittorianio, Roma, “Sale Del Bramante,” Rome. Michael J. Lazzara (Ph.D., Spanish, Princeton University) is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Luz Arce and Pinochet’s Chile: Testimony in the Aftermath of State Violence (2011); Chile in Transition: The Poetics and Politics of Memory (2006); Los Años de Silencio: Conversaciones Con Narradores Chilenos Que Escribieron Bajo Dictadura (2002); and articles on Latin American literature and culture. He is also coeditor of Telling Ruins in Latin America (2009), with Vicky Unruh. Francesca Lessa (Ph.D., International Relations, London School of Economics) is Research Associate for the Latin America International Affairs Programme at the IDEAS Centre, London School of Economics.

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She is the author of “The Investigative Commission on the Kidnapping and Assassination of Former National Representatives Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez-Ruiz” and “The Peace Commission” in the Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice (2012). Her research interests include Transitional Justice and Memory in the Southern Cone of Latin America, especially Argentina and Uruguay, and the current situation of human rights in the same region. Elizabeth Lira is a Psychologist and the Director of the Center of Ethics at the Alberto Hurtado University in Santiago (Chile). She has been awarded for her work and research on psychosocial treatment for victims of human rights violations the Nevitt Sanford Award (International Society of Political Psychology, 1998) and the International Humanitarian Award (American Psychological Association, 2002). She is coauthor with Brian Loveman for more than ten books on the historical process of Chilean political reconciliation since 1814 to the present time. Her recent research includes Reparations Policies, Justice, and Memory in Chile. She has been a member of the National Commission of Political Imprisonment and Torture (2003–2005) and member of the recent Advisory Commission for the recognition of disappeared, executed, and tortured victims (2010–2011). Valentina Salvi (Ph.D., Social Sciences, State University of Campinas, Brazil) is Researcher at the National Council of Scientific Research (CONICET) and the Research Institute “Gino Germani” (University of Buenos Aires). She is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires and Professor at the National University “Tres de Febrero” in the Faculty of Arts. She is the author of articles in books and journals on the military memory of the repression and on memory, nation, and responsibility, published in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Germany. Alejandra Serpente is a doctoral student at the Institute for the Study of the Americas, School of Advanced Study, University of London. The provisional title of her thesis is “Diasporic Argentine and Chilean Identities in Britain: The Traces of Dictatorship in Second-Generation ‘Postmemory.’ ” Her research interests include the politics of memory and trauma, as well as issues of cultural identity among Latin American migrant communities, especially those of the Chilean and Argentinean diasporas in the UK. Cecilia Sosa is an Argentine sociologist who worked for five years as a cultural journalist for the national newspaper Página 12. In 2007, she was awarded a Chevening Scholarship to undertake an M.A. at Goldsmiths, University of London, awarded with distinction. She is currently doing her Ph.D. in

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Drama at Queen Mary, University of London, working on a thesis entitled “Performance, Kinship and Archives: Queering Acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina’s 1976–1983 dictatorship.” She has published “A Counter-narrative of Argentine Mourning. The Headless Woman (2008), by Lucrecia Martel” in Theory, Culture & Society 26, nos. 7–8 (2009): 250– 262; she has two other pieces in press.

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INTRODUCTION

Present Pasts: Memory(ies) of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone of Latin America Emilio Crenzel

Dictatorships in the Southern Cone: The Terrorist States Three coups d’ état, staged respectively in Uruguay and Chile in 1973 and in Argentina in 1976, ushered in a period of military dictatorship in the region, unleashing a violent repression that was unprecedented in the history of these three countries. The main goal of these dictatorships was the annihilation of subversion and communism; to achieve that, these regimes coordinated their efforts in a region-wide repressive strategy that came to be known as the “Plan Condor.” In all three countries, the victims targeted by repressive action were guerrilla members, unarmed leftist activists, and participants in social movements who had been involved in the process of political radicalization experienced by these societies in the years leading up to the coups. But they were not the only victims, as all citizens were equally deprived of their civil and political rights, and terror spread across all spheres of private and public life.1 Notwithstanding the coordinated efforts and similarities of these dictatorships, they varied in their chosen method of repression. In Argentina, the predominant form was that of enforced disappearances, which consisted in the detention or abduction of individuals by military or police officers, who held them secretly captive in illegal detention centers or camps, known as “clandestine detention centers,” torturing and, in most cases, killing them.

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Their bodies were then buried in unmarked graves, incinerated, or thrown into the sea, and their property was looted. As these crimes were being committed, the state simultaneously denied any responsibility. While human rights organizations place the total number of enforced disappearances at 30,000, the official count as of 2010 is 9,334 disappeared persons, with some 500 children who were abducted along with their parents or born in captivity and were later illegally adopted by members of the security forces, who registered them under false names. Another 12,890 people were jailed for political reasons, 2,286 were openly killed, and an estimated 250,000, in a population of 25 million, were forced into exile.2 In Chile, the victims were distributed differently. Following the coup, 2,000 people were sentenced to death by military courts and killed in extrajudicial executions or by application of the ley de fuga (fugitive law), another 1,200 were disappeared, 200,000 were forced into exile, 50,000 people were arrested and tortured, and 100,000 were fired from their jobs for political reasons. In Uruguay, an estimated 250,000 people were exiled, while 116 people were murdered, 172 were forcefully disappeared (the majority in Argentina), and 60,000 were arrested and jailed as long-term political prisoners.3 The dictatorships also differed in terms of their significance in the political and institutional history of each country, which is a consequence of the diverse constitutional governments that they overthrew. In Chile and Uruguay, the dictatorships broke the liberal-democratic tradition that had dominated these nations’ institutional life throughout the twentieth century. In Argentina, by contrast, the dictatorship was a continuation of the Armed Forces’ tradition of intervention in institutional life, inaugurated by the coup of 1930. Moreover, while in Uruguay and Argentina the dictatorial regimes ousted constitutional governments that repressed subversion as a matter of state policy, in Chile the coup toppled a socialist government that sought to transform society through democratic and nonviolent means.4 In all three countries, but especially in Chile, the dictatorships set out to restructure capitalism through free-market policies that exacerbated social inequalities and undermined the power of trade unions and social movements. Simultaneously, a profound political and cultural transformation emerged as a common feature in the region to counter the dictatorships’ extreme forms of violence, which violated the right to life and, in Hannah Arendt’s words, the “right to have rights.”5 The revolutionary tone that prevailed in the reports of government repression prior to the coups was replaced by a humanitarian narrative that called for the safeguarding of the rights of individuals on the ground that everyone

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is entitled to the enjoyment of human rights.6 In this way, the historical and political denunciation of state violence and its relation to the social order or to powerful groups was replaced by narratives that focused on factual and detailed descriptions of the abductions and detentions, the torture suffered by the victims, and the conditions under which they were held captive and that chose to evoke the victims and perpetrators of the abuses by their names. The political narrative thus shifted to an account of a confrontation between victims and victimizers, displacing the class struggle framework or the populist approach based on the people-oligarchy antinomy, and the vindication of violence was superseded by reports of abuses committed against the physical integrity of the detainees. Furthermore, the victims of state violence were now presented through their basic identifying particulars, such as their age and gender, or through comprehensive categories, such as their occupation or religious beliefs, omitting their political activism while underscoring their moral values, to highlight the extent and indiscriminate nature of state violence. The narrative shift represented by the prevalence of the human rights discourse was the result of ties forged by political exiles and relatives of prisoners and disappeared persons with transnational human rights networks, in particular in the United States and Europe, and of the emergence of human rights organizations in Argentina and Chile and, at a later stage and with a lesser impact, in Uruguay. In sum, the unprecedented strength gained by the culture of human rights in the region was, ironically, a product of the dictatorships. Democracies: Truths, In/Justices, and Memories The power relationships that framed the transition to democracy in each country set the way in which the recovered democracies would respond to human rights abuses.7 Argentina was a unique case. In 1982, the dictatorial government suffered a defeat against the United Kingdom in the Malvinas/Falkland Islands War, and this outcome weakened the regime’s position and precluded a negotiated transition that would have allowed it to prevail over civilian leaders and thwart any attempts to investigate its abuses. Moreover, after the Radical Civic Union party won the October 1983 elections, the democratic president Raúl Alfonsín repealed the amnesty law passed by the military junta a month earlier and immediately called for the prosecution of human rights violations. In Chile, by contrast, General Augusto Pinochet decreed an amnesty in 1978 for the crimes committed after the coup, and in 1980 he amended the

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Constitution to give the Armed Forces a supervisory role in government, most notably by securing his position as commander-in-chief until 1998 and introducing the position of senator-for-life, which he would occupy after his military retirement. In Uruguay, too, the transition resulted from a negotiation, known as the Naval Club Pact, whereby the leading political parties, with the exception of the National Party, allowed the Armed Forces to have a say in domestic security matters and tacitly agreed not to prosecute the perpetrators of past human rights abuses. Once in office, the democratically elected Colorado Party pushed for the approval of the Ley de Caducidad de la Pretensión Punitiva del Estado (Law on the Expiry of the Punitive Claims of the State), barring the prosecution of any military and police officers involved in human rights abuses committed before the constitutional government’s inauguration on March 1, 1985. Thus, Argentina became a paradigm of transitional justice policies. In 1983, the Executive created the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP), with the mandate to investigate the fate of the disappeared and publish a report on the outcome of its investigation.8 Both CONADEP and its Nunca Más (Never Again) report were adopted as models by other Latin American truth commissions formed by governments or civil society: in Chile, the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, created in 1991, published the Rettig Report; in Uruguay, the Investigative Commission on the Situation of Disappeared Persons and its Causes was created in 1985, while the civil society organization Servicio de Paz y Justicia (Peace and Justice Service) produced its Nunca Más report in 1989. CONADEP’s investigative work and accounts put forward new public truths that broke the monopoly over the interpretation of state violence that had until then been held by the dictatorships, and they legitimated the testimonies of the victims.9 Moreover, Argentina’s trial of the military juntas in 1985, unprecedented on the continent, became both a specter that haunted the region’s outgoing dictatorships—an alternative that was not taken up by other constitutional governments—and a goal to be attained by human rights organizations. The prospects of justice, however, soon faded. The constitutional government that came into power in Chile in 1990 did not repeal the amnesty law passed by Pinochet. Argentina enacted the Full Stop (1986) and Due Obedience Laws (1987) and granted a pardon to the military juntas (1989; 1990), thus putting the perpetrators of human rights abuses beyond the courts’ reach, reversing any legal proceedings pending against them, or releasing those who had been imprisoned. Finally, Uruguay’s Ley de Caducidad was ratified by referendum in 1989.

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The early 1990s were marked by a lull in human rights mobilizations. In Argentina, this was prompted by the pardon and the hyperinflation that plagued the country from 1989 to 1990. Together with President Carlos Menem’s neoliberal package of economic adjustments, they monopolized public attention. In Uruguay, the outcome of the referendum dampened the hopes of human rights organizations, ushering in five years of silence and obliteration of the past epitomized by the conversion of the old Punta Carretas Penitentiary, in which political prisoners were held captive during the dictatorship, into a shopping mall in 1994. Around the same time, the release of the Rettig Report in Chile was eclipsed by the assassination of right-wing senator Jaime Guzmán.10 In the mid-1990s, however, memory emerged, along with truth and justice, on the agendas of human rights organizations and other civil society actors as a goal in its own right. This was the result of various factors: the realization that with the passing of generations there was a pressing need to convey an understanding of these violent pasts to younger generations; the “confessions” made by several perpetrators in Argentina and Uruguay regarding their involvement in the repression; and the emergence in both countries of HIJOS,11 an organization grouping sons and daughters of disappeared persons, former political prisoners, and exiles. These young adults, in their attempt to reconstruct their parents’ public and private histories, proposed new narrative and interpretative approaches to the past. In Chile’s case, the process was further triggered by Pinochet’s London arrest in 1998. The region thus experienced an “explosion of memory” regarding its violent past and the dictatorships. Several actors, primarily human rights groups, called for the opening of memory archives and the building of memorials in places that were emblematic of state terrorism. For instance, the infamous clandestine detention, torture, and extermination centers—the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA) in Buenos Aires and Villa Grimaldi in Santiago, were two sites that were initially to be torn down and turned into a “monument to reconciliation” and a residential neighborhood respectively. Other public spaces, too, have been devoted to the remembrance of the past, such as the Memorial to the Detainees-Disappeared that was erected in a public park in the Cerro district of Montevideo. Simultaneously, numerous memoirs were published by activists in the form of testimonial literature, and the recent past became a frequent topic of discussion in the media, an issue on political agendas, and the subject of artistic and cultural productions. In addition, during the first years of the twenty-first century, human rights abuses were once again under the scope of judicial investigations. In Argentina, the so-called impunity laws were declared unconstitutional, leading to the reopening of proceedings against perpetrators. In Uruguay,

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following President Tabaré Vázquez’s exclusion of certain cases from the Ley de Caducidad, two major figures involved in the dictatorship were prosecuted and convicted: Juan María Bordaberry, constitutional president at the time of the coup and de facto president during the dictatorship, was charged with violating the Constitution, and General Gregorio Álvarez, the country’s last de facto president, was charged with smuggling Uruguayan political activists into the country after their abduction and enforced disappearance in Argentina. Lastly, Juan Contreras, head of the Chilean National Intelligence Bureau under Pinochet, was convicted in a disappearance case by a court that invoked international human rights law. In this context, academic research increasingly concentrated its attention on the memories of state violence in the region, shifting the focus away from the analysis of democratic transition processes that had until then dominated the field.12 The study of the recent past and social memory gained academic legitimacy. Numerous works have focused on the memories of a range of actors, including relatives of the disappeared, political prisoners, exiles, former radical left-wing activists, and ordinary men and women. The building of monuments, museums, and memorials has also been studied. The role of testimony as a vehicle for remembering and of art as a medium for the transmission of memory emerged as important avenues for research. In addition, memory policies have been reviewed and compared against civil society perspectives. Over time, a dialogue between the historical accounts and the memories of these processes emerged, giving way to the historicization of social memories and the incorporation of memory as a source of history.13 Memories and the Politics of Memory: Perspectives from the Book This book contributes both to research on memory studies and Latin America. It compiles original essays that examine an array of public and private memories of the dictatorships that ruled Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay between the 1970s and 1990s. The authors—social scientists and scholars from diverse disciplines in the humanities—analyze various processes that stand out in the political struggles over memory in the region, and the still-fresh wounds and scars left by this traumatic past in communities and subjectivities. Each chapter endeavors to contextualize and historicize the violent pasts, and to link the emergence of practices, discourses, and conflicts of interpretation regarding these pasts with the official approaches developed in each country following the restoration of political democracy. Through that

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common prism, the chapters look at micro-practices of commemoration of the disappeared; analyze the politics of memory articulated by the victims of guerrilla violence and the resignification of values and family ties in Argentina; historicize the construction of memory of human rights abuses and the role of literature in the production of meaning regarding Chile’s dictatorial violence; study the shaping of postmemories among second-generation Argentineans and Chileans residing in Great Britain since the 1970s; and examine the traumatic impact of the disappearances on public and private memories, as well as the politics of memory furthered by constitutional governments and the tensions sparked with the memories and demands of Uruguay’s Armed Forces and human rights groups. In Chapter 1, Vincent Druliolle examines various “micro”-practices of commemoration of state terrorism in Argentina, such as the transformation of former clandestine detention centers into sites of remembrance, and the placement of plaques in memory of the disappeared throughout different neighborhoods. The author shows how these initiatives, which move local communities into action and constitute interventions that disrupt normal everyday life, prompt a construction of memory that counters the architectonical, discursive, and institutional idea embodied by museums. Druliolle argues, however, that these micro-commemorative practices cannot be explained from a binary logic based on the opposition between official and resistance-centered memories. Instead, he looks for an explanation in the specific relationships and conflicts that arise between memory and mourning, and those arising between the evocation of the past and contemporary political practices that seek to bring about change, as well as the futures envisioned by the actors who promote such practices. In Chapter 2, Valentina Salvi examines how, after Argentina’s impunity laws were repealed, civilian and military groups formed organizations calling for a “complete memory” that included an evocation of the victims of guerrilla violence in the “war against subversion.” In this way, these groups have reclaimed their space in the struggle to make sense of past political repression, while simultaneously bringing the issue of guerrilla violence back into public debate. Salvi notes that these practices and discourses are part of a strategy marked by the (re-)appropriation of the demand for “truth, justice and memory” that was put forward by human rights organizations 30 years ago. She also studies the tributes to “the victims of the war against subversion” and argues that, as the discourse behind them is based on the permanence of certain values, it provides a sense of belonging to a moral community set apart from the rest of society. In Chapter 3, Cecilia Sosa importantly considers the essentialization of family relations that underlie the discourse and practices of the Argentine

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human rights movement and that, she argues, the democratic governments too have naturalized. Her “queer reading” suggests that the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo actually open up the possibility of imagining forms of kinship that are not based on blood lines. It is a challenge to envision a collective “we”—as the subject of remembering—beyond the relatives of the disappeared. Sosa also discusses Los Rubios, a film directed by the daughter of a disappeared couple, and argues that it outlines similar postkinship ties as it explores questions of responsibility, memory, and forgetting. The final part of her chapter raises disturbing and challenging questions concerning the implications of the essentialization of blood links in contemporary Argentina. In the following chapter, Michael Lazzara critically explores the limits of the truth produced by the courts to expound and represent traumatic pasts and, at the same time, the possibility of accounting for these processes through other vehicles, such as literature. To that end, he analyzes Diamela Eltit’s book Puño y letra, which reconstructs, through the technique of montage, the public trial of Jorge Arancibia Clavel, one of the masterminds of the murder of Chilean General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires in 1974, several months after the military coup in Chile. Lazzara shows how Eltit’s book highlights the limits of formal justice and of testifying in court to account for traumatic pasts, how it transcends these frameworks by incorporating the subjective perspective of the victims, and by questioning in political terms the responsibilities for the regress of Chilean society during Pinochet’s dictatorship. In this way, Lazzara suggests that Eltit’s book can be seen as a revealing vehicle to reflect on the possibilities and obstacles that exercising radical justice in the face of limit-experiences confronts. In Chapter 5, Elizabeth Lira looks at how Chileans forged a memory of the human rights abuses committed by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. She describes the characteristics and scope of the repression perpetrated by Pinochet’s regime, and the denunciations of the abuses and the resistance to the dictatorship by different political and social groups both in Chile and abroad by exiles. She also examines the official account of this past proposed by the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission following the reinstatement of democracy in 1990. Lastly, Lira analyzes the emergence of an activist memory and claims that it is part of a historical practice of remembrance marked by tragedy and a willingness to redeem. In this way, the author historicizes the memory of the dictatorship in Chile and the difficulties for collective ownership faced by the accounts circulating in the public sphere. In Chapter 6, Alejandra Serpente studies the identities of second-generation Chileans and Argentineans living in Great Britain. This heterogeneous

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group is formed by children of both political exiles and economic migrants, all of whom were witness to the military violence in their countries of origin. The author takes up the concept of postmemory, examining how transmission operates within families of victims of repression—a leading player in the narration and interpretation of this past in the public sphere—and among other second-generation communities. Serpente thus sheds light on how traumatic effects, memory efforts, and conflicts over memory exceed both generational boundaries and the territory of the Southern Cone. In Chapter 7, Gabriela Fried Amilivia proposes a reflection on how collective memories of traumatic experiences connected with state terrorism in Uruguay reappear in the public sphere and in the privacy of family life. Her ethnographic study suggests that the relationship between trauma and collective memories is evidenced by the public and private silences that shape official policies, but also different modes of transmission and differences in the generational behavioral patterns of pedagogic practices within families: a need or compulsion to tell, softened versions, total silence, and the emergence of children’s inquiries about the past. In this way, Fried argues that, both socially and individually, silencing, denying, and forgetting state violence in Uruguay perpetuates the failure to deal with and acknowledge some processes that are necessary to publicly and privately come to terms with traumatic pasts. In Chapter 8, Francesca Lessa examines the tensions arising between official memory and transitional justice policies since the reinstatement of democracy in Uruguay, and contrasts them with the memories of two leading communities in the struggles to interpret this past: the Armed Forces and human rights organizations. To that end, she examines the perspectives proposed in these groups’ accounts and the conflicts over their interpretation triggered by emblematic anniversaries, memory sites, and elections, as it was in the polls that citizens closed off the possibility of prosecuting perpetrators of human rights abuses. Lessa suggests that the Uruguayan state succeeded in silencing the public debate on human rights violations, but that, from the mid-1990s onward, a combination of endogenous and regional factors has made it impossible to stop the growing wave of rejection toward the dictatorship and to prevent the victims from renewing their voice and presence in the public sphere. Lastly, Vikki Bell takes as a starting point Hannah Arendt’s idea that conceives the past not as a weight, but as a strength that pushes forward. In light of this, Bell rules out that “memory-works” are simply symptoms of melancholy, or mere attempts not to forget the past of political violence and dictatorship that tore the societies of the Southern Cone. Bell suggests instead that they are endeavors by various actors aimed at building “shared

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futures.” That is to say: imagined political communities. The past operates, according to Bell, as an ethical force that, through memory-works, feeds the present confrontation between alternative models of polis. The struggles among the politics of memory in the region express the vitality of this past and its work as a tool of confrontation that attempts to establish a political ethic, build institutions, and model future societies. For the author, the so-called transitions and post-transitions in the countries of the Southern Cone should be comprehended as “long presents,” scenarios marked by the struggle to establish, in the words of Robert Cover, a shared nomos that presupposes a political ethic, institutions, and rules, but also words that would constitute the very possibility of living together. A transversal reading of this volume reveals, first, the different characteristics of the forms of violence perpetrated by the dictatorships, and their failure to impose a univocal account claiming that military intervention had safeguarded these nations from communism—what Stern calls “memory as salvation.”14 The chapters also highlight the particularities of each transition to democracy, the different official memory and transitional justice policies of the constitutional governments, and the diverse power relations that mark the scenarios of struggles over different forms of evoking the violent pasts. Second, the book shows the transnational nature of dictatorial violence and the scars and marks it left on different communities and subjectivities, shedding light on the permanence of its traumatic effects in the region. More than that, the concept of region is indirectly put into question, as such effects are also echoed among communities of Southern Cone exiles living across the Atlantic Ocean. Third, the volume bares the multiple meanings of the link between trauma, how it is processed, and memory. The chapters show the different ways in which truths about the past are constructed, the various forms of coping with extreme situations, and the initiatives aimed at memorializing. Taken together, they convey a picture that reveals a wider scope of alternatives devised and created by these societies after their experiences of extreme violence. More specifically, they show the roles that art, architecture, and literature play in offering public truths that differ from those provided by the courts or by other transitional justice policies. The chapters also delve into the diverse ways in which mourning is processed, and illuminate the scars, ruptures, and silences that mark subjectivities, private spheres, and generational ties. In doing so, they continue along the lines introduced by Maurice Halbwachs when he coined the term “collective memory,”15 positing the social nature of these processes and recognizing the importance of anniversaries and sites of memory in triggering different and/or antagonistic ways of evoking past events.

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Fourth, the book foregrounds an understanding of memory as process(es) and its connection with political struggles. The chapters historicize the memories of state violence, showing both their changes and continuities over time. They highlight the diversity of social memory, and examine its ties with the interests and values of groups that presently attempt to give meaning to the past and envision future horizons for their societies. And it is perhaps here that the main contribution of this book lies, as its pages succeed in opening up the scope of analysis, transcending the dichotomy between memories constructed by the state and memories constructed by civil society, calling attention to the clashes that occur within the latter, focusing on the range of obstacles that hinder the expansion of the collective we that remembers, and the alternative discourses and practices deployed by various actors to allow the community to continue to reproduce itself and endure over time. Lastly, the volume suggests that these pasts are highly significant in the region’s political and cultural life. That is, it emphasizes their relevance as present pasts, or, in the words of Henry Rousso, “ever-present pasts.”16 The interpretation of these pasts is still the object of fierce controversies. As the chapters show, these conflicts cut across both public and private spheres; transcend borders and generations; permeate official discourses and practices, civil society and its groups; penetrate families; and construct and break up subjectivities and identities. In sum, this volume provides readers with interpretative elements and tools to reflect on the ways in which Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay currently evoke their dictatorial past, the content of these memories, and their place within a historical context that makes sense of the violence, and provides insights into changes and continuities in the interpretations of the past. Readers will thus find in this work a stimulating contribution to think about the ethical and political course taken by these societies to deal with their most tragic pasts. These pages will also no doubt suggest ideas and raise questions that will prompt a new look at the processes, actors, and conflicts of other memories arising from experiences of extreme violence elsewhere. Notes 1. Luis Roniger and Mario Sznajder, The Legacy of Human Rights Violations in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 2. For the number of disappeared persons and political prisoners, see the data of Secretaría de Derechos Humanos de la Nación (National Human Rights

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3.

4. 5. 6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

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Secretariat), http://www.derhuman.jus.gov.ar/. For the number of exiles, see Rodolfo Bertoncello and Alfredo Lattes, “Medición de la Emigración de Argentinos a Partir de la Información Nacional” in Dinámica Migratoria Argentina (1955–1984). Democratización y Retorno de los Expatriados, ed. Alfredo Lattes and Enrique Oteiza (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1987), 61–80. See Álvaro Rico, ed., Investigación Histórica Sobre la Dictadura y el Terrorismo de Estado en el Uruguay, 1973–1985 (Montevideo: Universidad de la República Oriental del Uruguay, Comisión Sectorial de Investigación Científica, Centro de Estudios Interdisciplinarios Uruguayos, Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, 2009). See Paul W. Drake’s “Prologue” to Maria Angélica Cruz, Iglesia, Represión y Memoria. El Caso Chileno (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2004), 13–18. Hannah Arendt, Los Orígenes del Totalitarismo (Madrid: Alianza, 1982), 296. On this process, see Vania Markarian, Left in Transformation: Uruguayan Exiles and the Latin American Human Rights Networks, 1967–1984 (New York: Routledge, 2005). For a comparative analysis of these policies in the region, see Alexandra Barahona de Brito, “Truth, Justice, Memory and Democratization in the Southern Cone” in The Politics of Memory: Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies, ed. Paloma Aguilar, Alexandra Barahona de Brito, and Carmen González-Enríquez (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 119–160. On this subject, see Emilio Crenzel, La Historia Política del Nunca Más: La Memoria de las Desapariciones en Argentina (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2008). On the impact of CONADEP and Nunca Más on transitional justice policies, see Kathryn Sikkink, “From Pariah State to Global Protagonist: Argentina and the Struggle for International Human Rights” Latin American Politics and Society 50, no. 1 (2008): 1–30. On memory cycles in Argentina, see Gabriela Cerruti, “La Historia de la Memoria” Puentes 3, no. 11 (2001): 14–25. On Uruguay, see Eugenia Allier Montaño, Las Batallas por la Memoria. Los Usos Políticos del Pasado Reciente en Uruguay (Montevideo: Trilce, 2010). On Chile, see Elizabeth Lira and Brian Loveman, Las Ardientes Cenizas del Olvido. Vía Chilena de Reconciliación Política 1932–1994 (Santiago: LOM, 2000). In Argentina, the acronym H.I.J.O.S. stands for Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence). In Uruguay, instead, HIJOS simply refers to these individuals’ condition as children of the disappeared; the J, normally written in red, alludes to justice and is written as falling over the letter O, to highlight the fight of justice against oblivion. Elizabeth Jelin, “Los Derechos Humanos y la Memoria de la Violencia Política y la Represión: La Construcción de un Campo Nuevo en las Ciencias Sociales” Cuadernos del IDES, no. 2, October 2003, http://www.ides.org.ar/shared/doc/ pdf/cuadernos/cuaderno2_Jelin.pdf.

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13.

14.

15. 16.

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For comparative studies of these subjects, see Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (4 vol.) (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986) and the book series Memorias de la Represión (12 volumes) coordinated by Elizabeth Jelin and published between 2002 and 2006 by Siglo XXI editores. See Marina Franco and Florencia Levin, “El Pasado Cercano en Clave Historiográfica” in Historia Reciente. Perspectivas y Desafíos Para un Campo en Construcción, ed. Marina Franco and Florencia Levin (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2007), 31–65. See Steve Stern, “De la Memoria Suelta a la Memoria Emblemática. Hacia el Recordar y el Olvidar Como Proceso Histórico (Chile, 1973–1998)” in Memoria Para un Nuevo Siglo: Chile, Miradas a la Segunda Mitad del Siglo XX, ed. Mario Garces, Pedro Milos, Miriam Olguín, Julio Pinto, María Rojas, and Miguel Urrutia (Santiago: LOM, 2000), 11–33. Maurice Halbwachs, Los Marcos Sociales de la Memoria (Barcelona: Anthropos, 2004 [1925]). Henry Rousso, Le Syndrome de Vichy de 1944 à nos Jours (Paris: Gallimard, 1990).

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CHAPTER 1

Remembering and Its Places in Postdictatorship Argentina Vincent Druliolle

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lmost 30 years after the end of the last dictatorship in Argentina (1976–1983), the groups and organizations that are commonly referred to as a single actor, namely, the Argentine human rights movement, keep demanding memoria, verdad y justicia (memory, truth, and justice). The election of Néstor Kirchner as President of Argentina in 2003 marked a major turning point for this struggle. At his instigation, the Congress overturned the amnesty laws that had protected the military junta from prosecution for human rights violations, and in June 2005 these infamous laws were declared unconstitutional, and null and void by the Supreme Court of Argentina (see Crenzel’s introduction to this volume). The Kirchner government also supported the memory agenda by making the state a central actor in a range of projects to preserve the memory of state repression, from the creation of the National Archive of Memory to the conversion of the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (Navy School of Mechanics, or ESMA) in Buenos Aires, one of the most infamous detention centers of the last dictatorship, into a “Space for Memory and for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights.” Such memory projects did not emerge when democracy was formally restored. They have their origin in the mid- to late 1990s, before the amnesty laws were overturned. Preserving or constructing memory was seen as essential precisely because criminal prosecution was impossible. Though it has always remained closely linked to the struggle for justice, this memory agenda has taken on a momentum of

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its own, as memory and the purposes of remembering were given meaning and acquired importance in postdictatorship Argentina. The proliferation of monuments and other memorials throughout Argentina over the last decade is a manifestation of this historical process. Some of these high-profile memory projects, in particular the conversion of ESMA into a “Space for Memory,” and the debates surrounding them, have been much discussed. As a result, a range of more “micro”-memory projects and commemorative practices receive less attention. This chapter analyzes them with a view to exploring the complexities of the struggle for memory in postdictatorship Argentina. Rather than describing a sample of these “micro”-memory projects in great detail, it outlines the understandings and rationales underlying their creation. The chapter explains that they can, following Yoneyama’s study of contemporary Hiroshima, be called “counteramnes(t)ic”—“unforgetful and unforgiving”—practices.1 However, while they aim primarily at remembering and paying tribute to the disappeared, they are seen as performing other political functions. Therefore, they highlight the struggles over the ways in which memory, mourning, and their purposes are understood. Indeed, as Jelin reminds us, “there is an active political struggle not only over the meaning of what took place in the past but over the meaning of memory itself ” (emphasis added).2 This chapter contends that it should be taken as a warning against the temptation to reduce the so-called politics of memory to a binary logic of “domination vs. resistance,” even though the contrast between official/high-profile memory projects and micro/local initiatives seems to invite such a framing. As Ortner contends, the tendency to project this dichotomous and simplistic logic onto a whole range of situations and contexts, as if it was a universal logic, ends up both misunderstanding them and romanticizing whatever is accounted for as resistance.3 Insofar as memory struggles are often understood as a struggle against forgetting, against other narratives, or as being intrinsically equated with resistance, the arguments of Jelin and Ortner should complement each other. In both cases, what is missing is an ethnographic perspective. This chapter thus extends Ortner’s advice to the study of memory: “one can only appreciate the ways in which resistance [memory] can be more than opposition, can be truly creative and transformative, if one appreciates the multiplicity of projects in which social beings are always engaged, and the multiplicity of ways in which these projects feed on as well as collide with one another.”4 In a first part, I thus provide a brief overview of these micro-memory projects in Buenos Aires. They are primarily the recuperación de los Ex-Centros Clandestinos de Detención y Tortura (recovery of the former centers of detention and torture of the last dictatorship) with a view to turning them into

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“sites of memory.” Most of the time, the initiative has come from neighborhood (barrio) associations, though they are often supported by human rights organizations and/or local authorities. Neighborhood associations in Buenos Aires have also designed other physical markers and rituals, for example, the laying of memorial plaques (baldosas) with the names of the disappeared in the barrios where they used to live. I explain that these memory projects and practices reflect some of the objectives of remembering as a political project—the collection of information that may be turned into judicial evidence and help obtain the conviction of the members of the military regime for human rights violations and the disappearances, the challenge to the fear that the dictatorship instituted, the reconstruction of social bonds, and the promotion of involvement in politics and social life. I also show that these micro-memory projects are articulated in opposition to a generic idea of the museum as an architectural, discursive, and institutional gravestone for memory. In a second part, I further explore the contrast drawn between micro-memory projects and official, large-scale, museum-like projects through the controversy surrounding the construction of the Parque de la Memoria (Memory Park) on the shores of the River Plate in Buenos Aires. The discussion concentrates upon the actors’ views about the proper forms of paying tribute to the disappeared, which is not limited to mourning as it is traditionally understood, and the tensions between and within these forms and practices of memorialization. Their analysis highlights the outline of a political project to transform memory into an active force in the present. In other words, the chapter focuses on the complicated interplay of grieving (both private and public), memory, and politics, or on how memory and the work of mourning have been redefined as political and forward-looking. The general question raised by the analysis is that of the place—as physical site, form, but also wider role, political or not—of the recovery of the personal and political lives of the disappeared. The idea of place should thus be used in the sense highlighted by geographers. According to Till, places are spatial and social contexts of events, activities and peoples . . . they are centers of meaning, memory, and experience for individuals and groups . . . places are porous networks of social relations that continuously change because of the particular ways they are interconnected to (and in turn shape) other places and peoples.5 With reference to “places of memory,” Till argues that “through place making, people mark social spaces as haunted sites where they can return, make contact with their loss, contain unwanted presences, or confront past

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injustices,”6 and more importantly, activists and relatives of the disappeared in postdictatorship Argentina show us, present injustices and social problems. The chapter argues that various social groups and actors negotiate these purposes, their meaning, and the possible tensions between them, in different ways. Understanding this complex superposition of roles and juxtaposition of sites of memory is important to avoid reducing micro-memory projects to an ill-defined “resistance” and opposing them to “monumental” projects. Instead, they are better seen as complementary. Although the chapter analyzes micro-memory projects in Buenos Aires where ethnographic data were collected, it is worth noting that there have been similar projects in other parts of Argentina. For example, the former clandestine centers of detention of the dictatorship are converted into sites of memory across the country,7 and a range of neighborhood associations lay baldosas in various cities. Various artistic interventions, from graffiti to murals,8 have also invaded the streets.9 The general argument of the chapter should be relevant to these memory projects, though such a claim would need to be substantiated by ethnographic data. In addition, an analysis of similar practices would probably highlight another complex dynamic, namely, the relationship between memories in the capital and “local” memories, which reminds us that the memory/ies that we tend to call “dominant” and “national” are in fact those we observe in specific locations, very often the capital or urban centers. Da Silva Catela and Mombello show in their analyses of memory struggles in the provinces of Jujuy and Neuquén that “local” memories may be different from, and even clash with, the “dominant” memory in Buenos Aires, as it is seen as erasing or absorbing them.10 The center/periphery dynamic may thus add more complexity and layers to the construction of memory, as discussed in the Argentine capital in this chapter. The last part of the chapter returns to the political dimension underlying the micro-memory projects discussed. It is argued that the site of memory itself does not exhaust, or replace, remembering and politics. Place-making is a wider set of activities, and I outline some ideas about how politics is at play in and through these sites and memory projects, which once again requires going beyond a binary logic of “domination vs. resistance.” 1.1 Remembering in the Barrios of Buenos Aires: Excavating, Marking, and Reconstructing Individual Lives and Communities This section provides a brief overview of the main micro-memory projects that have blossomed in Buenos Aires and its barrios. A first set of these

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projects is the recovery of the former centers of detention and torture of the last dictatorship (ex-CCDyTs). Other forms of memorialization are then introduced. Their importance as places of memory, and the understandings of remembering and its purposes underlying them, are discussed by drawing upon the four kinds of truth identified by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Finally, I analyze the opposition to a generic idea of the museum that is drawn by the actors involved in these micromemory projects in order to further illuminate the struggles over remembering and its places in postdictatorship Argentina. a) The Recovery of the ex-CCDyTs: Bodies of Evidence, Evidence without Bodies In her groundbreaking and exemplary analysis, Pilar Calveiro, herself a survivor of these centers, explains how the CCDyTs were the cornerstone of a network that reconfigured power and its exercise, and inaugurated the reign of terror in Argentina.11 Many victims of the dictatorship were taken to and tortured in these clandestine centers before they were “disappeared.” These former centers of detention have become the symbols of state terrorism.12 With the return of democracy, several of these buildings reinserted themselves in the urban landscape as pieces of the mosaic of routine daily life. They were once again garages, police stations, military hospitals, or even schools. Their identity as ex-CCDyT was forgotten while others no longer exist. The victims disappeared along with the repressive apparatus. The Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, CONADEP) was nevertheless successful in identifying some of them and collecting the testimonies of the survivors about their operation, but for a long time these traces of the repressive past remained invisible. It is today estimated that more than 520 CCDyTs operated throughout the period of the dictatorship across Argentina, of which 45 in Buenos Aires.13 Unlike in Uruguay where, as Lessa explains in her chapter, the Punta Carretas prison in Montevideo has been transformed into a shopping mall, human rights activists in Argentina have endeavored to identify the ex-CCDyTs and turn them into markers of the repressive past. It may be useful to draw upon the four kinds of truth identified by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, namely, “factual or forensic truth,” “personal and narrative truth,” “social truth,” and “healing and restorative truth,”14 to stress the different meanings and aims of the recovery of the ex-CCDyTs.15 Insofar as forced disappearance was the strategy of terror designed by the military junta, the ex-CCDyTs are a source of judicial evidence for legal action against the members of the military

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dictatorship and grupos de tareas (“task forces” whose mission was the abduction of “subversives”). The search for “factual or forensic truth,” which includes the identification and recovery of the ex-CCDyTs, is therefore particularly important for the relatives of the disappeared and the human rights movement. At the same time, it helps explain why the struggles for memory, truth, and justice are closely linked in Argentina. If these sites are a source of “factual or forensic truth,” the ex-CCDyTs are somewhat ambiguous evidence about the attitude of Argentine society under the military dictatorship. For some groups within the human rights movement, their urban location supports the claim that the population was aware of the state’s repressive activities. How could the people who lived near them not notice the unusual activities around these buildings, especially at night? When the dictatorship’s reign of terror ended, some Argentineans acknowledged that they had noticed unusual movements and activities that they did not report. They turned out to be the transfer of detainees, a lot of whom have never been seen again. Such attitudes have been explained by the terror instilled in society by the dictatorship. In this context, odd behaviors gradually become normal daily life. The implication is that the population cannot be considered guilty of (passive) complicity in the repression.16 Yet, today, it is argued that the recovery of the ex-CCDyTs should reopen a debate about this aspect. To put it differently, they are some traces of the past whose meaning is still contested and that as such are part of a “social truth” about the Argentine repressive past still to be elaborated and debated. One of the most iconic ex-CCDyTs in Buenos Aires, El Club Atlético (Photo 1.1), illustrates the importance of these sites and the activities surrounding their recuperation. El Club Atlético operated as a clandestine detention center between February and December 1977 in the basement of a three-floor building of the Federal Police. It was then destroyed for the construction of a highway overpass.17 Almost invisible in this dark, dirty space, the site was nevertheless used as an informal memorial space in the 1990s. The center’s former detainees, as well as several other organizations, mobilized to obtain the support of the City of Buenos Aires in the difficult excavation of the site that started in 2002. El Club Atlético was the first project of this kind. When the works began, the first markers used to signal the site (the plaques with the names of the victims and the torturers, the artistic symbols, the structure with the pictures of the disappeared) were destroyed by a firebomb and torn down. In 2003 a law outlining the project of the recovery of the site and setting up a commission in charge of it was passed. El Club Atlético was declared a historical monument in 2004. This is a model that was adopted for other ex-CCDyTs in Buenos Aires

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Photo 1.1 Ex-CCDyT El Club Atlético. Photo by Vincent Druliolle.

(where the Instituto Espacio para la Memoria (Institute Space for Memory), an umbrella institution of the City of Buenos Aires formed by most human rights organizations, now oversees and assists these projects) and elsewhere. El Club Atlético is still being excavated. As Tandeciarz argues, “literally and metaphorically, the site opens a wound that bears witness to the process of recovery (by the team of forensic anthropologists) and the reconstruction of memory as something inconclusive and imperfect.”18 The testimonies of the survivors have been essential to this task and to count and identify more than 200 people who were detained there and have since then been missing. Like several other former clandestine centers, El Club Atlético is gradually transformed into a espacio para la memoria (space of memory). Data about the prisoners, victims, and grupos de tareas that operated it are available at the site like in other ex-CCDyTs. In addition, in 2007 a small square was inaugurated on the other side of the road to bring El Club Atlético to light. It will host temporary exhibitions and other activities. The initiative for the recovery of the ex-CCDyTs has come from neighborhood associations, relatives of the disappeared, or former detainees. It reflects a willingness to pay tribute to the people who shared their daily lives, but also their traumatic experiences. Truth in this case is more a personal matter, “personal and narrative truth.” It is about reconstructing the lives of the disappeared and inquiring into what happened to them, how they were killed.

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However, if the ex-CCDyTs are bodies of evidence, they are often evidence without bodies. Disappearance has denied the right to bury one’s dead and made mourning impossible. According to Robben, this explains that the relatives of the disappeared never gave up their struggle for truth and justice.19 Drawing upon psychoanalytical theory, he emphasizes the importance of the corpse as a “transitional object” and of reburial for the relatives,20 a memory-work that Freud calls “working through.” “Personally, the reburial symbolizes the final reconciliation with the death of the former disappeared. Politically, it represents the liberation from the totalizing grip of the military who were the masters of their dead and their unfinished mourning,” Robben explains.21 In the absence of a corpse, physical markers may replace it and substitute for reburial. The ex-CCDyTs also perform the role of a memorial; their recovery is a way of reclaiming the identity and dignity of the disappeared and performing the work of mourning. Reconstructing individual lives by excavating and searching for the traces of the past is a powerful emotional experience. So recounts Carmen Lapacó, of Madres de Plaza de Mayo—Línea Fundadora (Mothers of May Square—Founding Line), who was abducted and held at El Club Atlético in March 1977 along with her daughter and her boyfriend, both of whom have never been seen again: I was there when the excavation [of El Club Atlético] began. We were saying “it’s here, it’s a bit more there, we’re wrong,” but when the walls appeared buried there, we all hugged each other, we kissed each other, and I was crying and laughing at the same time . . . I cried because my daughter stayed there and I was overjoyed because we had succeeded in something for which we had been fighting for so long. We weren’t six crazy people [who decided to recover the site], on the contrary this was the site. Subsequently I went alone, I stopped on the sidewalk that’s in front and I could see how they were working. I needed to be there.22 The recovery of the ex-CCDyTs illustrates that the trauma of disappearance may be coped with through activism, or how mourning may turn into activism, either to search for a corpse and/or build a memorial marker or to fight for a wider political project—in fact, the chapter shows that the latter may be taken to entail a rejection of the former.23 It also reflects how constructing memory is closely linked with disappearance and the lack of both truth and justice in Argentina. It has taken on several other forms that emphasize and negotiate other truths and understandings of the roles of remembering in a variety of ways, creating a complex network of memory and its places.

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Paying Tribute to the Disappeared by Marking the Barrios

The people who initiated the projects to recover the ex-CCDyTs through their local associations have sought to mobilize their barrios, mainly other organizations such as youth or cultural centers, and ordinary people. The idea of creating a network to pool their efforts gradually emerged, and the association Barrios x la Memoria y la Justicia (Neighborhoods for Memory and Justice, BMJ) was created in 2005.24 Their goal is to mark the barrios to pay tribute to the disappeared and reclaim a place for them in their communities. In particular, they have been laying baldosas with the names of the disappeared in front of what used to be their homes (Photo 1.2). Osvaldo López, a member of the local organization in charge of the recovery of the ex-CCDyT El Club Atlético and one of the figures behind the creation of BMJ, explains that “the idea entails reconstructing the history of their [the disappeared] lives, claiming their political engagement, and laying the plaque as a mark of their presence and activities in the barrios.”25 A member of BMJ adds that “it is something symbolic. The disappeared don’t have a tomb, but the dead need a space of their own in Western culture, and the baldosa becomes this space”; she also explains that some relatives visit and leave flowers at the baldosas.26 If the baldosas make the disappeared and the past present and visible, this aspect does not quite capture what constructing and preserving the memory

Photo 1.2 Baldosa, Buenos Aires. Photo by Vincent Druliolle.

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of the disappeared through the laying of baldosas involves, however. A member of BMJ emphasizes another important dimension through an account of the reasons why such micro-memory projects have blossomed throughout Buenos Aires: We were a group that was carrying out a work about the disappeared of the barrio and in other barrios of Buenos Aires. We knew that in Liniers there was already another group that had also been carrying out this kind of activities . . . So . . . You’re bringing the issue back to a realm that is closer to the people one may say, or to their home ground, their environment . . . And we thought, well, this experience that we’re familiar with and that also takes place in a few other places, let’s try to take it further, that is to say because . . . because it’s as if we could . . . manage to commit other social organizations to, one may say, a similar issue or subject matter, which has a multiplying effect . . . So a thorough field work is undertaken, and this produces the effect through and through. They [the other social organizations] transform themselves by assuming the issue, and at the same time the environment and its relation to the issue changes too. That is to say, there’s one more social group that has the discussion closer to it, they do activities . . . And then they put themselves in contact with the people who may have known him or her [the disappeared], with people that over there never spoke, that if they had, would have been abducted . . . So it has a multiplying effect. And at the same time . . . it’s also appropriating the barrio and its compañeros.27 I return, in the following section, to the social and political importance given to such an activity that is also essential to the recovery of the exCCDyTs. For the moment, another set of micro-memory projects deserves to be mentioned, namely, the planting of trees, these powerful symbols of life, intergenerational transmission and regeneration, and ties to the land that have been widely used across cultures as forms of memorialization and for place-making.28 A member of H.I.J.O.S.-Regional Capital29 draws upon these symbols to give meaning to these place-making initiatives: Maybe we choose to use the word site, the word space for this reason, right? Because . . . owing to what one understands by museum . . . And the politics of memory . . . are very different. This is what I’m telling you about the plaques, what I’m telling you about the idea of planting a tree. Planting a tree in a street . . . it’s really something very dynamic, filled with life. This has nothing of a museum. And this is a politics of memory. Putting a tree with a plaque, with a name, in tribute to . . . And this

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is a site of memory too. In San Cristóbal, some trees were planted there along the San Juan avenue. When I have kids, I’ll take them there so that they can see the tree of their grandfather, where the plaque of their grandfather is. And you know what? It’s like . . . it doesn’t remain static, it doesn’t . . . It doesn’t remain frozen in time. They cut off these trees, so overnight they didn’t have crowns, they came and destroyed the plaques, they cut off the branches. We replaced the plaques and the branches, life breathed into them again, and now they’re bigger each time. And you see the tree and you see the branches cut and the sawdust too, so it’s like . . . And it will give fruit too. Jacaranda trees were planted and they have beautiful flowers. So it’s very dynamic it seems to me.30 Interestingly, such micro-memory projects as the planting of trees are seen as performing memory-work—“and this is a politics of memory”—beyond their memorial dimension. What is striking is that, like in the words previously cited, this memory-work is made sense of through a sharp distinction with a generic idea of the museum. In the political context of contemporary Argentina, the micro-memory projects discussed in the last two sections are “counteramnes(t)ic” insofar as it is impossible to fully dissociate memory and justice, or the various truths that I have highlighted. However, their importance lies not so much in the place itself, as in what I have earlier referred to as place-making, that is to say, in the work to recover the ex–CCDyTs and reconstruct the lives of the disappeared to pay tribute to them. These activities are in addition contrasted to the memory-work performed by a museum—or the lack thereof. They thus illustrate what remembering is taken to mean and involve in postdictatorship Argentina. The following section further explores these social, political, and forward-looking dimensions of remembering. c) Beyond Monumental Projects: Remembering as Reconstructing Communities The various micro-memory projects in postdictatorship Argentina have objectives similar to those that have just been discussed. For the people involved in these projects, collecting evidence and testimonies from the people living in the barrio, discussing a project for the site, addressing demands at the local authorities, and mobilizing the barrio to that end, are activities through which memory is constructed. In other words, memory is meaningful when collective involvement is encouraged and social relationships reconstructed, when the barrios appropriate and perform the task of remembering themselves. It is in this sense that remembering becomes a political activity.

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It is precisely what made these micro-memory projects difficult that have made them political alongside the very task of constructing memory and remembering themselves. For years, Argentines did not speak about the past and what they had witnessed under the dictatorship, or were rather reluctant to do so. Yet these micro-memory projects depend upon this information. Sometimes people have refused to collaborate with the groups and associations leading the projects, to speak about the past, or they have simply opposed the initiatives. This has been interpreted as evidence of the enduring legacy of state terrorism and/or impunity, and constructing memory is seen as combating this legacy of fear insofar as it impedes the reconstruction of a democratic regime of which political participation is a legitimate, even crucial element. The sites acquire their meaning through these activities, through place-making. The political dimension of constructing memory through the micromemory projects discussed in this chapter beyond their memorial aspect is emphasized by a member of BMJ in the following terms with reference to the recovery of the ex-CCDyTs: It’s very different the fact that you’re given ESMA, and the social work that you undertake to recover a clandestine center of detention. It’s very different, let’s say . . . the fact that you go and put the name of a disappeared in the Parque de la Memoria, and the fact that you work with people in the barrio, publish a book,31 and explain the story of the life of their compañero who lived in the barrio. So for me, one thing has a content that is much more profound and that has to do with the social, with the political . . . And the other has more to do with . . . with a museum of memory one may say, beyond the structural and physical form it takes, it has to do with a museum of memory.32 These words are interesting because here too the micro-memory projects are made sense of in opposition to a generic idea of a museum understood as monumental in the sense of a top-down, architecturally imposing, and high-profile project. Entangled in these words is also a different understanding of remembering as paying tribute to the disappeared and how it may, or may not, be articulated with the idea of remembering as a set of political practices to transform Argentine society. In other words, the latter issue is intertwined with the “micro-memory vs. monumental projects” opposition, but is not identical with it. This is what I call the negotiation of remembering and its places. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the Parque de la Memoria and ESMA are lumped together as monumental projects in the words cited earlier. I will not discuss them in this chapter, and the reader may refer to Bell

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and Di Paolantonio’s analysis,33 as well as Brodsky’s important book.34 The point is not to assess the extent to which these descriptions are accurate and fair, for it is the very idea of memory and remembering as it is articulated through these oppositions that needs to be grasped. Instead, I want to focus on how the Parque de la Memoria has been the stage for the debate about remembering and its places, for the negotiation of the relationship between a range of commemorative practices and their roles. 1.2

The Controversy over the Parque de la Memoria

The preceding part discussed the various micro-memory projects that have emerged in Argentina over the last decade. They are what Schindel calls pequeñas memorias, or little memories, small in scale but very powerful owing to their local meaning, and they are also sometimes more imaginative than more monumental projects.35 This opposition, as put forward by those involved in micro-memory projects, reflects the tensions generated by the several functions remembering is claimed to perform in Argentina as it is intertwined with the “how” question. These tensions are illustrated by the controversy over the Parque de la Memoria (Photo 1.3).

Photo 1.3 Parque de la Memoria. Photo by Vincent Druliolle.

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The project to construct a sculpture park and a memorial to the disappeared officially started in 1997, though it had long been a demand of some human rights organizations and groups of the relatives of the victims of the last dictatorship.36 For Argentine artist Marcelo Brodsky, an initiator of the project, the idea was to create “a site where the families can exercise their right to express their pain and memory” and to help them work through the traumatic experience of disappearance.37 For symbolic reasons, it was decided to build the Parque de la Memoria on a small artificial hillside by the River Plate, where many of the disappeared were thrown to their death. Because it is located close to an airport, the noise of air traffic cannot but evoke these death flights. In the late 1990s, an international competition was organized to select the sculptures that would symbolize terror, disappearance, the work of mourning, and memory. A sinuous fissure runs through the park and symbolizes an open wound. The monument at the center of the project, the Monumento a las Víctimas del Terrorismo de Estado (Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism, Photo 1.4), was completed and inaugurated in November 2007. Built along this zigzag fissure as a walkway, visitors and the work of memory end in the river. The memorial is inspired by the memorial wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.,

Photo 1.4 Monumento a las Víctimas del Terrorismo de Estado. Photo by Vincent Druliolle.

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though it also borrows some design elements from Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin. The Vietnam War and, especially, the Holocaust, are indeed powerful metaphorical icons of our global memory culture. Both events have served to make sense of and commemorate past violence around the world, and Argentina is no exception. The names of the disappeared are inscribed upon the memorial wall on individual porphyry plaques. A portion of the monument has no nameplates, only empty spaces that, it is hoped, will gradually be filled, though the number and identity of all the disappeared will probably remain unknown. Huyssen underlines that this design aims at “commemorating the violent voiding of identity that was the torturers explicit goal and that always preceded disappearance.”38 Reflecting Maya Lin’s design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that subverts traditional war memorials to heroism that elude state responsibility, the official publication about the project of the Parque de la Memoria explains that “it is not the intention of this memorial to close any wounds that cannot be closed or replace truth and justice. Nothing will restore real peace to the relatives that have not been able to know the final fate of their loved ones, savagely tortured and murdered, and nothing will ever replace the social emptiness created by their absence.”39 In addition, as in other sitios de memoria, documentation and exhibition centers are part of the Parque de la Memoria. Several aspects of the Parque de la Memoria have been criticized. They are the “awkward juxtaposition” of a memorial wall, a documentation center, and a sculpture park;40 the very idea of devoting a single site to such diverse memories as those of the victims of the last dictatorship, those of the bombing of the main Jewish cultural center in Argentina (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, AMIA; Argentine Israelite Mutual Association) in 1994, and the Righteous Among the Nations (Justos entre las Naciones or Gentiles, the non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from Nazi persecution); but also the selection process for the competition, as well as the aesthetics of the sculptures eventually selected.41 But the controversy started when the project was presented to the City of Buenos Aires. The Asociación de Ex Detenidos-Desaparecidos (Association of Former Disappeared-Detainees, AEDD) has been one of the most ferocious opponents of the Parque de la Memoria. It criticizes the idea of engraving in stone only the names of the disappeared, not those of the members of the dictatorship and their accomplices. For them, “the desire for such a partial memory is worrying, to say the least,”42 which reflects the extent to which remembering is associated with the demand for truth and justice in postdictatorship Argentina. Indeed, the AEDD and other organizations refused to support and take part in the construction of the Parque de la Memoria for it was “handed in” to

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them by some politicians who voted for the amnesty laws. This is also what the member of BMJ cited earlier most certainly has in mind when she draws a sharp contrast between micro-commemorative practices and monumental projects.43 However, more is at stake in the critique by the AEDD: [T]he site selected for the proposed monument claims to symbolize the death of our compañeros. Exactly that which is least in need of remembering . . . We want exactly the contrary . . . Where and how can a monument claiming to represent our disappeared be erected? For now, and given that the murderers are still walking free, we cannot find another site than in ourselves, in our mobilization and permanent commitment to achieve this and other forms of justice that are pretty much necessary.44 Several issues are intertwined here. Remembering is a political commitment: Argentineans are collectively responsible for the reconstruction of Argentine society. Memory, justice, and human rights have been rearticulated both individually and together, to the extent that they are one and the same thing, and they are not confined to a closed physical site. Thus the AEDD claims that with the end of impunity, “we will be constructing a park a little bigger that the one planned on the Costanera, where the people’s children can live fully as our compañeros and ourselves have dreamt it.”45 This political dimension is the crux of the micro-memory projects discussed in this chapter. For some organizations, it entails a radical rejection of any form of monumental projects as a form of reparation, for it amounts to acknowledging the death not so much of the disappeared, as of their aspirations, which are claimed to be taken up in the present. Thus, when the works for the Parque de la Memoria began, the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Association Mothers of May Square) threatened to delete the name of their disappeared children engraved on the monument. For them, names written in stone are an acknowledgment of the death of their disappeared children and their ideals, something which they have stubbornly refused to do. The issue of place-making is here again intertwined with the question of how to remember the disappeared, though differently and in a somewhat radical configuration. The Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo claims to take up the struggles of the disappeared as a collective, political actor that, as mothers, they claim to embody (see Chapter 3 for a critical discussion of the conception of motherhood claimed by the Mothers). Thus, for the members of the Asociación, a project like the Parque de la Memoria is the affirmation of the death of their children and the renouncement of political action.

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There is no place, either physical or political, for personal and, implicitly, backward-looking, mourning. This is a major difference with the groups and organizations that have supported a range of micro-memory projects. It is also one of the issues that led to the split of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo in the mid-1980s. Hebe de Bonafini’s Asociación, but also other groups, rejects all that may amount to acknowledging the death of their disappeared children, especially monuments and financial reparations.46 The other Madres and organizations of the relatives of the disappeared refuse to give no place to personal mourning, however. In the early 2000s, Tati Almeyda, of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo—Línea Fundadora, hoped that the Parque de la Memoria would open soon: we want to see it . . . Are you realizing? A lot of mothers need to . . . will not make it . . . no matter how bad, how bad, how ill . . . That’s why what we are begging, all of us, is that we can see it. It will stay for history. I want to touch the name of my child. I want to touch it . . . It will not be too high so that all of us can touch them . . . That’s something crazy, isn’t it? But I want to touch it . . . 47 The controversy over the Parque de la Memoria is thus not just about whether or not to pay tribute to and mourn the disappeared, but also about the proper form of doing so. Even though a sharp “micro” vs. monumental projects dichotomy seems to impose itself, the picture that emerges from the analysis should not be redefined as an issue of domination vs. resistance. Rather, the picture is one of a complex network of crisscrossing issues about the understandings of remembering and its places—functions, forms, and sites. Discussing these micromemory practices that she refers to as pequeñas memorias, Schindel claims that the richness and vivacity of remembering emerge out of the dynamic interaction, sometimes conflictual, between them and monumental projects. “The micro-experiences of remembering . . . nourish and give meaning to big memorials . . . These pequeñas memorias, supported by everyday acts, make up the bulk of the plot of memory without which the latter would not find shelter in the city.”48 The opposition is thus more an irresolvable negotiation of the meanings of remembering and the functions it performs, or of what I call remembering and its places. Tandeciarz notes a similar irresolvable, yet productive, tension within the Parque de la Memoria: “This uneasy cohabitation, of the cut in the earth retreating into negative space and the images [sculptures] that aestheticize the memory debate, finally proves indicative of those very conflicts, conflicts most effectively figured in the metaphoric

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distance between the sculpture complex and the monument, between these divergent forms of recollection” (emphasis added).49 This is acknowledged by another Argentine human rights activist involved in micro-memory projects. Her words raise another issue that is important for all forms of remembering, and foreground another level of the complementarity between micro-commemorative practices and monumental projects. Talking about the Parque de la Memoria, this activist says: One can also understand the necessity for some relatives of the victims to have the name of their son, of their daughter, of their cousin put on a site to bring flowers. It has to do with the rites that each one needs. Then, well, symbolically one can say why did they make the Parque de la Memoria god knows where, very far away, so that nobody should be aware of it? You have to take 17 buses and travel for two hours to get there. I’m kidding of course. But, OK, why didn’t they make it in the center of the city of Buenos Aires, right? A Parque de la Memoria that does not produce uneasiness . . . Well, it has to do with the objectives, doesn’t it? The objective was to give a space to a given group or actors that need such a thing, not to construct a memory with respect to anything.50 These words show one of the lines along which the contrast between micro- and monumental projects is drawn. The consequence of its symbolic meaning is that the Parque de la Memoria is located upon an isolated and hardly accessible part of Buenos Aires on the shores of the River Plate, stuck between some residence halls of the University of Buenos Aires and high-traffic roads to one of the city’s airports, invisible to society. What is interesting is that the location of the park seems to be seen to have to do with making remembering meaningful (“a memory with respect to anything”). The idea of “producing uneasiness” highlights the importance of a memory that calls on society, and this requires that the past insert itself in the daily life of Argentineans so that memory is visible and helps reconfigure the present. This is an important point for it is stressed in all the micro-memory projects that this chapter has discussed, particularly the ex-CCDyTs. And here one is back to the political dimension of remembering. 1.3 Maybe “We Demand Memory Too Much and Expect the Sites of Memory to Solve Contemporary Conflicts.” Place-Making, Remembering, and Politics beyond the Struggle for the Site The micro-commemorative practices discussed in this chapter are made sense of in opposition to what the idea and institution of the museum is

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taken to stand for and imply, as well as other monumental projects. Yet the picture is more complex than one of domination/official/monumental vs. local/resistance. At stake is the negotiation of the importance and role of remembering as mourning, as a way of making sure that society does not forget, and of remembering as a set of political practices that aim at transforming contemporary society, which is intertwined with the issue of the relevant form and practice, if any, for each of them. It is thus at the same time a negotiation of the articulation between the backward- and forwardlooking dimensions of remembering. It has been argued that if micro-commemorative practices can be called counteramnes(t)ic, this does not exhaust what is seen as the political dimension of remembering. Thus, the chapter has stressed the importance given to popular participation in micro-memory projects as a way of fighting the dictatorship’s legacy of terror, of reconstructing communities, and of fostering Argentine society’s appropriation of memory and its construction. Nevertheless, the actors who initiated these micro-memory projects are aware of the limits of some of their ambitions. For example, the project of turning some ex-CCDyTs into sites of memory includes the construction of small galleries for temporary exhibitions, documentation centers, cultural centers, or libraries. However, this seems to presuppose that which is seen as the product of the interaction with these sites, namely, a commitment or willingness to take part in the construction of memory. Museums are often criticized for this very reason. Can micro-memory projects generate this willingness, let alone a genuine commitment, and how? Yet, by focusing upon this question, do we not fail to understand politics and see how it may be at play in and through these sites and memory projects? Reflecting upon some projects for the recovery of some ex-CCDyTs, Mónica Muñoz and Alejandra Naftal, respectively, a museologist and a member of Buena Memoria, an association involved in various memory projects created by artist Marcelo Brodsky (Buena Memoria is the title of his widely acclaimed work), ask: Should all the former centers of detention be turned into museums, documentation centers, sites for various activities, for exhibitions, into meeting places? This is something we are concerned about because saturation is not good. Quantity and superposition do not guarantee participation, nor do they guarantee that the message is understood. This temptation to make museums or any other of their variants, can play against us, can trap us. It seems to us that sometimes we demand memory too much and expect the sites of memory to solve contemporary conflicts, while we know that they will only find a settlement through [politics].51

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This lucid assessment echoes Schmucler’s claim that the risk is that the struggle for the site might replace the struggle for memory, for it is the memory that makes the site, not the other way round.52 These ideas also reflect a sense of the contingency of the project of remembering, what it may institute and how, while foregrounding the centrality of politics. It is here that the idea of making these sites and the memories they embody visible, beyond their transformation into “museums or any other of their variants,” becomes a genuine component of remembering as a set of political practices to transform society. For these markers seek to insert the past in the routines of daily life with a view to disrupting its sense of normalcy. The emphasis upon making the past and its consequences visible through the project of marking the ex-CCDyTs and a range of other sites has been a defining aspect of the struggle for memory and justice in postdictatorship Argentina. The first mass initiative to demand truth and justice was both artistic and political. Called the Siluetazo, the idea was to make the disappeared, or absence, present. The aim was to force the state to tell the truth about what happened to them. Thus, human-size silhouettes were drawn upon large pieces of paper and then pasted upon buildings throughout Buenos Aires. The result had a visual impact that left no one indifferent and proved far more efficient than a traditional demonstration, and it has since then inspired other commemorative practices and the entire memory and justice agenda in Argentina.53 Following the insights of such authors as Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, and Roland Barthes, a whole body of literature has long shown that cities are “fluid mosaics and moments of memory, matter, metaphor, scene, and experience that create and mediate social spaces and temporalities” by triggering all human senses.54 It shows the ways in which memory and the city as social, cultural, and political geography shape each other,55 though there has been an overemphasis on their role in enforcing the domination of the ruling group(s) and the construction of exclusionary national identities, which is itself probably related to an excessive and simplistic focus upon “official” monuments and memorials, in particular war memorials. Today, scholars increasingly show interest in “spontaneous” and often more ephemeral memorials.56 Among the commemorative practices analyzed in this chapter, only the baldosas may be called “spontaneous memorials.” But the interesting point is that such memorials “play a more critical function than galleries [or official monuments] because they interfere with the day-to-day flow of pedestrian traffic in the city and repoliticize the city’s half-forgotten [spaces].”57 They are “performative commemoratives” in that they do not merely pay tribute to the disappeared but they also, as I have suggested, and

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following Santino, “[address] a social issue, [try] to convince people, [try] to make something happen” (emphasis added).58 In societies like Argentina, the past left wounds, political projects, and other traces as ghostly presences in the urban landscape that some groups want to bring back to light (and life).59 So as the scholarly literature about the city emphasizes, by simply walking in the city, memory floods in.60 The ever-changing urban situation generates “involuntary memories,” which unconsciously guarantee the continuity of memory or on the contrary seek to awaken new ones, as it were. This is nicely summarized by Sztulwark: “if memory is not concentrated in an object but is made of various marks and effects (deliberate or not; planned or not; contradictory or not), urban memory is the city itself.” Memory is thus not just the archive, the monument, the public square; through urban situations, it is “that which is constantly performing, that which is producing and producing us.”61 Although I cannot explore this further here, I want to suggest that it is in this light that one should understand the importance of place-making in postdictatorship Argentina, while it also foregrounds the complementarity of various forms of remembering and their places. Making a range of sites and marks visible aims at questioning the normalcy of daily life. It is in this way that they seek to interpelate society. As such, micro-memory projects are similar to the silhouettes of the Siluetazo and to more traditional forms of street art such as graffiti or wall painting as a form of protest that is very common in Latin America.62 The city, urban space is turned into a public sphere as a participatory, visual, and discursive battleground in which the debate about the past and the interpelation of Argentine society is not always carried out through rational argumentation and in which, ultimately, the better arguments win the day—the idealized model of the public sphere postulated by deliberative democrats. Mitchell’s reflections about public art are relevant to the memory projects discussed, whether or not they may qualify as art, which is not what interests me here. They also stress the kind of politics that memory projects and commemorative practices may contribute to instituting, namely, an undecidable dialectic between “utopian” and “critical” relations between art and its publics that the simplistic logic of domination vs. resistance fails to grasp: on the one hand, art [or memory projects] . . . attempts to raise up an ideal public sphere, a nonsite, an imaginary landscape . . . on the other hand, art . . . disrupts the image of a pacified, utopian public sphere, . . . exposes contradictions and adopts an ironic, subversive relation to the public it addresses, and the public space where it appears.63

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Photo 1.5 “Never Again look the other way” painted on a zebra crossing. Photo by Vincent Druliolle.

Notes This chapter is based on the author’s doctoral research about commemorative practices and the (re-)construction of democracy in postauthoritarian Argentina undertaken while at the University of Essex (Department of Government) and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom (Award Number PTA-031-2006-00465). A period of fieldwork in Argentina was also supported by a Postgraduate Travel Grant of the Society for Latin American Studies, United Kingdom. A shorter version of this chapter was presented at the 45th Annual Conference of the Society for Latin American Studies, University of Leeds, March 26–27, 2009. I would like to thank all the activists and people in Argentina who kindly shared their experiences and views with me. I would also like to express my gratitude to Bárbara Gómez Pleguezuelos for her support

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and assistance while undertaking research for my Ph.D. thesis and for this chapter. All translations from Spanish in this chapter are mine unless otherwise indicated. 1. Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces. Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 2. Elizabeth Jelin, State Repression and the Labors of Memory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), xviii. 3. Sherry B. Ortner, “Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37, no. 1 (1995), 173–193. 4. Ortner, 191. 5. Karen E. Till, “Places of Memory” in A Companion for Political Geography, ed. John Agnew, Katharyne Mitchell, and Gearoid O’Tuathail (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 291. 6. Karen E. Till, The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 8. 7. On these projects in Córdoba, see Comisión y Archivo Provincial de la Memoria, “Ex Centros Clandestinos de Detencion en Córdoba,” http://www.apm.gov.ar/ content/ex-centros-clandestinos-de-detencion-en-c%C3%B3rdoba. 8. See, for example, the Mural of Memory in Godoy Cruz in the province of Mendoza, Carolina Baroffio, “Vuelven a Pintar un Mural ‘Borrado,’ ” Diario Uno, October 8, 2009, http://www.diariouno.com.ar/edimpresa/2009/10/08/ nota226107.html. 9. For an overview of such sites of memory in Rosario, see Museo de le Memoria, “Lugares de Memoria. Rosario-Argentina. Un Recorrido Por las Huellas de la Barbarie del Estado // 1976–1983,” http://www.museodelamemoria.gov.ar/ lugares-de-memoria.pdf. 10. Ludmila Da Silva Catela, “Apagón en el Ingenio, Escrache en el Museo. Tensiones y Disputas entre Memorias Locales y Memorias Oficiales en Torno a un Episodio de Represión de 1976” and Laura Cecilia Mombello, “La Capital de los Derechos Humanos” in Luchas Locales, Comunidades e Identidades, ed. Elizabeth Jelin and Ponciano del Pino (Madrid; Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2003), 63–105 and 209–232. 11. Pilar Calveiro, Poder y Desaparición: Los Campos de Concentración en Argentina (Buenos Aires: Colihue, 1998). 12. Argentine cinema too has memorialized the ex-CCDyTs in such films as Garage Olimpo and Crónica de una Fuga about the former centers El Olimpo and Mansión Seré. 13. See a map and a description of the most important ex-CCDyTs in Buenos Aires on the website of the Instituto Espacio para la Memoria, “Ex CCDTyE. Recuperar el Pasado Para Iluminar el Presente y Construir el Futuro,” http:// www.institutomemoria.org.ar/exccd/exccd.html. See also the maps for Argentina as a whole by Memoria Abierta, “Topografía de la Memoria. Un Recorrido Por los Sitios de Memoria. Mapas de los Centros Clandestinos de Detención,” http://www.memoriaabierta.org.ar/ccd/index.htm.

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14. For a discussion of this typology and the rationale behind it in South Africa, see Claire Moon, Narrating Political Reconciliation: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008), 107–113. 15. For an overview of some of the initiatives for the recovery of the ex-CCDyTs, see Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, El Porvenir de la Memoria. Segundo Coloquio Interdisciplinario de Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Buenos Aires: Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, 2005), 85–173, http://www.abuelas.org.ar/material/documentos/ coloquio2.pdf, as well as the relevant pages of the websites of the Instituto para la Memoria and Memoria Abierta in note 13. 16. An excellent analysis of the paralyzing effects of state terrorism in Latin American dictatorships is Juan E. Corradi, Patricia Weiss Fagen, and Manuel Antonio Garretón (eds.), Fear at the Edge: State Terror and Resistance in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California, 1992). In her penetrating analysis that goes beyond hasty and easy moral judgments, Calveiro claims that society and the centers of detention were constitutive of a single reality dominated by terror. She contends that caught in this network of repressive power, society was both victim and victimizer. Calveiro, 147–159. 17. The following account is based on the documents and information of the website of the project for the recovery of El Atlético, Comisión de Trabajo y Consenso del Proyecto de Recuperación de la Memoria del Centro Clandestino de Detención y Tortura “Club Atlético,” “Proyecto de Recuperación de la Memoria del Centro Clandestino de Detención y Tortura ‘Club Atlético,’ ” http://www.exccdytclubatletico.com.ar/inicio.html. 18. Silvia R. Tandeciarz, “Citizens of Memory: Refiguring the Past in Postdictatorship Argentina,” PMLA 122, no. 1 (2007): 162. 19. Antonius C. G. M. Robben, “The Assault on Basic Trust: Disappearance, Protest and Reburial in Argentina” in Cultures under Siege: Collective Violence and Trauma, ed. Antonius C.G.M. Robben and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 70–101. 20. Robben, 85–87. 21. Ibid., 86, note 13. 22. Carmen Lapacó’s words are reproduced from Instituto Espacio para la Memoria, “La Palabra de los Integrantes del IEM. Entrevista a Carmen Lapacó: ‘Todo Lo Que Sirva Para Incentivar la Memoria es Muy Importante,’ ” http://www.institutomemoria.org.ar/notas/070926opi_madres.html. 23. For a discussion of mourning rituals and the ways grief and the passions it unleashes have been coped with across time and cultures, see Gail HolstWarhaft, The Cue for Passion: Grief and Its Political Uses (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000). 24. See the website of Barrios x la Memoria y la Justicia, http://www.memoriaen losbarrios.com.ar/. 25. Quoted in Werner Pertot, “Las Baldosas de la Memoria,” Página/12, April 2, 2006, http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-65083-2006-04-02.html. 26. Quoted in Crítica Digital, “Baldosas Contra el Olvido,” April 24, 2009, http:// criticadigital.com/index.php?secc=nota&nid=22286. For an illustration of

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27. 28. 29.

30. 31.

32. 33.

34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

42.

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the activities surrounding the laying of baldosas, see the weblog of a neighborhood association of the barrios of Almagro in Balvanera, “Vecinos de Almagro Balvanera Por una Memoria al Servicio del Presente y del Futuro,” http:// memorialmagro.blogspot.com/. Interview with the author, March 13, 2007. Paul Cloke and Eric Pawson, “Memorial Trees and Treescape Memories,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26, no. 1 (2008): 107–122. H.I.J.O.S. (Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio, Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice and against Forgetting and Silence) is an organization created in the mid-1990s by some children of the disappeared that rejuvenated the Argentine human rights movement’s struggle for justice and against impunity. See Susana Kaiser, “Escraches: Demonstrations, Communication and Political Memory in Post-Dictatorial Argentina,” Media, Culture & Society 24 (2002): 499–516. Interview with the author, May 18, 2007. In 2009, a publication produced by Barrios x Memoria y Justicia that recounts the lives of some disappeared and the laying of baldosas to pay tribute to them was edited by the Instituto Espacio para la Memoria. See Crítica Digital. Interview with the author, March 13, 2007. Vikki Bell and Mario Di Paolantonio, “The Haunted Nomos: Activist-Artists and the (Im)possible Politics of Memory in Transitional Argentina,” Cultural Politics 5, no. 2 (2009): 149–178. Marcelo Brodsky, ed. Memory under Construction—Memoria en Construcción. El Debate Sobre la ESMA (Buenos Aires: La Marca, 2005). Estela Schindel, “Las Pequeñas Memorias y el Paisaje Cotidiano: Cartografías del Recuerdo en Buenos Aires y Berlín” in Trabajos de la Memoria. Arte y Ciudad en la Postdictadura Argentina, ed. Cecilia Macón (Buenos Aires: Ladosur, 2006), 52–73. See the website of the Parque de la Memoria, http://www.parquedelamemoria. org.ar/home/select.htm. Marcelo Brodsky, “Génesis y Evolución de una Idea,” Ramona. Revista de Artes Visuales, no. 9–10 (2000/2001), 6–7. Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 103. Gobierno de Buenos Aires, Proyecto Parque de la Memoria (Buenos Aires: Gobierno de Buenos Aires and Comisión pro Monumento a las Víctimas del Terrorismo de Estado, 2001), 7 [English translation p. 60], http://estatico. buenosaires.gov.ar/areas/vicejefatura/derechos_humanos/pdf/publ_proyecto_ parque_memoria.pdf. Tandeciarz, 153–159. Graciela Silvestri, “Memoria y Monumento. El Arte en los Límites de la Representación” in Identidades, Sujetos y Subjetividades, 2nd ed., ed. Leonor Arfuch (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2005), 113–127. Inés Vasquez, “¿Parque Justicia?” Ramona. Revista de Artes Visuales, no. 9–10 (2000/2001): 8.

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43. Brodsky nevertheless replies that the legitimacy of the Parque de la Memoria stems from the conjunction of the involvement of the main, “historical” human rights organizations and of the adoption of the project by an overwhelming majority of the assembly of the City of Buenos Aires. Brodsky, “Génesis y Evolución de una Idea,” 7. 44. Vasquez, 8. 45. Ibid. 46. Fernando J. Bosco, “Human Rights Politics and Scaled Performance of Memory: Conflicts among the Madres de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina,” Social and Cultural Geography 5 (2004), 381–402. 47. Quoted in Gustavo Bruzzone, “ ‘Quiero Tocar el Nombre de mi Hijo . . .’ Conversación con Tati Almeyda de Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Línea Fundadora,” Ramona. Revista de Artes Visuales, no. 9–10 (2000/2001), 12. 48. Schindel, 71. 49. Tandeciarz, 159. The tension is also identified, albeit indirectly, by Peter Homans and Diane Jonte-Pace, “Tracking the Emotion in the Stone. An Essay on Psychoanalysis and Architecture,” Annual of Psychoanalysis 33 (2005), 261– 284. They discuss the differences between the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Jewish Museum. Both have inspired the Parque de la Memoria, so that, following their analysis, it seeks to help the work of mourning but also to foster reflection, while at the same time its “Jewish Museum” element represents the uncanny. 50. Interview with the author, April 12, 2007. 51. Quoted in Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, 170–172. 52. Héctor Schmucler, “La Inquietante Relación entre Lugares y Memorias,” Memoria Abierta (n.d.), http://www.memoriaabierta.org.ar/materiales/pdf/ hector_schmucler.pdf. 53. On the Siluetazo, see Gustavo Bruzzone and Ana Longoni (eds.), El Siluetazo (Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo Editora, 2008), a stimulating edited collection to which I have devoted a review essay. See Vincent Druliolle, “Silhouettes of the Disappeared: Memory, Justice and Human Rights in Post-Authoritarian Argentina,” Human Rights & Human Welfare 9, http://www.du.edu/korbel/ hrhw/volumes/2009/druliolle-2009.pdf. 54. Till, The New Berlin, 8. 55. M. Christine Boyer, The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994). 56. Jack Santino, ed. Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Lisa Benton-Short, “Monuments and Memories” in The Sage Companion to the City, ed. Tim Hall, Phil Hubbard, and John Rennie Short (London: Sage, 2008), 87–105. 57. Ekaterina V. Haskins and Justin P. DeRose, “Memory, Visibility, and Public Space: Reflections on Commemoration(s) of 9/11,” Space and Culture 6, no. 4 (2003): 381. 58. Santino, 1.

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59. Steve Pile, “Ghosts and the City of Hope” in The Emancipatory City? Paradoxes and Possibilities, ed. Loretta Lees (London: Sage, 2004), 210–228. 60. Steve Pile, “Memory and the City” in Temporalities: Auto/biography in a Post Modern Age, ed. Jan Campbell and Janet Habord (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 111–127. 61. Pablo Sztulwark, “Ciudad Memoria: Monumento, Lugar y Situación Urbana,” Memoria Abierta (2005), http://www.memoriaabierta.org.ar/materiales/pdf/ ciudad_memoria.pdf. 62. On street art and its uses as political communication, see Lyman G. Chaffee, Political Protest and Street Art: Popular Tools for Democratization in Hispanic Countries (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993). On graffiti and wall painting as common forms of street art in Argentina, see Claudia Kozak, Contra la Pared. Sobre Graffitis, Pintadas y Otras Intervenciones Urbanas (Buenos Aires: Libros del Rojas, 2004). 63. W. J. T. Mitchell, ed. Art and the Public Sphere (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 3.

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CHAPTER 2

The Slogan “Complete Memory”: A Reactive (Re)-signification of the Memory of the Disappeared in Argentina Valentina Salvi

F

ollowing the overruling of the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws in Argentina in June 2005,1 there has been a surge in associations organized under the slogan Memoria Completa (Complete Memory). These groups seek to acquire visibility in the public sphere in a political moment in which prosecutions against military and security officers accused of human rights violations committed during the last dictatorship (1976–1983) have restarted over the last few of years. This revival of military memory was witnessed in several public rallies held at San Martín Square in Buenos Aires since 2006 to pay tribute to the “people killed by subversion,”2 and disseminated in the media through books, press releases, conferences, reports, web pages, and forums about the recent past.3 Through this political activity, the Complete Memory associations aim to transcend the boundaries of highly cohesive military institutions to open up a new social, civil, and national space in which they can position themselves as new actors in the debate over historical memory. These groups question the legitimacy of the human rights organizations and their discourses to gain recognition for their demands and narratives within Argentine society, by putting forward policies of “national reconciliation.” In this regard, their unfolding strategy tries to challenge the search for, and the meaning of, the

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truth about the recent past as traditionally expressed by the discourse of the human rights organizations. Drawing upon research into the commemorative practices and representations of the Complete Memory associations, this chapter endeavors to analyze how, through the appropriation of the symbols, images, and language that by tradition belong to the human rights organizations, these groups attempt to establish and transmit a narrative on the recent past that can be accepted by Argentine society. This chapter focuses on the construction of a reactive memory that both contradicts and reflects the memory of the disappeared, through the use and the reinterpretation that these associations make of the core slogans of the human rights organizations in Argentina, namely, “Memory, Truth, and Justice.” The analysis of speeches and commemorative tributes by the Complete Memory associations demonstrates the attempt to rebuild memory, by mimicking and reacting against the memory of the disappearances, and to achieve legitimacy for actions and slogans of the dictatorship that are still deeply discredited among public opinion in Argentina. The chapter is divided into two sections: one descriptive, the other analytical. The first, entitled new/old memory entrepreneurs, describes the groups that compose the Complete Memory associations, and provides a historical account of the events that shaped their configuration as a new actor in the memory landscape in Argentina. The second briefly introduces the origins and meanings of the slogans used by the human rights organizations over the past three decades, before analyzing their appropriation and resignification by the Complete Memory associations that demand “Complete Memory, Truth, and Justice.” 2.1 New/Old Memory Entrepreneurs Due to its active participation in the celebrations held at San Martín Square in Buenos Aires, the organization in the spotlight was the Comisión de Homenaje Permanente a los Muertos por la Subversión (Committee in Homage to People Killed by the Subversion), which comprises three different groups united under the umbrella banner of “Complete Memory.” The first category of groups includes relatives and friends of dead officers, like the Asociación de la Víctimas del Terrorismo en Argentina (Association of Victims of Terrorism in Argentina) and the Familiares y Amigos de Víctimas del Terrorismo (Relatives and Friends of Victims of Terrorism), both heirs to the original but currently inactive Familiares y Amigos de los Muertos por la Subversión (Relatives and Families of People Killed by the Subversion, FAMUS). The legitimacy claimed by these groups rests on their portrayal of

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themselves as people directly affected by terrorism, being the wives, children, cousins, fathers, and mothers of officers killed by subversion and speaking as unacknowledged or forgotten victims. The second set are the representatives of civil society, as they like to define themselves, or civil and nonprofit associations, organizations, and foundations such as the Argentinos por la Memoria Completa (Argentines for Complete Memory), Grupos de Amigos por la Verdad Histórica (Friends for the Historic Truth), Foro por la Verdad Histórica (Forum for the Historic Truth), Jóvenes por la Verdad (Youth for the Truth), Verdad sin Rencor (Truth without Resentment), Argentinos por la Pacificación Nacional (Argentines for the National Pacification), Asociación Unidad Argentina (Argentine Unity Association), and a nationalist-leaning political party, Movimiento por la Recuperación de la Argentina (Movement to Recover Argentina). These present themselves as fighting for “memory, truth and the reconciliation of Argentines” and against “the humiliation, punishment and persecution of the fundamental institutions of the Fatherland.”4 To achieve their objectives, they distribute books, documents, and reports on recent history; hold conferences; launch websites; and stage discussion forums on what they label as the revolutionary war in Argentina. There is also a civil association, the Asociación de Familiares y Amigos de los Presos Políticos Argentinos (Argentine Association of Relatives and Friends of Political Prisoners), that provides legal defense to members of the military who are currently in jail for human rights violations. Finally, the network of Complete Memory also includes a number of media outlets, such as the magazine B1 Vitamina para la Memoria (B1, Vitamin for Memory), the websites www.ladécadadel70.com.ar (the 1970s) and Servicio Privado de Información (Information Private Service, www.seprin.com), as well as the El Tábano and Notiar news agencies. These outlets distribute news, reports, and editorials regarding imprisoned or sentenced officers, activities related to the defense of military officers facing trial, commemorations, dates and anniversaries relating to the struggle against the subversion, the activities of leftist revolutionary organizations in Argentina, and current events in national defense affairs and the Armed Forces. The relatives’ associations, the civil organizations, and the media outlets function as new memory entrepreneurs, given that they actively intervene in the public space to gain political acknowledgment and social legitimacy for their version of the recent past.5 The activities of these associations are not unprecedented, but date back to the church services in memory of “people killed by the subversion” organized by the well-known FAMUS in the mid1980s. Initially, FAMUS did not have a political aim and its supporters were united by the memory of their relatives who had died defending the

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integrity of the nation. However, its public activity was later strictly linked to the military political agenda during the first decade of Argentina’s transition to democracy. In 1984, FAMUS arose in response to the investigation into the disappeared carried out by the CONADEP Truth Commission.6 At that time, FAMUS sought to improve the public image of the Armed Forces, which were being accused of grave human rights violations, and to harm the prestige of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of May Square), by publicizing the emotional drama of military and police officers and their families who had been attacked by leftist armed organizations. Despite its victimizing tone, FAMUS’ discourse was however complemented by a strongly aggressive character toward human rights organizations and a forceful defense of the Generals’ actions during the dictatorship.7 FAMUS eventually disbanded in 1991 after military officers had been pardoned.8 As its former leader Leonor Barceló recalls: “After the pardons and the Due Obedience and Full Stop Laws, which benefited the terrorists equally, we decided to contribute to national pacification and stopped doing public ceremonies.”9 In fact, after the impunity laws were adopted in the late 1980s, the commemoration of officers “killed by the subversion” and the endorsement for the actions committed during the repression reappeared only in the restricted surroundings of military in-groups. In the early 1990s, following their fall from prestige, the military in-groups and headquarters were once again strengthened, as the Armed Forces regained power through their intervention in national and domestic security, a consequence of the creation of the Consejo Nacional de Seguridad (National Security Council).10 This new framework was established following the attack on the La Tablada military barracks by the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (All for the Motherland Movement)11 and was part of the policy package of national pacification of the new President Carlos Menem, which also included the presidential pardons for military officers who had been convicted and jailed. Several years after the strategic silence, the new Complete Memory associations reentered the public arena. This occurred during the mid-1990s when the impunity that the military sector had gained began to crack, and the former commanders and other officers were sent to the dock, charged with the illegal appropriation of babies born to women in clandestine detention centers during the dictatorship.12 This happened in parallel to the socalled causas por el derecho a la verdad (trials for the right to truth), which attempted to shed light on the fate of the disappeared to satisfy the right to know the truth about the past of both the victims’ relatives and society.13 The memory of the “struggle against the subversion” therefore began witnessing a revival as a consequence of a series of memory and juridical

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events, such as the annulment of the impunity laws and the recuperation of former clandestine detention centers as places of memory (see Druliolle’s chapter).14 As human rights investigations and trials resumed in the late 1990s, the Complete Memory associations started to reemerge as new actors in the landscape of memory in Argentina. They define themselves by their interest and ability to renarrate the tensions of the recent past and the mimicking of the typical narratives of human rights organizations. Additionally, as Hugo Vezzetti suggests, these organizations are characterized by the persistence of interpretative frameworks that, originating in the past, mark the limits of what can be discussed and thought about these contested events in the present.15 The Complete Memory associations present themselves as a gathering of “Argentines with memory,” and propose a belligerent discourse that builds on a specific narrative of the past, as well as a clear definition of who the enemies of the past and of the present are. The characterization of an enemy that wages a war in nonmilitary areas such as the economy, politics, and culture is without doubt sufficiently vague to encompass a vast number of opponents. The most loathed of them are the “surviving subversive activists” and the “self-defined human rights defenders” who promote a vindictive campaign motivated by “hatred and revenge against the Armed Forces.” Following this depiction, the associations identify the enemies of the past with the Madres and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers and Grandmothers of May Square). The Complete Memory groups see them as part of a “body that defends, promotes and distributes domestic and international terrorism.”16 2.2 Memory, Truth, and Justice in the Discourses of the Complete Memory Associations In their antagonism to the human rights organizations, the Complete Memory associations endeavor to question the truth about the recent past. In this way, they construct a reactive memory that both mirrors and challenges the memory of the disappeared and the struggle of the human rights organizations. In fact, the Complete Memory narrative takes the shape of a replica in the double sense used by Gilles Deleuze, as effect and as accusation.17 As effect, these associations appropriate the slogans that have driven the struggle of the human rights organizations for the past 30 years, which are “Memory, Truth, and Justice,” to position themselves publicly in the scenario of memory and increase their legitimacy. As accusation, the Complete Memory groups question the significance of the sentiments socially treasured by the human rights organizations, to discredit and question their truth and

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struggle. This is demonstrated by a fragment of Ana Luicioni’s (president of the Comisión de Homenaje Permanente a los Muertos por la Subversión) speech during a rally held at San Martín Square in Buenos Aires on October 5, 2006: “nobody has the right to appropriate the exclusive property of suffering, of the absolute truth, of memory or justice, especially when there are half-truths and justice is partial.”18 Memory, Truth, and Justice were the claims put forward by the human rights organizations during their consolidation as one of the main social actors during the Argentine transition. The demand for Truth, which emerges early on in the dictatorship, originates from the nature of the act of disappearance itself. The disappearance, conceived as harm, implies not only the kidnapping of a body, but also the denial of information. For this reason, the slogan of Truth acquired vital significance in insisting to know with some certainty what had happened to the disappeared, how these crimes had been perpetrated, but more specifically, what had been the fate of each of the missing. The call for Justice arises later on, after the crisis of the Malvinas/Falklands War, and encompasses not only the legal punishment of those directly responsible—that had planned, managed, and implemented the machinery of terror—but also the political condemnation of those indirectly responsible, like the political parties, the trade unions, the church, the media, businesses, and many citizens—that did not stop the massacre and in many cases benefited from a society deprived of rights. Lastly, the demand for Memory is anchored in the belief that only constant remembrance can constitute a barrier preventing the repetition of the past. The forward-looking motto “Never Again” rests on a remembrance of the past. Complete Memory The slogan “Complete Memory” places the Complete Memory associations on a similar grounding as that of the human rights organizations, namely, the struggle against oblivion. The Complete Memory associations refuse to forget that there was an “internal war” in Argentina, prompted by international Marxism. From a detailed selection of past facts and historical figures, the Complete Memory associations reconstruct a highly dramatic story that seeks to establish a careful distinction between the attackers and the attacked, between the victims and the victimizers. It is a memory that focuses on the recalling of the attacks and the suffering that they caused. For this reason, it draws attention to kidnappings, assaults on military headquarters and regiments, assassinations, and popular trials by armed organizations during the first half of the 1970s. At the same time, it obscures and minimizes the violence that was carried out by the Armed Forces and

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constructs an image of the “victims of terrorism” that both mirrors and opposes the figure of the victims of state terrorism. From a relational logic that identifies and contrasts the military memory with the memory of the disappeared, the characterization of attackers as “subversives” is increasingly replaced by the term “terrorists.” Along these lines, “killed by subversion” is substituted with “victims of terrorism.” Appropriating the meanings and representations first employed by the human rights organizations and later on by the courts to describe the modus operandi of state terrorism, the Complete Memory associations portray in their public speeches the violence committed by armed organizations as part of a “systematic plan,” the kidnappings as “forced disappearances of people,” the killings as “crimes against humanity,” and the guerrillas as “owners of life and death.”19 This is exemplified by this fragment of Ana Lucioni’s speech on October 5, 2006: “the terrorist organizations attacked Argentine society without respecting rules or codes and violating fundamental human rights of all its members.”20 In addition, according to Complete Memory, the representations and beliefs that made the repression possible persist in the present, among them the demonization of the enemy. Originally, the demonization of the “subversives” made the construction of the negative otherness possible, and was epitomized by the expulsion of thousands of citizens to other countries, and the legitimization of the killings during the dictatorship. The evil nature of the “subversive enemy” is taken for granted by the Complete Memory associations, and functions as an unquestionable starting point for reconstructing the recent past. From there, the acts of violence committed by the armed organizations are spawned by the evil motivations of the “terrorists.” A perverse and malignant will typifies the structure of their personalities and prevails beyond those acts, since one can assume the existence of an essential and innate being that determines the acts that they commit.21 Accordingly, the aggressors are described as “psychopaths” and “demented,” driven by sentiments of hostility and resentment. The “terrorists” are animated by an “internal hatred.”22 This type of memory endeavors to revive and maintain alive in the present the hatred that characterized the attackers in the past. Complete Memory, in the words of Nietzsche, is a “dyspeptic” memory. It is trapped in a traumatic remembering that focuses on the mnemonic impression that was originally received, and continues to be characterized by that original pain and suffering.23 It is a memory that does not forget, but instead revolves around painful traces and keeps the disgrace and humiliation alive, so that they can be directly used for the accusations that the Complete Memory groups wish to formulate against the human rights

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organizations. But how are these allegations formulated, and what consequences can they trigger? The declarations seek to achieve benefits from the calamities remembered and reported through the permanent recollection of the attackers’ hatred as the motive for their wrongdoing. The characterization of the aggressor as an agent willing to kill is presented as a paralogism that affirms: “if you are bad, then I am good.”24 As a result, this discourse is based on a negation that is transformed into a self-serving affirmation: “the enemies are bad, and for this reason we are good.” In the words of Nietzsche, the reaction, and not the action, is the horizon upon which the Complete Memory discourse praises itself and morally justifies the immoral actions it defends.25 The Complete Memory rests on a rigorous dualistic logic, in which the negative characteristics of the other determine one’s positive characteristics. The interpretation of the past and the demonization of the aggressors are part of the process of construction of a positive identity for the Complete Memory associations and the Armed Forces and a negative identity for their opponents within the field of memory. The accusations are maintained alive, even though they are rooted in the allegations of aggressors from the past, that is, “subversives,” and are later transferred to contemporary enemies. The Complete Memory associations point to the existence of a vindictive campaign animated by past hatred and resentments that are reactivated in the present to disparage and discredit the Armed Forces. For instance, during a rally on January 23, 2007, to commemorate the dead in the attacks on the Azul and La Tablada Army barracks, Lieutenant Colonel Emilio Nanni claimed: “All this does more than show that for the people of crime, rage and hatred, the war continues. What is left is materialized in lies, resentment and revenge.”26 This memory of resentment is coupled with one of suffering. Accusations and complaints reinforce one other in the narrative of the Complete Memory with the objective of gaining social legitimacy for the “victims of terrorism.” In their effort to question the human rights discourse and position themselves against the memory of the disappeared, the Complete Memory associations create the figure of “victims of terrorism” that both reflects and challenges the socially legitimate category of victims of state terrorism. On the one hand, this shift to a memory of victimization employed by the Complete Memory is part of a larger tendency within memory. Collective identities are often founded upon a traumatic fact that represents a sufficient basis for the justifications of group claims and to dispute meaning in the public space.27 On the other hand, Complete Memory’s use of victimization can be interpreted as a sorrowful memory that generates an active effect of unity and adherence derived from the shared painful memory.28

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The attempts by the Complete Memory associations to gain public attention and political recognition for the “victims of terrorism” illustrate that there is no immediate and natural relationship between the death of a person and the classification of victim.29 On the contrary, the social existence of the figure of the victim is the result of a complex process of construction in which the agents involved in memory struggles and their confrontations play an essential role. There is a self-evident criterion that the Complete Memory associations summon to construct the social category of “victim of terrorism.” Even if civilians and members of the military died in attacks on barracks, murder attempts, and confrontations, the paradigmatic figure of the “victim of terrorism” applies mainly to the officers killed after being kidnapped for months. The focus on kidnapped military officers is not a coincidence. It responds to the need to compete with the figure of the “detainee-disappeared” and aims at sanctifying the image of the officials of the Armed Forces. The figure of the “victim of terrorism” is sustained in the renarration of the dramatic events in the personification of officers who were kidnapped and murdered by the armed organizations of the left during the first half of the 1970s. The life and death of these officers are reconstructed through the looking glass of the Complete Memory. They therefore acquire meaning beyond themselves, through the weaving of cultural and social relations that substantiate them.30 Complete Memory emphasizes the acts of kidnapping and killing of Armed Forces officers, as a way to evoke the violence and suffering that they went through and contribute to the revival of the public image of the military institutions. The focus on the officers’ physical suffering and the pain of losing a loved one renders those feelings susceptible to being socially shared. Beginning with a careful renarration of events, the Complete Memory tries to show that the losses and suffering of the officers who were “victims of terrorism” were greater than the pain suffered by their opponents. These unequal experiences of suffering are justified through the human morality of individuals. The “terrorists” are represented as evil individuals who “kill out of hatred,” while military officers are depicted as “men of honor.” While the “terrorists” lack spiritual values and morals, and are susceptible to “betrayal” and “cowardice,” military officers are “men of honor” who faced torture with moral integrity. Regarding the disappeared-detainees under torture, Marquéz states: Even if the terrorists had no qualms in killing, kidnapping or setting off explosives, once they were detained by legal forces, the level of explosive device, once they were arrested by the legal forces, the level of snitching, accusations and treason among their own forces was very significant.31

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To create the figure of the honorable and heroic person who embodies the values of honor, abnegation, and sacrifice that are so admired by the military community, the Complete Memory transforms the passive figure of the victim into the active figure of the martyr. In this way, the Complete Memory attempts to transform individual suffering into collective losses, and individual biographies into exemplary ones. During his captivity, the victimized officer is the object of his attackers’ hatred and resentment. The martyr officer is, however, removed from this passive position, and given a capacity to act. While the victim passively suffers the injustice of undeserved pain, the martyr confronts adverse circumstances as a hero, even when it is in vain. The martyr suffers more than the victim because he does not surrender to his inevitable death. As Veena Das describes, the construction of martyrdom assumes the action of a subject faced with the unpleasant truth that death is to come. Even if it causes him enormous suffering, the martyr faces death even in unfavorable conditions.32 While the victimized officer is brutally killed, the martyred official is noble, because he survives “with strength” and refuses to betray his values. For instance, a description of the kidnapping of Colonel Roberto Ibarzábal claims that “physical and psychological torture, party indoctrination, and all kinds of humiliations could not break his solid patriotism, his faith and his commitment to his unyielding principles. His legacy was an example; his bravery, his sacrifice and his honor.”33 The moral community formed by killed officers survives through their personality and sacrifices. The victims’ memory and the recollection of their suffering have the social function of reproducing the morality of this community to position itself in the scenario of memory. In this way, individual pain is revived in a narrative that not only proves the moral strength of the officers, but also the long-lasting values indicating the belonging to a moral community separate from the rest of society. Complete Truth The rhetoric of suffering and sacrifice that retrospectively constructs the image of the officials killed by the subversion is also employed to describe the scenario of memory in the present. Thus, the Complete Memory associations see themselves as victims of the vindictive policy of silence and oblivion by the governing and leftist parties, with both groups acting as “vengeful opinion givers.” The absence of recognition by the state or civil society adds drama to their struggle for memory and the narrative about the recent past. It legitimizes the narrative of the Complete Memory associations inasmuch as they receive criticism from their opponents (human rights organizations).

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Colonel (ret.) Emilio Nanni stated in the event of January 27, 2007: “I refer to the victims of terrorism, who have not only been set aside when instead they should have been acknowledged, but were also victims of the most cruel of actions: disgrace, oblivion and scorn.”34 In a contemporary context of “disgrace,” “scorn,” and “humiliation,” the Complete Memory associations tend to elaborate and foster a vision of themselves as voices of the truth that have been silenced by official lies. Giving new meaning to the slogan that the human rights organizations promoted in their struggle to know the truth about the whereabouts of the disappeared, the military associations appropriate the imperative of truth and present their participation in the scenario of memory as a heroic act of “revelation” and “un-masking.” While fighting against the politics of “distortion,” “manipulation,” and “propaganda,” the testimonial and journalistic diffusion of the narrative of Complete Memory selects and focuses upon certain events and dates in the recent past while concealing others, to present their truth as a positive reflection of reality. Therefore, it is appropriate to wonder, what are the meanings over the recent past that Complete Truth aims to reveal and expose? It tries to boost the image of the Armed Forces and Police Forces as “legal forces” that defended the “constitutional powers” against “terrorism.” The Complete Memory associations intend to establish and promote a narrative about the past that could be accepted in the postdictatorship political context, within a framework of democratic institutions, and amid an intense questioning of the junta’s authoritarian practices. These groups identify the “terrorist aggression” as an offensive force that had the power to destabilize the constitutional powers and therefore present the military reaction as a “constituted order.” Similarly, the actions of the guerrillas are considered as a “coup attempt” and the reaction of the Armed Forces portrayed as “democratic.” This sort of historical revisionism, which constructs the recent past out of the opposition between coup supporters and democratic supporters, legal and illegal forces, and constituted and dissolvent powers, reinforces an interpretative position that associates the constituted powers with the legal forces. In short, the constitutional government, together with the Armed Forces, was committed to the defense of the Fatherland. This interpretation reproduces the classical image of military memory that presents the Armed Forces as the “saviors of the nation.” Here it becomes a renewed strategy that allows the Complete Truth to transcend the differences that separate civil society from military sectors and present itself to public opinion with an updated and credible discourse. The strategic repositioning of the Armed Forces as democratic is also based on a reinterpretation of historical events of which the Armed Forces

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were one of the main actors. In particular, there is a significant fact that, when reinterpreted, opens the possibility of positioning the military intervention in the “war against subversion” as an “act of service” in the “defense of the constitutional order.” To support the image of the Armed Forces as subordinate to the national Constitution, the Complete Truth endeavors to highlight that the order to “annihilate subversion” was legally dictated by the democratically elected authorities that had complete knowledge of the events and of the repressive methods employed. The decree that the military memory uses to justify and legitimize the Armed Forces’ intervention in the repression was signed in 197535 by the same government that had previously abolished a law adopted by the former military dictatorship to “fight terrorism.”36 The decree is interpreted by the Complete Truth as a recognition of a state of war and the threat of the dissolution of the nation that the Armed Forces predicted. Furthermore, this decree is interpreted as a written endorsement by the democratic authorities for the implementation of the Counterinsurgent War Doctrine.37 In the light of this interpretation of the recent past, the Complete Truth rejects the charges that the Armed Forces were responsible for implementing policies of state terrorism. Drawing upon two decrees of 1975, it attempts to legalize the repression, reinforcing the idea that the involvement of the Armed Forces in internal affairs was an oath to defend the country. Moreover, by arguing that the repression was legally ordered, the Complete Truth works to demonstrate that the democratically elected authorities were in full knowledge of how it was to be enforced. This argument includes at least four assertions regarding the recent past. First, the constitutional authorities were responsible for the decision to carry out the repression, as well as for the means of its implementation. Second, the Armed Forces were summoned to fight by the constitutional government and they answered a call to duty with the support of the political parties, the church, the business community and unions, the media, and the general public. Third, the repression began during the constitutional government and not after the installment of the military junta on March 24, 1976. Last, it is inappropriate to consider the response implemented by the constitutional powers against terrorism as state terrorism. In fact, Complete Truth aims to establish continuity between the periods separated by the coup of March 1976. Instead of laying claim to the coup, the Complete Memory associations wish to minimize the coup’s political and historical impact. To conceal its importance and relevance, Complete Truth affirms that it does not represent a break in the institutional order, given that it had already been undermined by the advancing terrorist wave and the inaction of politicians. Furthermore, the Armed Forces’ takeover

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is portrayed as the only way to recover the institutional order on the brink of chaos and anarchy. Thus, the relevance of the March 24, 1976, military coup is often diminished as follows: “in effect, the idea was not to break the ‘state of law’ but to repair ‘state of waste.’ ”38 Complete Justice Along with the slogans of Memory and Truth, these associations also demand Justice. This latest request arose in response to the reopening of judicial proceedings against military and police officers once the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws were eventually overturned in 2005. Far from defending a concept of Justice in the criminal sense of trials to repair the harm done, the military narrative traditionally refers to an extrajudicial notion of justice, a historical or divine justice. Nevertheless, the Complete Memory associations developed the slogan of “Complete Justice”; this is an offensive concept that explains the recent trials against officers accused of human rights violations as part of a political campaign of revenge. Therefore, the petition for Complete Justice is presented in the scenario of memory as a demand for equality before the law. This demand for equal treatment before the law materializes in different ways. First, the visible discontent of the military associations derives in part from what they see as the unequal legal treatment to which the Argentines who fought in the legal forces were subjected. To sustain this argument, the Complete Memory associations present a detailed account of the pardons and amnesties that have been granted to each side in the struggle (Armed Forces vs. guerrilla members), contending that “since 1973, the terrorists have benefited from six amnesty laws and pardons; during the same period, members of security forces have been granted only three such measures. Today, the latter have been overruled and annulled.”39 In the scenario of memory of the postdictatorship period, the pardons and amnesties40 were used as political resources to pretend that nothing had happened.41 By suspending the court’s authority to be able to hold trials or hand down sentences, the pardons and amnesties are socially linked to the climate of impunity. However, the Complete Memory associations frame this exemption from criminal prosecution within their demands for Complete Justice. In their perspective, the absence of criminal punishment becomes an act of justice, justified by a conception that equates Justice with revenge. As a consequence, the popular slogan “Trial and Punishment” (juicio y castigo) of the human rights organizations is portrayed as a reiteration of resentment and a refusal to give up the desire for revenge.

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In this sense, the amnesty or pardon for officers put in the dock or sentenced for human rights violations is understood as an action of equality and fair balance, as their beneficiaries are presented as carrying out an act of surrender, in two respects. First, sentenced military officers are willing to give up the revenge for the offences and humiliations that they suffered as victims of terrorism. This is why, according to this line of argument, it would be fair for past and present terrorists to surrender their desire of vengeance and grant the benefit of amnesty to those people, that is to say Complete Memory associations, who have pardoned them. This self-exculpatory argument rests on a parallelism between the suffering of the victims of terrorism and the situation of those officers who are imprisoned for human rights violations. Second, the least visible face of the military discontent is employed to denounce the impunity that former terrorists are still enjoying in the present. The associations that defend imprisoned officers, for example, the Asociación de Familiares y Amigos de los Presos Políticos Argentinos, similarly call for “Trial and Punishment” like the human rights organizations. To gain credibility and legal standing, this group invokes the legal category of crimes against humanity. Even though the debate over the legal nature of the crimes exceeds the objectives of this chapter, in their rhetoric the Complete Memory associations appropriate the universal language of human rights and retroactive justice to gain legitimacy for their beliefs. They refer to officers currently imprisoned for human rights violations as political prisoners, and label the crimes perpetrated by the guerrillas as crimes against humanity to gain legitimacy for their discourse within public opinion. Conclusion To conclude, it can be suggested that the reactive logic that appropriates and resignifies the core slogans of “Memory, Truth, and Justice” is based on an understanding of memorial conflicts in Argentina as an extension of war by other means. The defenders of Complete Memory overturn Clausewitz’s formula in the same way that they reverse the ideologies of the war against subversion.42 In his main thesis, Clausewitz argues that war is always embodied by politics, because the political objectives of nations are those that limit those nations. By reversing this formula, war is transformed into an absolute that escapes political leadership, and has its own aims. It is a war without limits, without a way out or control. Absolute war exceeds the military sphere, and invades all others: social, psychological, political, ideological, economic, et cetera. Likewise, the struggle over memory also enters into

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military-type speculations. Indeed, the scenario of memory in Argentina is perceived as a manifestation and site of a silent war similar to the activities of the subversive enemy that seeks “to take control of education, culture, the media to then take over political power to dominate civil society.”43 The logic of war is at the core of the military memory that persists and reappears today in new confrontations. In this way, and from this perspective, the reconstruction of the past and the description of the present coincide. The present becomes a continuation of the past insofar as they share a common thread: the fight between two opposing groups. While in the past this confrontation occurred as a “nonconventional war,” in the present it is a “psychological war” waged in the scenario of memory. The old opposition between the subversive Marxist conspiracy and the Armed Forces as the “saviors of the nation” reoccurs today between those championing a “partial memory” and those that wish to unmask that through the motto of “complete memory.” Finally, it is worth stressing that the slogan “Complete Memory” focuses on the remembrance of the suffering of the military officers and their families, leaving aside the pain caused by the repression of thousands of men and women. In this way, the past of violence and repression is recounted as a succession of martyrdoms aimed at constructing a sacred, virtuous, and positive image of the military institutions in Argentina. Through the evocation of the murdered officials as martyrs of the nation, the Complete Memory associations attempt to obliterate the illegal character of state repression and the atrocious acts committed by military officers, to strengthen instead a nonviolent image of these institutions as themselves the victims of the terrorist aggression. This narrative of victimization also works as a strategy to evade the disapproval and rejection that surrounds military discourse, on the one hand, allowing it come out of the silence and the close circuit of the corporative memory, and entering the public scene with a plausible discourse that can challenge the meanings about the past that have been crystallizing over the last 25 years. On the other, the narrative of victimization permits the renovation of the deteriorated image of the Armed Forces, through new justifications for their past actions to gain recognition from the state and society. Notes 1. In June 2005, the Argentine Supreme Court overruled the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws, contending that they were unconstitutional. The Court also confirmed the constitutionality of Law 25.779, which Congress had adopted in 2003 to abolish the impunity laws.

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2. On May 24, 2006, the first public celebrations to honor the “people killed by the subversion” was held in front of the Monumento a los Caídos en la Guerra de Malvinas e Islas del Atlántico Sur (Monument to the Fallen in the Malvinas and South Atlantic Islands War). On October 5, 2006, the Complete Memory association held a second rally on the steps of General José de San Martín’s Monument in honor of the officers who died in the Montoneros’ assault on the Army Barracks of Monte 29 in the Province of Formosa. It declared this date the “National Day of Victims of Terrorism.” 3. The term “recent past” refers to the increasing sociopolitical unrest of the 1970s and the years leading up to the military coup on March 24, 1976. 4. Asociación Unidad Argentina (AUNAR), Subversión. La Historia Olvidada (Buenos Aires: AUNAR, 2005), 6. 5. Elizabeth Jelin, Los Trabajos de la Memoria (Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores, 2002) 6. As soon as President Alfonsín assumed power, he decreed the establishment of the Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (National Commission on the Disappearance of People, CONADEP) in charge of investigating the disappearances that occurred during the dictatorship. This commission prepared a report that was used by the Executive as part of the indictment for the Trial of the Military Juntas in 1984–1985. The CONADEP’s final report was summarized and published as the book Nunca Más (Never Again); a TV program outlining the commission’s investigations was named after the report too. 7. Aldo Marchesi, “Vencedores Vencidos: Las Respuestas Militares Frente a Los Informes ‘Nunca Más’ En El Cono Sur,” in Memorias Militares Sobre La Represión En El Cono Sur: Visiones En Disputa En Dictadura Y Democracia, ed. Eric Hershberg and Felipe Agüero (Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores, 2005), 177. 8. On December 23, 1990, President Carlos Menem announced his intention of pardoning the former commanders sentenced in 1985, as well as Generals Camps, Suárez Masson y Richieri, Montonero leader Mario Firmenich, and other civilians, despite the strong opposition of Argentine society. 9. La Nación, “El Recuerdo de los Caídos en Acciones Terroristas,” April 30, 2002. 10. The CONASE was created in 1989 by President Alfonsín and was composed of the Ministry of Defense, the Home Office, the Foreign Office, the Secretary of State Intelligence (SIDE), the Chiefs of the three Armed Forces, and the Chief of Military State. Its aim was to advise the government on “anti-subversive action.” See Carlos H. Acuña and Catalina Smulovitz, “Militares En La Transición Argentina: Del Gobierno a La Subordinación Constitucional,” in Juicio, Castigos Y Memorias: Derechos Humanos Y Justicia En La Política Argentina, ed. Carlos H. Acuña, et al. (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nueva Visión, 1995), 75. 11. On January 23, 1989, a group belonging to the All for the Motherland Movement and linked to the ERP guerrilla attacked the Infantry Regiment at La Tablada. The confrontations that ensued only strengthened the military narrative regarding the recent past in two ways: on the one hand, the

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13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

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danger of subversive aggression returned again hidden behind the human rights organizations—the fact that some of those involved in the attack were members of these organizations only boosted this claim. On the other, military repression was presented as the only possible response to save the nation. After the impunity laws, human rights organizations’ demands for justice focused on lawsuits to investigate the appropriation and identity change of children who had been kidnapped or were born in captivity. These crimes were not covered by the impunity laws. During the mid-1990s, relying on the right to truth as a legally recognized human right especially within the American system for the protection of human rights, the relatives of the disappeared requested Federal Courts to open files and investigative proceedings without the possibility of prosecution to gain information on the whereabouts and final destiny of their missing relatives. In April 1998, the Federal Court in La Plata accepted this requirement. This was the starting point for the “Truth Trials,” which gathered and recollected a lot of information against security officers. In 1998, the Congress passed a bill to abolish the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws. During the same year, the Buenos Aires City Legislature voted in favor of building a “Monument to Victims of the State Terrorism” in front of the River Plate. Also in 1998, the Federal Court of La Plata began hearings in the Truth Trials that would later follow in Rosario, Bahía Blanca, Mar del Plata, Mendoza, Jujuy, and Chaco. In 1999, the former Commanders and Generals accused of kidnapping minors were imprisoned. In 2001, federal judge Cavallo handed in a decision, stating the “unconstitutionality and nullity” of the impunity laws. That same year, 100,000 people attended a commemorative rally on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the coup. In 2003, the former officer and repressor Domingo Cavallo was extradited from Mexico to Spain to face criminal charges and trial under the jurisdiction of Judge Baltasar Garzón. The Senate voted to annul the Due Obedience and Full Stop laws and in 2004 ESMA was officially declared a “Space for Memory.” Hugo Vezzetti, “Conflictos de la Memoria en la Argentina,” Lucha Armada en la Argentina 1, no. 1 (2004). Nicolás Márquez, La Otra Parte De La Verdad (Buenos Aires: Argentinos por la Memoria Completa, 2004), 137. Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche Y La Filosofía (Barcelona: Anagrama, 1994), 157–206. SEPRIN, Acto 5 De Octubre—Homenaje a Los Muertos Asesinados Por La Subversion, http://www.seprin.com/portal2/notas/acto05-10-2006.htm This image repeatedly appears in survivors’ testimonies of the clandestine detention centers, when describing the behavior and personalities of the torturers. See note 18. Tzvetan Todorov, Frente Al Límite (México: Siglo XXI, 1993), 141. Carlos Acuña, Por Amor al Odio. La Tragedia de la Subversión en Argentina, Tomo I and II (Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Pórtico, 2004). Friedrich Nietzsche, La Genealogía De La Moral (Madrid: Alianza, 1987), 66. Deleuze, 168.

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25. Unlike the literature on the Holocaust that illustrates survivors’ resistance to recalling the hatred and resentment that they were subjected to, Complete Memory recalls and relives in the present the humiliations and suffering lived in the past. See Piere Ansart, “História E Memória Dos Ressentimientos,” in Memória E (Res) Sentimento. Indagações Sobre Uma Questão Sensível, ed. Stella. y Naxara Bresciani, Márcia (Campinas: Unicamp, 2002), 31. 26. Emilio Guillermo Nanni, Homenaje a Los Muertos Por La Guerrilla http:// blogbis.blogspot.com/2007/02/homenaje-los-muertos-por-la-guerrilla.html 27. Dominick LaCapra, History and Memory after Auschwitz (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 15. 28. Alain Brossat, “Entre La Resistencia Y La Gobernabilidad” Puentes—Revista de la Comisión por la Memoria 6, no. 19 (2006); Ernst Renan, “¿Qué Es Una Nación?” in La Invención De La Nación, ed. Alvaro Fernández Bravo (Buenos Aires: Manantial, 2000). 29. Virginia Vecchioli, “Políticas De La Memoria Y Formas De Clasificación Social. ¿Quiénes Son Las ‘Víctimas Del Terrorismo De Estado’ En La Argentina?” in La Imposibilidad Del Olvido: Recorridos De La Memoria En Argentina, Chile Y Uruguay, ed. Bruno Groppo (La Plata: Ediciones Al Margen, 2001), 85. 30. Santiago Álvarez, Leviatán Y Sus Lobos. Violencia Y Poder En Una Comunidad De Los Andes Colombianos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Antropofagia, 2004), 138. 31. Márquez, 77. 32. Veena Das, Critical Events. An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India (New Delhi Oxford University Press, 1995), 20. 33. B1 Vitamina Para la Memoria 1, no. 2 (2006): 10. 34. (Re) General Lieutenant Emilio Nanni’s speech during the celebration to commemorate people killed in the assaults on the Azul and La Tablada Headquarters, on January 27, 2007. http://blogbis.blogspot.com/2007/02/ homenaje-los-muertos-por-la-guerrilla.html 35. They are Decree Number 261 (February 5, 1975), which ordered “to carry out military operations needed to neutralize and/or destroy actions of subversive elements operating in the Province of Tucumán,” and Decree Number 2771 (October 6, 1975), which ordered “to execute military and security operations necessary to destroy the action of the subversive elements all over the country.” 36. This second case refers to Law 19053, which was passed by the previous dictatorship on May 28, 1971, and created the Federal Penal Court. Its duty was to judge all the actions considered subversive in a single instance and trial. This law and other repressive laws were abolished following the democratic government’s rise to power, together with the decree of the amnesty law for all political prisoners. 37. Thus, between the abolition of Law 19053 in 1973 to the passage of Decree Number 261 in 1975, the democratic government avoided any type of military intervention in internal affairs, described as a sign of the legal void that left the Armed Forces and the rest of society defenseless against “fateful terrorism.” 38. Márquez, 77.

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39. B1 Vitamina Para la Memoria, 6. 40. In a recent work, Paul Ricoeur differentiates pardon from amnesty. The first is a right of the Head of State and is a remainder of a quasi-divine and discretionary right of the sovereign. The second puts an end to violence by setting a selective and punctual prescription and imposing forgetting. Paul Ricoeur, La Memoria, La Historia Y El Olvido (Madrid: Trotta, 2003), 587. 41. Nicole Loraux, “De La Amnistía Y Su Contrario” in Los Usos Del Olvido, ed. Yosef H. Yerushalmi et al. (Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión, 1989), 33. 42. Karl Clausewitz, De La Guerra (Madrid: Punto Omega, 1984). 43. Márquez, 119. This phrase, written by Antonio Gramsci, is repeated in different publications to describe the memory scenario.

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CHAPTER 3

Queering Acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina’s Dictatorship: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and Los Rubios Cecilia Sosa

Why a Queer Reading? It might sound strange to propose a “queer” reading to address the aftermath of Argentina’s last dictatorship. How might it be possible to connect a political and theoretical field usually associated with the struggles of lesbian, gay, transgendered, and bisexual (LGTB) groups with the experience of mourning triggered by a process of state terrorism in a Latin American country? If so, what could be the benefits of this perspective? In recent years, the field of queer studies has expanded its boundaries to address issues that are not exclusively related to sexual and identity politics. A significant number of scholars have crafted new theoretical tools to engage with experiences of trauma, loss, race, and injury that can be particularly productive to approach the sense of bereavement and frailty left by 30,000 missing individuals in Argentina.1 In light of this, I propose to revise the country’s aftermath of violence through the lens of queer studies. Beyond sexual implications, in this chapter I use the term “queer” as Judith Butler primarily understands it, that is, as an argument against “certain normativity.”2 In particular, my queer reading aims at contesting the

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biological framework that has been traditionally employed to establish who counts as a victim in postdictatorial Argentina. During the first years of democracy, to gain recognition by the state, the human rights movement evoked the politically powerful image of a “wounded family” in portraying the victims of state repression. As Jelin argues, “in post-dictatorial Argentina, ‘truth’ came to be equated with testimony of those ‘directly affected’ first and foremost in the voices of blood relatives of the ‘disappeared.’ ”3 However, more recently, the language of the family has turned into a trap that encapsulates and restricts the possibilities of understanding the transmission of trauma beyond bloodline inscriptions. Facing the need to develop new critical frameworks, a queer reading can work as a productive strategy to go beyond the traditional discourse of human rights groups. It can provide new images and vocabularies to account for the affective lines of transmission that have already permeated wider society. In this context, the political powers attributed to the term “queer” are fruitful to challenge the biological normativity that is implicit in the heteronormative setting of a “wounded family.” In “Critically Queer,” Judith Butler famously argues: “If the term ‘queer’ is to be a site of collective contestation . . . it will have to remain that which is, in the present, never fully owned, but always and only redeployed, twisted, queered from a prior usage and in the direction of urgent and expanding political purposes.”4 Since the work of queering is never complete, the “political purposes” of my reading become especially urgent after, since 2003, the Kirchners’ democratic governments5 have appropriated the position of the victims, to consecrate the idea of memory into a “national duty.” My proposal wishes to contest the politics of victimization that currently is the prevalent mode of engaging with loss. Thereby, the term “queer” refers, on the one hand, to its nonnormative content and, on the other, to the possibility of building an alternative strategy to respond to a so-called progressive and auspicious human rights politics that surreptitiously still champions a bloodline hierarchy of suffering. This perspective, far from dismissing the pain of those who have been “directly affected” by violence, endeavors to add to the debates that seek to enlarge the understandings of the resonances of trauma, including the emotional responses that might be tangential to those who have traditionally considered themselves as the “real” victims. In addition, I want to make the case for liberating the category of trauma from victimization clichés. Ann Cvetkovich’s analysis of lesbian cultures in the United States is especially relevant to address the affective dimension of mourning in contemporary Argentina.6 Following her premise that the reverberations of trauma can serve as the foundation of a new public culture,

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Queering Acts of Mourning

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I seek to show how the affects that emerged in the local process of grief involve not only pain, sorrow, and guilt, but also new forms of pleasure. Finally, this chapter seeks to highlight the nonnormative temporality involved in the processes of loss that exceeds the reproductive model implicit in the familial setting. In that operation, queer studies are also helpful in proposing links with the past that refuse a linear historicism and offer affective contacts across time to account for how traumatic experiences are transmitted from one generation to another. The “non reproductive” notion of queerness supported by Lee Edelman and the “queer futurity” developed by Jose Muñoz are especially engaging to suggest lines of exploration of grief as an experience related both to the past and to the future.7 More precisely, the final goal is to explore the unpredictable linkages among performance, kinship, and mourning that have emerged in the dictatorship’s aftermath. In this regard, a rephrased conception of kinship could be appealing to grasp different modes of infliction that have grown up outside narratives constrained by blood ties. At the juncture of these insights, I will present my queer reading through the analysis of two case studies. First, I will propose a retrospective scrutiny of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo’s activism, arguing that their famous tagline “our children gave birth to us” (nuestros hijos nos parieron/ nuestros hijos nos dieron la vida) can be established as a point of departure of a lineage that reverses the biological tie as the primary bond. Second, I will contend that the film Los Rubios (2003), directed by the Argentine filmmaker Albertina Carri, envisages how the second generation of survivors brings to light a new idea of community based on the pains and pleasures of a shared mourning. By looking at these disparate materials, I will try to map how the traumatic past led to the emergence of a nonnormative culture of grief that goes beyond those directly affected by violence. 3.1

The Language of the “Wounded Family”

When democracy was restored in 1983, the network of organizations created by the victims of state terrorism assumed the form of a peculiar family. Most of the associations formed by the relatives of the disappeared evoked the biological tie to support their claims. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the Relatives, and more recently, the Children and the Siblings constituted what I call here a “wounded family.”8 Seemingly, only those related by blood to the missing had the authority to claim for justice. As Elizabeth Jelin describes, a monopoly of power, memory, and pain was established: “those who have suffered directly or through their immediate relatives define themselves as the bearers of pain and memory.”9

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In my view, this is the biological normativity that restrains the resonances of trauma from traveling throughout a wider society.10 Nevertheless, as Virginia Vecchioli suggests, it is not that the dictatorship only left a bloodline chain of victims, but that the evocation of a community of blood worked as an effective instrument of political intervention for the human rights associations for more than 30 years.11 Although some organizations did not assume the kinship tie as the principle for public recognition, it was ultimately the one that was imposed.12 The state played a crucial role in naturalizing human rights claims as a family issue. By creating categories such as “the relatives of the victims of state terrorism,” the democratic governments produced a legal framework in which the recognition of the figure of the victim became attached to the family. As Vecchioli argues, the full status of the “relatives” was acquired when the state disposed the law of economic reparation for the victims that defines the disappeared as those who “in the majority of cases were taken alive from the bosoms of their families.”13 Following on from this, the condition of victim became not only a kinship tie, but also a legal figure. Therefore, the very idea of the “disappeared” emerged in the public scene as the exclusive property of the relatives, who, via the reifying tie of blood, were transformed into victims. This legal framework set a fundamental paradox: by assuming a demand based on blood, the state proposed a familial narrative of victimization for the whole nation. In this way, the discourse of the family became the social norm. Why does this biological normativity need to be challenged? As Jelin argues, the familial framework was largely rooted in the history of the country. The idea of the family as the “basic cell of the nation” was evoked by the military, which assumed the role of the “strong father” and whose role was to “extract and destroy the infected social tissues” and “re-establish the natural equilibrium” of the supposed “Grand Argentine Family.”14 In that sense, the force of the familial language within the human rights movement can be perceived in continuation with the military’s narrative. While the military deployed the repression in the name of a “strong father,” the associations of the victims ultimately denounced a crime against the family and constructed their practices “not as metaphors or symbolic images of family ties, but grounded in literal kin relations.”15 Thereby, arguments that highlight the familial position of the victims tend to produce an experience of grief that flows into a hierarchical and private sphere. This familial framework conceals the nonnormative attachments and ties that emerged out of the experience of mourning, discouraging the considerations of more extended public commitments to the process of loss that remain silenced behind the enhanced qualities of blood.

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The need of queering this framework becomes more urgent in the current period when grief has become a national matter. On March 24, 2003, the anniversary of the military coup of 1976 was declared a national holiday to observe a “National Day of Memory, Truth and Justice.” On March 24, 2004, the main detention center during the dictatorship, the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), was handed over to civilian authorities to be transformed into a site of memory. Speaking in front of a heterogeneous multitude that gathered to celebrate this historical event, President Kirchner addressed his speech to his “brothers and sisters” and congratulated the Mothers, the Grandmothers, and the Children for their “model of struggle.”16 By presenting the democratic state as the “head” of the victims, the Kirchner administrations have officialized the biological frame, leading to a substantialization of the identity of the victims. After several therapies of “forgiveness” indulged by former democratic governments, the laws that granted impunity to the military were overruled by the Supreme Court in 2005 and trials of members of the Armed Forces responsible for human rights violations have since resumed. Precisely in this seemingly auspicious context, I propose to take the other “side,” this space outside the framework that Edelman names the “structural position of queerness.”17 Beyond the familialism supported by the human rights movement, this strategy may help to rethink the experience of becoming “other” implied by the process of loss.18 Against the prevailing familialism, I propose a queer reading to revise the monopoly of the process of grief, all the more when the framework at play presumes a category of the victim that no longer corresponds to the modes of filiations in contemporary Argentina. A crucial point should be clarified here. I am not simply suggesting that the language of the family should not be excised from any critical analysis. Rather, I propose to develop further the notion of kinship, to interrogate the extent to which its rephrased expressions may be a powerful tool to articulate a social critique of the politics of loss currently at play in Argentina. 3.2 Calling the Biological Frame into Question The biological normativity that suggests that the victim of state terrorism only is a “wounded family” needs to be contested. But what are the implications of doing so? In Frames of War, Butler argues that “to call the frame into question is to show that the frame never quite contained the scene it was meant to limn, that something was already outside, which made the very sense of the inside possible, recognizable,”19 Accordingly, although the discourse of a heteronormative family eventually emerged as the social norm, it never managed to contain the whole postdictatorial scene. If

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terrorism introduced a horrifying breaking off of social ties, the biological narrative that was constructed to respond to that violence only worked to make the inside recognizable, dismissing other configurations and attachments that were left outside. For instance, the situation of the newborn babies who were abducted by the military personnel and grew up with their abductors disturb traditional kinship narratives, and demand new languages to apprehend the ongoing effects of trauma. By the same token, the constant appeal to a “true identity” performed by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo in their struggle to recover the abducted children who were born in captivity stages a dubious ambiguity. The reliance on techniques of DNA testing, which allowed the successful restitution of 100 abducted children,20 reinforces a sense of biological determinism that might ultimately conceal subtle forms of racism. The case of a recovered grandson who, after living away from home for 30 years, does not “get along” with his “brand-new” biological sister, whom I interviewed, already unsettles the association’s framework. Eventually, the Grandmothers opted to expel the “sister” from their organization. Can these new forms of contested attachments be resumed within the happy narrative of a heteronormative family, as most of the associations of the victims seem to be still demanding? I argue that they cannot. The aftermath of violence staged an unexpected scene of expanded ties that cannot be captured by heteronormative discourses. Rather, these other forms of attachments ask for an expanded conception of kinship. If the process of mourning was perceived in relation to a community that was imagined as based on familial ties, my proposal here is to imagine a community built on a different basis, one in which the bloodline proximity with the missing ones cannot be conceived as a source of property. Instead, I seek a broader sense of belonging built on the basis of a common vulnerability and loss. However, may it be possible to shift the very schemes of intelligibility in which the idea of the victim was constructed? As Butler argues, when “an image lands in new contexts, it also creates new contexts by virtue of that landing, becoming a part of the very process through which new contexts are delimited and formed.”21 This “landing/shifting” movement can provide a fresh perspective to explain how the language of the family landed in contemporary Argentina, producing new possibilities within the “shadowy realm” of kinship. If familial ties, evoked by the associations of the Mothers, the Grandmothers, the Children, and the Relatives of the disappeared, have been effective in addressing the experience of trauma at some early stage of the recovered democracy, this framework was also shattered to produce nonnormative versions of alternative ties that are not constrained to the margins of the heteronormative family.

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In this new context, I suggest that a postkinship framework might be productive to apprehend the transmission of trauma from a less restrictive perspective. For instance, the field of postkinship studies22 that was developed to grasp the nonheteronormative familial formations among gay parents could be useful to explore the anxieties raised by those biological siblings who ultimately reencounter each other in their early thirties, or even to grasp the underestimated linkages built between abducted children and their illegal appropriators. However, the possibility of assuming this alternative framework also involves new sources of conflict. As Butler suggests, breaking out of the frame also implies breaking out of the designs of authority that sought to control that frame. In the Argentine context, this means going against what has been considered the most progressive human rights politics since the recovery of democracy. It also implies contesting the restrictive idea of the “us” championed by the victims’ associations that are still seen as the exclusive subjects of remembering.23 In this sense, my queer reading is committed to freeing the left’s critique from its biological basis and reorienting it toward an alternative politics of loss beyond familial victimizations. The challenges are considerable, and so are the risks of misunderstandings. Conversely, this reading seeks to open the naturalized condition of “affected” toward a more inclusive idea of “us,” one in which loss can become the condition and necessity for a new sense of community.24 The alternative seems to be clear: “Whether we expand our existing frameworks or allow them to be interrupted by new vocabularies will determine, in part, how well we consult both the past and the future for our present-day critical practices.”25 This is the ethical imperative that animates my proposal. 3.3

The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, the Basis for a Queer Linage

To map my queer reading, I will start with the well-known case of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, the famous group of Argentine women that in 1977 started clamoring for the “alive appearance” (aparición con vida) of their children. Thirty-three years after their first public intervention, I propose to look backward to consider the political implications of a process that appears to be the fetishized iteration of a biological motherhood, and explore the extent to which the Mothers’ performance hindered the emergence of postkinship arrangements out of the experience of mourning. Since the disappeared are dead without burial, the association of the Argentine Mothers with Antigone is not difficult to make. If there was a time when the disappeared had fallen beyond the borders of the human,

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eventually the Mothers managed to confer legitimacy to their loss and transformed their act of mourning into a part of the public landscape. Their repetitive circles around the Plaza de Mayo ultimately reinscribed the disappeared into national history: the lives that were banished by the murderous state earned the right to be grieved as such. The disappeared reemerged from the sphere of the abjected: they were transformed into grievable lives.26 Still, in which terms did the Mothers challenge the traditional forms of kinship? In Antigone’s Claim, Butler states that Antigone “represents not kinship in its ideal form but its deformation and displacement.”27 In a parallel sense, I argue that the Mothers performed an idea of motherhood beyond bloodlines that displaced traditional kinship arrangements. Let us explore this possibility further. The Mothers’ occupation of the Plaza de Mayo constituted the foundational event of a militancy apparently based on the nontransferable tie of blood. The Mothers enacted the Constitution of a new subject on the basis of a common injury evoked by their children’s disappearance, and this very status provided the ground for their legitimatization. Although the Mothers gathered as a political community constructed through the language of kinship, the fact that their action was from the beginning attached to a public space staged their activism as exceeding the margins of a traditional family, haunting the whole nation instead. Given this paradoxical Constitution, the Mothers performed a claim that did not belong to the private sphere, but rather to a national community imagined as a family. In that sense, the idea of motherhood evoked by the group became a sort of perversion of the political sphere. Although it was formulated as animated by a biological tie, the Mothers’ origin was not “naturally” reproductive. Rather, it was the product of a political struggle. As the French philosopher Alain Badiou explains, there is something “purely haphazard” that links particular human beings to unforeseen events.28 Even more, the idea of the subject does not preexist the event that it declares, but rather it is the very event that turns the subject into being. Thereby, subjects enact a subjective truth that is tied to a primary event that marks a before and an after in their private histories. Seen in this light, the event of their children’s disappearance can be perceived as the inaugurating scene for the Mothers’ coming into being: they did not exist as a collective subject prior to that event, nor did they survive later as individual women. One of the Mothers’ major statements, “our children gave birth to us,” bears witness to a peculiar inversion of biological roles. This curious tagline, which entangles life and death in the emergence of a new collective subject, also brings to light a peculiar conception of time. If, as Lee Edelman suggests, heteronormativity works as “the guardian of temporal (re)production,”29 the

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inversion of biological sequences involved in the Mothers’ tagline can be rethought as animated by a queer temporality. The inversion of biological sequences also opened the space for an expanded conception of kinship ties. In his reading of Badiou, Jose Muñoz argues that the uncanniness attached to the effects and affects that occur in the face of the event makes what follows “the thing-that-is-not-yet-imagined.”30 In fact, what has not yet-beenimagined is that the Mothers’ struggle, seemingly performed in the name of a biological tie, could turn out to be the basis of a nonfamiliar system of kinship. By staging their children as giving birth to them, the Mothers showed how time as the medium of advent can be deferred, refused, and contested from a nonbiological perspective. The Mothers showed themselves as subjects not constrained by a logic of death-in-life reproduction, but capable of proposing neither reproductive nor heteronormative accounts of kinship. In that sense, their struggle can be conceived as queer. A major conflict eventually emerged within the original group of Mothers. In 1982, the first mass graves were found, making it impossible to maintain any hope that the disappeared could return alive. As Robben argues, the identification of the bodies by forensic groups opened the possibility for reburials, a new situation that apparently “would help raise the empathy for the rest of society for the victims of military repression.”31 However, while one sector of the Mothers welcomed the forensic investigations and eventually the reburials, another group led by Hebe de Bonafini rejected them, arguing that they would not recognize the death of their children. This faction contested the principle of burying the bodies prescribed by its own Catholic background, and enounced this gesture as a refusal to heal. “Many want the wound to dry so that we will forget. We want it to continue bleeding, because this is the only way that one continues to have strength to fight,” claimed Bonafini.32 The drastic gesture of denying the death of their children stressed the oppositional logic already involved in the Mothers’ activism and placed them in the role of queer Antigones. Undone by grief, they assumed their fight as a stubborn resistance to the social order, one that flows beyond any pragmatic principles. While the more “grounded” sector, naming itself Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo—Founding Line, accepted the economic reparations offered by the democratic government, arguing that it was a way for the state to assume its responsibility, the radical faction, known as the Association of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, rejected the indemnifications.33 “What are you going to protest when you accept the exhumations and the indemnifications? In no way whatsoever do I want a dead body, what I want is the murderer,” claimed Bonafini at that time.34 The partition of the original group eventually occurred in January 1986. The radical group, which, as Druliolle shows in his chapter, also resisted

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the idea of memorials, performs a form of inscription of trauma that does not simply disrupt linear or reproductive desires, but also becomes stuck in the affective resonances of an impossible past. In that stubbornness, the Mothers have managed to place a demand on the present that embodies “a desire issuing from another time.”35 Even more, this turn toward time enacted by the Mothers could be associated with what Edelman describes as the imperative of the death-drive involved in the position of queerness.36 The death-drive impulse involved in their refusal to “accept” enacted a sort of excess that may be considered a way of disclosure with their generational carnal connection. In this manner, the Mothers perform what might be called an “impossible project of a queer oppositionality” that challenges any secure notion of kinship.37 While still demanding for the “alive appearance” of their children, the Mothers enact an oppositional form of temporality, one that appears to have no future. However, this impossible claim has persisted in time, flowing outside language, and becoming not only an ethical imperative, but also a queer form of loyalty with their children. The partition of the Mothers was indeed a fracture related to different ideas of “fidelity” in relation to the event of the disappearance of their children. Both sides began considering themselves as “inheritors” of their missing sons and daughters. In 1987, the so-called laws of impunity, which Crenzel discusses in the introduction, brought to an end the prosecution of military officers. By that time, the group led by Bonafini had progressively moved into a socialized conception of motherhood. If during the first public appearances each woman used to carry the name of her disappeared child written on her white scarf, eventually the Mothers decided to carry only the name of the group, omitting any personal details.38 They also included a nonnormative pitch within their rounds that staged the extent to which the seemingly private losses had been assumed as collective: Un hijo, todos los hijos (One child, all the children). Bypassing any form of calculative rationality, the Mothers not only challenged the notion of uniqueness attached to the idea of the mother, as Nora Domínguez argues,39 they also displaced the traditional family values to an extended field of attachments, affiliations, and affects that puts any secure notion of motherhood in crisis. Their claim “One child, all the children” advocated against blood as the only form of kinship. While endlessly circling around the Plaza de Mayo, the Mothers literally performed without end and without interruption a different conception of tie for the nation’s future. There is an additional point to consider here. Regardless of the different factions, the ways in which the Mothers gathered together did not respond

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to any traditional kinship category either. They defined themselves on the basis of a new “we,” bound together in rage, love, and desire. And in doing so, they built female networks that were not mediated by bloodline ties. Still, they were proud of recognizing themselves as siblings. “The fact of having a disappeared, just that, established a sisterhood between us,” stated one of the Mothers.40 In fact, something similar could be argued about the associations of the relatives that followed the Mothers’ group. Although the Grandmothers and the Children also evoke their biological tie to the missing ones, they have all built inside their organizations alternative social arrangements that exceed any heteronormative formation. Precisely, the associations of the relatives seem to fit better this range of queer relations “that do not conform to the nuclear family model and that draw on biological and nonbiological relations, exceeding the reach of current juridical conceptions, functioning according to nonformalizable rules.”41 This is perhaps one of the most underestimated paradoxes of postdictatorial Argentina: the emergence of alternative kinship bonds that still seek to be perceived as conforming to the structure of a heteronormative family. If the potential disturbance of kinship by the associations of the relatives may not have been perceived as such, it is precisely because the state played a crucial role in confining their action within the margins of the heteronormative frameworks. More precisely, as a way of configuring a politics of loss—and perhaps as a way of stepping outside violence—the democratic governments incorporated the emergence of the affective and social formations created by the “directly affected” by linking the category of the victim to the figure of a “wounded family.” Thereby, a queer reading emerges as the form of criticism that can displace the biological frames to glimpse beyond bloodline arrangements. This form of critique is the one that can also dismantle the operation concealed under the familial narratives, rediscovering the disturbance of kinship present in the Mothers’ performances and those of their descendants. Beyond what they could acknowledge themselves, the Mothers were pioneers of this disturbing displacement of ties. Retrospectively, their trajectory shows that it was possible to conceive lives interconnected in differential levels of precariousness at the expense of a new form of spectral and intergenerational relationality. This was the unpredictable contribution of the group to national mourning: the Mothers opened the possibility of conceiving an expanded sense of community through a queer reinvention of kinship ties. If it is only now that we are able to perceive it, it is precisely because the frame has changed. New voices have emerged to undermine the familial norm.

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3.4 Los Rubios: Undoing the Cult of the Victim To explore the continuities between the Mothers’ ontological disturbance of kinship ties and those of their descendants, I propose an analysis of Los Rubios (2003). Although the unwritten rule of Argentine postdictatorship cinema stipulates that descendants and survivors must honor the name of the missing ones, the film directed by Albertina Carri not only rejected this dominant genre, but also challenged the compulsory demand of genealogical inscription that has become dominant in human rights discourses. The film opens with a seemingly playful scene: a doll’s house full of plastic toys performing the quotidian routine of a family living in the countryside. A few shots later, the scene is not so peaceful, not so quiet, not so familiar. The plastic toys turn out to be the deferred traces of a family that is not possible anymore, that perhaps has never been possible. In some forceful way, it becomes clear that what we are going to witness is nothing but the director’s attempt to recover the traces of her missing parents: Ana María Caruso and Roberto Carri, a prestigious intellectual couple who were kidnapped by the military forces on February 24, 1977, and murdered that same year. Los Rubios has nothing in common with traditional documentaries. All the conventions of the genre seem to be displaced, slightly removed, queered. Albertina Carri does not search for the quality of the evidence. All the more, the “epic” stories recalled by her parents’ colleagues are projected on television monitors, like awkward supplements, uncomfortable or sterile fables of the past that the young crew views with infinite mistrust. The starting point of the film is already disturbing. The person telling the story is not Carri herself but an improbable alter ego, a woman in her late twenties who provocatively says to the camera: “My name is Analía Couceiro, I’m an actress, and in this film I play the part of Albertina Carri.” By converting the first person of the film into a fictional character that has not been “directly affected” by violence, Los Rubios challenges the identity politics that staged a figure of victim in bloodline inscription. In her analysis of the film, Nouzeilles argues that Carri disestablishes the public persona of the “daughter of the disappeared.”42 This directorial gesture also calls into question the biological framework that established the legitimate subject of remembering in the aftermath of violence. However, Carri does not step aside. Provocatively, we can follow the director instructing the actress or debating with the crew the constant ups and downs of the plot. In doing so, the film also contests the idea of testimony as the expression of an inner and private “truth”; rather the possibility of giving an account of oneself emerges as a ritualistic performance that can be rehearsed, repeated,

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iterated beyond bloodline inscriptions. As Alejandra Serpente also explains in this volume, Los Rubios stands for a politics of mourning where the experience of being affected is not limited to familial borders, but open to more expanded affiliations. In a key moment of the film, the crew walks down the proletarian quarter where the director lived at the moment of her parents’ disappearance looking for possible traces of the disappeared couple. Among the neighbors’ elusive responses, the team is faced with a peculiar testimony. “I cannot remember anything about that family,” says an old lady who used to live next to the family. “I just know that the three girls were blonde, the father was blond, the mother was also blonde. They were all blond,” she states. From this conspicuous episode the film eventually takes its name. Still, the words of the woman trouble the crew: why was the brownish-haired family remembered as blond? Within the racialized discourse that has strong grounds in the cultural history of the country, the working class sectors have been traditionally recalled as “the black heads” (cabecitas negras).43 As other scholars noticed, it seems not so difficult to understand why the Carris, an educated and wealthy family that did not have much in common with the rest of the inhabitants, were recalled as blond: they were the foreigners, they were the others.44 However, I want to try a slightly different argument here. In my view, the film takes this indubitable sign of class to push it toward unforeseen implications. Rather than a mark of social status, the film beckons the idea of “blondness” as a feeling of strangeness in relation to one’s “own name.” Thereby, I propose to analyze the film under a spectral idea of inheritance that reverses traditional conceptions of victimhood. 3.5 A Touch across Times In contrast to those who qualified Los Rubios as a “frivolous” and even “selfish” film, I argue that Carri offers an ethical response to the inexorability of her parents’ absence. The titles have not yet finished when the actress in charge of the daughter’s role reads aloud some passages of Roberto Carri’s combative oeuvre. Her tone is so imperturbable, so distant, that it seems as if the radical discourse of the dead father were coming from a buried past. Although this early scene seems to stage an irreverent mood of engaging with the specters, I contend that Carri takes responsibility “under the injunction of someone who is not there.”45 If, as Derrida argues, responsibility is always an obligation “to honour the name which is not mine,” he also suggests that the very idea of the name “is always in the future.” How could it be possible to be true to the name of the other if this name has not yet arrived? Derrida’s

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answer evokes a queer sense of temporality: “You receive an old name from the past, but a name as such remains of a name-to-come; and the only way to sign with a name-to-come is, or should be a countersignature.”46 By countersigning her own name, Carri offers an alternative mode of relationality with loss across time. Argentina’s present not only responds to an obscure relation with the past, but also to an ethics toward the future. The nation’s trauma lies at the threshold of a spectral relation with the past that has to be responded in a time-to-come. If the Mothers’ trajectory can be conceived as a battle in the name of a backward fidelity, how, if not as a question of honoring the name of the other, could the singular spectacle of the descendants of the disappeared who have chosen to be known as H.I.J.O.S. (the Children) be imagined? Without a doubt, both groups seem to perform an inquiry in relation to the boundaries of kinship in an expanded conception of time. However, since the linkage between lineage and truth remains quite problematic, a rephrased conception of kinship can help to perceive this seemingly familial drama under a new light. As Butler argues, “If we understand kinship as a set of practices that institutes relationships of various kinds, which negotiate the reproduction of life and the demands of death, then kinship practices will be those that emerge to address fundamental forms of human dependency, which may include birth, child rearing, relations of emotional dependency and support, generational ties, illness, dying, and death.”47 As I have argued here, the organizations of the Mothers, the Grandmothers, the Children, the Relatives, and the Siblings have relied on kinship forms to address the demands of death in the restored democratic context. Although they have evoked familial titles, they do not seem to conform to any of them. They have addressed forms of support, interdependency, and care through horizontal organizations that reunite people of similar generations who gathered together owing to their common condition of having suffered. They have evoked traditional kinship forms, but they have managed to build social arrangements that exceed the borders of blood. They have built nonmarital and nonreproductive ties that emerge outside the heteronormative ties, but that still rely on traditional kinship titles. Given this paradoxical Constitution, the pretension to inscribe their activism within a bloodline chain betrays the spectral resonances of the case. Los Rubios plays out its battle exactly on that stage. The very idea of blood becomes countersigned to suggest nonbiological attachments in relation to the missing ones. Whereas the associations of the Mothers and the Children have been framed to make a cult of the victims, for the first time a daughter manages to establish a different fight with the ghosts. “I am

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not interested in an advocate perspective. The name H.I.J.O.S. scares me. I do not want to be a ‘daughter’ for all my life. I want to be other things,” claims Carri.48 And she does other things indeed. For instance, she stages her parents’ disappearance in a quite hallucinatory way: a plastic spaceship swoops down from the sky and whisks away her toy-parents. While dealing with the impossibility of recovering those absences, the film reintroduces the figure of the disappeared not as familial propriety, but as the insuperable characters of a national fiction. By converting her parents into toys, Carri stages an alternative response to the familial normativity championed by the associations of the relatives. For this reason, I do not see her “toy-parents” as an impugnation of their figures, but rather as a process of “countersignature,” that can also be perceived as a queer form of fidelity with the missing ones. Crucially, fidelity in this case does not imply simple repetition or reproduction. On the contrary, the idea of being true to the other, “true in terms of fidelity,” implies in Derrida’s words to “add something new, to give something to the other, something that the other could receive and could, in his or her turn, actually or as a ghost, countersign.”49 The fundamental novelty staged by Carri’s process of countersignature is the fact that she does not take responsibility in the name of a “wounded family,” but rather in the name of all others who might also have been inflicted by violence. In doing so, Los Rubios stages a new fiction of kinship for the present time. While dealing with the painful resonances of an ongoing trauma, Carri’s film never loses its singular lightness, and even a certain form of tenderness. In one of the last passages, we can see the actress in front of a birthday cake. She says: “I hate having to make a wish to blow out the candles on my birthday. I spent many birthdays making the same wish and I cannot stop wishing for the same thing: that my mum would come back, that my dad would come back, that they would come back soon.” The director does not like the results and obliges the actress to shoot the scene several times. Once again, by highlighting the uncanny split of characters, the film displaces the familial content of the scene. That wish, iterated by an actress, no longer belongs to a victimized daughter, but rather to all those who become unraveled by that childhood flashback. In doing so, the film introduces the possibility of sharing as the unexpected aftermath of violence. Yet, the queer futurity of blowing out the candles of an improbable past may also bring a desire for a different future. In that sense, Los Rubios can even be grasped as a gift, the impossible gift for those who are not there to receive it.50 Moreover, in the nonreproductive logic of the film, that gift becomes extended to an intergenerational and affective community beyond blood.

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3.6

Becoming Blonds

Butler finishes Antigone’s Claim with a doubt. She states that the Greek heroine “is caught in a web of relations that produce no coherent position within kinship.”51 Something similar could be argued in relation to the descendants of the disappeared: daughters and sons of vanished parents, brought up with relatives and friends in the best-case scenario, or with their appropriators in the worst, and in most cases, without clear knowledge of their origins. To some extent, for them the system of kinship remains unintelligible. Yet, Los Rubios offers an alternative answer to this indecipherable chain. At the end of the film, Analía Couceiro, the actress who enacts Carri’s role, stands in the middle of the countryside. She is not alone. The entire team and the director are also there. They are all wearing blond wigs on their heads. They all walk toward the horizon. It seems to me that this closing scene has the ability to read the postdictatorial scene under a new light. Undoubtedly, the wigs make reference to the testimony of the old neighbor who recalled the Carris as blond. But are the wigs just an ironic quote, the material sign of an oblique misunderstanding projected in time? It doesn’t seem so. The members of the film crew who wear the wigs are not only descendants of the disappeared. In fact, most of them have not been directly touched by the state repression. In their cases, the wigs function as the deferred engagement that refuses the reduction of kinship to a regular family of victims. They appear as a fetishized object that draws the figure of a new community beyond familial inscriptions. The wigs offer a playful, creative, and still critical response to the monopoly of mourning supported by the associations of the victims. While extending the legitimacy of loss to a variety of kinship forms, the blond heads draw a more extensive idea of “us” for postdictatorial Argentina. In her analysis of Los Rubios as a “postmemory artefact,” Nouzeilles describes the last scene as a “pantomimic performance of displaced identities.”52 We can push her argument a little further. As Butler reminds us, Benjamin also conceives an intimate relationship between pantomime and mourning. For him, pantomime is the form in which mourning takes place, a sort of chorographical and ostentatious gesture that is ultimately related to certain sensuousness of the bodies coming back from loss. Butler quotes Benjamin saying, “Comedy—or more precisely: the pure joke—is the essential inner side of mourning which from time to time, like the lining of a dress at the hem or lapel, makes its presence felt.”53 Butler draws from the image of the dress to argue that mourning is linked to a material of clothing “that is suddenly, or even unexpectedly, felt against the flesh, the leg, or the neck.” In that way, she reintroduces the idea of grief as “a

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certain encounter between a comodified material and the limb that knows only on occasion.”54 It seems to me that the blond wigs appear as that artifact, that commodified material felt against the flesh. All the more so as Butler argues that “the dress is, as it were, laughing.”55 To some extent, Carri’s wigs iterate that dress; they appear as the artifice, the sensuousness that animates the bodies of the film crew walking toward the horizon. Moreover, the wigs emerge as the artifice that laughs in mourning, and it is a laughter that mocks all familialism and stages instead the uncanny pleasures of being plural in loss. The blond wigs are Carri’s singular response to trauma, one that shows the familial framework in its artifice, and its potential undoing. In her reflection on grief post-9/11, Butler suggests that grief has the capacity to un-do the subject, enabling new attachments and configurations. The new chorographical disposition of the bodies at the end of the film stages a form of mourning that “is not resolved into melancholia,” but rather, it emerges as a form of pleasure, a mode of becoming other, of becoming blond, and being undone by the process of loss.56 Under this light, Los Rubios’ last scene becomes gracefully performative: it stages the wigs as a fetish element of a postkinship structure of an intergenerational and intercorporeal transmission of trauma. The youthful team enacts the spectral community of those who partake in and debate a common destiny, a community that displaces the borders of the monopoly of suffering and helps to conceive a broader idea of being inflicted. What this last scene reads, then, is the crisis of traditional forms of kinship governed by the linkage of blood framed in the postdictatorial period. It calls into question the state’s connivance with that familial language, suggesting an emergent ethical order where more diverse social arrangements are possible. Los Rubios offers a visual narrative for those attachments that might not necessarily be spoken or easily articulated. It envisions a nonheteronormative and horizontal community, which mocks fathers and leaders, opening the door to irregular relations of love, empathy, and care—unexpected ties formed around trauma. Finally, the crew wearing the blond wigs has the lightness of a visionary dream. The embryonic queer family walking toward the horizon has the ability to highlight something that is still in a process of emergence in Argentine society: a new linage where past and present are joined together through an experience of shared mourning. Yet, the film enacts a dream that invents its own future. It works as a self-reflexive object that offers a new fold to Argentina’s recent trauma, a centrifugal fiction that bears a complex texture of anger, guilt, responsibility, forgiveness, but also laughter. Carri makes a final wink to her viewers: in this trip they are all invited.

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Afterword As I gave the final touches to this chapter at the end of April 2010, a new incident in the so-called Noble case captured media anxieties. Ernestina Herrera de Noble, the director of the national newspaper Clarín and the iconic figure of one of the most powerful economic corporations of Argentina, has been suspected of being the illegal appropriator of her two adopted children, Felipe and Marcela, born during the dictatorship, and now in their early thirties. Although investigations have been underway for almost nine years, the siblings, via the family lawyers, pervasively refused to run the DNA tests that can corroborate that they are the descendants of disappeared.57 The newspaper owned by their mother became the target of conspicuous governmental maneuvers. In a heated exchange of threats, the Noble family responded first with a public statement that bears the signature of Felipe and Marcela, and a few days later, with a short video featuring the siblings. The framing of the clip is surprising: staging the scene of an ordinary family, Marcela and Felipe sit on the couch of a living room. They hold hands. Marcela’s blouse looks slightly untidy and sometimes the camera captures Felipe’s gaze curiously out of focus. Despite the fact that a huge corporation supported the media event, the clip appears plain and even spontaneous. Keeping the same monochord tone, the siblings successively argue that they do not want to be “war trophies.” They present themselves as “victims” of a government’s campaign. “Thirty-four years ago our mother chose us as her son and daughter. Everyday, we choose her as our mum. Nobody can ever destroy this tie,” they claim. At the end of May 2010, the siblings were eventually forced to run the genetic tests in the terms requested by the human rights organizations. Even so, while the DNA results are still pending, how may it be possible to make sense of the whole episode? The narrative at play is already known. It is still the language of the family, but a language that is strangely displaced, subtly queered, this time from an unexpected “side.” It has been said that the siblings are the “toys” of their mother, that they just read or repeat the language of their appropriators. But they do more than that: they iterate the biological normativity in place to make themselves part of an unexpected chain of familial victims. With the force of the norm, the language of the family traveled throughout society to become iterated by those who are precisely suspected to be perpetrators of violence as an attempt to legitimize their claim. In her analysis of the “Complete Memory” associations included in this volume, Valentina Salvi addresses the victimizing discourses developed by the relatives of fallen military officers in the “war against subversion”, as a strategy to portray them as martyrs. The siblings Noble also share the

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impulse to be recognized in their suffering, as part of a domestic realm suddenly endangered by violence. As much as the associations of the “directly affected,” Marcela and Felipe Noble share the desire to be perceived as familial victims. And in some contested sense, they probably are. The problem is that the reifying force of kinship operates to obscure fundamental differences. Yet, public declarations of human rights organizations showed themselves clueless to address this paradox: “The Noble case has been transformed into a war that should never have existed,” argued Estela Carlotto, leader of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.58 Although she perceives the uncertainties of the case, she also fails to acknowledge them, revealing the limits of the narratives at play. Still, something has changed. On April 30, a response to the video got published in another national newspaper. Mariana Eva Pérez, a theater director and herself daughter of a disappeared couple, argues that although it is impossible to discern the position of the siblings, their bodies become enacted by a violence that exceeds them. She contends that the term “appropriator” is not enough to give an account of the social dimension of the crime: “We need to invent new concepts,” she claims.59 And she is right. From an unforeseen place, the biological chain has been surrendered. In a very disturbing way, the siblings’ discourse rejects the idea of family as something “natural.” Ironically, the Nobles do not rely on blood ties either. Precisely because of that, their case becomes particularly poignant to reveal the limits of the narratives of human rights groups. It exposes the extent to which the language of the family as the social norm functions precisely “by way of managing the prospect of its undoing.”60 In a totally unforeseen way, the Noble case also claims for more advanced conceptions of ties in the wake of trauma. In this chapter, I have presented a “queer reading” in response to the need for new vocabularies to address the aftermath of violence. I have proposed to move toward refigured frameworks of kinship to understand the new affective attachments that have emerged out of the process of loss. As much as the concept of “queer families” permeates, corrupts, and undermines the notion of the family as the exclusive space of reproduction and heteronormative practices, I suggest that the affiliations that have emerged in postdictatorship Argentina do not simply trouble normative desires: they also disturb the idea of a “wounded family” as the only victim of state terrorism. In doing so, they invite us to imagine new connections and ties that bind Argentine society intergenerationally. Given this, I have proposed to move into a rephrased conception of kinship that does not rely exclusively on bloodline and, ultimately, is based on a spectral idea of friendship. Still, this alternative perspective does not assume any

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attempt to reconcile. Rather, it appears as an expansion of critical horizons to address the set of problems that unsettles traditional human rights discourses. The American scholar José Esteban Muñoz suggests that queerness could be a mode of desire, a new form of temporality that applies for something that is still missing in the present and could be embedded with certain hope.61 If a queer reading is relevant to grasp the Argentine case, perhaps we may arrive at a stage where the idea of memory could move beyond the monopolist imposition of a “familial duty” and emerge instead as an intergenerational process of sharing that involves new forms of pleasure, as the image of the blond wigs seems to suggest. Frames have started changing. The sense of being undone by mourning whispers new sensuous forms of tie-to-come. Notes I am grateful to Catherine Silverstone and Maria Delgado, my supervisors at Queen Mary, for their constant support to help me develop this framework to approach postdictatorial Argentina. I am indebted to Catherine for a critical reading of an earlier version of this chapter, and to Vikki Bell, my accomplice in the Argentine passion. Thanks to Alejandra Serpente, Valentina Salvi, Constanza Tabbush, and Matias Ison for their inspiring feedback, and to the editors Francesca Lessa and Vincent Druliolle who, after our meeting at the SLAS conference in Leeds (2009), believed in this book project. This research was partially funded by Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme (ORSAS) and Queen Mary’s Drama Department. The Central Research Fund, University of London, and the Society for Latin American Studies supported fieldwork for the research on which this chapter is based. 1. To craft the idea of a “queer reading,” I am specially inspired by the works of Judith Butler, Ann Cvetkovich, Lee Edelman, Jose Muñoz, and Heather Love, among other queer scholars. 2. In an interview conducted by Regina Michalik, Butler argues: “Queer is not being lesbian, queer is not being gay. It is an argument against certain normativity.” Judith Butler, “The Desire for Philosophy,” http://www.lolapress.org/elec2/ artenglish/butl_e.htm. 3. Elizabeth Jelin, “Victims, Relatives, and Citizens in Argentina: Whose Voice is Legitimate Enough?” in Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy, ed. Richard A. Wilson and Richard D. Brown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 177. 4. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter. On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York, London: Routledge, 2003), 111. 5. Nestor Kirchner was President of Argentina from 2002 to 2007, when his wife, Cristina Fernandez, was elected to succeed him.

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6. Cvetkovich’s analysis explicitly rejects a pathologized account of the idea of trauma for American lesbian cultures and challenges its hierarchies by proposing a horizontal process that can be extended beyond obvious sites of suffering. See Ann Cvetkovich, An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexualities and Public Lesbian Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). 7. Lee Edelman, No Future. Queer Theory and Death Drive (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004); Jose Muñoz, Cruising Utopia. The Here and There of Queer Futurity (London, New York: University of New York Press, 2009). 8. In 1996, the children of the disappeared founded H.I.J.O.S, Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice, against Forgetting and Silence). The emergence of the organization Herman@s (the Siblings) seems to confirm the productivity of the familial frame. 9. Elizabeth Jelin, “The Politics of Memory: The Human Rights Movements and the Construction of Democracy in Argentina” Latin American Perspectives 21, no. 2 (1994): 53. 10. The essentialization of family biological links in the discourse of human rights organizations is also acknowledged by Alejandra Serpente in her analysis in this volume of the transmission of trauma with the second generation of Chileans and Argentineans in the United Kingdom. 11. Virginia Vecchioli, “La Nación Como Familia. Metáforas Políticas en el Movimiento Argentino Por los Derechos Humanos” in Cultura y Política en Etnografías Sobre la Argentina, ed. Sabina Frederic y Germán Soprano (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2005). 12. The Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) works as a counter-example of the familial shape of human rights associations. Although the organization was founded by a group of relatives of the disappeared, it does not assume blood as the principle of public distinction. 13. Vecchioli, 257. The law of economic reparation for the victims was adopted in 1994. 14. Jelin, “Victims, Relatives, and Citizens,” 180. 15. Ibid., 182. 16. Ibid., 195. 17. Edelman, 27. 18. I am following Judith Butler’s account of the process of mourning developed in Precarious Life. The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004), 21. 19. Judith Butler, Frames of War. When is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009), 9. 20. The estimated number of kidnapped children who grew up with false identities is 500. By 2010, the Grandmothers had managed to restore 100 identities. 21. Butler, Frames of War, 9. 22. See Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), 102–130 (Chapter 5, “Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual?”); Angela McRobbie, The Uses of Cultural Studies (London: Sage, 2005), 185–196 (“Mothers and

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23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43.

44.

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Fathers, Who Needs Them? Butler’s Antigone’s Claim . . .”); David L. Eng, The Feeling of Kinship. Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). Jelin, “Victims, Relatives, and Citizens,” 198. Judith Butler, “Afterword” in Loss: The Politics of Mourning, ed. David Eng and David Kazanjian (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 468. Butler, Frames of War, 162. As Butler argues, “if a life is not grievable is not quite a life.” Butler, Precarious Life, 34. Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between Life and Death (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 24. Quoted in Peter Hallward, Badiou. A Subject to Truth (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 114. Lee Edelman, in Carolyn Dinshaw, Lee Edelman, and Roderick Ferguson, “Theorizing Queer Temporalities: A Roundtable Discussion” in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 13, no. 2–3 (2007): 181. Muñoz, 21. Antonious Robben, Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 329. Quoted in Robben, 329. Today, Hebe de Bonafini’s Association of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo is the closer to Cristina Kirchner’s administration. Quoted in Robben, 329. Carla Freccero, in Dinshaw et al., 184. Lee Edelman, in Dinshaw et al., 181. Edelman, 4. By contrast, the Mothers—Founding Line remained attached to the figures of their personal losses. Nora Domínguez, De Dónde Vienen los Niños. Maternidad y Escritura en la Cultura Política (Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterbo, 2007), 282. Cited by Vecchioli, 244 Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 102. Gabriela Nouzeilles, “Postmemory Cinema and the Future of the Past in Albertina Carri’s Los Rubios” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 14, no. 3 (2005): 266. In the mid-1940s, President Juan Domingo Perón (1946–1952, 1953–1955, and 1973–1974) reappropriated the term “black heads” to dignify the figure of the working class, his main supporter and the first source of legitimization of his populist governments. The term “black heads” has been inherited by his successors and still haunts the political arena. Beatriz Sarlo, Tiempo Pasado. Cultura de la Memoria y Giro Subjetivo. Una Discusión (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2005), 146–151. Martín Kohan, “La Apariencia Celebrada” Punto de Vista, no. 78 (April 2004): 24–30.

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45. Jacques Derrida, “As If I Were Dead: An Interview with Jacques Derrida” in Applying: To Derrida, ed. John Brannigan, Ruth Robbins, and Julian Wolfreys (London: Macmillan, 1999), 220. 46. Derrida, “As If I Were Dead,” 220. 47. Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, 102–103. 48. María Moreno, “Esa Rubia Debilidad,” Página 12, October 23, 2003, http:// www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/radar/9-1001-2003-10-23.html. 49. Derrida, “As If I Were Dead,” 220–221. 50. Jacques Derrida, The Work of Mourning (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 64. 51. Butler, Antigone’s Claim, 57. 52. Nouzeilles, 275. 53. Judith Butler, “Afterword” in Loss: The Politics of Mourning, ed. David Eng and David Kazanjian (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 470. 54. Judith Butler, “Afterword,” 470. 55. Ibid., 470. 56. Ibid., 471. 57. Although in 2003 the siblings agreed to run the DNA tests to respond to the claims of two individual families who claim to be their biological ones, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo still want to cross their tests with all the information available in the National Genetic Database created in 1987 to respond to the affiliation disorders provoked by the last dictatorship. 58. Perfil.com, “Para Carlotto, El Caso Noble Se Transformó ‘En una Guerra’ No Deseada,” April 1, 2010, http://www.perfil.com/contenidos/2010/04/01/ noticia_0022.html. 59. Mariana Eva Pérez, “La Materialidad de los Cuerpos,” Página 12, April 30, 2010, http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/las12/13-5685-2010-0430.html. 60. Butler, Frames of War, 12. 61. Muñoz, 32.

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CHAPTER 4

Justice and Its Remainders: Diamela Eltit’s Puño y letra Michael J. Lazzara

Trauma and the Limits of the Law If we think of Chile’s transition to democracy as a continuum upon which greater degrees of truth and justice have become possible over time, it seems plausible to affirm that, having already passed through manifold political attempts by the various Concertación governments to “repair” or “reconcile” with the past (attempts, I should add, that have met with varying degrees of success), we now find ourselves situated squarely within the phase of justice seeking. Although legal justice was clearly already being sought before the Pinochet regime (1973–1990) ended, the public imperative, particularly when Patricio Aylwin assumed the presidency in 1990, was, first and foremost, to establish truth. As a first step toward public recognition of the truth about the Pinochet regime, the National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (1990) detailed the dictatorship’s crimes against humanity, but did so without naming the perpetrators directly or giving sufficient treatment to the reality of torture as state policy under Pinochet. This left the human rights community and certain sectors of the citizenry incensed and feeling like the government had only responded partially to society’s need to address the past. The failures of this early commission later necessitated other attempts to establish truth, like the Mesa de Diálogo (1999), convened during the Eduardo Frei administration (1994–2000) and completed during Ricardo Lagos’s tenure as president (2000–2006), or the National Commission on

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Political Imprisonment and Torture (2004), whose Valech Report, based on over 30,000 torture victims’ testimonies, was a milestone document that raised public awareness of torture as a reprehensible and widespread politics of the Pinochet regime. Throughout it all, despite public apologies and public discourse (I am thinking of the relatively recent mea culpas of the different branches of the Armed Forces), the military—as was the case with the Mesa de Diálogo—has been less than completely forthcoming with the truth about the disappeared and far from contrite in accepting responsibility for its crimes. Though definitely less prevalent and more nuanced than it perhaps once was, the memory narrative of Pinochet as a “savior” who rescued the Chilean people from the throes of Marxism still holds water among hardline pinochetistas and certain pockets of Chilean society.1 Truth has therefore been slow in coming, incomplete, always insufficient, and always “spun” or constructed through the subjective and ideological lens of the one doing the remembering. Truth, as we know, is always a narrative palatable to the speaking subject, a narrative that palliates pain or shame. However, despites the limits of truth, when we think about legal justice in Chile it is also fair to say that today the possibilities for prosecuting human rights violators are far greater than they were in the early 1990s when President Aylwin, shackled by an authoritarian legacy, issued his famous call for truth and justice en la medida de lo possible (insofar as they were possible)—see Chapter 5. Of course, the surprising detention of Augusto Pinochet in London (1998) contributed, in no small measure, to the prosecution of dictators and human rights violators not only in Chile, but also in transnational contexts, as did the unyielding work of lawyers and judges who dedicated decades of their lives to advancing prosecutions and managed, with admirable success and in spite of legal and political obstacles, to put many perpetrators behind bars. The declassification of CIA documents for certain emblematic cases (like those of Orlando Letelier, Bernardo Leighton, and Carlos Prats) has also played a key role in this process of opening doors to convictions.2 My point is that although much remains to be done, legal justice, too, is undeniably advancing, while the rule of law is becoming an ever-stronger anchor for the long-desired consolidation of democracy. At the same time, it is essential to recognize that the possibilities for legal justice also hinge on a political will to see justice done, a will that undeniably varies in accordance with the desires and dictates of each successive government. Yet certain concerns remain—and these are not minor. For example, the idea of “letting the courts do their work,” a phrase often bandied about by politicians in the media as a signal to the citizenry that the country’s democratic institutions are functioning properly, can be read, on the flipside,

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as a conduit toward olvido (forgetting)—the ever-so-familiar “turning the page” or “looking to the future” that has permeated the discourse of Chilean transitional politics—or as a convenient escape mechanism to avoid confronting traumatic and incendiary issues. When memory—real memory, deep memory, difficult memory, memory that reveals and recognizes both the victims’ faces and the faces of political and economic injustice—is too politically contentious to tackle head on, relegating “justice” to the courts seems an easy fix for politicians, who find it easier to pass the buck than to accept responsibility for the past. These same actors are reticent to admit complicity—covert or overt—with Pinochet’s neoliberal endgame. We also hear the legitimate frustrations of victims and families who feel that justice has been too selective, too lenient, or much too slow in coming and who are incensed when they hear calls by the military or the government to agilizar los procesos (speed the trials along) so that they do not languish interminably in tribunals. In fact, just as I am completing this chapter in July 2010, the Chilean Catholic Church has caused widespread concern by issuing a call for presidential pardons (indultos) that may affect some human rights violators currently imprisoned for crimes against humanity. The bill, known as the indulto bicentenario, is true to its name insofar as it instrumentalizes the country’s upcoming bicentennial as a moment for reflection and generosity of heart; it is being offered to Congress in a spirit of clemency toward those whom the Church feels are too old or too ill to serve out their sentences. Truth and justice insofar as they are possible: this has been the logic of Chile’s transition to democracy. But legal justice, always partial, always selective, is insufficient in and of itself. To circumscribe the idea of justice to the realm of legality closes off possibilities of asking deeper questions about what constitutes justice in postdictatorial times. If we confine justice to the framework of the law, making the law its sole arbiter, we perhaps conveniently avoid the question of what real justice might look like, a kind of justice that not only reckons with the real violence of the past, staring at it in the face, but that is also accompanied by a radical politics committed to mitigating social inequalities and endemic discriminatory practices.3 In short, our definition of what constitutes justice in the neoliberal postdictatorial moment must be broader, open to the past as well as to alternative futures. If we accept this imperative, then, certain questions arise. What can the law do to repair the past and promote reconciliation, and what lies beyond its scope? In other words, what might be the “limits” of the law in postauthoritarian/posttraumatic scenarios? The latter question is the one I wish to pursue. A sweep of the critical literature reveals a common refrain: the primary concern of judicial proceedings is not to produce truth (although this is

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certainly part of their objective), but to produce judgment—to bring “closure” to a grievance and mete out a punishment tantamount to the crime.4 Trials serve many positive functions: they create a credible, public record of crimes that for years were covered up; they generate documentation that can assist researchers in understanding the past; they provide a venue in which victims can tell their stories and confront those who harmed them; and they demonstrate a commitment by the government and society to making amends.5 But, as Nancy Rosenblum points out, “formal judicial proceedings are often inadequate from the standpoint of victims, which is why individuals, groups and whole communities [may] look outside the law for relief.”6 Procedural justice may produce insufficient documentation for gaining a complete picture of history and, at bottom, is not always specifically addressed to the victims’ affective or psychological needs. Rather, procedural justice responds to broader society’s need to see justice done and brings closure to a traumatic historical period or provides reassurance that democracy and the rule of law are thriving. Thus, although the importance of legal remedy is undeniable, trials and convictions may not be enough for the victimized and the aggrieved. After a verdict is reached in court, something remains. The idea of a remainder resonates particularly in the Freudian language that has saturated postdictatorial thought. Thinking of the classic Freudian distinction between mourning and melancholy, Idelber Avelar points out that the task of mourning, even when it brings about some sense of “closure” that permits the mourner to escape melancholic malaise, always leaves behind some “remainder” that the living continue to mourn ad infinitum.7 That is, even if the mourner manages to displace his libido onto a surrogate object (e.g., a symbol of the lost loved one or a verdict in court), even if the mourner can reckon with the dead and bury his remains, “mourning is never simply completed.”8 Such remainders may be partially compensated by institutional vehicles created specifically for healing social trauma (truth commissions, public apologies, monetary reparations, public memorials, etc.), or also by noninstitutional vehicles (therapy, academic work, art, or literature). These variegated approaches to addressing the past appeal to victims, families, and societies in different ways, both practical and affective. Interested in striking a distinction between what the law can do to repair the past and what other modes of “working through” trauma (like writing or literature) can, Shoshana Felman notes that the language of literature differs from the language of the law: A trial and a literary text do not aim at the same kind of conclusion, nor do they strive toward the same kind of effect. A trial is presumed to be

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a search for truth, but, technically, it is a search for a decision, and thus, in essence, it seeks not simply truth but a finality, a force of resolution. A literary text is, on the other hand, a search for meaning, for expression, for heightened significance, and for symbolic understanding.9 The problematic to which I am referring—the limitations of the law, trials, and legal language—stand at the center of Diamela Eltit’s recent book, Puño y letra: juicio oral.10 Reminiscent of the court reporting genre, whose most famous contemporary example is probably Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem,11 Eltit’s project selectively records her own act of witnessing in Argentina the public trial of Jorge Arancibia Clavel, one of DINA’s civilian liaisons in Buenos Aires, convicted on grounds of “illicit association” and sentenced for the September 1974 car bombing that killed Pinochet’s “constitutionalist” predecessor, Carlos Prats González, and his wife, Sofia Cuthbert Charlione.12 The text is a creative montage of documents that Eltit as “author” and “documentarian” selects and organizes to give the reader a feel for the trial and its idiosyncrasies.13 By no means an exhaustive record of the trial, the book employs a montage-like format to, in effect, rewrite the trial to disrupt its proceedings, reveal its faults and lacks, and open up spaces for reflection on the limits of the law and the very nature of justice. This act of rewriting is a conscious political and aesthetic choice on Eltit’s part; it is not her objective to give us a record of the trial or to record its “facts,” but to make us acutely aware of the spectacles of justice and of the neoliberal moment we are living. To that end, what constitutes justice in postdictatorial times is a key question that Eltit’s book seeks to illuminate. Focused on the theatricality of the juridical scene, Puño y letra hinges on the distinction between procedural justice and a broader (though arguably more nebulous) notion of justice, between the production of a guilty verdict against Arancibia and the traumas (social and individual) that remain in the trial’s aftermath. Because of the unfinished nature of justice for Eltit, her book opens a fundamental gap between the law and literature as epistemological modalities for dealing with traumatic memory; the law evokes the language of facts, of the finite, while literature, in this case, deals with the subjective, the infinite, the wound that lingers. By creating a fragmentary text that is, at its core, a montage of disparate but related discursive registers, she brings into relief the tensions at play among approaches to speaking and healing trauma, while simultaneously inviting a reflection on what remains after the gavel has come down. In what follows, I would like to speculate around a specific iteration of justice that Eltit’s book pursues. Let us call it radical justice: a justice that is always unfinished; a justice that implies an honest, critical vision of

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history; and a justice that is, above all, political in the sense that it seeks to reactivate the possibilities for leftist politics in the present in ways that go beyond the “spectacle” of consensus-based politics as it has been practiced on the transitional scene. I will pursue this discussion by focusing on three of the “remainders” that I read in Puño y letra: first, Eltit’s questioning of the trial as a vehicle for producing a satisfactory or sufficient version of the “truth”; second, the victim’s pain that lingers, to some degree, in the trial’s aftermath, coupled with the essential unrecoverability (and/or unsayability) of the original traumatic moment; and third, impunity. To contextualize, however, let me begin with a brief word about the Prats case and about one of the many accomplices to his murder, Jorge Arancibia Clavel. 4.1

The Case

A Chilean citizen, former cadet, and member of a military family, Jorge Arancibia Clavel decided to abandon his formal military education to study engineering. Nevertheless, dressed in civilian clothes, he would stay connected to Pinochet’s military apparatus for a long time thereafter. From the late 1960s, the dinamitero (dynamite-guy), as he was known, became affiliated with right-wing nationalist groups, using his engineering skills to plant bombs against leftist targets following Salvador Allende’s election in 1970. Accused of violating the Ley de Seguridad del Estado (State Security Law), he fled to Argentina in 1971 to avoid punishment, where, under the false name Felipe Alemparte (among others) and posing as an employee of the Banco del Estado (State Bank), he soon became a key functionary in the international operations of DINA, Pinochet’s notorious secret service organization. Although he did not personally place the car bomb that killed Prats and Cuthbert, Arancibia aided and abetted the crime as a “cog in the wheel” of Operation Condor’s villainy. In 1978, with the Pope’s intervention, he was used as a bargaining chip in negotiations concerning the Beagle Channel conflict, pardoned of accusations of espionage, and granted Argentine citizenship.14 Much to the dismay of the Prats daughters, Arancibia opened a restaurant and lived in impunity until 1996, at which time the case was renewed. Argentine judge María Servini also called for the extradition of seven of DINA’s henchmen, along with Pinochet.15 However, at the time, Chile’s courts did not uphold the extradition and Arancibia took the fall for the entire conspiracy. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2000. In March 2003, the case was reopened in Chile against the other DINA agents. After seven years of litigation, Chile’s Supreme Court, in July 2010, upheld a 2009 appellate court resolution issued by Judge Alejandro Solís and the Ninth Court of Appeals convicting nine military officers and civilian

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collaborators for their roles as intellectual authors or accomplices to the assassination. Former head of DINA, Manuel Contreras, already imprisoned for other human rights convictions, received a 17-year sentence, plus three additional years for conspiring to commit a terrorist act. His second in command, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, received a similar fate. Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, Christoph Willikie Flöl, José Zara Holger, and Juan Morales Salgado all received fifteen-year sentences. In their roles as accomplices, civilian agents Jorge Iturriaga and Mariana Callejas each received a five-year sentence, while Subofficial Reginaldo Valdés got a prison term of 1,081 days. Moreover, the Supreme Court, in a shocking move, significantly lightened the sentences of both Espinoza and Contreras. In the case of Contreras, for example, a dual life sentence was reduced to a mere 17 years, thus calling into question the judiciary’s commitment to punishing perpetrators to the full extent of the law. Responding to the verdict, the Chilean Army issued a statement (July 2010) repudiating all of the convicted for their criminal acts. Furthermore, the Army expressed its solidarity with and sympathy for the Prats daughters while, in the interest of rehabilitating and correcting its indelibly marred public image, recommitting itself to upholding the fundamental values that Chilean society holds dear. 4.2

The Remainders

a) Truth Textualmente (textually). This word functions as a section heading within Puño y letra and pops up several times within the book’s general lexicon. To reproduce language textually is to be faithful to displaying its truth (or lack thereof)—a veritable obsession for Eltit, whose project, at least in part, seems to be about the status of truth in testimony and about the kind of truth that a trial can establish. In addition to her own first-person account of the trial’s theatricality and another autobiographical essay entitled “1974,” the centerpiece of Eltit’s project is the deposition of Hugo Alberto Zambelli, a musical theater actor and former gay lover of Arancibia Clavel. The book also contains a letter from Pinochet to Prats in which the former expressed his undying friendship and gratitude to the man he was about to have killed, as well as a series of closing statements by two of Arancibia’s prosecutors. Intentionally, Eltit only makes us privy to certain aspects of the trial record, thereby emphasizing the subjective, fragmented, constructed, pastiche-like character of her account, and of memory in general. In effect, the book’s structure (incomplete and selective) echoes the idea of a pulverized memory

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(dubious, traumatized, and incomplete) set up by the author’s epigraph: A mi madre y su memoria pulverizada (to my mother and her pulverized memory). The impact of Puño y letra hinges on the tensions among what can be proven, what has been proven, and that which exceeds proof, tensions that concern the very goals of testimony. Is testimony’s primary goal to prove the facts of the case, or to transmit the “unspeakable” or affective components of memory? Does testimony’s aim change depending on the audience, venue, or purpose of the speech act? The lawyers’ closing statements are fascinating illustrations of these tensions and questions and, likely, it is to that end that Eltit includes them in her book. Doctor Guillermo Jorge’s first intervention, for example, consists in a lexicon absolutely obsessed with phrases like se ha probado (it has been proven) and claramente (clearly), which appear dozens of times in the text. The lawyers cite documents, cross-reference testimonies, show graphics, make claims, reiterate, and carefully construct a logical and reasoned line of argumentation: DINA existed, DINA functioned hierarchically, DINA had an Exterior Department, this department performed very specific functions in Argentina; Operation Condor existed; the accused participated in DINA’s operations; the accused acted specifically in the assassination plan for Prats and his wife. These facts are the ones that “matter”; other details (the emotional toll, the real psychological detriment of the traumas suffered) stand in excess of the trial. One wonders why it is necessary for the lawyers to spend pages establishing DINA’s existence—something that seems obvious since the fact was well known since the time of the coup. However, as prominent human rights attorney and truth commission member José Zalaquett once said, it may be true that “everyone knows that Pinochet was responsible for thousands of killings, torture and disappearances, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to prove it in court.”16 The legal venue, in this case, requires a certain kind of testimony that hinges on factual data and chains of logical reasoning. Eltit includes the lawyers’ closing statements in her book because she wants us to take note of their constructedness, of their subjective and unknowable elements. The repeated use of phrases like a mi juicio (in my judgment) indicates that the lawyers are subjectively crafting the real, that they are framing the facts in narrative form. In that sense, the juridical scene, like other venues for constructing or reconstructing memory, becomes a space in which representational strategies are crucial to a successful narrative. Consider the following passage—likely of interest to Eltit— in which the verbal formula puede ser (maybe)—an indication of the unknown, the unknowable, or the

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irrelevant—calls up a fundamental tension with what has been definitively “proven”: Arancibia Clavel aportó los contactos y, como bien citó el Doctor Carrió hoy, puede ser que el responsable de la custodia, encontró apoyo en la Policía Federal y en otros organismos locales. Es decir, puede haber habido, además de este esquema central, otros apoyos, puede ser internacional como la CIA, puede ser algún grupo parapolicial . . . Pero lo que tenemos probado en la causa es que la decisión de poner la bomba fue una decisión adoptada en el máximo nivel chileno. Arancibia Clavel provided the contacts and, as Doctor Carrió pointed out today, maybe the one responsible for caretaking was supported by the Federal Police or other local organizations. In other words, there may have been, aside from this central chain of command, other support networks, maybe of international character like the CIA, maybe somo para-police group . . . But what we have proven in the case is that the decision to place the bomb came from the upper echelons of the Chilean military hierarchy. (emphasis added)17 The passage is significant because it shows that the structure of the trial (and its language) produces a very specific kind of truth (geared toward a verdict and an indictment), but does not exhaust our inquiry into the past. Juridical testimony remains steeped in speculation. Within what has been proven, the figure of the secret remains inscribed. In that vein, at another point in the closing statements, the lawyers allude to the forever-unknowable secrets that the military have kept under lock and key or eclipsed behind a tacit pact of silence: Es decir, no hay documentos públicos que se puedan utilizar para conocer lo que ellos hacían. Son secretos y no están disponibles para el Tribunal. Y, por otro lado, hay un compromiso de confidencialidad. Hay un compromiso de los integrantes de esta organización de mantener el secreto. Y el sistema judicial argentino y el chileno no tienen cláusulas que les permitan favorecer o dar incentivos para romper este compromiso. In other words, there are no public documents that can be used to find out what they did. They are secrets, and they are not available to the Court. And, on another hand, there is a pact of confidentiality. The members of this organization are committed to keeping secrets. And the Chilean and Argentine judicial systems have no provisions for giving incentives to break that pact. (emphasis added)18

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Again, truth—the whole truth—evades the juridical scene’s desire. Perhaps testimony’s greatest moment of crisis in Puño y letra is the interrogation of Hugo Zambelli, a character who is obviously fearful of self-incrimination and who is full of delusions of grandeur that are exacerbated by his status as a second-rate theater actor.19 Like Arancibia, Zambelli is submerged in his own fantasies and fictions of the self; he constitutes a prime example of how anonymous bodies, by virtue of their living within a “state of exception,” become marked by power and altered irreparably. Eltit is attuned to the hallucinatory and “acted” nature of Zambelli’s deposition, whose visual appearance on the page evokes a theatrical script. Although the witness’s interrogators constantly remind him that he is under oath, he does not fail to interject that his life siempre se basó en el teatro, el teatro, el teatro (was always based on theater, theater, theater).20 The reader gets lost in Zambelli’s contradictions and shares the extreme frustration of the lawyers, who, at certain points, wonder about the usefulness of his testimony. The deposers become perturbed and aggressive; they yell at the witness—¡Que haga memoria!,¡Escúcheme!, ¡Trate de ser claro porque si no va a tener problemas! (Remember! Listen to me! Try to be clear because if you’re not, you’re going to have problems!)21 They spend pages trying to get a straight answer to a simple question: “When was the last time you saw Arancibia?”22 Dates and details clash with Zambelli’s previous depositions, to a point where the law is left at a veritable impasse. One of the lawyers tells the judge: Yo no tengo la menor idea si él mintió en ese momento o está mintiendo ahora. Pero yo le voy a pedir que se extraigan testimonios de las declaraciones y se lo investigue por presunto delito de falso testimonio. Porque son tantas las discordancias y tantas las precisiones que él anuncia antes y tanta las precisión que él anuncia ahora, que yo no sé cómo seguir con este interrogatorio. I don’t have the slightest idea whether he was lying back then or whether he is lying now. But I am going to extract testimony from his declarations and have him investigated for the crime of perjury. Because there are so many discrepancies and so much precision with regard to what he said back then and what he says now that I don’t know how to continue with this interrogation.23 The theatrical polysemia of Zambelli’s phrases contributes to the spectacular nature of his testimony (le mentiría si le digo) (I’d be lying if I told you). His sworn act of truth-telling, in the end, is nothing more than a performance of perjury, in the Derridean sense!24 The good-faith “pact of

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truth” that testimony presupposes between witness and listener is betrayed. Zambelli appeals to his audience to legitimate his word—créanme!, palabra de honor, te doy mi palabra de hombre! (Believe me! Word of honor! I give you my word as a man!)—but, in the end, he cannot save himself from the judgment of rational minds: the attorneys’ and the readers’. Truth exceeds the testimonial utterance and remains secret: Yo le quiero decir una cosa, Doctor. La primera declaración que me toman, la primera, la primera cuando lo agarran, yo estaba en un estado realmente bastante mal. Y a mí ahora todo esto me confunde. Pero realmente me confunde, porque yo [he says mockingly] desde adentro de mi corazón, sé cómo es la cosa I want to tell you something, Doctor. During the first declaration they took, the first one, the first one after Arancibia was nabbed, I was in a really bad state. And now, all of this is confusing me. It really confuses me because within my heart I know the real truth.25 Zambelli’s voice is cowardly, obsessed with self-protection and selfaggrandizement, seeking a spotlight in which his truth can shine and be accepted by others. He spins a verbal web that is only convincing to him and, in that sense, points up the logical flaws of certain delusional memory scripts, like those of the military or civilian collaborators. Moreover, his voice can be read as a compendium of many voices that have borne witness falsely, partially, about human rights crimes. As Mónica Barrientos aptly notes by citing García Canclini and perhaps echoing the logic found in an early work like Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life:26 “Identity is theater and politics; it’s acting and action.”27 Zambelli does nothing more than perform the limits to the truth of the juridical scene and the cowardice of a bystander who knew too much. Words themselves do not guarantee truth. It is also striking that more than half of Puño y letra is taken up by Zambelli’s delirious testimony. From the attorneys’ perspective, the testimony of such a minor character in the Prats saga would certainly have had little importance; indeed their frustrations and communications prove that that is so. Why, then, would Eltit make Zambelli’s testimony so central to her literary project? Why would she go so far as to give the impression that his was the only testimony given at trial, the only voice that really mattered? Why not capture the voice of Arancibia or some other more central player whose culpability was clearer? My feeling is that Eltit is interested in Zambelli precisely because he is not part of the military hierarchy. In fact, he was little more than an innocent bystander who got mixed up with one

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of the bad guys. His false testimony is, in that sense, part of a vast spectrum of ethical grays that the experience of dictatorship produced. As has often been observed in the case of the Holocaust, those who lived beside the concentration camps—out of fear, or for other reasons—covered up the real horror or simply refused to see it. Zambelli is thus a subject whose life is marked by the pain of his inseverable linkage to unsayable horror. Consequently, his figure most aptly dramatizes the position of the reader (perhaps a Chilean reader, or even a U.S. reader) who might maintain a safe distance from Prats’s and Cuthbert’s pulverized bodies and from the dictatorship’s pulverized memory in general. Zambelli’s presence in the text forces us to ask about our role—explicit or implicit—in upholding Pinochet and his neoliberal transformation of Chile. In short, by bringing readers face to face with a “bystander” like Zambelli, Eltit brilliantly incites the need for a society-wide examination of conscience whereby justice would imply an honest reckoning with the past not just for those involved, but for all Chileans, for all of us. In short, Zambelli compels us to recognize the spectacle of memory in neoliberal times, to dissect its language, flash, glitz, and limits. b) Pain, Emotion, Affect After the trial, the pain of victims and average citizens, though perhaps mitigated, also remains. Eltit’s introduction makes special mention of the Prats and Arancibia sisters, who continue to suffer silently, overwhelmed by the intensity of the juridical drama and the protracted uncertainty of many years of waiting. These women, abandoned by the Chilean military, in whose ranks their brother or father once served, are, for Eltit, the only people valiant enough to “show their faces” on the public stage.28 The Prats sisters, likened to Antigone, and the Arancibia sisters, likened to García Lorca’s female characters, offer a metaphor for women’s central, public role in the ideological and political struggles of the dictatorship and transition. The Prats sisters’ suffering particularly moves Eltit, as she notes that Arancibia’s trial cannot hope to restore for them the essential truth of their parents’ untimely death, but rather algo parecido a la verdad (something akin to truth).29 To my mind, one of the most fascinating aspects of Puño y letra is Eltit’s own subjective presence in her writing. Although it is true that her authorial voice has spoken in previous testimonial works like El Padre Mío and El Infarto del Alma (see note 19), here, I think, her own suffering as an “inhabitant of the Chilean dictatorship” is much more salient, more affective, more emotionally revealing than in her previous work.30 She presents herself as a

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common citizen-victim whose life, memory, and thought were forever altered by living a state of exception. The year 1974 functions as a detonator, a link between Eltit’s personal trauma narrative and the Prats crime. Witnessing Arancibia’s trial drags up her own repressed fears and rancor, stored in some remote corner of her confused and convulsive memory. According to Eltit, 1974, the most intense year of political violence, was a “pedagogical” year in which Chilean bodies—her own included—were reeducated, cowed, neutralized, muted, tortured, or displaced.31 The author’s first-person voice is poignant as she struggles with the age-old question of how to express the inexpressible—perhaps the central question theorists and commentators of trauma narrative have grappled with in their critical writing. Eltit calls 1974 ese año inexpresable (that inexpressible year); 1974, the year in which Chile’s internal subjugation became so strongly consolidated that citizens were blinded (or chose to remain blind) to unspeakable crimes being committed just on the other side of the cordillera (or perhaps much closer to home), as if the Prats assassination were a perfect mirror image of the exception-ally infirmed Chilean interior.32 Eltit remembers her close friend Carlos, exiled to Paris. She remembers poor day-laborers forced to rebuild a new and glorious patria for a pittance. Many of those obreros (workers) were the same subjects who had taken to the streets to defend Allende and fight for change. Eltit notes that the dictatorship refunctionalized their insurrectional bodies, turning them into mistreated peons on whose backs the new neoliberal Chile was erected. Such memories resonate with Eltit, evoking shame and pain that linger until today. At times her narrative becomes so introspective that she steps back from her position as a highly regarded Chilean writer and speaks instead as a Chilean, as a human being who also harbors questions and deep wounds: Mi cuerpo crónico, a partir de ese año, ya no tuvo cura. Arrastro la cicatriz que encubre la herida moral que me atravesó el alma de manera irreversible. Ese año, el 74, hubimos de olvidar forzadamente los rituales en los que habían transcurrido nuestros pasados pensantes. Olvidar que las calles nos pertenecían . . . Olvidar las estéticas en las que antes nos organizábamos. Olvidar cada milímetro de rebeldía . . . Parece imposible, ¿no? My chronic body, from that year forward, could no longer be cured. I carry the scar that hides the moral wound that tore through my soul irreversibly. That year, 1974, we had to forget the rituals of our past as thinkers. To forget that the streets belonged to us . . . To forget the aesthetics according to which we once organized ourselves. To forget every millimeter of rebellion . . . It seems impossible, doesn’t it?33

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This passage is even more striking if we consider Eltit’s commitment to the cause of Allende’s Popular Unity government and her dedication to denouncing the Pinochet regime publicly during its most dangerous years. Her participation in CADA (Colectivo de Acciones de Arte, Art Action Collective) from 1979 to 1985, lauded by critics and remembered by Chileans as one of the most valiant neo-avant-garde artistic interventions to emerge on the dictatorial scene, is implicitly called into question by Eltit’s subjective reflections.34 Despite the overt and vocal ways in which she and her colleagues in CADA protested against unspeakable state violence, on some level it seems that she feels like it was not enough. Although she used her body as a site of rebellion against the dictatorship’s violence, she also recognizes that that same body was, on another level, reprogrammed to live in a state of exception, wounded irreversibly to its core. Eltit boldly argues that in the ultraviolent national space of 1974, those who before were the thinkers and dreamers of a more just society were forced to forget the depth of their rebellion, to become depoliticized subjects who were in some sense normalized within the neoliberal rubric of the “new Chile.” Implicitly, she suggests that that same rebellious drive and thirst for change has never returned with the same intensity that it perhaps had prior to the 1973 coup. Trauma remains inscribed not only as the loss of comrades, but also as a moral loss, a political loss, the loss of possibility for real social transformation (for real justice) that the dictatorship and transition governments have relegated to oblivion through manifold operations. And there, amidst it all, the original, unsayable crime persists—despite the court cases, despite any and all attempts to access it. There, amidst it all, symbolically, stands the most unreconstructable remainder of the dictatorship’s darkest days: the symbolic, mutilated bodies of Carlos Prats and Sofia Cuthbert. Implicitly engaging long-standing debates on trauma’s representability, Eltit only alludes to the disaster’s infinite pain, without describing it outright. Her wager, it seems, is that pain remains beyond description. Its unsayability is an ethical imperative not to forget, to think critically: Sólo el pudor me impide describir los efectos que alcanzó el bombazo en Sofia Cuthbert (Only modesty impedes me from describing the effects that the bomb had on Sofía Cuthbert.)35 For Eltit, those mutilated, emblematic bodies evoke the ruinous marks of the disaster: the moral wound, the shame of conformity, the guilt of not seeing, or not wanting to see. And, in fact, the bitter truth is that we know much more about Prats and Cuthbert than about thousands of anonymous bodies destroyed by the dictatorship, those excluded from the mediatic farándula (showbiz) of memory. Significantly, Eltit begins “1974” by mentioning in passing two names: Santiago Avilés, a painter, and Nicolás Flores, a textile apprentice. Both were

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detained in 1974 during a raid of the Quinta Bella shantytown. These are the anonymous subjects whose memories are eclipsed by emblematic and grandiose figures like Prats and Cuthbert. What would it mean to truly gaze upon these forgotten figures, to restore their silenced memory? In a 2005 essay on how the Chilean media tends to erase the density of memory and turn past traumas into a momentary fad or a banal sound bite, Eltit registers a lament that reminds us of what Puño y letra does not show: [que] hasta hoy sabemos tan poco, tan poco de cada una de esas vidas [anónimas]. Menos aún los instantes de sus muertes (that to this very day we know so little, so little about each and every one of those anonymous lives, much less about their deaths).36 The gavel has hit and the Prats case is history. Justice, in a matter of speaking, has been done. But what of Áviles and Flores? c) Impunity More than a book about Prats and Cuthbert, or their deaths, Puño y letra is about marginal, anonymous bodies: underlings and common citizens whose existence, in different ways, was sculpted and permanently altered by the experience of living a state of exception. Arancibia was a “cog in the wheel” of Chile’s repressive state apparatus, and Zambelli the pathetic, residual byproduct of that association. Eltit gets us thinking about how postdictatorial justice is meted out symbolically. In this case, lackeys take the fall while the upper echelons of power remain untouched. Nevertheless, while this may be the harsh reality of the political and juridical scene, neither Eltit nor the prosecuting attorneys let Pinochet go unjudged. Puño y letra provides persuasive evidence for accusing Pinochet as the ultimate criminal and mastermind behind the plot. This is significant, because even though his decrepit body had been declared unfit to stand trial in 2000, literature offers an alternative forum for proving him guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Where the law butts up against its limits, literature stands in as a surrogate. Thinking about bodies in impunity as remainders of the law, a recent case comes to mind that emblematizes the fragility of Chilean justice and brings into relief the brazen defiance of certain military officials when it comes to owning up to past crimes: that of retired Army General Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, one of DINA’s most notorious criminals, recently convicted for the kidnapping and disappearance of MIR activist Luis Dagoberto San Martín. Between June and early August 2007, Chileans were shocked when Iturriaga Neumann spent 52 days as a fugitive, in protest of a jail sentence issued by the Supreme Court. Before fleeing, he issued a public video statement to the media in which he affirmed his innocence and complained that a travesty of justice had been committed against him and 500

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others: Abiertamente me rebelo ante esta arbitraria, sesgada, inconstitucional y antijurídica condena. ¡No la acepto!¿Debemos seguir aceptando esto? ¡Yo no! ¡Ya no más! (I openly rebel against this arbitrary, biased, unconstitutional, and illegal conviction. I don’t accept it! Can we keep accepting this? Not me! No more!) The image of Iturriaga raising his voice on television, making a mockery of Chile’s judicial system, was disconcerting! A full-blown investigation ensued. Fifty-two days later, he was found living under a false name in a Viña del Mar apartment. The case evoked reactions across the board, most of which centered on the Concertación’s happiness that “democracy was functioning properly” and that “no Chilean is above the law.” A handful of right-wing politicians defended Iturriaga, eliciting outrage in other political sectors. There he was, Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, 52 days a fugitive of the law—another theatrical body performing a fiction, a fantasy of innocence, evoked from the depths of his being. Eltit’s reading of Arancibia once again applies: Deliberado. Majaderamente teatral. Sí, él sabe que a partir de este momento será observado y lo disfruta. Resulta evidente que le importa sobremanera este torcido protagonismo que ahora adquiere. Posa su pose sin tapujos. (Deliberate. Ridiculously theatrical. Yes, he knows that from this moment forward he will be observed and he enjoys it. It’s apparent that he greatly enjoys the twisted protagonism he has acquired. He poses his pose without reserve.)37 Arancibia and Iturriaga are now in jail, but not without final bows to their adoring fans. Upon his capture, Iturriaga headed toward the police car that would take him to his destiny. A television reporter greeted him: Buenos días, señor Iturriaga. ¿Cómo se siente esta mañana? (Good morning, Mr. Iturriaga. How do you feel this morning?) With a smile, he replied: ¡Muy bien, feliz! (Very well. Happy!) With that, the curtain came down. Final Reflection We always rewrite and revisit the past as a function of the present. For that reason, the question of justice cannot simply be reduced to collecting “facts” and meting out sentences to a group of the most brazen perpetrators. Symbolic justice is important, but the “idea of justice,” to evoke Amartya Sen’s recent expression, has to be broader; it has to move beyond the realm of the law (of the courts and legislation) and take as its point of departure a more capacious notion of freedom.38 The idea of justice must not simply be responsive or reactionary, but rather a set of values that guide our way of life and help us to live democratically and in solidarity with one another.

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The Pinochet dictatorship is often thought of as an “exception,” a “counterrevolutionary” response to a set of burgeoning revolutionary impulses that erupted dramatically and acutely in the early 1970s. Though this reading is possible and, to some extent, accurate, it is also, admittedly, incomplete. To look at the 1973–1990 period in isolation betrays a deeper examination of the social and political forces (racism, classism, economic disparity, ideological entrenchment, etc.) that made the dictatorship possible in the first place. Moreover, the dictatorship must be understood as a set of authoritarian practices and political and economic beliefs that continue to function in ways covert or overt. Since the return to democracy, many of the attitudes born during the Pinochet years have remained entrenched and untouched, while the market and the almighty dollar have created a society of “citizenconsumers.”39 For many, the neoliberalization of Chile has been a blessing, while for others, like Diamela Eltit, it has brought dire consequences that urgently call for a radical reformulation of thought and political action. (Eltit, of course, identifies with a radicalized sector of the Chilean left that is critical of more orthodox leftist positions and is certainly critical of institutionalized leftist politics as it has been practiced throughout the transition.) Furthermore, discrimination continues against the Mapuche nation in the Chilean south, while unemployment, workers’ rights, overcrowded prisons, and poverty continue to be issues that Chilean society urgently needs to address. Forging a viable historical memory, one that does not avoid the real face of the past, needs to embrace and address these realities as part of a vision toward radical justice. What would it mean to harness the political promise of a long-forgotten moment, the Popular Unity period, and bring it to bear on the present? It is not a question of restoring a lost moment integrally as it was, but rather of asking what that lost era can teach us about achieving justice—real justice—in a new context where the rules of the game have clearly changed. In a sense, Eltit’s entire political, ethical, and aesthetic project is about urging us not to be Hugo Zambelli, not to be fearful bystanders blinded by our own delusions, desires, and self-interested memories. Instead, her work challenges us to ask how we should live (how we can live) in relation to a crime that, on many levels, has not ceased to take place. Notes 1. For a thorough analysis of the memory script of Pinochet as savior, see Steve J. Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).

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2. These three men were all assassinated by Pinochet’s secret police on foreign soil. Orlando Letelier, a former Allende government minister, was killed in Washington, D.C., on September 21, 1976. Bernardo Leighton, a prominent Christian Democrat, was targeted in Italy on October 5, 1975, and survived. Carlos Prats, a “constitutionalist” General loyal to Allende, was killed in Buenos Aires on September 30, 1974. All three of these crimes were carried out in the context of Operation Condor, a consortium of terror that coordinated the efforts of several South American dictatorships to eliminate enemies and “subversives.” For a detailed account of Condor and its workings, see John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (New York: The New Press, 2004). 3. My deepest thanks go to Tamara Spira for her friendship, conversation, and inspiration. Our lengthy discussions about the “question of justice” have contributed, in no small measure, to my thinking in this chapter. 4. See especially Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, translated by Daniel Heller-Rozen (New York: Zone Books, 1999), 18–20. 5. Nancy L. Rosenblum, “Justice and the Experience of Injustice” in Breaking the Cycles of Hatred: Memory, Law, and Repair, ed. Martha Minow (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 82. 6. Rosenblum, 78. 7. Idelber Avelar, The Untimely Present: Postdictatorial Latin American Fiction and the Task of Mourning (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 5. For further development of these arguments, see Michael J. Lazzara, Chile in Transition: The Poetics and Politics of Memory (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006), Chapter 3. 8. Avelar, 5. 9. Shoshana Felman, The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 54–55. 10. Diamela Eltit, Puño y letra: Juicio Oral (Santiago: Planeta, 2005). 11. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin, 1994 [1963]). 12. DINA (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, National Intelligence Directorate) was Pinochet’s first secret service organization. It functioned from 1973 to 1977, at which time it was replaced by CNI (Central Nacional de Informaciones, National Information Center). 13. Daniel Noemí uses these terms to describe Eltit’s authorial function in her book in his excellent article “De Puño y letra. Justicia, documento y ética” in Diamela Eltit: Redes Locales, Redes Globales, ed. Rubí Carreño Bolívar (Frankfurt: Iberoamericana, 2009), 201–213. In the same volume, Mónica Barrientos also writes on Puño y letra. To date, these are the only critical articles I have found about Eltit’s recent book. I am indebted to the lines of inquiry that these two scholars have opened. 14. The Beagle Channel conflict was a notorious dispute over a major waterway that drove the Chilean and Argentine dictatorships to the brink of armed conflict. In 1978, papal intervention was sought as a means of arbitration.

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15. The DINA agents referred to above are Manuel Contreras, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, Armando Fernández Larios, José Zara Holger, Raúl Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann, and Jorge Iturriaga Neumann. 16. Quoted in Naomi Roht-Arriaza. The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 80. 17. Eltit, Puño y letra, 160–161. 18. Ibid., 154–155. 19. His highly illogical discourse reminds the reader of the crisis of truth and memory evidenced in the voice of another of Eltit’s locos (madmen), El padre mío. Readers will recall that madness as a mechanism for questioning the testimonial enterprise has been a repeated concern in Eltit’s literary project, not only in El Padre Mío (My Father), but also in El infarto del alma. See Diamela Eltit, El Padre Mío (Santiago: Francisco Zegers Editor, 1989) and El Infarto del Alma (Santiago: Francisco Zegers Editor, 1994). In both of these texts, the figure of madness, like it does in Puño y letra, challenges us to look for alternative, metaphorical, or symbolic levels to truth-telling. The testimony of the loco, with its alternative logic, speaks, we might say, a different kind of truth. For a fuller discussion of how Eltit deploys and challenges the testimonial genre, see Lazzara, Chapter 1. 20. Eltit, Puño y letra, 39. 21. Ibid., 83. 22. Ibid., 86. 23. Ibid., 89. 24. Derrida writes: “Perjury . . . presupposes this sworn word, which it betrays. Perjury does indeed threaten all bearing witness, but this threat is irreducible in the scene of the sworn word and attestation. This structural threat is at once distinct and inseparable from the finitude that any testimony also presupposes, for any witness can make a mistake in good faith; he can have a limited, false perception, one that in any number of ways is misleading about what he is speaking about; this finitude, which is just as irreducible and without which there would be no place for bearing witness, is nonetheless other, in its effects, than the kind that obliges us to believe and makes lying or perjury always possible. There are thus two heterogeneous effects of the same finitude here, or two essentially different approaches to finitude: one that goes by way of error or hallucination in good faith, and one that goes by way of deceit, perjury, bad faith. Both must always be possible at the moment of bearing witness.” Jacques Derrida, “Poetics and Politics of Witnessing” in Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan, ed. Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 78. 25. Eltit, Puño y letra, 91. 26. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971 [1959]). 27. Mónica Barrientos, “El Juego de la Representación en Puño y letra de Diamela Eltit” in Diamela Eltit: Redes Locales, Redes Globales, ed. Rubí Carreño Bolívar (Frankfurt: Iberoamericana, 2009), 195.

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Eltit, Puño y letra, 27. Ibid., 26. Ibid., 13. Ibid., 187. Ibid., 185. Ibid., 189. For an excellent study of CADA’s “art actions,” see Robert Neustadt, CADA DÍA: La Creación de un Arte Social (Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 2001). Eltit, Puño y letra, 189. Diamela Eltit, “La Memoria Pantalla (Acerca de las Imágenes Públicas Como Políticas de Desmemoria)” Revista de Crítica Cultural 32 (November 2005): 33. Eltit, Puño y letra, 21. Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2009). See Tomás Moulián, Chile Actual: Anatomía de un Mito (Santiago: LOM/ ARCIS, 1997).

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CHAPTER 5

Chile: Dilemmas of Memory Elizabeth Lira, Translated by Maxine Lowy

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his chapter identifies and analyzes the dilemmas concerning the social, political, and historical memory of Chile’s recent past. Memory is closely related to the political struggles for better social and political conditions in the country over the past 50 years. It is also associated to the political repression that unfolded during the military dictatorship (1973–1990), with its heavy legacy of violations of human rights and, at the same time, the resistance against political oppression and repression during this period. This memory has gradually been taking shape through various means of recording and working through the consequences of the violations of fundamental rights that individuals endured as a consequence of the state’s repressive action. The knowledge of what happened to individuals, families, and groups has come to be known generically as “the truth” (as recorded by truth commissions). The “truth” about these violations led to the development of reparations policies that proposed compensation or remedies for victims and restoration of those rights whose violation was politically motivated. Policies of memory have been based and relied upon initiatives and demands forged by victims’ organizations, and have been supported by the state’s public policies. Increasingly, individual or collective measures of reparation have been accompanied by policies related to commemoration and memory, expressing a political will that such violations will never be repeated.

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When the dictatorship ended, Chile was still a divided society. Despite a consensus on past events, a persistent range of ethical and political divisions about the interpretation of the past survived. This process demonstrates a plurality of existing political views, which compose an antagonistic and even traumatic memory regarding Chile’s recent past. How is it possible to build a “democratic memory,” a memory for the future? Some voices claim to turn the page, others to read and learn the page before closing the book. 5.1 Political Repression in Chile Throughout the Twentieth Century: History and Memory Working conditions in coalmines, nitrate works, and rural areas were characterized by sunup to sundown workdays, lacking any kind of set work schedule. Every mining office paid wages in tokens redeemable for goods only in company stores that were not accepted as legal tender outside the locale. The risk of on-the-job accidents and occupational diseases only worsened the unstable working conditions. A worker who complained or simply aired grievances was immediately fired. Housing conditions were squalid and precarious. The struggle to change these conditions had been the major focus of work and social demands since the nineteenth century. During the same period, at least since 1927, Chile’s Interior Ministry kept a watch over persons and organizations considered subversive. It monitored the political affiliations and activities of the people with whom they associated, as well as their national and international ties. This monitoring by the Interior Ministry facilitated the surveillance of persons. Intercepting mail and telephone calls and preventive arrests became the mechanisms to ensure state security from disturbance of public order anywhere in the country.1 Initially, workers rallied for wage demands. However, with the development of union federations and political parties during the twentieth century, labor and political demands increasingly merged. Some political parties called for programs of social change that government officials rejected, and they were persecuted. Their members were labeled as “enemies” of society and their ideas were regarded as a “threat” to domestic national security and political stability. Generally, these people were Communists and Anarchists. Officials defined them as “agitators” and they were blamed for strikes and social unrest. The Executive implemented states of constitutional exception to contain the impact of labor strikes and local demonstrations in support of these demands. To reestablish “order,” the government invoked domestic security laws to suspend individual rights with police force and, frequently, the Army

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unleashed brutal repression upon strikers and demonstrators. Demonstrators were seen as “subversives,” thereby giving government authorities a reason to exercise their “duty” to repress them. The course of events in response to a series of protests and demonstrations in 1957, opposing public transportation fare hikes in Valparaiso and Santiago, illustrates this point. The instructions of the Military Command in Santiago, based upon the decree establishing the state of siege in Santiago on April 2, 1957, recommended the repressive forces to make use of their weapons against the protesters: In order to maintain public order, which is my duty, we must warn citizens that the government will adopt all measures that circumstances may compel, as painful as these may be . . . Take the arms you need: rifles, machine guns, and cannons. These shall be employed to bring an end to the vandalism of the wicked intent upon causing chaos and anarchy.2 It was not uncommon for such movements to win some improvements (pay and working conditions), or obtain a temporary postponement of measures that generated conflict, for instance, the introduction of new fees for basic services. They also customarily obtained a legal “concession” as part of negotiations to restore “peace” at the workplace. However, with certain frequency, the conflict ended with the “activists” being arrested and indicted. Movement leaders were not only fired from their jobs, but also sentenced to prison or internal banishment to remote areas of the country. Violations of rights were generally justified in the name of the common good, social peace, and political stability. At some mines and in agriculture, dismissal also meant eviction from housing and the town. Repressive violence often resulted in deaths. Public outcry over the dead and wounded led to denunciations in the press and in Congress, blaming the government for the turn in events. In some cases, the Senate appointed special investigative commissions to ascertain the facts, the perpetrators, and the responsible parties. Initially, judicial inquiries fell under the jurisdiction of military courts, owing to the involvement of the police or the Army in the events. Frequently, the responsible parties were identified, but amnesty laws almost always suspended court action. Judicial oblivion and impunity became entrenched as the basis for social peace. During the twentieth century, social memory was the memory of tragedies associated with social struggles in northern and southern Chile.3 Historiographic interest in such events led to the reconstruction of segments of twentieth-century social history, unearthing the historic and political context that framed these episodes.4

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In most cases the facts were reconstructed from press reports, court proceedings, through Congress records and survivors’ recollections. The commemoration of these tragedies has become a ritual of unions and parties of the political Left ever since the events occurred, with greater social and public interest during certain periods of national history. Yet, in general, it had meaning only within the context of such organizations. However, the greatest dissemination of the memory of these social struggles may well be Pablo Neruda’s epic poem Canto General published in 1950.5 Its subject is the history of the Americas and of Chile, marked by violence and political repression in different periods. In the poem “The Massacre” of Canto General, Neruda reflects on the past and describes the consequences of political repression in all eras: “the people’s death was as it has always been: as if nobody had died, nothing.”6 In the late 1940s, at the onset of the Cold War, waves of repression were unleashed against unions and political organizations, while the Communist Party was outlawed through the extension of internal security laws. Neruda, a senator and a Communist, was persecuted and forced to flee clandestinely from Chile in 1948. In 1952, he would receive a presidential pardon but he was out of the country for several years more. The Communist Party was banned until 1958. In the late 1960s, Chile was a country that valued order and a stable institutional base that had been built over a century and a half upon the scaffolding of a conservative spirit strongly rooted in rural and Catholic origins. Inequalities, inequities, and differences coexisted in the private and social spheres, but gradually an awareness of individual rights began to emerge, through the social and political demands of social organizations and political party platforms. Social reform, and agrarian reform in particular, shifted the country’s economic and structural base. The growing presence of women, peasants, and urban poor in various venues of social and political participation generated greater awareness of rights and bolder demands for social change. The influence of the Cuban revolution was evident in certain political groups and movements that proposed a revolutionary program for Chile.7 5.2

The Salvador Allende Government and the Military Coup

In 1970, the Socialist physician and veteran politician, Salvador Allende was elected President of Chile with a coalition of left-wing political parties known as the Popular Unity. The ethics of social justice inspired Allende’s platform and attracted broad-ranging social sectors. To fulfill the program

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of the political platform, various social reforms were set in motion, while others initiated by the previous presidential administration, such as agrarian reform, were intensified, with an enormous impact upon the transformation of social and economic relations in the countryside.8 In July 1971, the National Congress unanimously voted to nationalize copper.9 The creation of a social area of the economy (state property and mixed property ownership with worker participation) as well as reforms in education and health were fundamental features of the Allende government’s policies. Cabinet ministers and undersecretaries were appointed from the Popular Unity coalition parties, most of them of Marxist ideology, and represented a broad social spectrum. Old miners worked alongside professionals with vast international experience and with young Christians committed to social change. However, the Popular Unity government policy encountered resistance from various segments of Chilean society. Moreover, the country became the center of Cold War political dilemmas. A national and international conspiracy exacerbated insurmountable obstacles to policy implementation, driving the Allende government to a situation in which it was impossible to govern. The conflict heightened on different fronts.10 Political opponents orchestrated a press and mass media campaign to discredit Salvador Allende’s government, equating problems in day-to-day existence with catastrophic consequences: shortage of basic goods and complete chaos, lack of capacity to govern, and civil war. The media campaign evoked anxiety, frustration, fear, and uncertainty in many people. However, it would not have been successful had the country not been besieged by real problems such as a shortage of basic goods and the looming phantom of civil war as inevitable denouement.11 5.3

The Military Dictatorship (1973–1990)

Augusto Pinochet became commander-in-chief of the Army in August 1973. He headed the military “pronouncement” and defined it (as well as the political repression that followed) as an action to “save the nation” and as a necessary reaction in light of the climate of political conflict that threatened order and legality. But the denouement of 1973 had been determined long before the conflict exploded in the country, as documents declassified in 1999 by U.S. President Bill Clinton clearly show. These documents disclose the United States’ intervention and involvement in engendering the military coup and its support for General Pinochet’s government.12 The first available official information about that intervention was the product of an inquiry undertaken by the U.S. Senate in 1975. Known as the Church Report, the

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document unveiled facts about the conspiracy set in motion long before Salvador Allende won the 1970 presidential election. Funds destined to influence Chilean politics were first distributed in 1963, with intervention in the 1964 election when Eduardo Frei Montalva was elected president.13 According to the Church Report, the military coup was masterminded in 1970 in the United States under Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, contradicting the official story recounted by the military junta when it took power. The military regime blamed the deposed government for the economic, financial, social, and political chaos rampant in the country. Numerous bibliographic sources published by the protagonists and their supporters elucidate the origins of the intervention and the military regime.14 Although the chaos was designed deliberately to bring the political and economic situation to the brink of collapse and political polarization aligned everyone either for or against the government, the explanations from each side simplified the process. Either everything plaguing Chile stemmed from the Popular Unity’s incapacity and ineffectiveness, or everything stemmed from a conspiracy against the Popular Unity. The Popular Unity government was also accused of devising a plan to murder its opponents. Known as “Plan Z,” the alleged plot was signaled as a psychological and political justification for ruthless repression. In reality, Plan Z comprised a major strategy of psychological warfare intended to pave the road for the military coup and gain the support of all who believed they were threatened.15 Thousands of people accused of participation in Plan Z were arrested and imprisoned. Many were tortured and murdered under the guise of searching for weapons with which they planned to kill thousands of opponents. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission explained this situation in the following terms: the subjective climate created in the country prior to the military coup—an inflammatory press, frenzied political leaders, an economy in chaos, an institutional base broken by confrontation, subversive violence—determined the behavior of the military and especially the deployment of force to control the situation . . . This danger, subjectively perceived but not objectively proven, [the Rettig Report discounted the existence of Plan Z] is the rationale for acts of violence that permitted the military to regain control of the country. The sense that the institutional base had been restored conferred legitimacy to the violence itself. It is what the generals call “extreme situations.”16 The military coup is commonly described as having ruptured national coexistence and being a cataclysm for people affected by political repression.

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Political polarization gave way to violence and fear was ever-present in daily lives, and social and political relations. In a few short hours the social conflict transformed into war, as defined by the new officials. Psychological warfare operations aimed to shape public opinion to support the Popular Unity’s overthrow, the coup, and the de facto government. Such maneuvers also were intended to justify the mass-scale human rights violations and were sustained by systematic disinformation and censorship, as well as the manipulation of the population’s expectations and fears. The military dictatorship traumatically interrupted a political process of increasing social participation in the name of geopolitical interests and a political-ideological perspective that represented the interests of the Chilean right and multinational economic entities. In addition, for a segment of the nation, the concept of authoritarian order has been and continues to represent a guarantee of political stability and security in daily life. This enabled the military regime to enjoy popular support throughout the country. Pinochet won 42 percent of citizen support in the 1988 plebiscite, when he was intent upon being elected to govern for the next eight years. The concept of authoritarian order stems from Chile’s foundational roots, manifest in social relations and everyday life, as well as in laws that safeguard public order. From the constitutional states of exception that multiplied in character and application during the military regime, to the numerous interior security laws that established special authority, press censorship, and arms control, a political culture has been built in which authoritarian expressions are perceived as a guarantee of order and public security.17 The fact that the majority of Chileans lack memory (and knowledge) of the recent and remote past has led to a fragmented judgment regarding the military intervention, the repression, and its consequences. Recent studies extend knowledge of the past and help ensure that memory of that past is not associated only with political repression and its effects.18 Nevertheless, the dictatorship was a long chapter of repression within a national history fraught with chapters of repression sustained by impunity in the name of order and a narrow concept of democracy and the common good. The military regime was characterized by the ruthless persecution of adherents of the deposed government and of all opposition to the dictatorship. In a country with only 10 million inhabitants in 1973, an estimated 2,000 people died in extra-judicial executions ordered by war councils, in fictitious armed confrontations, through torture and invocation of the fugitive law (ley de fuga). Another 1,200 persons were arrested, tortured, and forcibly disappeared. Approximately 12,000 people sought asylum in embassies and close to 200,000 were compelled to leave the country for exile during the entire regime. More than 50,000 people were arrested and

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tortured, while at least 100,000 were dismissed from their jobs for political reasons. Nearly 4,000 peasants, who were political leaders or activists, were expelled from the land that had been granted under agrarian reform. These figures, always rough calculations, allude to a selective persecution, in every region and place of the nation that destroyed the lives of people, their families, community organizations, unions, political parties, as well as peaceful social coexistence. Prisoners were treated as if they had no rights. Humiliated, abused, and tortured, they were branded as national enemies. Torture was a mode of exercising power that starkly showed the radical breakdown in social relations. With everyday relationships clouded by a veil of suspicion and fear, daily life was shattered. Torture became a routine dimension of the brutal exercise of power, carried to the brink of death. Practiced systematically with the intention of achieving the submission of the other through threat, torture generated fear of extreme suffering and augmented the fear of death. Torture was exercised by Chileans, the majority members of the Armed Forces or police, on behalf of the state and the nation—the same state and the same nation as the prisoners, those everyone belonged to. Torturer and torture victim were unknown to each other. As strangers, each literally embodied the schisms that existed in society. One was subjected to torture in the name of the prevailing power, and resisted in the name of his/her loyalties. The other performed his/her job, obediently following orders from superiors who claimed to defend the nation. They represented the opposing views that were debated in society. The mission of saving the nation apparently had to traverse a course of death and destruction of fellow citizens labeled as enemies. The torturers would forget the prisoner’s name and would categorically deny ever having mistreated or tortured anyone. Their conscience appeared not to be ruffled in the least. They were ordered to torture and kill. They could only obey. Moreover, all their actions appeared justified in a context saturated with a discourse that dehumanized the victim and transformed him or her into a contemptible, evil being; a terrorist, a subversive. Torture came to comprise an aspect of the daily fear of thousands. A detainee could corroborate that the hatred was not personal, but rather the projection of political hatreds, that transformed the prisoner into a dangerous enemy, thus justifying the use of violence to save the nation. Each tortured body was marked by the destruction exercised upon it. The torturers denied this practice was unacceptable. Even today, those who endured torture can barely enunciate the words to name the pain and humiliation, and they refer to the experience as a way of dying. However, there existed a certain social tolerance of abuse and torture as repressive mechanisms, and moral indignation or repudiation was completely absent from the segment

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of society that supported the dictatorship until many years after the advent of political transition. Such tolerance was quite pervasive. However, in a country in which the deaths of some—the massacres—had been widely denounced, especially in the National Congress, and collective memory retained the remembrance of what occurred, the initial news in September 1973 of mass executions, fugitive law killings, and the implementation of death sentences by war councils, provoked a sense of cataclysm among those who perceived themselves as potential victims. The lack of information propagated rumors. The estimated number of people arrested grew exponentially. The number of bodies seen floating along the rivers multiplied by hundreds every day. It was unclear whether hundreds of bodies were in the rivers or if hundreds of people had seen them float by, and hundreds of people had heard something about those bodies.19 A similar situation occurred with the bodies left lying outdoors for days on the streets. Their numbers multiplied by the number of eyes who saw them, when passing by. Likewise, the approximated numbers of victims was the product of a terrorized imagination. Prisoners in the sports stadiums and in jails escalated from hundreds to thousands. Terror made the numbers swell. The meaning of homeland was altered in this context. No longer was it possible to refer to the notion of homeland in the sense of a shared identity, sustained in shared traditions and political beliefs, as well as similar education and socialization. The so-called subversives, extremists, and leftists were defined as non-Chileans, as antipatriots, and traitors, and, therefore, susceptible not only to exclusion, but also extermination. It was as if the diametrically opposed readings of reality constructed during the conflict had demonized social relations, producing terror and death. Afterward fear and silence reigned for many years. Public silence accompanied private horror and suffering. Social life became “normalized” by cleaning streets and statues, suppressing slogans written on the walls, murals, and street art in an attempt to erase the memory of political ideas and its protagonists. Parallel to this, political repression was carried out in the framework of a profound economic, technological, and institutional modernization. Such transformations that the military government called “modernizations” received the enthusiastic support of many Chileans, while the menacing climate and political repression created a country of enemies. Fear was constructed through personal experience. It was reconstructed in the narratives of terror, in the lack of information, in the imagination, in the silence of the night, intensified in curfew (that lasted, with a few lapses, until 1988), in subjects silenced by censorship and self-censorship. Fear swelled from the perception that the power to kill was unchecked by law and that it was limitless.20

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Persecution targeted ideas, plans, and dreams, rarely, real crimes. The boundaries between life and death became blurred, and people lost the capacity to control their daily life and future. Fear, uncertainty, and insecurity invaded social instances. Mistrust grew. Familiar places became inhospitable, aggressive, and sinister, even for people who had no involvement and no desire to become involved. The dictatorship was a time characterized by the loss of boundaries between private and public worlds. People were persecuted for their ideas and political participation, their body and psyche destroyed, their homes invaded, and their loved ones threatened. Paradoxically, the effects of the persecution had to be lived as the victim’s private concern, in the shadow of the watchful eye of the state to prevent the shame and humiliation of political repression from falling upon family members. Many denied their experience. Fearing reprisal, once they reported what had happened to them, they resigned themselves that it was over and nothing could be done about it. But others did denounce in the courts, in the press, wrote about what had happened to them in memoirs, novels, and investigative journalism.21 The memory of this past compresses in a few images: La Moneda, the presidential palace bombed and in flames; thousands of prisoners in stadiums and military bases; the military occupation of the country. These images are a counterpoint to the shared memory of present-day Chile as a country with an idealized democratic past that advanced social change in the context of respect for the law. Nevertheless, repression and torture were the tools and the means of governmental policy for nearly two centuries. Although political resistance arose to this type of abuse, its success was quite limited. That those repressive episodes would be repeated was a certainty, precisely on account of the impunity that perpetrators had enjoyed following each chapter of repression in Chilean history. 5.4 Multifaceted Resistance to the Dictatorship Resistance to the dictatorship had different expressions and protagonists over time. In 1973, Decree Law 77 banned the political parties of the Popular Unity. Subsequent decrees toughened the punishment for various crimes associated with outlawed political activities. Political parties organized clandestinely to resist the persecution and oppose the dictatorship both within and outside Chile, at great risk of becoming targets of political repression.22 The Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), which had not been part of the Popular Unity coalition, initiated armed resistance to the military regime, and later, in the 1980s, the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, tied to the Communist Party, conducted armed resistance actions.23 The

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memory of these activities has been reconstructed through the memoirs, essays, and studies of some political leaders of the time,24 while the Latin American Social Sciences Faculty (FLACSO)’s Santiago office created the Eugenio Ruiz-Tagle Digital Documentary Archive.25 Beyond Chile’s borders, political resistance was initially organized through Democratic Chile Committees, with an array of political and cultural activities in more than 50 countries where Chileans found refuge. Moral (and political) resistance to human rights violations found expression in acts of solidarity with victims through legal defense, and the repressive policies through cases filed in court were documented.26 Nonprofit human rights organizations possess vast documentary sources on these actions, comprising an archival body that has been declared a world heritage of humanity.27 Moral resistance initially was sustained through initiatives undertaken by religious institutions (Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Orthodox Church of Chile, and Jewish Communities) that set up the Committee for Cooperation for Peace in October 1973.28 The Committee provided legal assistance for persecuted people and social service support for their families. Less than a year after embarking on this mission, the military regime began exerting pressure upon the churches, expelled Lutheran bishop Helmut Frenz, and forced the Committee to close in December 1975.29 Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez thereupon founded the Solidarity Vicariate, based in the offices of the Santiago Archdiocese to resume legal defense and continue the Committee’s work. The Vicariate closed in 1992. Victims came together in various organizations, seeking to ease the situations that affected them. The Association of Relatives of Disappeared Persons persists with its labor today and has played a very significant role in national politics, by preventing human rights violations from languishing in impunity.30 This moral resistance had the permanent backing of international agencies. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the Inter American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (IACHR), the International Labor Organization (ILO), the World Council of Churches, Amnesty International (AI), the International Organization of Jurists, and many more reacted with alarm to the events taking place in Chile. Some of these entities sent representatives to the country, linking Chilean individuals and organizations to others both within and outside of Chile.31 The IACHR received denunciations of human rights violations from September 1973 onward, and its annual reports denounced the persistence of human rights violations up to the end of the military regime.32 Throughout

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this entire period, the IACHR repeatedly requested that the government respond to accusations of situations and cases reported, and urged the restoration of respect for individual rights.33 The United Nations Commission on Human Rights similarly received denunciations of violations. The Chilean government formally acknowledged demands to respect individual rights, but continued the practices of torture and disappearance. During its 1974 session, the UN General Assembly’s assessment was that the situation was extremely serious. On November 6, 1974, with 90 votes in favor, 8 against, and 26 abstentions, the General Assembly condemned Chile for human rights violations. That initial condemnation would be repeated every year of the regime’s duration, until 1989.34 A group of Protestant churches and representatives of the Catholic Church as well as the Orthodox Church in Chile came together in 1975 to form the Social Aid Foundation of Christian Churches (Fundación de Ayuda Social de las Iglesias Cristianas, FASIC) that continues to exist today, in 2009.35 Subsequently, other human rights organizations were created, such as the Committee for Defense of the People’s Rights (CODEPU) in 1980 and the Chilean Human Rights Commission in 1978.36 These offices provided legal defense, social assistance, health services, and medical-psychological care for families who endured traumatic experiences of political repression.37 Human rights attorneys continue working at CODEPU, FASIC, and the governmental Human Rights Program of the Legal Assistance Service on cases in process in the courts. Services for victims included medical and psychological care, provided by professional mental health staff of the various human rights organizations. The concept of trauma encompassed the subjective effects and consequences of human rights violations, including the radical rupture of the individual’s life projection and the destructive effects of torture and repression on personal relationships and the family.38 The concept of “reparation” was a key element in psychological and therapeutic approach, conceived not only in emotional but also historical, social, and economic terms. Cultural resistance had multifaceted expressions, although it had limited scope. Groups of people and individuals created theater, art performances, essays, poetry, murals, and the patchworks called arpilleras.39 Each comprised a fragment of a kaleidoscope of emotions that spurred artistic expression, associated with efforts to remain socially alive. The arpilleras are patchworks of embroidered tapestries that narrate pieces of history. The creators of arpilleras were women searching for their sons and daughters, fathers or husbands, who had been arrested and, sometimes, disappeared.

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The arpilleras were memories of those days, created by women whose family life and economic situation had been tragically disrupted.40 Theater deserves a special note. Various theater companies existed in Chile during the dictatorship. The history of Chilean theater then is one of constant struggle for survival and keeping hope alive, often at the cost of arrest, imprisonment, or expulsion from the country. Such was the case of the Aleph theater group in 1974. Theater companies during dictatorship ran the risk of being shut down without warning, actors, and directors received death threats, and were attacked by “unknown” assailants. Many other theater groups, actors, creators, documentary producers, artists, filmmakers, singers, composers, musicians, painters, muralists, and culture workers made a meaningful contribution in maintaining and expressing democratic culture in times of the “cultural black-out” under the dictatorship. Resistance to the dictatorship was also expressed in the articulation of social actions that gave greater visibility to the magnitude and capacity of mobilization, overcoming fear and repression. Workers’ resistance was channeled through the labor union movement, dismantled by de facto decree laws preventing union activity, and was met with arrests, torture, exile, and the killing of many union leaders who opposed the dictatorship. The ILO and its Union Freedom Committee logged many denunciations from international labor organizations in the days immediately following the military coup.41 On September 13, 1973, the Latin American Workers Federation, supported by the World Confederation of Labor (WCL), filed a series of denunciations, complaining that a great number of union leaders, not only Chilean but also of other Latin American nations who had taken refuge in Chile, were arrested and the military government had disbanded the Chilean Workers Central (Central Única de Trabajadores, CUT).42 Overcoming tremendous odds, opposition media emerged to inform about what was happening. In the late 1970s, the magazines APSI and Análisis began publication. In early 1980 another magazine, Cauce, was founded, and the daily newspaper Fortín Mapocho began circulating later that year. The newspaper La Epoca and magazine Página Abierta emerged in the late 1980s. Alternative press played a significant role in reporting on human rights violations and providing greater visibility to the opposition movement to the regime. Since its earliest days and throughout the entire dictatorship period, the Vicariate of Solidarity printed the free news bulletin Solidaridad that informed Chileans about problems that affected the nation.43 A broad range of civil society organizations such as “Women for life” began organizing mobilizations in 1981 to confront the dictatorship’s “culture of death.” Another significant group was the Sebastián Acevedo

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Movement Against Torture that launched its public campaign in 1983, inspired by a father who died after setting himself ablaze at the doors to the cathedral in the city of Concepción, demanding that authorities release his two teenage children who were held in custody and tortured.44 Professional associations also denounced the repression unleashed against colleagues and the effects of the regime’s policies on their professions. Union members, working-class neighborhood residents, and students elevated visibility to the protests held against the regime beginning in 1983. Press and documentary film recorded these actions, capturing memorable dimensions of creative resistance in different spheres of national life. Such activities fostered the construction of an effective political opposition movement. In 1988, representatives of the parties opposed to the regime came together to form the Concertation of Parties for Democracy, a political coalition that governed Chile between 1990 and 2010. The political coalition identified human rights violations and their effects on society as its main concern, focusing on the clarification of those crimes as a priority. From this stated principle, a government’s policy originated that recognized that the human rights violations took place and established reparations for victims. 5.5 The Political Transition and Human Rights Transitions to democracy endeavor to address a fundamental strategic objective: to rebuild national unity that was deeply affected by the political polarization entrenched at the onset of conflict and later maintained by political repression. The majority of transitional regimes invite “reconciliation” amongst citizens. The conditions of Chile’s political reconciliation were first discussed in the 1980s. At the time, there was consensus among opponents to the dictatorship that reconciliation depended on the capacity to confront, both politically and judicially, the impact of human rights violations. Despite consensus on this issue, the appeal for reconciliation provoked resistance from various segments of society. The implicit or explicit reference to the need to “forget the past and forgive” was widely rejected, especially by victims. Patricio Aylwin’s presidential term started in 1990. A central issue of his administration was the recognition of the effects of human rights violations. The swearing in ceremony of the new government took place on March 12, 1990, in the National Stadium, the capital’s largest sports arena, which the military had converted into a prison and place of torture for thousands of political prisoners immediately after the coup. During the ceremony,

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President Aylwin referred to the stadium as a place where human rights were violated, in the following words: in this facility, that in the sad days of fateful hatred, when force prevailed over reason, was a place of imprisonment and torture for many fellow citizens, we declare to all Chileans and to the entire world that observes us . . . Never again! Never again shall human dignity be trampled! Never again fratricidal hatred! Never again will there be violence between brothers! . . . We have said and today we solemnly reiterate that the nation’s moral conscience demands clarification of the truth regarding the disappearance of persons, horrendous crimes and other serious human rights violations during dictatorship. We also have said—and I repeat today—that we must approach this sensitive matter by reconciling the virtue of justice with the virtue of prudence and that once personal responsibility materializes, the time for forgiveness will arrive.45 Augusto Pinochet remained commander-in-chief of the Army until 1998. As of 1990, matters relating to past human rights violations, addressed directly or indirectly to Pinochet, were almost always met with veiled or open threats. This was perceived as a constant warning against the fragile political stability of the transition. President Patricio Aylwin’s speeches during his first year in office emphasized the concept of framing human rights policy as a kind of navigational chart for tasks still pending. In his first address to the National Congress, two months after taking office, President Aylwin described the central points of the government’s human rights policy as follows: Our first task is to achieve national reconciliation founded upon truth and justice. In order to achieve the national unity we long for, it is essential that we overcome the injuries of the past, repair offenses, erase suspicion, and dissolve mistrust. Only then will we be able to achieve a true—not just superficial—national reconciliation . . . It is for these reasons that, fulfilling what I always told the nation— and no one can be caught by surprise—I have commissioned the complex task of stanching the wounds inflicted in the past.46 5.6 The Resistance of Memory Created in April 1990, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presented its report to President Aylwin in February 1991. The commission’s mandate

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called for producing true, indisputable information to ascertain the facts and offering a moral foundation for the measures aimed at providing reparation to the victims. The commission developed specific reparations proposals for relatives of the victims identified in the report. Reparation initiatives included health care and psychotherapeutic services, pensions, scholarships for children of persons disappeared and killed, as well as public acknowledgment of the victims’ suffering as a consequence of the crimes of the dictatorship.47 Upon informing the nation of the commission’s findings, the President noted: The rule of truth is the foundation of all coexistence . . . In the issue of human rights violations in our country, the truth was concealed during a very long time. While some people denounced violations, others—who knew—denied it was happening and people who should have investigated, did not. This explains why many people, perhaps the majority, did not believe this was happening. And this discrepancy became a new factor that divided Chileans. The report I hereby present for public knowledge clarifies the Truth.48 In this speech, Aylwin asked the victims’ families for forgiveness on behalf of the nation. This gesture reconciled the abuses a government of Chileans had committed against them, while also accepting the historical responsibility this implied. The impact of the commission report, known as the Rettig Report for the commission’s head Raúl Rettig, was immediate. Civilians who had supported the military regime and the Armed Forces rejected its findings, reaffirming that they had saved the nation from the Marxist threat, as if this argument sufficed to justify facts that could no longer be denied. The Rettig Report’s meticulous work might have stimulated debate concerning the past. Instead, it sparked off an upsurge in terrorist action, beginning with the assassination of Jaime Guzmán, senator for the Independent Democratic Union party (UDI), the military regime’s ideologue. This action redefined terrorism as carried out by small groups and Guzmán’s murder became the focus of national attention instead of state terrorism. The commission verified slightly over 3,000 victims. This figure was far below the imagined numbers that arose from the emotional impact of terror in the early years after the coup. A traumatized imagination had multiplied them infinitely. Even today disagreement over the precise number of victims exists. Perhaps “the people’s” figures constitutes a metaphor for the cataclysm, and, for this reason, official figures will always be lower than the subjective reality that always signaled hundreds of thousands of victims.

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The Armed Forces rejected the report, sustaining that the coup and the subsequent repression were morally justified, alluding to alleged colossal evils that had been thwarted. Therefore, any atrocities committed had been “the lesser evil.” The military also referred to the immense collective benefits achieved (especially economic accomplishments). Once again, the Armed Forces repeated the same arguments, this time to the commission, that they had always employed to justify military intervention.49 The dictatorship insistently emphasized its role as “savior” that had rescued the nation from morally reprehensible actions, an argument put forth to justify their acts and exonerate individuals—perpetrators and spectators—from possible pangs of remorse. Claiming to act in the name of moral, religious, or ideological principles to torture or murder persons connotes, above all, that conscious mechanisms are employed to defend specific political interests of certain groups within society. The definition of who the enemy is, the reason for annihilating it, and in whose name or on behalf of what values it is exterminated can change over time, but the atrocities committed in wars reveal that combatants are capable of extreme acts of horror and brutality if authorities, which are considered legitimate, justify those actions in name of the common good. It has also been observed that an individual is more inclined to inflict injury upon another if the suffering is invisible and the other is reduced to the category of a threat to the social order, deserving persecution and death, even with support from the people.50 The Rettig Report detailed how political justification was constructed on the basis of the legalization of repression that made it possible for the situation to find, if not acceptance, at least tolerance, from various sectors. The truth commission (with “and reconciliation” as surname) announced in its name the contradiction of proclaiming truth regarding human rights violations, exposing the atrocities and injustices inflicted upon the victims— crimes against humanity—in a political context in which impunity was guaranteed thanks to the amnesty decreed in 1978. While acknowledging the existence of conflicting views of events, as well as conflicting interpretations and justifications, the commission proved that the facts, so often disclaimed and denied, indeed had taken place. Yet, political reconciliation requires not only truth and reparations policies, but also justice and recognition of the victims’ rights. Thus, the objective of obtaining the commitment of democratic citizens to prevent the recurrence of repressive violence as the primary tool for surmounting political conflicts would require the guarantee to respect the rights of all persons and to ensure that perpetrators will be brought to trial. Nevertheless, throughout Chilean history, impunity had provided the foundation for social peace and appeared to be installing itself once again. However, reconciliation will not

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be possible if impunity prevails, and political reconciliation must include justice as prerequisite. A reparations policy was developed with this recognition as point of departure and victims’ associations advocated historical memory policies, frequently backed by the various elected governments since 1990. They included the creation and upkeep of sites of memory, memorials in cemeteries where many victims are buried, memorial plaques, and other commemorations.51 This time around, the circumstances of the deaths and names of the victims killed found official support, as a result of the persistent efforts by family members to keep their memory alive. 5.7

Memories and Their Contexts

The description of each case contained in the Rettig Commission Report denotes the victims’ party membership, supplied by relatives. Yet, during the dictatorship, many families attempted to conceal political affiliations to avoid the recurrence of repression against relatives. It is as if, to acknowledge the condition of victim, one needed to ignore the (political) motive that made this person a target of repression; and as if recognizing the reality of the conflict reactivated political polarization, ideological differences, and hatred, and hindered “memorialization.” A few years ago, some groups began efforts to reclaim the victims’ political history and to have their political affiliation before and during the dictatorship recognized for they claimed that this political option gave meaning to the victim’s life and death.52 Truth commission reports focus on the crimes committed against the victims and the effect of these crimes, which, in some way, eases society’s concerns about that past by having a document that ensures awareness about that truth, even though the majority of the citizens and even the victims themselves are unfamiliar with the report’s content. Even so, the perception and memory of the painful past and the suffering that victims endured tend to fade over time, precisely owing to the immense emotional and moral (but also physical and material) impact on the lives of family members. Many relatives do not wish to remember. Others do not want to know. Remembering the victims’ names, beyond the personal circle of those who loved them, has nearly insurmountable limitations when it involves thousands of people. The anonymity of victims will fall away to the extent that their names are associated with the concrete history of their political group and the global history of the nation through public memory. In this way, the public memory of the victims allows others to accompany family members in their mourning process that, from the beginning, has been disturbed and discredited as if it were only a private concern. In turn, public memory contributes to

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maintaining clarity as regards the political causality of the repression and deaths of these persons. Memory may be understood as a version of history that interprets events of the past evoked from personal experiences and emotions. Feelings and emotions define the memories that are selected for retention. These shape an indelible memory that constitutes a hallucinatory present impervious to the passage of time. It is a traumatic memory. Those who remember can identify with others’ narratives and with the feelings these evoke, perceiving this history as belonging to them. The diversity of narratives builds communities of memory about a shared past. However, when that past is punctuated by death and fear, by political commitments that led many to love their cause more than their own life, then, memory defers us to existential signifiers that gave meaning to their lives and comprised an emotional, moral, existential, and political sphere that shaped personal identity. Emotional intensity and social practice of these memories affect the nature of the memory retained. Thus, some collective and public memories center on the victims, sanctifying and idealizing them. At times they are transformed into heroes. Sometimes they are disconnected from the historic context. Some private memories transit from initial idealization to repudiation and rejection of the victims’ political ideas, only to later reintegrate these as intrinsic elements that comprise emotions, associations, and personal memories. The interfacing of the intimate and personal realm with the collective and social realm is responsible for the persistence of memory of the victims of political repression, particularly in the setting of their family and those who identify with them and their political ideas. However, this does not guarantee that memories will have meaning for other segments of society. In the case of Chile, the memory of the victims has prevailed over other memories of the recent past. As occurred with the massacres and tragedies that affected social movements of the twentieth century, this memory retains a past linked to death and political repression. This way of memorializing has been the heritage of the political Left that intends it to become the memory of—and for—the entire society. However, the memory of massacres remains peripheral, absent from official accounts of history during decades. When the memory of “those who fell” is retained only as tribute and as an expression of mourning for those people who died, over time it tends to be relegated to anonymity, the history of life and struggle reduced to the commemoration of tragedy, persecution, and death. Neruda wrote many poems that became memories of a scarcely recorded past, linking personal loss to political processes. Perhaps the poem Forever of Canto General best exemplifies the concept of memory that has traversed the tragedies of twentieth-century Chile. In

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this poem, Neruda proposes an indelible memory, whose meaning is the hope for “the final day of suffering.”53 Then, it is not death and tragedy that maintain memory, but rather the hope that endowed their lives with meaning throughout the course of time and the centuries. But hope does not seem to have the same metaphoric meaning it did during the first half of the twentieth century to which Neruda alluded. Still, if collective memory in Chile continues to consist of the memory of tragedy and death, without moving onward to life, it will remain a mourning process that cannot close. And that memory may become trapped by the duty to commemorate a tragedy, at the risk of forgetting the meaning of the lives of those who died in these circumstances. Final Reflections Moral, psychological, and political resistance to abuse frequently has centered upon the stories of specific persons who were victims and who left concrete evidence of what happened, and whose personal narratives foster the identification of hundreds, if not thousands, of other narratives. How should we recount these stories in Latin America in such a way that people will listen to them? Why should we remember and why make others remember? Why should the memories be made into history? For what purpose do we remember and commemorate? What political meaning does memory have? What is the role in society of this memory-history reconstructed through the victims’ memories? Many of these questions have still to find adequate answers and, in many cases, the questions have not even been articulated. As analyzed in this chapter, memories in a certain way record and reproduce different spheres of collective trauma, which are recognizable by the traces they leave, both in the distant past and in the recent past. These are visible and recognizable in the drama of individual cases, antagonisms, hatred, violence, and death, as a possible sequel. What must be done to prevent this drama from ever reoccurring in Chile or elsewhere? What kind of political, subjective, and moral working through will be required to exorcise the recurrence of the threat of the abuse of power to kill and violate human rights? Is it the moral significance and meaning of memory? Considered from this perspective, a series of dilemmas present themselves that need to be enunciated. What meaning and what content would (does) memory (or memories) have as social (and political) sphere in a pluralistic society? Is this the memory of a truncated political ideal? Is it the memory of victims as ordinary people or as political actors? Is it the equivalent of memories whose legitimacy derives from the condition of individual or group subjective memories? Is it about including in national history not only the event in

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its capacity as historical narratives, but also as the memory of victims? What role should victims and their descendants play in this memory process? What is the state’s responsibility in this regard? How do we build democratic memory, that is, a memory of everyone for peaceful coexistence? And who defines which memories are legitimate? What conditions render them democratic? The conflict and death of the past in Chile has been called an open wound. Again, this metaphor centers on pain as the axis of political consensus to commemorate and memorialize the past, fostering the preeminence of the memory of death and commemorations of the tragedy over memory of life and the ideals for which they gave their lives. This dilemma comprises a facet of a dialogue that must take place in the future to enable differentiation between what has definitely died from what continues living in the conscience and hope of the living, that which is worth remembering and commemorating. Notes This essay, with some modification, was presented at the First International Colloquium of Democratic Memory in Barcelona (October 17–20, 2007), and was subsequently published as “Xile: Dilemes de la Memòria Política” in Polítiques Públiques de la Memòria. I Col·loqui Internacional Memorial Democràtic, ed. Jordi Guixé Coromines and Montserrat Iniesta (Barcelona: Eumo Editorial and Memorial Democràtic, 2009), 33–76. The text has been developed in the context of the Memoria y Justicia project of Alberto Hurtado University with support from the Ford Foundation. 1. The Investigative Commission on the actions of the Ibáñez dictatorship (1931) compiled copious facts regarding these occurrences. See the chapter “Vigilancias” in Los Actos de la Dictadura, Comisión Investigadora, 1931, ed. Brian Loveman and Elizabeth Lira (Santiago: Dirección de Biblioteca, Archivos y Museos/ Centro de Investigaciones Diego Barros Arana, Universidad Alberto Hurtado; LOM Ediciones, 2006), 385–446. 2. Horacio Gamboa, En la Ruta del 2 de Abril (Santiago: Imprenta “Fantasía,” 1962), 161–163. 3. A strike that began in the nitrate mines in December 1907 mobilized thousands of workers to Iquique, capital of Tarapacá province. Workers stayed at Santa María School and began negotiating their demands with officials. On December 21, military forces commanded by Colonel Roberto Silva Renard fired upon the protesting workers. Fatalities have been estimated between 170 and 500 persons. See Eduardo Devés, Los Que Van a Morir Te Saludan. Historia de Una Masacre: Escuela Santa María de Iquique, 1907 (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2002); Pablo Artaza Barrios et al., eds., A Noventa Años de los Sucesos de la Escuela Santa María de Iquique (Santiago: Dirección de Biblioteca, Archivos y Museos/Centro de

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4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

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Investigaciones Diego Barros Arana, Universidad Arturo Prat-Iquique; LOM Ediciones, 1998); Mario Garcés, Crisis Social y Motines Populares en el 1900 (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2003). During the June 4, 1925, massacre at La Coruña Nitrate Office, the Army used cannon to shoot workers at random, while others were thrown dead to the bottom of the sea. Approximately, 2,000 persons were killed in addition to dozens wounded. See Rolando Alvarez Vallejos, “La matanza de La Coruña” Contribuciones Científicas y Tecnológicas 116 (1999): 77–108. Pablo Neruda, Canto General, trans. Jack Schmitt (Berkley: University of California Press, 1991). Neruda, 186–187. Mario Garcés et al., eds., Miguel Enríquez y el Proyecto Revolucionario en Chile (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2004). See Diana Veneros R.-T., Salvador Allende (Santiago: Sudamericana, 2003); Peter Winn, Weavers of Revolution. The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). The documentary trilogy by Patricio Guzmán “La batalla de Chile” is possibly the audiovisual document that best depicts the UP government. Jaime Ruiz-Tagle, “Vía Legal y Transición al Socialismo. Dos Años de Gobierno de la Unidad Popular” in Mensaje. Testimonio de la Historia, 1971–1981 (Santiago: Aconcagua, 1982); Julio Pinto Vallejos, Cuando Hicimos Historia (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2005). Patricio Dooner, Periodismo y Política: La Prensa de Derecha e Izquierda, 1970– 1973 (Santiago: Andante, l989). Emilio Filippi and Hernán Millas, Anatomía de Un Fracaso. La Experiencia Socialista Chilena (Santiago: Zig-Zag, 1973). Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File. A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York: New Press, 2003); Patricia Verdugo, Allende: Cómo la Casa Blanca Provocó Su Muerte (Santiago: Editorial Catalonia, 2003). “Covert Action in Chile 1963–1973. Report of the Committee Appointed to Study Governmental Operations Concering Intelligence Activities” U.S. Senate (December 8, 1975). Cristian Opaso, Frei, Allende y la Mano de la CIA (Santiago: Ediciones del Ornitorrinco, l991). Luis Heinecke Scott, Chile. Crónica de un Asedio, 4 vols. (Santiago: Santa Catalina S.A., 1992); Carlos Molina Johnson, 1973. Algunas de las Razones del Quiebre de la Institucionalidad Política (Santiago: Estado Mayor del Ejército, 1987); Carlos Molina Johnson and Francisco Balart Páez, La Violencia Política en Chile (Santiago: Biblioteca Militar, 1999). For more details about “Plan Z,” see Steve Stern, Battling for Hearts and Minds. Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973–1988. Book Two of the Trilogy “The Memory Box of Pinochet’s Chile” (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 41–56. Ascanio Cavallo, “La Venganza de Allende” La Época, May 17, l991. See Brian Loveman and Elizabeth Lira, Las Ardientes Cenizas del Olvido. Vía Chilena de Reconciliación Política, 1932–1994 (Santiago: DIBAM/LOM

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18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25. 26.

27.

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Ediciones, 2000); Brian Loveman and Elizabeth Lira, Arquitectura Política y Seguridad Interior del Estado, Chile 1811–1990 (Santiago: DIBAM/Centro de Investigaciones Diego Barros Arana, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2002). See Verónica Valdivia, El Golpe Después del Golpe (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2003); Mario Garcés and Sebastián Leiva, El Golpe en La Legua (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2005). See Ariel Dorfman, Widows, trans. Stephen Kessler (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983); The film “Lonquén” produced in 1980 by an anonymous group identified only as “Grupo Memoria” portrays the discovery of the bodies of disappeared persons in the rural zone of Lonquen. Years later the filmmaker was identified, and so was the director, Ignacio Agüero. For a study on fear in dictatorship, see Elizabeth Lira and Maria Isabel Castillo, eds., Psicología de la Amenaza Política y del Miedo (Santiago: Editorial ILAS, CESOC-Ediciones ChileAmérica, 1991). Hernán Valdés, Tejas Verdes. Diario de un Campo de Concentración en Chile (Barcelona: Ariel, 1974); Jorge Montealegre, Frazadas del Estadio Nacional (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2003); Claudio Enrique Durán Pardo, Autobiografía de Un Ex Jugador de Ajedrez (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2003); Pascale Bonnefoy Miralles, Terrorismo de Estadio. Prisioneros de Guerra en Un Campo de Deportes (Santiago: Ediciones CESOC, 2005). DL 81 established “penalties for those who disobey government orders to report to officials who, for state security reasons, and for those who re-enter the country, violating the law.” Published in the Diario Oficial (Nº 28.694, November 6, 1973). Miguel Enríquez, “El MIR y las Elecciones Presidenciales” in Con Vista a la Esperanza (Santiago: Escaparate Ediciones, 1998); Hernán Vidal, FPMR: El Tabú del Conflicto Armado en Chile (Santiago: Mosquito Editores, 1995). Cynthia Brown, Diez Años De Atropellos A los Derechos Humanos en Chile (New York: Americas Watch Committee, 1984); Jorge Arrate and Eduardo Rojas, Memoria de la Izquierda Chilena, Tomo II, 1970–2000 (Santiago: Ediciones B, 2003); Rolando Álvarez, Desde las Sombras. Una Historia de la Clandestinidad Comunista, 1973–1980 (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2003); Genaro Arriagada Herrera, Por la Razón o la Fuerza. Chile Bajo Pinochet (Santiago: Sudamericana, 1989); Verónica Valdivia, Rolando Álvarez and Julio Pinto, Su Revolución Contra Nuestra Revolución (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2006); Sergio Bitar, Isla 10, 11th ed. (Santiago: Pehuén Editores, 2009). Fondo Digital Eugenio Ruiz Tagle, Biblioteca FLACSO—Chile, Catálogo en Línea, http://fondo.flacso.cl/b-flacso/opac/index.htm. Vicariate of Solidarity, ¿Donde Están? (Santiago: Vicaría de la Solidaridad, 1979); Máximo Pacheco, Lonquén (Santiago: Aconcagua, 1980); Ruby Weitzel, Tumbas de Cristal, Libro testimonio de la Vicaría de la Solidaridad del Arzobispado de Santiago (Santiago: ChileAmerica-CESOC, 1991). UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program declared the Human Rights Archives of Chile, compiled since 1973 by the Association of Relatives of Disappeared Persons(AFDD); the Corporation for Promotion and Defense of the Rights

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28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33. 34. 35.

36. 37.

38.

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of the People (CODEPU); Vicariate of Solidarity; the Justice and Democracy Corporation; the Christian Churches Social Assistance Foundation (FASIC); the Foundation for the Protection Child Victims of States of Emergency (PIDEE); the Chilean Human Rights Commission and Teleanalisis, international heritage of humanity. See also “La Vicaría de la Solidaridad. Por la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos en Chile,” Memoria Chilena, Portal de la Cultura de Chile, Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos (DIBAM), http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/index.asp?id_ut=lavicariadelasolidaridad(1973-1992). See “Comité de Cooperación para la Paz en Chile (1973–1975),” Memoria Chilena, Portal de la Cultura de Chile, Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos (DIBAM), http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/dest.asp?id=vicariacomite. Pamela Lowden, Moral Opposition to Authoritarian Rule in Chile, 1973–90 (London: Macmillan, 1996); David Fernández, La “Iglesia” Que Resistió a Pinochet. Historia, Desde la Fuente Oral, del Chile Que no Puede Olvidarse (Madrid: IEPALA, 1996). Corporación Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, 20 Años de Historia de la Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos de Chile. Un Camino de Imágenes (Santiago: Corporación Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, 1997); Hernán Vidal, Dar la Vida Por la Vida. Agrupación Chilena de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (Santiago: Mosquito, Biblioteca Setenta & Tres, 1996). The support of the World Council of Churches was fundamental in the creation of human rights organizations and in ensuring legal assistance for persecuted people, especially from 1973 to 1975. The IACHR conducted special reports about Chile in 1974, 1976, 1977, and 1985, based on information gathered directly in Chile by human rights organizations. After 1990, the IACHR continued to play a significant role in various matters relating to human rights violations committed under the military government. The UN condemnation of 1975 consisted of 95 votes in favor, including the vote of the United States, 11 opposing, and 23 abstentions. Mario Garcés and Nancy Nicholls, Para una Historia de los Derechos Humanos en Chile: Historia Institucional de la Fundación de Ayuda Social de las Iglesias Cristianas FASIC, 1975–1991 (Santiago: LOM Ediciones; Fundación de Ayuda Social de las Iglesias Cristianas, 2005). Chilean Human Rights Commission Annual Report, 1982 (Santiago, 1983); Chilean Human Rights Commission, Gracias al Mundo (Santiago, 1989). Social Aid Foundation of Christian Churches, Jornada de Abogados Defensores de Presos Políticos en Chile (Santiago: FASIC, 1989); Vicaría de la Solidaridad, “Una Experiencia de Defensa Legal de Los Derechos Humanos Fundamentales, 1981,” Legal Department, http://www.memoriachilena.cl/archivos2/ pdfs/MC0043533.pdf. Elizabeth Lira and Eugenia Weinstein, eds., Psicoterapia y Represión Política (México: Siglo XXI, 1984). FASIC, Exilio 1986–1978 (Santiago: Amerinda Ediciones, 1986). See also Eugenia Weinstein, Elizabeth Lira, and M.E. Rojas

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39.

40. 41. 42.

43.

44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

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et al., Trauma, Duelo y Reparación (Santiago: FASIC-Editorial Interamericana, 1987). See “Arpilleras,” Memoria Chilena, Portal de la Cultura de Chile, Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos (DIBAM), http://www.memoriachilena.cl/ temas/dest.asp?id=vicariaarpilleras. Marjorie Agosin, “Patchwork of Memory. Journal-Chile,” NACLA—Report on the Americas 27 (1994). Elizabeth Lira and Hugo Rojas, eds., Libertad Sindical y Derechos Humanos (Santiago: LOM; DIBAM; ILO; Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2009). ILO, “Caso(s) núm(s). 765, Informe núm. 142 (Chile): Queja contra el Gobierno de Chile presentada por la Federación Sindical Mundial, la Confederación Internacional de Organizaciones Sindicales Libres, la Central Latinoamericana de Trabajadores, la Confederación Mundial del Trabajo y varias otras Organizaciones Sindicales,” http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgilex/pdconvs2.pl?host =status01&textbase=ilospa&document=3195&chapter=3&query=Chile%40re f&highlight=&querytype=bool&context=0. Each of these newspapers and magazines dissolved during the first half of the 1990s. The publication Solidaridad may be consulted at “Solidaridad,” Memoria Chilena, Portal de la Cultura de Chile, Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos (DIBAM), http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/dest. asp?id=vicariasolidaridad. See Hernán Vidal, El Movimiento Contra la Tortura Sebastián Acevedo. Derechos Humanos y la Producción de Símbolos Nacionales Bajo el Fascismo Chileno, 2nd ed. (Santiago: Biblioteca Setenta & Tres, Mosquito Editores, 2002). Patricio Aylwin, La Transición Chilena. Discursos Escogidos, Marzo 1990–1992 (Santiago: Andrés Bello, 1992), 20–21. Aylwin, 31 (“Discurso En el Inicio de la Legislatura Ordinaria del Congreso Nacional,” Valparaíso, May 21, 1990). Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Informe de la Comisión Verdad y Reconciliación (Santiago, 1991), 765. Aylwin, 131 (“Speech Upon Informing the Nation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report,” March 4, 1991). Armed Forces of Chile, Presentación del Ejército de Chile a la Comisión de Verdad y Reconciliación, 4 vols. (Santiago, 1990). Elizabeth Lira, “Y A los Ojos Se Me Asomara la Vida Que Ya Viví (First Prize in the Fourth “Juan Gomez Millas,” Competition held by the Reparations Corporation and the Society of Writers of Chile),” in IV National Essay Competition: For a Culture Respectful of Human Rights (Santiago: Society of Writers of Chile, 1996), 30–68. See Elizabeth Lira and Brian Loveman, Políticas de Reparación Chile: 1990– 2004 (Santiago: LOM Ediciones-DIBAM-Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2005); Roberta Bacic et al., Memorias Recientes De Mi Pueblo. 1973–1990. Muerte y Desaparición Forzada en la Araucanía: Una Aproximación Etnica (Temuco: Centro de Estudios Socio culturales, Universidad Católica de Temuco, 1997).

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52. Rolando Álvarez, Desde las Sombras. Una Historia de la Clandestinidad Comunista, 1973–1980 (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2003); Lucía Sepúlveda Ruiz, 119 de Nosotros (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2005); Comité Memoria Mapu, Ausentes Presentes. Vidas y Memorias (Santiago: El Comité, 2007); Juan Azócar Valdés, Prometamos Jamás Desertar: Apuntes Para Un Memorial De la Militancia Socialista En la Resistencia (Santiago: Fundación Memoria & Futuro, 2007). 53. Neruda, 191.

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CHAPTER 6

The Traces of “Postmemory” in Second-Generation Chilean and Argentinean Identities Alejandra Serpente

O

ver the past two decades, the rise of trauma theory within the field of memory studies in the humanities and social sciences has cemented the concept of “postmemory” as a symbolic transgenerational act of memory transfer from one generation of survivors to a generation of secondary witnesses. This chapter is an exploration into the mechanisms of postmemory, a mode of memory transmission within an intimate family setting, as well as how it applies to communities that form part of bigger transnational diasporas, in this case, second-generation Chileans and Argentineans living in Britain. It seeks to explore the limits of postmemory by calling for an expansion of whom we consider as suitable memory carriers, that is, broadening the limits of the familial and what it means to belong to a “memory community.” By memory community, I mean new spaces where individuals can come together as collectives to remember, but also challenge the dominant modes of memory in the Southern Cone that for so long have privileged the figure of the human rights activist. The issue is not whether postmemory is an act of transference of memory from one generation to the next. Rather, it is whether this connection can also speak about the experiences of a wider generation that is affected by the events of the Southern Cone dictatorships. The case that serves to highlight my argument is that of second-generation

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Chileans and Argentineans living in Britain, and how they relate to their parents’ memories of living under the Southern Cone military dictatorships of the 1970s. The individual subjectivities that this chapter focuses on do not necessarily form part of any formal collective political or social initiative serving to challenge the status quo within a contested memory landscape from abroad. Instead, what they do is hint at other possible alternatives of remembrance. They are memories that remember the dictatorships at a geographical distance from the source of memory debates in the Southern Cone, but whose presence nevertheless has implications on how the “politics of memory” continues to play out into the future.1 A comparison between the children of Chilean political exiles in Britain and the children of Argentineans who came for more economic and professional reasons might at first seem disparate. Nonetheless, it is precisely in their differences that I seek to find common ground, in the sense that the traumatic nature of the dictatorships that Chile and Argentina lived through, impacted on a larger scale beyond the direct victims of state terrorism, albeit in different ways. Larger communities of Argentinean exiles can be found in France and Spain, for example,2 but a significant number of families also left Argentina during the dictatorship and in the decades soon after it ended in 1983 and settled in Britain. These families came to escape economic hardship and find work, and many individuals in the first generation in these families lived under the dictatorship in Argentina as young people, some of whom were highly politicized as university or high school students. Looking at individual second-generation subjectivities in Britain adds to the growing body of work carried out on the Latin American political exiles of the 1970s who escaped the military regimes in Chile and Argentina, by looking at an area that so far has received very scant attention, namely that of the families who did not return home after the restoration of democracy and, in particular, the second generation’s experience of dual belonging. This is an especially pertinent experience for the second generation, who either migrated alongside their parents to Europe or were born in the countries of their parents’ destination, and who grew up with two different cultural influences. In this diasporic framework, the second generation grew up surrounded by their parents’ stories of their homelands, and as the findings of my research prove, have had the experience of traveling back and forth, generating a sensation of belonging to two worlds simultaneously. For the Chilean and Argentinean second-generation individuals that I am investigating, their experiences could not be more diverse. With the Chileans, for example, the dominant historical framework that has shaped

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their experiences has been their parents’ exile to Britain from 1973 onward, as the first wave of Latin American immigrants and political refugees to the country.3 Moreover in more recent years, the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998 also sparked young Chileans’ interest in finding out more about the military regime responsible for their parents’ exile. In contrast, for the Argentineans I interviewed, hardly any had parents who came to Britain as political refugees. Rather, the majority came as economic migrants under circumstances that have far more discreet links to events from 1976 onward. However, some events of note during the interviews have been the Malvinas/Falklands conflict in 1982 that generated tensions between Britain and Argentina at the time, as well as more recent events such as the 2001 economic crisis that led to mass migration from Argentina to Europe. Despite the differences in historical contexts shaping Chilean and Argentinean subjectivities, the stories presented in the accounts of the second-generation individuals I have interviewed not only have a great deal to tell us about the cultural and political practices of migrant communities and their descendants, but also how they can problematize and expand our understanding of postmemory when applied to the military regimes of the 1970s. It is precisely the conjunction between diaspora and postmemory, and individual and collective memory present in these subjectivities that creates the possibility for a reflexive space to emerge. This space gives us a new perspective into the unfolding politics of memory debates in the Southern Cone, and questions the preoccupation of scholars with the continuation of memories from one generation to the next that are too heavily drawn to the “traumatic.” It must be recognized that this so-called “post”generation has forged alternative ways of overcoming the trauma experienced by their parents’ generation who lived under the state repression of the 1970s, by incorporating their everyday realities to the legacy left behind by the first generation. My interviews have shown that in relation to their parents’ experiences of military dictatorships, individuals have managed to “work through” the painful traces of memories of state terrorism and have resisted them becoming a part of their own lived experiences. The idea that postmemory describes both a process of proximity to a traumatic past as well as a distance from the damaging effects of it, by allowing an empathy to develop with first-generation testimonies, without appropriating them as your own, will be analyzed further on.4 In Argentina and Chile, this process has been shaped by the legacy of the human rights movement, whose continual campaigns for justice have recently been rejuvenated by sympathetic democratic governments keen to promote a human rights agenda and, as Sosa explains in her chapter, instil

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a duty of remembrance surrounding important historical dates. As part of a diaspora, my interviewees stand afar from this legacy, but have managed to generate their own dialogues in relation to it that is informed partly by the legacy of the human rights movement, and partly by their parents’ own engagement with it from a place of exile and migration. The legacy of the human rights movement as a whole is highly significant, since it also started out from places of Chilean and Argentinean exile all over the world. As Jelin has shown in the case of Argentina, the human rights movement has struggled to safeguard the memory of the disappeared, and has transformed its social actors into key political activists as well within the contested “politics of memory.”5 In time, certain groups have occupied a privileged position in the public sphere as the surviving family members of the disappeared and political prisoners such as Madres de Plaza de Mayo and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo.6 Nowadays, this responsibility has been handed down to the second generation, the children of the disappeared, as the secondary victims of state repression. In Argentina, one of the most prominent groups to have taken on this responsibility in the public sphere is H.I.J.O.S. (Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio–Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence) that formed in 1995. This group has initiated its own performative public commemorations that have departed somewhat from the original public protests of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, by occupying city streets and neighborhoods in order to unveil the presence of a former repressor who has been living among ordinary citizens.7 The purpose of this chapter, like Sosa’s, is not to critique the legitimacy of these groups, but rather to question the continuation of a memory that is primarily located within the familial experiences of the direct victims and their relatives for it limits other possibilities for remembering the disappeared. Analyzing second-generation postmemories in a diasporic framework questions the territorialization of memory in two ways: the first is to challenge this location of memory within a very closed human rights discourse that privileges the direct victims of state terrorism; the second is to investigate whether memory functions only within set national boundaries, which fails to take into account the diasporic experiences of those individuals that migrated and forged their own narratives in relation to a traumatic past. 6.1 Trauma and Victimhood: the Emergence of Postmemory within Memory Studies With the emergence of Holocaust studies and memory studies in the humanities and social sciences in the 1980s and 1990s came a preoccupation with

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issues of cultural memory and trauma, and the reminiscences of state terrorism in twentieth-century nation-states.8 This “turn to memory” was associated with a broader postmodern “subjective turn” that began questioning the dominance of grand historical narratives, rather than micro-narratives focusing on the life trajectories of individual subjectivities.9 Testimonies of Holocaust survivors became the primary sites through which investigating the intersubjective transmission of memory and revealing trauma’s hidden traces. In essence, the testimonies of survivors of the concentration camps became “icons of truth” for the next generation.10 This new theoretical drive in European intellectual discussion also coincided with an emerging postdictatorship critical thinking in Latin America, where the crimes of the dictatorships were being understood in reference to the explosion of testimonial accounts of state terrorism.11 Moreover, given that many of the victims of state terror, particularly in Argentina, were themselves the descendants of Holocaust survivors who had migrated to Latin America, memory work carried out in the Southern Cone had some emotive parallels with studies being developed in the United States and in Europe. With a growing body of literature on cultural memory in Europe, the United States, and the Southern Cone, theorists such as Susannah Radstone have been keen to highlight a “Manichean tendency” within memory and trauma studies with personal “spectacular” instances of trauma and victimhood.12 For Radstone, memory research has “coined a wealth of concepts to describe memory that exceeds the personal” where testimonial witnessing, often through confessional autobiographical works, dominate popular culture and our sense of how we fit into contemporary traumas in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.13 This dominant approach to individualize trauma, according to Radstone, was first established by two canonical texts in memory studies by Caruth, and Felman and Laub.14 For Radstone, over the past two decades these texts have presided over a growing fascination with “suffering” at the expense of other more “fantasy”-laden subject positions.15 There has been a need for academics in cultural memory studies to bear witness to Holocaust testimonies and the impossibility of representing the horrors of traumatic experience as secondary witnesses. The concept of “postmemory” as an act of generational memory transfer emerged from this preoccupation according to Radstone with “whether this witnesser is understood as reader/listener/spectator or as a construct internal to testimonial texts or discourses, it is witnessing that enables testimony, though what is witnessed may be the sheer impossibility of representing that which struggles towards, but refuses representation.”16 Indeed, the postmemories of second-generation Chileans and Argentineans that emerge in my interviews engage with the impossibility

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of representing a traumatic past, not by claiming to speak on behalf of the victims, but by highlighting their own diasporic positionalities in relation to a past that has so far failed to take their experiences into account. Their responses in the interview process reveal an intimate transmission of memory within the family unit, which contains the opportunity of imagining other kinds of collective social affiliations through which to cope with the loss associated with the trauma of the dictatorships. 6.2

Postmemory and the Intergenerational Transfer of Traumatic Memory

Postmemory is a concept first devised by Hirsch to describe the relationship between the first generation of survivors of the Holocaust and their children as secondary witnesses to their parents’ trauma.17 For Hirsch, “postmemory characterizes the experiences of those who grow up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth, whose own belated stories are evacuated by the stories of the previous generation shaped by traumatic events that can be neither understood nor recreated.”18 As a concept, it seemed to offer a new perspective that allowed for the possibility of transcending this issue of representing the impossible aspects of traumatic situations, by dealing with the traces of traumatic memories as they unfolded in the act of transgenerational witnessing within close family settings. What became important for academics was not the accuracy of the testimonial account, but the significance of what was being transmitted to the individuals involved, and how, since “this academic ‘witnessing’ understands the difficulties of its task in relation to the ‘unrepresentability’ of the very sufferings that it seeks to redeem.”19 For Radstone, however, Hirsh’s “ethical aesthetics of postmemory” still does not quite manage to depart from the dominant “spectacular” approach within memory studies. Hirsh’s own “witnessing” comes from her reading of autobiographical works by second-generation authors and visual artists such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus’ volumes. It was also her childhood memories that influenced her analysis of the direct relationship between family photographs in relation to the Holocaust, and the mediated transference of memory that these objects passed on the next generation. The pertinence of these “post”memories was precisely constructed out of the idea that postmemory could be seen to overcome the difficult context of the past traumatic event that affected the first generation. For Hirsch, it also allows an understanding of how the second generation deals with present difficulties shaped by their experiences of being the receivers of traumatic narratives of ethnic persecution inside their personal family circles. In the case of my interviewees,

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their experiences have been shaped by family narratives of political persecution, and the stigma and shame surrounding their parents being labeled as politically subversive. Within these familial spaces, Hirsh argues that through the use of personal photographs and objects, the second generation children of survivors are able to access a different kind of memory transfer in situations where perhaps talking about the past is still too painful. For her, photographs simultaneously approximate and distance both generations from one another, allowing the second generation to empathize with their parents’ suffering, without actually becoming traumatized themselves. She states that “postmemory is a powerful and very particular form of memory precisely because its connection to its object or source is mediated not through recollection but through an imaginative investment and creation.”20 Taking into account the memoirs of Eva Hoffman, Hirsh describes postmemory as “emanations,” as glimpses, snippets, incoherent manifestations, and traces of memories left behind by the first generation. In the case of the second generation Chileans and Argentineans interviewed, it was also not a question of openly discussing the past, but rather, of memories erupting without any sense of predictability or temporal linearity. For example, Luisa,21 when asked the question “When you were growing up did your parents tell you a lot of stories about Chile?,” replied that My mother did, my mother did quite a lot. She did, I think she’s a true romantic! Sadly like I said they’re no longer together. She hasn’t got the greatest memories, but she holds my dad very dearly. My father on the other hand, his character is quite different, he’s a kind of person that doesn’t express himself verbally or physically. He has a way of expressing himself by writing and he’s never told or spoken to me about what had happened until when I was living in Chile and a new legislation came about to give reimbursements or some kind of compensation to victims. So he had to fill in all this paperwork and stuff, so my father sat down, and for him it meant peanuts money which was nothing for him. But it was, I don’t know, some way of the state recognizing what had occurred. But anyway, it was that day that we started speaking about it. So many years had gone by and he didn’t take it very well, and I think he’s never received any kind of psychological support regarding the torture that he suffered. So I don’t like to step on his tiptoes regarding those issues. Here we find gender differences in how her parents related their stories to Luisa. Her mother seemed quite open in speaking to her about the past and the country she left behind, while her father’s reticence to speak has to do

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with the fact that he had been tortured before being exiled. It was only when Luisa decided to go and live with her father in Chile, who had returned there after separating from her mother, that other events impacted on his decision to share more of his thoughts and frustrations with his daughter. A dialogue that was not easy for either party. While postmemory has described this very individual and private transfer of family memories within a specific group of second generation children of survivors as demonstrated above, it has also shown certain limitations when dealing with collective generational postmemory. Hirsch herself has acknowledged that current debates in memory studies center around the ownership of this postmemory since “[what is] at stake is precisely the ‘guardianship’ of a traumatic personal and generational past with which some of us have a ‘living connection’ and that past’s passing into history.”22 It is a “living connection,” as Hirsch calls it, that ensures the continuation of testimonies that the Nazi regime sought to destroy in the first place. It is for this reason that postmemory has come to represent one of the most important theoretical discussions within memory studies. Yet several issues remain: how can this postmemory be shared collectively? And how can individuals engage with the consequences of catastrophic events, without appropriating the position of victim that ultimately renders them helpless? Postmemory in this way still encapsulates a departing point for current preoccupations within cultural memory studies of the relationship between the personal and the social, “and yet postmemory is not a movement, method or idea; I see it, rather, as a structure of inter-and trans-generational transmission of traumatic knowledge and experience. It is a consequence of traumatic recall but (unlike posttraumatic stress disorder) at a generational remove.”23 Hirsh accepts that because postmemory describes very interpersonal relationships within individual family groups, it can never fully escape instances where the second generation appropriates their parents’ memories as their own, because “to grow up with such overwhelming inherited memories, to be dominated by narratives that preceded one’s birth or one’s consciousness, is to risk having one’s own stories and experiences displaced, even evacuated, by those of a previous generation.”24 For Hirsch, postmemory privileges a familial space of intergenerational communication because the nature of traumatic events violently ruptures the link between private individual memories, and our public memories shaped by external political and cultural expressions of which national memory is formed. It is precisely the sacred Catholic familial space containing these private memories that the dictatorships in Argentina and Chile wished to exult, while at the same actively destroying it as part of their plans for national reorganization.25

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For Hirsch, the language of family, the language of the body: nonverbal and noncognitive acts of transfer occur most clearly within a familial space, often in the form of symptoms. It is perhaps the descriptions of this symptomatology that have made it appear as though the postgeneration wanted to assert its own victimhood alongside that of the parents.26 It is precisely the powerful approximation of postmemory and its “symptomatology” that could explain a tendency to act out as secondary victims on the part of the children of survivors, one that continues to privilege the familial space and the testimonies of those closest to the impact of trauma. Hirsch insists that postmemory represents a “generational structure” of transmission that draws heavily, but is not restricted to, the family frame. Therefore, postmemory could be open to other significant generational experiences that might be influenced by trauma, but not be directly shaped by it. Hirsh is attempting to expand the familial limits of postmemory by insisting that “postmemory is not identical to memory; it is ‘post,’ but at the same time, it approximates memory in its affective force.”27 An “affective force” that, she insists, can be used as a “frame of reference” for other traumatic contexts outside of Holocaust studies, and that is particularly relevant as a point of departure for exploring the experiences of second-generation Southern Cone diasporic identities. To expand the conceptual reach of postmemory, Hirsch formulates within her existing framework a structure of “affiliative” intragenerational identification that exists in relation to a national traumatic event. To include collective memories of trauma, Hirsch is expanding her definition to make room for a wider second generation not directly affected by trauma, where “ familial structures of mediation and representation [can also] facilitate the affiliative acts of postgeneration.”28 Kaiser has attempted to identify this wider postgeneration in her study of young people in Argentina belonging to the second generation and their memories of the military regime.29 Kaiser’s work reminds us that postmemory, when linked to the memories of the victims of state terrorism, also includes a plurality of contested memories and positionalities such as the ones that Valentina Salvi describes in her chapter, and that displace the traditional figure of the victim and struggle for their own social recognition.30 Stern has warned that these “other” positionalities should also form a part of our analysis and understanding of the authoritarian periods in the Southern Cone.31 In relation to one interviewee, Ricardo, who left Argentina with his parents and his older brother as a small child in 1982, remembers certain

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poignant moments in his parents’ lives under the coup through images that he has forged in his mind, even though he did not live those experiences.32 His parents are not what would be considered the traditional figures of the direct victims of state terrorism. Nevertheless, his reply when asked about how much he found out about the dictatorship on his own is important in finding out how his parents passed on to him and his siblings memories and experiences of living under state terrorism: In relation to what I read and what I saw I reckon that a lot of them are anecdotes from my family, especially from my parents. More than anything I have photos in my mind, not like a film of what that period was like. They are like small photographs or moments that have passed, things that happened. For example, I have the image of soldiers entering my mum’s room, they find some books and some records that they considered to be communist and they ignite them, they burn them. I have that image, I have images of Montoneros using violence against violence, a thing that never seemed a good solution to me. Ricardo’s parents came to Britain to pursue their academic careers, but before they had lived under the dictatorship as medical students in Buenos Aires, and related to their children stories of their university friends disappearing. Ricardo’s mother it seems somehow also escaped being taken away herself. This highlights how seemingly ordinary experiences contain extraordinary stories of living under state terrorism, even if at first glance the dictatorship did not impact directly on Ricardo’s parents’ decision to leave Argentina. However, when asked if these events later on had any influence at all on his parents’ decision to leave he states: I think that in a big way, a big way. Especially I tell you with the fear of a resurrection, as one way of calling it, of the Armed Forces in 1986, I think that it was important in their decision. I think that they were fed up with the instability, they wanted to live a quieter life without the fear of returning to what was before. So I think that yes, I think that it did influence their decision. Despite leaving Argentina to find work, Ricardo’s parents passed on to him and his siblings stories of living under a military regime that, it turns out, also impacted on their choice to leave in the 1980s and build another life in Britain. This type of experience is certainly what Hirsch would include as part of her “affiliative postgeneration.” Although it significantly increases the

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number of experiences that postmemory would consider relevant, this framework is still based on a familial space as a primary site of generational identification. It is precisely this feature of postmemory that needs to be questioned, especially in relation to the Chilean and Argentinean cases discussed here, since it seems to promote the idea that only the relatives of survivors are capable of identifying in a direct way with traumatic memories. Even though Ricardo’s own memories originate in a familial space, he does not consider his parents to be direct victims themselves, which indicates that there is a vast array of hidden positionalities that are yet to be analyzed in relation to a collective national trauma. Hirsh’s formulations identify a wider “postgeneration” only in relation to dominant narratives that circulate within a public landscape of memory. For example, as is the case in Argentina, with the memories forged by the children of survivors that belong to groups such as H.I.J.O.S. While it would be questionable for individuals not directly affected by a traumatic past to align themselves with human rights groups on the basis of an identification as victims, it is still vital to see how a national trauma such as the state terrorism of the Southern Cone dictatorships permeated the consciousness of a wider society. As we see in Ricardo’s account, without claiming to be a secondary victim, the dictatorship did impact on his family in an important way. Conversely, this process also reflects upon the wider global cultural and ideological shifts that have allowed recent worldwide events such as 9/11 to become ingrained in the public consciousness as ‘traumatic’ moments in people’s lives.33 For Radstone, there is a dominant tendency within Hirsch’s work to only identify with the position of the survivors.34 She argues instead that there are other marginal representations of the Holocaust that “work against the grain of identifications with ‘pure’ victimhood” that also deserve attention and that can also be found in accounts of the Southern Cone dictatorships.35 Radstone’s critique of Hirsch’s work suggests that in the case of the human rights discourse in Chile and Argentina that centered around the voices of the direct victims of state terrorism, a duty to remember is placed upon a very select and small group of people, excluding the rest of society from any social responsibility. This is especially true since “public indifference was another impediment to the quest for justice in the transitional period.”36 For Radstone, postmemory as representative of a transference of traumatic memory runs the risk of not being able to distance itself from this lack of reflexive self-analysis affecting memory studies as a whole. For her, it fails to question the parameters of traumatic experience to the full and has limited the scope for other more critical types of reflections on memory to emerge.

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However, postmemory can still offer a space from which to begin to think about the various positionalities in relation to the Southern Cone dictatorships, as an alternative space for critical reflection that Radstone has identified as the “grey-zones.”37 For Radstone, the “ethics of witnessing” present in these grey-zones allows multiple identifications both with the figure of the victim and the figure of the repressor. She warns that these grey-zones are in constant danger from the repeated alignment within academia with dominant positions of victimhood and narrow definitions of trauma. Something is at stake here when Radstone states that “if history is not to repeat itself, the task of witnessing and remembering the sufferings of others ought not to be separated from the difficult acknowledgement of testimonial witnessing’s darker side.”38 Though postmemory indeed derives from an identification with the suffering of others, it is not solely constituted by it since, it is in these grey-zones, such as diasporic spaces, that one can begin discussing the second-generation postmemories of Chileans and Argentineans living in Britain. 6.3

Postmemory in the Southern Cone

Precisely because of its significance as a process of transgenerational communication, postmemory has expanded beyond its initial reach to discuss other historical contexts, in this case, the dictatorships of the Southern Cone of the 1970s.39 However, this seemingly natural transfer has not gone unnoticed, nor has it gone unquestioned. On the one hand, postmemory offers a theoretical space to make second-generation experiences in relation to the memory of the dictatorships visible. On the other, as discussed previously, in the context of Chile and Argentina, postmemory seems to refer directly to the memory work carried out by human rights activists who position themselves in the public sphere as the relatives of the victims of state terrorism. This straightforward appropriation of postmemory within the context of the Southern Cone means that, according to Arruti, “there are undoubtedly intrinsic ethical and political questions in collective trauma and ensuing memory work that should inform academic debates,” although she acknowledges that “here, creativity rests on engaging with the traumatic event without reification.”40 As testimonies of state terrorism in Latin America became crucial to the restoration of human rights within the transitions to democracy, memory became an ethical, legal, moral, and political obligation for those invested in it. As such, it became difficult to establish a critical perspective on the role accomplished by the narratives of the victims, since they were those who had initiated the only visible campaign in defense of human rights against the military regimes, both at home and abroad.41

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Thus, “among these dislocated expressions of a deeply fractured social memory, the testimony of those who survived the state’s criminal violence had and still has a privileged status as a form of narrative that, being the bare remainder of catastrophe, resists all simplifications.”42 By embodying the memory of the thousands of disappeared, the human rights movement in Chile and Argentina challenged the dominant versions of history that the military regimes sought to protect that they were fulfilling a national duty to defend their nations from dangerous subversives (see Chapters 2 and 5). Both Nelly Richard and Elizabeth Jelin have engaged with the different modalities of memory that have dominated the landscape of memory in Argentina and Chile since the end of the military dictatorships.43 For both Richard and Jelin, two tropes have presided over the restoration of a national responsibility to remember: “memory as monument” and “memory as document.”44 “Memory as monument” concerns the ritualization of memory surrounding key anniversaries and events related to the military coups, such as September 11 for Chile and March 24 for Argentina, the opening of ex-detention centers such as the Villa Grimaldi Park for Peace Corporation, as well as other monuments and plaques to commemorate the lives of the disappeared.45 The other dominant feature in the landscape of memory, “Memory as document,” has to do with the archival work of human rights groups such as the Vicaría de la Solidaridad (Solidarity Vicariate) in Santiago or the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (Center for Legal and Social Studies, CELS) in Buenos Aires that during and after the coup compiled information about the disappeared. While at the time this provided vital information for relatives and lawyers seeking to establish the truth about individual disappearances, the exhaustive and meticulous details recorded in these files have narrowed individual testimonies only to the fact of disappearance, and not much else. Referring to Chile, Richard argues that other commemorative practices are carried out that contain multiple ways of remembering the dead, where “art and literature work, thankfully, against this dual citational usage of memory as practised within the Transition, and it is thanks to their polysignifying and irruptive labour on forms (images, stories and narratives) that the aesthetic gesture is able to intensify memory as a battle of symbolizations.”46 Richard calls for new symbolic interventions that expand the boundaries of how we produce, transmit, and practice memory that challenge the dominant voices within our own social and political practices, to continually allow for other critical formations that engage with their own positionality. Art and literature stand out against these two “memory as monument/memory as document” tendencies because they allow more freedom of expression: “it is not only a matter of sharing mourning with those in

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grief but also of committing the subject of historical mourning to the labour of resignification.”47 Since the landscape of memory in the Southern Cone has been dominated by the testimonies of the relatives of the disappeared that have functioned within the confines of human rights groups, Jelin’s words seem to echo Radstone’s quoted earlier: “in this sense, there is a double historical danger; oblivion and void fostered by politics and its complement, ritualized repetition of the traumatic and sinister story, of tragedy reappearing constantly without the chance for new subjectivities to emerge.”48 Postmemory should represent a space from which to maintain a distance between past and present, where “at the same time it requires the recognition of current life conditions and the possibility of imagining a future. In memory, in contrast to traumatic repetition, the past does not invade the present, it informs it.”49 It has given the second-generation children of exiles whom I have interviewed a space for more contemporary internal debates to be analyzed, such as the stigma and shame surrounding feelings of being the children of “subversives” that they experienced while growing up, while questioning and engaging with their parents political projects in a positive manner. 6.4 New Interventions in Postmemory In the case of second-generation Chileans and Argentineans living in Britain interviewed, I would argue that their postmemories of the Southern Cone dictatorships do not abide by any notion of collective identity. This is due to their fragmentary, singular, and often disconnected dimensions that defy the dominant historical narratives that so far have excluded them from representation. These postmemories contain traces of their parents’ memories, albeit in different ways. Their existence in a geographical space away from the Southern Cone also distances them from an inadequate appropriation of traumatic memory that excludes so many other ways of remembering. Their diasporic framework of self-reference to two different cultural domains allows the possibility of approaching memory with caution and provides a critical outlook. For Ricardo, being Argentinean and living in Britain is important to him because It means the possibility of showing that Argentineans are not all like the news might portray us. The experience of people here, of Argentineans that come here on holidays is very different to the experience of meeting Argentineans back home, I think. Because not all Argentineans, very few can travel abroad, so the face of Argentina that people see is not representative. I see it as a possibility of being able to teach a bit about what

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the real Argentina is, of being able to be more honest than what a typical Argentinean is, let’s say. These interconnected dimensions of migration and diaspora allow a positive critical engagement with both cultural domains to emerge that can expand what postmemory signifies for the second-generation Chileans and Argentineans. The past plays an important role in who these individuals consider themselves to be, but they are not solely defined by their parents’ stories of exile or migration. The different spaces for reflection on memory and identity that these individuals occupy also have some connections with more current memory interventions carried out in Argentina and Chile by second-generation visual artists. In particular, as Cecilia Sosa demonstrates in her discussion of Los Rubios (2003), the film expresses the possibility for other, nonnormative “familial” memory communities to emerge from a collective traumatic national past. Los Rubios is an exploration of director Albertina Carri’s identity in relation to the memories of her parents as disappeared political militants, but it is very clear that this project is not just about her position as a daughter of disappeared parents.50 It is also about struggling to make sense of a turbulent and contested past in a positive way, through building connections with her peers who might or might not have personal connections to a shared past. While most human rights campaigns in Argentina and Chile have named and individualized disappearances through the display of photographs and personal narratives, “Carri in contrast, enthusiastically embraces the postmodern rejection of a unified subject. Not only does she find herself unable to produce a viable and satisfactory depiction of her parents, she is also unable (or unwilling) to depict herself from the narrative position of a stable ‘I’.”51 Artists like Carri have found new expressions for loss that do not dwell on the traumatic. Rather, “their projects work against facile, closed narrative forms, revealing the fictions bound up in nonreflexive first-person narratives, as well as the gaps and fissures that characterize any narrative of experience.”52 This diasporic space is beginning to be explored only within an emerging “cartography of exile” in Argentina and in Chile, where exile is slowly gaining more recognition among other systematic acts of violence inflected by the state terrorism of the last military dictatorship.53 These new emerging accounts of exile that, in the case of Chile, also discuss the experience of return from the late 1980s onward, have attempted to prioritize previously unknown narratives of ordinary people forced to become political refugees.54 Nevertheless, while some have hinted at the difficulties for the second-generation Chileans and Argentineans who moved back to Chile

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and Argentina alongside their parents, few scholars have so far looked at the second generation that did not go back at all.55 Overall, some of these previously unknown accounts are ignored as a theoretical opportunity to document the heterogeneous array of experiences of exile and move away from a model that presents them in the same manner as traditional accounts of state terrorism characteristic of the testimonies of human rights archives.56 6.5 Diasporic Postmemory: The Case of Second-Generation Chileans and Argentines I want to suggest that the presence of Chileans and Argentineans secondgeneration sons and daughters of political exiles and migrants allows us to think about the ways in which postmemory can be put “under-erasure.”57 They provoke us to think about new modes of remembrance that depart from the already established landscape of memory in the Southern Cone by human rights groups, without subscribing to what Diana Taylor calls the “DNA of performance” that she attributes to groups such as H.I.J.O.S.58 We know that young people in the Southern Cone have been influenced by various discourses surrounding the coups. In Chile, the transition to democracy initiated by the Concertación governments was continually overshadowed by General Augusto Pinochet’s presence while he remained Head of the Armed Forces. In Argentina, the Trial of the Juntas in 1985, the Full Stop and the Due Obedience laws of the late 1980s followed in the early 1990s by President Carlos Menem’s official pardons of the main junta leaders and other convicted officers and individuals, were all key moments in shaping collective memory. It was not really until the governments of Néstor Kirchner (2003–2007) in Argentina and Michelle Bachelet (2006–2010) in Chile that the impunity laws of the 1990s were revoked or subverted. Currently, new cases continue to be brought to trial. For the Chileans and Argentineans growing up in a diasporic space, what they knew and were aware of about news back home depended solely on their parents’ interest since they went to school in Britain, and would not necessarily have discussed such issues with their friends. Key moments happened closer to home, such as General Pinochet’s arrest in London in 1998, when he faced extradition to Spain on charges of human rights abuses committed during his military regime.59 Not only was this event important for the first generation of political exiles who had escaped Chile and relentlessly campaigned against the regime from abroad, but it also coincided with the second generation’s coming-of-age. Now young adults or older, the second generation began making connections between

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Pinochet’s arrest and their own parents’ exile to Britain. For the first time, some felt that they could ask questions and obtain more information, not only from their own parents and extended families, but also from the wider community that met and gathered to protest during Pinochet’s detention. Moreover, visits to Chile also encouraged more dialogue between generations, sometime with relatives that they had never really known or even dared to speak to about the past. At a time when most young people begin to challenge the authority of their parents and forge their own identities and make their own decisions, young second-generation Chileans were doing so in relation to a difficult past. When discussing her participation in the pickets outside the House of Parliament or outside the London clinic where Pinochet was being treated, Luisa told me: Until you are personally affected or it’s in the news regarding your country, until Pinochet arrived in Britain the British people started to know what was occurring, or occurred in Chile. And then of course I felt that identity and I considered myself Chilean and even though I didn’t live it, I felt that I had to be there in representation of my family. She continued that Outside the pickets, we were there every day after school, and I would go, and maybe I didn’t have a political view about it, but I understood the reasons why it was there. And it was just really amazing caus that community that was there from the 1980s just reinforced itself once again. And then it was just so weird to see all these little kids that you had met when you were so tiny, and to see them at 14 and 15 and then everyone felt some part of them being Chilean. And you know we would obviously organize, we organized our own little youth society in representation to the trial and one person was nominated to go inside the court in representation of the youth. So that was good that we were able to participate in that way. For the first time, the second generation joined their parents’ cause and defined their own struggle in relation to the past. It might not have sparked any long-term political action or a continuing interest in issues of human rights or justice, but it ignited a feeling that they were Chilean, a conscious realization that their parents’ exile was the reason why they had been born and raised in Britain, and why they were now standing next to them in protest.

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While interviewing the Chilean second generation, there is a sense that despite the tremendous painful stories of their parents’ exile, they never feel burdened by this past. On the contrary, the past has allowed them to define who they are as adults, and make connections with things that matter to them in the present. As seen previously, it has made them think about being both Chilean and British at the same time, and to make a connection with their parents’ struggles since they arrived in Britain in the 1970s as political refugees. Postmemory clearly has more to say about the possible conjunctions between the personal and the collective. When I asked him about the stories his father had told him about the coup, Pedro, another Chilean whom I interviewed, told me: From what I can remember there were never any specific stories, like his personal stories but, and I can’t remember at what age I knew or realized this. But I always knew that he had come to England because of the coup, and you know, he would always take me to his friends house and they were all Chilean so, yeah basically I don’t know from what age but I grew up knowing that I was with a group of people who had been forced to leave their country and many of whom had been tortured, and yeah, so I kinda just knew why they were there. And I think also caus he took me to the protests and stuff as well, and you’d see the anger and the passion in other people, like I said I don’t know what age it was but I just grew up knowing that!60 Pedro’s feeling that those stories were somehow always present is poignant. But it is also important to note that while his father might not have shared all of his memories with him, the bigger network of Chilean friends in exile that Pedro knew while growing up, did. This implies a wider network of memories that are not just passed down from family member to family member, but a small community of people reaching out to the next generation, regardless of whether they are their own biological children or not. There is a hint here at a wider memory community redefining generational dialogues, where stories are shared beyond the normative family model. 6.6 Diasporic Conjunctions: Postmemory as Hybrid Subjectivities of Dual Belonging While postmemory offers us the chance to highlight a particular kind of memory belonging to the second-generation children of survivors of state terrorism, its use in other historical contexts, as we have seen, also problematizes

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its theoretical reach. Diaspora entails the conjunction of two different sociopolitical terrains, and the compatibility between different cultural identities. It seems pertinent, therefore, when discussing second-generation Chilean and Argentinean postmemories in Britain, to also mention some of the theoretical underpinnings developed in the field of cultural studies, in order to connect it with other long-standing migrant experiences in the UK. Concepts that were first devised to speak about the black Caribbean, black African, and Asian experience in the UK to Latin American diasporas, particularly those generated around issues of cultural memory and identity seem very crucial. For example, the formulation that “hybrid” identities that inhabit two different cultural domains can also challenge dominant historical narratives at the same time is exactly what postmemory should also speak about.61 As Homi Bhabha states, Hybrid agencies find their voice in a dialectic that does not seek cultural supremacy or sovereignty. They deploy the partial culture from which they emerge to construct versions of history memory, that give narrative form to the minority positions they occupy; the outside of the inside: the part in the whole.62 The challenge, as I see it, is to enter into new debates as to what other kinds of hybrid spaces for memory, if any, postmemory generates, allowing other minority subjectivities to emerge that have responded to an official duty to remember in nonnormative ways without dismissing the memory work already carried out by human rights groups in the Southern Cone. While it is still unclear to what extent personal narratives of trauma initiate wider collective identifications, the traces of memory that the second generation has to pick up and deal with are very lucid. They might be untidy, fragmented, painful, tense, and problematic, but they are also vividly creative and persistent, and feature significantly in the choices that the next generation makes. Bhabha presents this disjuncted world very well when he writes: We have entered an anxious age of identity, in which the attempt to memorialize lost time, and to reclaim lost territories, creates a culture of disparate ‘interest groups’ or social movements. Here affiliation may be antagonistic and ambivalent; solidarity may be only situational and strategic; commonality is often negotiated through the ‘contingency’ of social interests and political claims.63 As Bhabha has noted, it is an anxious time, but it is also a time for generating new discussions about what being part of a diasporic second-generation

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postmemory community would entail. To reformulate our understanding of postmemory as rooted in a traumatic instance, we need to focus on generating new positive encounters that do not dwell on loss and trauma but forge new commitments to remember the dictatorships in Chile and Argentina with a critical stance. In conclusion, the concept of postmemory as formulated by Hirsch to highlight the transmission of memory from the survivors of the Holocaust to their children—that has been expanded here to discuss the testimonial narratives of state terrorism in Chile and Argentina−needs more thorough analysis. In this chapter, I have introduced a neglected aspect of our understanding of cultural memory in relation to the Southern Cone dictatorships: the postmemories of second-generation Chileans and Argentineans living in Britain. Through an analysis of the complex mechanisms involved in postmemory and what this entails for the children of exiles and migrants, we can problematize postmemory’s reliance on a family frame, and come to explore other alternatives that might lead to the creation of new memory communities, not exclusively tied to biological (or blood) bonds. Without dismissing the collective projects of human rights actors in the Southern Cone, whose political identities are grounded in traditional familial relations to the disappeared and to the past, if memory is to persist, it must also look at the experiences of those families living on the periphery of the politics of memory. In particular, the second generation Chilean and Argentinean diaspora in Britain that has grown up surrounded by poignant stories of the dictatorships and of homelands far away, and that has managed to engage with the past in ways that do not repeat the effects of the trauma experienced by the first generation. Rather, the experiences of the second generation can reconfigure the effects of loss to fit more current realities in a positive, dynamic and creative manner. Notes I would like to express my gratitude to Cecilia Sosa for her contribution in helping me to sharpen my ideas in this chapter and beyond. I want to thank my supervisor Maxine Molyneux for her opportune comments on this piece and for her ongoing patience during my whole research. Special thanks also go to Carmen SepúlvedaZelaya, Norberto Serpente, Patricia Serpente, and Edward Lowe for their continuing support. This chapter is dedicated to all my interviewees. 1. Elizabeth Jelin’s definition of the “politics of memory” refers to the public and political sphere in which all the human rights activists and organizations that systematically documented the abuses of the military regimes (both in Argentina and Chile) since the 1970s and demanded the right to the truth about their actions and the right to seek justice, operate. She states that “during all this

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2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

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time, the movement has been torn between its political and institutional role, expressed in the demand for justice, and its symbolic role in the construction of a historical memory, actively promoting the need not to forget and developing in different ways and in a variety of settings the symbols and events that would foster the preservation of the vivid memory of the lived traumatic experience.” Elizabeth Jelin, “The Politics of Memory: The Human Rights Movement and the Construction of Democracy in Argentina” Latin American Perspectives 21, no. 2 (1994): 39. For a study of Argentine exiles in France, see Marina Franco, El Exilio: Argentinos en Francia Durante la Dictadura (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2008). For one of the first accounts of Chilean exile to Britain, see Diana Kay, Chileans in Exile: Private Struggles, Public Lives (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1987). Elizabeth Jelin, State Repression and the Struggles for Memory (London: Latin American Bureau, 2003), 51. Jelin, “The Politics of Memory,” 39. This has also generated a kind of hierarchy of suffering where the image of the disappeared dominates all other experiences. As Calveiro (2007) has discussed, fellow ex-political militants and the mass media initially treated survivors of detention camps with suspicion since they were believed to have co-conspired with their captors in order to survive. Their testimonies were pitted against the myth of the “heroic” figure of the militant disappeared martyr who supposedly died during torture. Pilar Calveiro, “La Experiencia Concentracionaria” in Argentina 1976: Estudios en Torno al Golpe de Estado, ed. Clara E. Lida, Horacio Crespo, and Pablo Yankelevich (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, El Colegio de México, 2007), 201. See Susanna Kaiser, “Escraches: Demonstrations, Communication and Political Memory in Post-dictatorial Argentina” Media, Culture & Society 24, no. 4 (2002): 499–516. Barbara A. Misztal, Theories of Social Remembering (London: Open University Press, 2003). Susannah Radstone, “Trauma Theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics” Paragraph 30, no. 1 (2007): 21; Beatriz Sarlo, Tiempo Pasado. Cultura de la Memoria y Giro Subjetivo. Una Discusión (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores, 2005), 17. Sarlo, 23. Ibid., 60; Andreas Huyssen, “Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia” Public Culture 12, no. 1 (2000): 26. Susannah Radstone, “Social Bonds and Psychical Order: Testimonies” Journal for Cultural Research 5, no. 1 (2001): 61. Susannah Radstone, “Memory Studies: For and Against” Memory Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 33. Cathy Caruth, ed., Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, eds., Testimony. Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York: Routledge, 1992). Radstone, “Trauma Theory,” 9.

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16. Radstone, “Social Bonds,” 62. 17. Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography Narrative and Postmemory (London: Harvard University Press, 1997). 18. Hirsch, Family Frames, 22. 19. Radstone, “Social Bonds,” 62. 20. Hirsch, Family Frames, 22. 21. Interview with the author, February 9, 2009. Luisa is not the interviewee’s real name. In this chapter, the interviewees’ names have been replaced with pseudonyms. 22. Marianne Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory” Poetics Today 29, no. 1 (2008): 104. 23. Hirsch, “The Generation,” 106. 24. Ibid., 107. See also Karein Goertz, “Transgenerational Representations of the Holocaust: From Memory to ‘Post-Memory’ ” World Literature Today 72 (1998): 34. 25. Marguerite Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 38. See also Elizabeth Jelin, “Victims, Relatives, and Citizens in Argentina: Whose Voice is Legitimate Enough?” in Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy, ed. Richard A. Wilson and Richard D. Brown (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 179–183. 26. Hirsch, “The Generation,” 112. 27. Ibid., 109. 28. Ibid., 115. 29. Susana Kaiser, Postmemories of Terror: A New Generation Copes with the Legacy of the “Dirty War” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 30. Here, there are also less documented accounts of military and police personnel who refused to cooperate with the regime’s plans both in Chile and in Argentina. Some of these individuals disappeared or were dismissed from their posts because of their refusal to participate in the torture and disappearance of thousands of political prisoners. See Patricia Verdugo, Chile, Pinochet, and the Caravan of Death (University of Miami: North-End Press, 2001). 31. Quoted in Kenneth P. Serbin, “Memory and Method in the Emerging Historiography of Latin America’s Authoritarian Era” Latin American Politics and Society 48, no. 3 (2006): 195. 32. Interview with the author, March 9, 2009. 33. Barbie Zelizer, “Finding Aids to the Past: Bearing Personal Witness to Traumatic Public Events” Media, Culture & Society 24, no. 5 (2002): 697–714. 34. Radstone, “Social Bonds,” 64. 35. Ibid., 65. 36. “Despite the large numbers of victims of human rights violations, a majority of the citizens of the countries that experienced state terrorism had not lost family members or close friends; most had not undergone arbitrary arrest and torture. Many of the same persons who had hidden behind a feigned ignorance of the

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37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

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human rights violations occurring around them during the period of repression continued to be disengaged, perhaps shamed by the reminders of their earlier denial of reality.” Thomas C. Wright, State Terrorism in Latin America: Chile, Argentina and International Human Rights (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 36. Radstone, “Social Bonds,” 66. Ibid., 61. Hirsch, “The Generation,” 108; Lesley Morris, “Postmemory, Postmemoir” in Unlikely History: The Changing German-Jewish Symbiosis, 1945–2000, ed. Lesley Morris and Jack D. Zipes (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 291. Nerea Arruti, “Trauma, Therapy and Representation: Theory and Critical Reflection” Paragraph 30, no. 1 (2007): 6. Sarlo, 62. Gabriela Nouzeilles, “Postmemory Cinema and the Future of the Past in Albertina Carri’s Los Rubios” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 14, no. 3 (2005): 264. See Elizabeth Jelin, “The Minefield of Memory” NACLA Report on the Americas 32 (1998): 23–29 and Nelly Richard, “The Reconfigurations of Postdictatorship in Critical Thought” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 9, no. 3 (2000): 273–282. Richard, 275. Before stepping down as President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet unveiled the Museo de Memoria y Derechos Humanos (Museum of Memory and Human Rights) in Santiago in January 2010. Richard, 275. Ibid. It is a set of practices and a dynamic that Druliolle explores in Argentina in Chapter 1. Jelin, “The Politics of Memory,” 53. Jelin, State Repression, 51. For such a reading of Carri’s film, see Janis Breckenridge, “Performing Memory and Identity: Albertina Carri’s Los Rubios” Letras Femeninas 34 (2008): 11–27. Breckenridge, 19. Michael J. Lazzara, “Filming Loss: (Post-)Memory, Subjectivity, and the Performance of Failure in Recent Argentine Documentary Films” Latin American Perspectives 36, no. 5 (2009): 149. Silvina Jensen, “ ‘Nadie Habrá Visto Esas Imágenes, Pero Existen’: A Propósito de las Memorias del Exilio en la Argentina Actual” América Latina Hoy 34 (2003): 104. Some recent works are, for Chile, Thomas C. Wright and Rody Oñate, Flight from Chile: Voices of Exile (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), Loreto Rebolledo, Memorias del Desarraigo: Testimonios de Exilio y Retorno de Hombres y Mujeres de Chile (Santiago de Chile: Catalonia, 2006), and José del Pozo Artigas, Exiliados, Emigrados y Retornados: Chilenos en América y Europa, 1973–2004 (Santiago de Chile: RIL Editores, 2006); for Argentina, see Daniel

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55.

56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

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Korinfeld, Experiencias del Exilio: Avatares Subjectivos de Jóvenes Militantes Argentinos durante la Década del Setenta (Buenos Aires: Del Estante Editorial, 2008); Diana Guelar, Viara Jarach, and Beatriz Ruiz, Los Chicos del Exilio: Argentina, 1975–1984 (Buenos Aires: Pais de Nomeolvides, 2002). An important collection of second-generation accounts of exile and migration is the book by Andrés Jaroslavsky, The Future of Memory: Children of the Dictatorship in Argentina Speak (London: Latin America Bureau, 2004). Interestingly, this book also follows the traditional testimonial format reminiscent of the accounts written by human rights activists on the disappeared. A book that has documented the experiences of the second generation that returned to Argentina is Roberto Aruj and Estela González, El Retorno de los Hijos del Exilio: Una Nueva Comunidad de Inmigrantes (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2007). One account of Chilean exile deviates from this. Marta Zabaleta’s story of her exile to Britain subverts traditional storytelling narratives of exile. See Marta Raquel Zabaleta, “Exile” Feminist Review 73 (2003): 19–38. By disrupting the linear sequencing of her story, she signals the violent rupture that exile entails. She also shows how postmemory erupts within a familial space as incomplete traces of memory that she then shares with the reader in a collective project of bearing witness. Stuart Hall, “Who Needs Identity?” in Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (London: Sage, 1996), 1. Diana Taylor, “ ‘You Are Here’: The DNA of Performance” The Drama Review 46, no. 1 (2002): 149–169. See Madeleine Davis, The Pinochet Case: Origins, Progress and Implications (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 2003). Interview with the author, February 18, 2009. See, Virinder S. Kalra, Raminder Kaur, and John Hutnyk, Diaspora and Hybridity (London: Sage, 2005). Homi K. Bhabha, “Culture’s In-Between” in Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (London: Sage, 1996), 58. Ibid., 59.

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CHAPTER 7

Private Transmission of Traumatic Memories of the Disappeared in the Context of Transitional Politics of Oblivion in Uruguay (1973−2001): “Pedagogies of Horror” among Uruguayan Families Gabriela Fried Amilivia

R

epressive political regimes worldwide have attempted to control not only the institutions of memory and history, but also their sources: ordinary people’s capacity to remember and transmit the past. Since the Nuremberg trials following World War II, movements have been steadily growing calling for state accountability for gross human rights abuses such as genocide, apartheid, and torture, perpetrated by authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, as well as the remembrance of this violence. From Spain and South Africa to Eastern Europe, East Timor, and Peru, victims have pushed for public redress and against the denial and forgetting of their suffering. A similar process has occurred in the transitional societies of Latin America’s Southern Cone. This chapter focuses on the case of Uruguay’s record of human rights abuses during its postauthoritarian political transition, as a lens to analyze how the memory of the traumatic experiences resulting from state terror endured to be transmitted in families of the disappeared, in a context of

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transitional human rights politics of denial, impunity, and silencing in the aftermath of the dictatorship (1985–2001). As the Uruguayan state waged its war against “communist subversion” in the 1970s, its Armed Forces unleashed political violence against its own citizens during the civic-military regime (1973–1984) that was unprecedented in its history. This involved the widespread and systematic use of political detention, long-term imprisonment and torture, exile, and forced disappearance1 as emblematic tools of state terror in the region. In the dictatorship’s aftermath, Uruguay’s new democratic government and society memorialized and dealt with the legacies of state terror, by implementing one of the most extreme policies of denial and silencing of the human rights abuses in the Southern Cone region, which could be labeled as Uruguay’s “Policies of Oblivion” (1985–2001).2 In the name of reconciliation, these policies denied public recognition and redress to the victims of state-inflicted human rights abuses, reinforcing the silencing of public debate and memory of over 200 disappeared citizens, 6,000 political prisoners, the systematic use of torture, and thousands of exiles.3 While these policies of oblivion initially seemed to have successfully wrapped the public memory of the state repression under a mantle of silence, within a decade the political landscape started changing. Memories of past state abuses started to emerge through the cracks in the walls of public silence and oblivion, evidence that the collective memories of the dictatorship had endured in civil society, despite the transitional regime’s policy of impunity, denial, and silencing. As Francesca Lessa recounts in her Chapter, by 2001–2003 under the new administration of President Batlle, the so-called “Peace Commission” (Comisión para la Paz) was created, the first to timidly and officially recognize forced disappearance and attempt to document them. Yet it would not be until Tabaré Vázquez, of the left-wing coalition Frente Amplio, took office in 2005 that the legacy of pending human rights questions would take political center stage again, and the tide of impunity and silence would slowly start to turn. In this chapter, I ask how it was possible for the collective memory of the traumatic experiences of state terror, in particular the silenced experiences of forced disappearance, to endure and be transmitted in the context of tight social policies of silencing and oblivion. I examine this question in broad strokes through family transmissions. I look at the narrative and pedagogic transmissions through family generations within the intimate realm of family memories of those who suffered the disappearance of one of their members during the military regime (1973–1984), in a context of transitional human rights politics of denial and silencing (1985–2001), as well as growing social mobilization for memory and redress (1996–2010).

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To do so, I present and discuss empirical findings based on ethnographic evidence of narrative and pedagogic transmissions of disappearances in Uruguayan families. I here argue that to understand the endurance of collective memory of silenced traumatic pasts and the dynamics of its public emergence in apparently sudden “waves of memory,” it is necessary to analytically develop a robust methodology and framework to study memory traumatic transmissions in the private and intimate layers of collective memory.4 This chapter, a selection of a much larger longitudinal project of analysis of the relationship between private and public transmissions of memories of state terror in the Uruguayan transition, focuses on what I conceptualize as the formative layer of the intersubjective undercurrents of private memories. Empirically, it looks at how the memories of the Uruguayans who disappeared were transmitted among private communities of memory and families of the disappeared across generations during the dictatorship and its aftermath (1985–2001). The empirical analysis focuses on one aspect of intergenerational family transmissions: how the experiences of disappearance were transmitted from parental or grandparental caregivers to their children via embedded and pedagogic narratives, what I have entitled “pedagogies of horror.” In what follows, after providing a context on Uruguayan transitional politics, I consider the transmissions through familial generations and I develop an analysis of the parental pedagogies of horror. I analyze first a need or compulsion to tell the children; second, edited or softened versions; and third, silence, not telling the children by maintaining partial, selective, or total silence. I complete the empirical part by looking at children’s inquiries; these illustrate the ways in which children themselves developed their own methods of research, or information-gathering techniques into the un-known. I end the chapter with a brief discussion and summary conclusions. 7.1 The Context: Transitional Politics of Oblivion and Impunity The political repression by the state against the revolutionary movements of the late 1960s had solidified an alliance of bureaucratic-authoritarian military regimes throughout the Southern Cone region of Latin America5 in the 1970s in the war against “communist subversion,” taking ideological inspiration from the Cold War era “National Security Doctrine” (NSD).6 The Uruguayan military (1973–1984) unleashed a wave of political violence against organizations and families of political activists, which was unparalleled in Uruguay’s history. Political imprisonment, exile, and forced disappearance7 became emblematic categories of state terror; they aimed at

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destroying “the individual as a political being and to affect the person by severing the links with family and other valued groups.”8 The number of lives directly or indirectly affected by state terror and the culture of fear in everyday life can be counted in the hundreds of thousands, and had a great impact on Uruguayans’ civic and political human rights. From a small population of barely 3 million at the time, Uruguay had the highest ratio of political prisoners in the world—1 in every 50 citizens was detained and 4,000–6,000 were held as long-term political prisoners.9 Onetenth of the total population, or an estimated 300,000 citizens, were forced out of the country between 1972 and 1984.10 The number of about 200 Uruguayan disappeared citizens, who vanished without a trace during the years of dictatorship, is relatively low11 (as it was not the main repression strategy here, compared to Argentina, for instance), but it remains highly significant in its contribution to the nation’s spread of an unprecedented culture of fear. The rise of a culture and politics of state terror deeply shocked the existing cultural notions of self-identity in a country that, until the 1970s, prided itself in its image as a peaceful, civilized, and secular nation. Like Chile, Uruguay had had a long tradition as a stable democratic welfare state regulated by a finely developed legal system and political consensus, with high levels of political organization and literacy. In the dictatorship’s aftermath, the new democratic government led by Julio María Sanguinetti in the mid-to-late 1980s engineered a “Politics of Oblivion,” an elite-driven political pact intended to sustain a “peaceful transition” via a social reconciliation program based on amnesty and social amnesia (by “turning the page” on the recent-past social conflict and violence, as it was publicly addressed). The cornerstone of this policy was a 1986 statute of limitations officially named Ley de Caducidad.12 The law absolved all military and police personnel from any human right crimes committed during the civic-military regime without any prior investigations or due process. It was approved by the major conservative political forces at the time. An effervescent period of public discussion ensued between 1987 and 1989, and again in 2007 and 2009, in two different waves of public referenda against what became known as the “impunity law”—especially among the growing urban left. The law has now been ratified by two popular consultations (the 1989 Referendum and as recently as the 2009 Plebiscite) on the same law. Uruguay’s case of a citizenry legally voting twice, two decades apart, with the result of upholding an amnesty for perpetrators of state human rights crimes, is unique and continues to act as a “double seal”13 to most pending human rights cases.

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The premise that the crimes of the past were better forgotten seems to have gained acceptance not only among the political and military elites, but also among a thin majority of civilians. As a result, and up until the first Frente Amplio (left-wing coalition party) administration (2005–2010), all military as well as civilian perpetrators of state human rights abuses were untouched by justice, while the victims at large were denied any form of public recognition or redress for what they had suffered.14 After the 1989 campaign and for the next decade, all public debate on the state human rights abuses had gone silent, in the name of a political reconciliation “in peace.” But in recent years, after the campaign and result of the 2009 Plebiscite (52.3 percent of Uruguayan voters rejected the proposal to overturn the Ley de Caducidad),15 increasing social mobilization16 and debate about the law and the impeding international legal challenges to the impunity regime, are evidence that the debate is ongoing and that polarization has increased, not diminished, over time. Rather than fading away with the passing of time, the unresolved problems of the past have paradoxically resurfaced in public memory with growing force in the past few years, timidly between 2001 and 2003, and with stronger impetus since 2005, as new memory movements joined the old in a chain of generational renewal for the claims and actions for state recognition of the human rights abuses and the memory of the victims. Among these young movements was a new generation of “blood-based” human rights activists, after generations of mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared, the movement of the children of the disappeared (1997–2003),17 and more recently movements of children of former political prisoners.18 The endurance and increasing “waves” of memories of the disappeared and their public resurgence over time is an interesting irony, considering all the coercive efforts by official elites to suppress these memories. These “waves” put under the spotlight the underlying conflicts of the unresolved past woven into the fabric of the contemporary culture and politics, the effects of unprocessed experience that slowly simmered in the undercurrents of collective memory, occupying subjective and intersubjective intimate spaces, surviving and being sustained in the secrecy of the everyday relationships of individuals, families, and communities touched by state repression. What had been excluded from the public memory paradoxically had retained a profound intersubjective and cultural presence, finally pushing its way into the public. What I illustrate here are some of these undercurrents as they manifested in families of the relatives of the disappeared across generations, focusing on parental dilemmas and stated strategies of transmission of the experience of disappearance in their families.19

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7.2 The Transmission of the Unknown: Generations of the Disappeared and Parental “Pedagogies of Horror” The fearful climate of the dictatorship, in which adults were in danger of being abducted by the very state that was supposed to shelter them, forced adults to hand down survival lessons in their struggle to protect their children from the terror of military raids and everyday repression tactics. To protect their children, adults had to give them reassuring accounts of reality, which expressed values for adapting and coping.20 How do parents prepare children to encounter unforeseen terror? How can they convey survival lessons without drowning the children in the adults’ fears? How do they reveal the truth of disappearance, without transferring burdensome obligations and responsibilities? The following pages illustrate some of these communicative narrative and pedagogic parental practices and dilemmas to cope with living under state repression, which I have entitled “parental pedagogies of horror.” The parents managed to pass down knowledge, experience, moral and practical lessons for life by resorting to these communicative pedagogic practices living under state terror, or “pedagogies of horror,” which arose in response to a set of stated or unstated dilemmas as a result of political repression and enforced disappearance in their families. Their dilemma was whether to share the burdens of knowledge and silence and how to do it. This was particularly challenging when the knowledge of disappearance continued to be unsay-able and inexplicable for decades. Adults had the enormous burden of explaining a loved one’s absence that they themselves could not make sense of. Which aspects of the experience and what life lessons should they transmit to the children under their care? How could they walk the thin ice between sheltering the young from the burden of fear and teaching them how to live honorably and with dignity under a political climate of silence and denial? How to live under regime of fear and not transmit the fear that served it? Parents and caregivers had to balance the clashing demands of both sheltering their children’s innocence and alerting them to the dangerous reality that could invade their homes and families. They had to teach them not to trust authorities but at the same time avoid transmitting painful, dangerous, and harmful contents of fear engrained in the authoritarian regime, which they were fully aware was the goal of the regime. I found that the pedagogic strategies among the caregivers I interviewed21 followed two main paths of transmission practices, presented in the next three sections: (1) Narrative urges: a need or compulsion to tell the children;

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(2) Softening and silencing narratives: giving edited or softened versions, and not telling the children, by maintaining total or selective degrees of silence. I also discuss children’s agency in this relationship though a section on (3) Children’s inquiries: the counterpart to adult dilemmas. Children often went through their own puzzles on whether to ask questions or remain quiet about their families’ past. In what follows, I illustrate these paths and modes of transmission pedagogies through a tale of three families: Ana’s, Alicia’s, and María’s families. Narrative Urges: The Need or Compulsion to Tell All human cultures have shown a “compulsion to transmit,”22 a human need to pass on significant aspects of our lives and leave an enduring legacy in the memories of the coming generations. This transmission urge internally motivates parent-child communications. Parents tend to want to explain and justify their lives to their children and this stands at the core of human culture. Family One: Ana’s Family, Telling Enrique Ana is a widow and home-maker in her late 70s whose youngest son Juan disappeared in 1974.23 He was a newlywed whose wife Edna was four-months pregnant. After Juan’s disappearance, his wife Edna gave birth to their son Enrique in prison, and she was released after she spent four years as a political prisoner in Punta de Rieles, the female political prison in the outskirts of Montevideo. Enrique, Ana’s grandson, spent two years in prison with his mother and then returned to the family. Ana’s second son and his family narrowly escaped arrest and disappearance in Buenos Aires. Her oldest son, described by the family as “the silent brother,” stayed in the shadows, away from politics, and supported his mother in the search. After her release, Edna married Lucho, another former political prisoner now in his fifties, and had two children together. They remain actively involved in the redress movement to this day. When Edna, Ana’s daughter-in-law, was released in 1978 after four years in prison, she had sat her then-four-year-old Enrique down and told him the whole story of their imprisonment and his father’s disappearance. “He probably doesn’t even remember,” she added, sounding self-critical. After a pause, she added regretfully: He did not react, nothing, he did not say anything. My memory is that he did not say anything . . . Fortunately, [smiled] I learned to control better my compulsion to transmit everything to him [laughter]! Poor thing! Poor little angel . . . (Edna).

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She recalled how she had overwhelmed Enrique with her urge to tell the story. With hindsight, she now felt that she had been invasive and tactless, and has since learned the benefits of respecting her child’s autonomy: With Enrique, the relationship . . . was not always as respectful as it is now from my part. When he was much younger, I had an enormous necessity to confront him and tell him what had happened . . . We people from leftist backgrounds were left with such hushed feelings of frustration, defeat, and enormous loss . . . [that] we had the constant preoccupation, a compulsion, to get the kids and tell them everything . . . I had an enormous desire for him to grow up so that we could talk . . . (Edna). Edna’s experience with Enrique is an interesting illustration of how pedagogies constitute a learning process that relies heavily on time, on many episodes of conversation over the years. Like Edna and Alicia, many of the parents and grandparents I interviewed had wished to be providers of a safe environment, and felt guilty about what their narrative urges had exposed their children to. Others learned to diminish the impact of their stories by softening or editing out the more shocking elements, waiting for their children’s questions and interests to develop before disclosing full details of their stories. Softening and Silencing Narratives Family Two: Alicia’s family, Disclosing the Truth to Sofía Alicia, a separated factory worker now in her late eighties, whose only son Ignacio had been kidnapped in a café in Buenos Aires in 1974 by Condor operatives,24 told me that she kept her son alive in her ongoing inner conversations. Alicia herself had been detained for a few months and labeled “dangerous” for being a trade union member and for inquiring about her son. After the disappearance, she went into exile in Europe with her daughter-inlaw Alma and granddaughter Sofía. After exile, Alicia returned to Uruguay in the mid-1980s to become a key leader in the human rights movement. Sofía and her mother remained in Europe.25 Sofía, who was six when her father went missing, said: “I don’t know where to start . . . well, I could tell you that it changed my life completely—I don’t know what my life would have been . . .” (Sofía, in her thirties). When Ignacio disappeared during their first exile in Buenos Aires in 1974, his mother Alicia and wife Alma pondered how to tell Sofía (then five years old). They first tried an alternative softened version, which followed the common image of a trip, “Daddy went on a trip . . . .” Alicia said: “Her

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mother at first told her that [he] had gone to the south of Argentina, but then she thought it over, and went back on her steps and said [to Sofía]: “He is in prison, we are looking for him.” When Sofía learned the truth, she threw such a tantrum because we had lied to her! [laughs, then silence]. Well, we actually had to tell her because she was constantly expecting him, her heart on a string (vivía en vilo), she’d hear the bell ring and say: “It’s my daddy, it’s daddy, daddy came back, it’s daddy” . . . (Alicia). [emphasis added] What happened is that I think my son and Alma were very “unaware” (inconscientes). They were activists, and as all young activists at the time, other young people were constantly coming over to their house and talked about everything that happened in the country in front of the girl. The girl, of course, was not in their circle, but she was playing nearby and she was absorbing absolutely everything they were talking about! . . . So when her father disappeared, Sofía would take me aside and ask me: “Granny, what are they doing to my daddy? Do you think they may be pulling his nails out?” [Silence] . . . She knew everything that they could be doing to her little daddy! Because she had heard it all . . . [her emphasis] In such moving cases, adults were sometimes forced, despite their misgivings, to tell some of the brutal truth before an anxious and perceptive child’s questions. Most of the now adult children of the disappeared interviewees had been direct child witnesses of the circumstances around their fathers’ or parents’ abduction. A few cases in my larger research sample included children who disappeared with their parents as abducted babies and were later recovered (not explicitly used for the selection in this chapter).26 The child’s emotional impact assessment seemed to shape how a child would dare to ask questions, in a mutual learning process of whether to disclose or silence the stories of the past, depending on how much pain it seemed they could cause to their loved ones. After Edna dumped the full story on her four-year-old son’s unprepared ears, she stated that she thought that Enrique had not asked any questions. But Enrique recalled asking indirect questions as a child in his own time and subdued ways. Children do ask questions about delicate issues in their own elliptical ways. Enrique’s adoptive father Lucho recalled: Little Quique [nickname for Enrique] did not ask direct questions, but it does not mean that whenever a topic would come up, he was not listening. He listened very attentively; he was interested in listening, right?

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And sometimes he would definitely come back and ask about partial things he had heard again many times, as if he could never really finish understanding . . . There are many shocking things about him . . . (Lucho) [my italics for emphasis]. Through an ongoing learning process, parents came to recognize what was necessary and beneficial for their children to know and what was not. Children’s questions and reactions about traumatic experiences, given the vulnerability of their formative years, were not easy to handle, and parents acknowledged this by resorting to emotional and factual adaptability, withholding or softening portions of the narrative. For example, Alicia recalled one night in a refugee shelter in exile when her seven-year-old granddaughter Sofía raised her concerns: And I remember . . . The walls of the refuge were cardboard-thin. In the room next door they could hear everything . . . One of the other refugees, father of four . . . tells me: ‘Ay, Alicia! If any of my children came to me with the questions that your granddaughter makes, I would die . . . I don’t know what I would tell them!’ Because she came, got into bed, and says to me: [recreating the dialogue, bemused tone] —You know granny what I was thinking? —Sure, tell me, what did you think? —That I no longer want the Revolution. —But what happened, that you got so disappointed? [mocking tone] —Because I got to thinking, they already killed my daddy, and in a revolution many people die . . . And I don’t want you or my mommy to die! [pause] . . . [turning to me] Those were the thoughts she had, can you imagine?! This dialogue illustrates the dilemmas of parents or caregivers faced with children who have perhaps too much knowledge. Withholding, not sharing emotions and information in this context became a collective, as well as personal, survival strategy inherited, in part, from the activists’ codes of conduct and safety developed, as well as the culture of fear, during the dictatorship. Reinforced by a double wall of social silence and fear, and intrapsychic and familial silences, parents and grandparents did not always manage to inform their young children with enough sensibility to make them feel included and sheltered. The disappearances were part of their daily lives and were embodied presences in multiple ways, but went largely unspoken or not addressed directly in narrative forms within the family.

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Children’s Inquiries Just as adults had to consider whether to tell their children, children had to decide whether to ask questions. Families developed their own home-grown idiosyncratic cultures of sharing or staying silent and the children responded in kind to the climate. Children who were too young to know what had happened could remain excluded from the knowledge for some time. But those who were old enough to be witnesses had no tools to interpret what had happened without help from adults. Adult behavior depended on whether their need to tell outgrew the need to protect the children from knowledge that adults thought could be harmful. The children, in turn, could influence these dynamics through their questions or silences. Most children had developed their own methods of research, or information-gathering techniques. They followed their own sixth sense into the unknown, openly or covertly listening; nosing around for secrets the way children do; picking up clues from the environment and overhearing fragmentary adult conversations, observing and absorbing gestures, and moods; tying bits and pieces together; and appropriating facts and fantasies from every corner of their homes. Children perceived the adults’ hopes and fears and acted to shelter the adults from pain. In a singular reversal of generational relations, most of these children remembered feeling that they should protect their elders from reliving painful experiences and thus tended to avoid posing direct questions about the missing, sometimes even silencing their queries completely. Avoidance also sheltered the children themselves from the pain, acting in defensive denial and with the aid of magical thinking: “If I do not ask, nothing bad can happen to me or my loved ones; I protect myself, and them, with my silence.” Viviana’s mother and father were kidnapped together in front of her very eyes the day she turned four. The family had gone out for groceries for her birthday party. Her and a younger sister had been left at the side of the road to their fate, and were luckily rescued by neighbors and returned to the care of their maternal grandmother María. Viviana had turned into a child who did not ask questions: I knew something weird had happened, I always had that sensation. In addition, I never asked. There must have been a reason why I never asked. Maybe I erased it . . . I think all my childhood I had a mechanism . . . a sort of hermetism—‘if I do not ask, nothing will happen’—not thinking, denying. (Viviana in her thirties)

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In turn, her grandmother kept her wrapped in a protective silence. At night, after the little girl was asleep, María would cover her head and cry under the covers.27 On her parent’s disappearance, Viviana had initially stated a lack of words: “My parents disappeared . . . in 1979. They disappeared at the same time in Montevideo . . . Y bueno, tá (Well, that’s it) . . .” Viviana remembered her mom screaming: “Please, don’t take the girls!!!”28 This tragedy is encapsulated by the words “Y bueno, ta”—Uruguayan slang to end a sentence. Viviana was at a loss for words to describe what they had gone through. She compared her story to the Brothers Grimm’s classic tale of Hansel and Gretel, two children who had been abandoned in the forest by their parents and tried to find their way back by following a path of bread crumbs which they had dropped on the way in. But as bread crumbs had been eaten by birds, their path to return had been erased. The comparison to a story about losing and then searching for one’s path can be seen as representing her own identity search, shaped by the early witnessing experience of her parents’ disappearance: Well, let’s start with this story of Hansel and Gretel . . . . . . I do not remember this, but my grandma and my aunt were telling me that I made drawings and I would keep them in a little bag. Or I would gather little things and would keep them in the bag. One day, my aunt asked me why I was keeping this little bag with drawings and everything with me all the time. I told her that I had done those drawings for my mom. So my aunt said, “Oh, OK, so one day you will be able to give them to your mommy.” And she says that I replied: “No, I am not going to give them to her because my mother was taken away by the military, and I will never see my mom again.” I do not remember that, but I suppose that I must have repeated something I heard from the adults around me . . . But what I mean is, when I was little they did not hide the fact that my parents were disappeared.29 Like Hansel and Gretel’s lost path, Viviana’s drawings and cherished objects were linking phenomena that drew an imaginary connection between herself and her lost mom and dad. Even though she rationally knew that her parents were gone forever, she continued to look for ways to relate to this experience, in her own way, like many of these children. She had begun to seek answers when she turned 22, her mother’s age when she was forced to disappear. She was later a key organizer of the association of children of the disappeared (HIJOS) that acted as a human rights network among the youth in the late 1990s.

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Today, some of the children barely have a name and a date of birth of their missing parents, others do not yet even bear their original family names and are still involved in legal dilemmas on whether to adopt their missing fathers’ names. Many treasure letters and documents—letters, diaries, photos, placards, banners, fliers, notebooks, anything in relation to their missing that might fall into their hands or was handed down from their parents or their parents’ compañeros (companions), their adoptive aunts and uncles. Most are still putting the pieces of the puzzle together, along with their elders and the rest of the society. The very parental (or in some cases, grandparental) pedagogies intended to protect children by telling these softened stories, on the other hand, seem to have had the unintended outcome of leaving the children alone, left to their own covert resources. As a result, they often remained silent about these topics, sensing the charged emotions and self-censorship through the fabric of the adults’ silence. I observed that most caregivers preferred to err on the side of silence, rarely imposing a trauma narrative upon them. This frequently created a “double wall”30 or intergenerational taboo between caregivers and children. The silence was thus reinforced in many families by an implicit “No ask-No tell” pact that endured for years, sometimes decades. When children asked direct questions about taboo topics, which was rare according to my data, the effect was remarkable. An untypical case in point is Alicia’s granddaughter Sofía, who compared herself to a Mafaldita, the popular River Plate cartoon character of a philosophical and politicized little girl who always asks adults “bothersome questions”:31 I asked a lot and I think I was quite—I know I was quite quick to capture situations. I had like a sixth sense for how adults were feeling. They would tell me things and I really had Mafalda-like replies—I remember that part. And I remember that many adults were endeared to me because of that, but many others were angered. I was breaking their schemes and they did not like that at all, and I remember their reactions of rejection (Sofía). It should come as no surprise that few children are reported to have actually raised questions as directly and disturbingly as Sofía did, in the context of silence and muffled but considerable pain and guilt. Sometimes children had no tools to handle the answers, so they knew better not to ask. Even when children had witnessed the abduction of one or both of their parents or had overheard information from adult conversations, most could make sense of such traumatic events only later, in retrospect, with the help of adults. It is noticeable that very few of these children report direct

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conversations with their closest caretakers about the disappearance itself. The disappearance seemed to go mostly unspoken of between generations in their private family life. In most cases this intergenerational dialogue, where the adults updated or clarified certain events and meanings to the child, did not happen in one day and in lineal narrative but through a cumulative reiteration of a basic story fragment over time, narrated throughout decades, using various channels, from silent to nonverbal (embodied) to narrative forms of expression. 7.3

Generations and Transmissions

The evidence gathered suggests a generational behavioral pattern of difference or discontinuity in pedagogic practices between grandparental and parental caregivers of these children and transmission paths. The older generation of grandparents, particularly the grandmothers in this study, and the older parents (mothers in particular), who had not been deeply involved in revolutionary activism, tended to soften or silence the story of disappearance, purportedly to shelter the children under their care. They also invested much of their energy in decades of searching for their missing loved ones in rather private and institutional ways, rather than creating widely shared narrative forms of transmission. Surviving parents who were activists and belonged to the generation of the 1960s, even though they were reticent and defensive about discussing their personal feelings and emotions with their children, tended to explicitly discuss the political reality of disappearance and political repression in general with other adults more openly, sometimes in front of their children, thus (perhaps over-) exposing the child to narratives of the fear, danger, and violence of the times. Those parents and grandparents who may have felt more cautions about keeping their children’s environment safe, and exposing them less to the vulnerability of their situation, perhaps sought a palliative for what they had unintentionally subjected their children to (living under state terror) by giving them softened versions through edited stories. It is highly noticeable that even when children were direct witnesses, or had overheard information from adult conversations, still most of them made sense of such traumatic events on their own, without daring to ask questions to the adults in their lives. It is also noticeable that very few of these children report direct conversations with their closest caretakers about the disappearance itself. The disappearance seemed to go mostly unspoken of between generations in their private family life.

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In most cases this rather broken intergenerational transmission did not tend to happen in lineal narrative, but through a cumulative reiteration of a basic story fragment over time, throughout decades, using various channels, mostly silent and softened versions wrapped in heavy nonverbal (embodied) messages, where narrative forms of expression tended to be very sketchy and fragmented. Conclusion I have examined how families in Uruguay have transmitted to their children, in the form of narratives, the private experience of disappearance through their pedagogies of living under state terror, or “pedagogies of horror.” Most transmissions happened through children’s long-term exposure to the intimate relational and emotional narratives, psychological defense mechanisms and edited, softened or silenced versions of the meaning of the events that marked their families’ lives, as parental and caregivers’ lives were marked by the “un-know-ability” and “un-sayability” of disappearance, framed socially by the ongoing transitional institutional and civil support for the state policies of denial. Mainly through powerful, yet fragmentary, expressive narratives and exemplary teachings, muted emotions and affectively charged silences, these caregivers passed on to their children a legacy of pending questions and a sense of the weight of the unresolved past-in-the-present. What emerged strongly throughout all the interviews was how heavily the children, while growing up, felt this sense of a legacy of “unfinished business” from their caregivers, wrapped in multiple layers of secrecy, subtlety, softened versions and charge silences. In the context of Uruguay’s long-term transitional politics of oblivion and silencing, enduring unfavorable social conditions resulted in the families’ ongoing tempering and silencing of the abusive past, well beyond the events themselves or the generations that suffered the repression directly. What had been excluded from the public memory had paradoxically retained a profound intersubjective and cultural presence, finally pushing its way into the public. This paradoxically resulted in nourishing the endurance of redress and memory movements across generations, albeit fragmented and in waves of demands to the unanswered questions. By not recognizing the harm done as a result of political and social denial of the problem, Uruguayan society not only did not provide any public resources for narrative and historic transmission, restitution and healing, but blocked the afflicted subjects’ and community’s ability to achieve a degree of closure. This lack of closure powerfully transmitted across generations

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may be paradoxically responsible, in part, for the endurance of these kinds of fragmented transmissions as well as of the growing social movements for redress in recent decades. The evidence illustrated from the families presented here suggests that members of the second generation, far from forgetting or healing, are also struggling with the legacies of their past. They seem to be having difficulty shaping narratives, becoming aware of their choices and expressing in their own voices any ambivalence about the burdens of the unresolved past of the previous generations. Some signs also point to the role of the generation of children after disappearance as a linking bridge, a chain in a longer-term process of transgenerational transmission. Members of succeeding generations may be called to revive the mourning process and symbolically bury the dead, before being able to take a fresh look into the future. Given the intersubjective nature of intergenerational relations and of the transmission process, this process of transmission, constructing and sharing narratives change will require the workings not only of the passing of generational time, but also the presence of a social “other,” a witness who will listen with empathy and legitimize the stories they have to tell, as well as the questions the successive generations will bring. Putting the stories of the disappeared into a less fragmentary, more widely shared narrative beyond the family history is a first step for these experiences of state terror to become part of the public and political realm, as well as subjects of redress claims. The case study underlines the importance of designing strategic research sites to visualize the underlying conflicts of unresolved and unprocessed past experiences in contemporary cultures and polities, even if unacknowledged explicitly in the public sphere. This case also highlights that to understand the endurance of collective memory of traumatic political pasts and the dynamics of its public emergence in apparently sudden “waves of memory,” it is necessary to analytically develop a robust methodology and framework to study memory traumatic transmissions in the private and intimate undercurrent layers of collective memory. These occupied subjective and intersubjective spaces, and were sustained in the shelter of the private and intimate, everyday realms of individual and interpersonal subjectivities, families, and communities that endured the era of state repression and its continuation in the form of politics of oblivion and impunity along decades of the democratic transition. What the public political memory excluded for decades was paradoxically sustained and “revived” in the cultural and intersubjective realms of everyday memory processes and practices. Such undercurrent practices made their contribution, in part, for the collective memory of these suppressed experiences of

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the political repression to be sustained, reconstructed, and be made readily available to new generations over time. A further research question remains, under what subjective, intersubjective, and cultural processes will such process be enabled? Ultimately, the policies of denial and silencing did not achieve the expected social reconciliation or closure. Under the thin varnish of consensus, polarizations remain and seem to be growing to this day. The damage to fragmentary transmissions cannot be addressed or repaired only at the level of individuals or families. The solution has to come from all the institutional and political levels that jointly contributed to the silence and secrecy that enabled the impunity regime to endure. Resolution will come only when the social culture, as well as the political community, can recognize the experience suffered and take steps to involve the whole community, the society, and its institutions—political, judicial, social, educational, and interpersonal—to establish new boundaries between the past and the present, toward a changing culture of meaningful, narrative and historical transmission, transparency, and accountability. Notes I wish to acknowledge the Mellon Fellowship for Latin American Sociology at the University of California Los Angeles, the United States Institute of Peace Randolph Jennings Fellowship, and the University of California Los Angeles. I also thank the Ford Foundation/Social Science Research Council Program for my inclusion in the 1999 Memory of the Repression in Latin America Program, which provided partial support for some of the research on the grandmother’s generation, as well as the Rockefeller Program at the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Republic—Uruguay (2001), for generous support during the fieldwork stages of this project. I also thank the generous support from the Department of Sociology at California State University Los Angeles during follow-up research in 2008–2009, as well as the Faculty of Psychology, University of the Republic—Uruguay for their support during the final writing (2009–2010). Finally, I thank Francesca Lessa for her wonderful work on this editorial project and for the privilege of having worked with her. Mentors, colleagues, interviewees, community leaders, and friends who have accompanied me in the longitudinal study in LA and Montevideo are too many to mention here. I thank just some key cornerstones from my time in Los Angeles: Dr. Jeff Prager, my mentor and inspiration, and Dr. David Lopez, and Saul Friendlander, from UCLA. I also want to thank the invaluable scholarly comments to earlier stages of my work by Dr. Jeff Olick at the University of Virginia, Dr. Lynn Rapaport at Pomona College, and Sachiko Takita-Ishii at the University of Yokohama, and Dr. Elin Skaar at the Bergen Christian Michelsen Institute. Needless to say, the responsibility for the analysis in these pages and any mistakes or inaccuracies are solely mine.

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1. Forced Disappearance refers to the illegal abduction by state agents (usually military or police units or undercover intelligence officers) of citizens suspected of oppositional political activism. Disappearance has been typified as a permanent, ongoing crime, and as a crime against humanity in international human rights law, such as the 1994 Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons and the 2006 International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. 2. Adriana Bergero and Fernando Reati, Memoria Colectiva y Politicas de Olvido— Argentina y Uruguay, 1970–1990 (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 1997). 3. See note 7 for detailed figures. 4. For a complex notion of memory layers, I have been inspired by Nicholas Abraham and Marie Törok, L’Ecorce et Le Noyau (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1987). 5. This transnational cooperation, now known as “Condor Operation” or Plan Cóndor in Spanish, was the illegal cooperation of the repressive operatives across borders to hunt down “subversives” by the military dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. Brazil and Paraguay and even Bolivia are known to have cooperated in these operations as well. 6. The U.S. ideological and logistical support under the NSD is well documented. See Samuel Blixen, El Vientre del Condor (Montevideo: Brecha, 1998); Saul Landau, The Dangerous Doctrine: National Security and U.S. Foreign Policy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988). 7. The total number of Uruguayans documented as disappeared is 167: 35 disappeared in Uruguayan territory; 125 Uruguayans disappeared on Argentinean territory but their fate was decided by identified Uruguayan military officers within the context of Plan Condor; 8 in Chile, 2 in Paraguay, 1 in Colombia, and 1 in Bolivia. The jurisdiction, accountability, and responsibility are now a subject of great controversy between Argentinean and Uruguayan jurisdictions. See José Pedro Barrán, Gerardo Caetano, and Alvaro Rico, Investigación Histórica Sobre Detenidos Desaparecidos, Tomo IV (Montevideo: Dirección Nacional de Impresiones y Publicaciones Oficiales [IMPO], 2008), 227–311; Servicio Paz y Justicia (SERPAJ), Uruguay, Nunca Más (Montevideo: SERPAJ, 1989). 8. Sofia Salimovich, Elizabeth Lira, and Eugenia Weinstein, “Victims of Fear: The Social Psychology of Repression” in Fear at the Edge: State Terror and Resistance in Latin America, ed. Juan E. Corradi, Patricia Weiss Fagen, and Manuel Antonio Garretón (Berkeley: University of California, 1992), 74. 9. “Comisión para la Paz. Presidencia de la República. Informe Final. 10.04.2003, Sección 2” in Investigación Histórica Sobre Detenidos Desaparecidos, Tomo IV (Montevideo: IMPO), 23–71. See Presidencia de la República Oriental del Uruguay, http://www.presidencia.gub.uy/_web/noticias/2007/06/tomo4.pdf. 10. This number conflates refugees, exiles, and émigrés, as the dimensions of the problem have not yet been well documented or studied systematically. 11. This round number is relative compared to the estimated over 8,000 reported and 30,000 claimed to be disappeared in Argentina, and over 3,000 cases reported in Chile.

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12. It was initially President Sanguinetti’s Executive project, later corroborated by a majority in Parliament. In Spanish, “Caducidad de la Pretensión Punitiva del Estado,” literally the “Law on the Expiry of the Punitive Claim of the State.” 13. Luis Roniger, “Olvido, Memoria Colectiva e Identidades: Uruguay en el Contexto del Cono Sur” in La Imposibilidad del Olvido, ed. Bruno Groppo and Patricia Flier (La Plata: Al Margen, 2001), 163. 14. Under Tabaré Vázquez’s progressive coalition since 2005, this “double seal” has shown increasing signs of cracking as the Executive and the Judiciary have changed interpretations of the law and declared it unconstitutional for some of the cases of disappearances (Caso Sabalsagaray in 2009, for example). It is too early to assess the policies of the present administration of President José Mujica, historic leader of the urban guerilla organization of the 1970s, Tupamaros, and of Frente Amplio in Parliament. At the time of writing, there is a heated parliamentary and political debate internal to Frente Amplio about the possibility to annul the Ley de Caducidad, as recent rulings from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights require that Uruguay dismantle its impunity regime, deemed incompatible with its national Constitution as well as with international treaties Uruguay is signatory to. 15. It is remarkable that during the 2009 Plebiscite, those who supported the status quo on the issue of the prosecution of human rights violations did not have to take any action for their vote to uphold the law, joining in the ranks of those citizens who were uninformed or indifferent, while those who opposed the law had to put in a pink slip. Very noticeable among the rank and file supporters of the annulment of the law are the urban youth through many civic associations like the Federación de Estudiantes Universitarios del Uruguay (Federation of Uruguay’s University Students) and their presence in the door-to-door 2009 campaign mobilizations. 16. Example of this is the Marcha del Silencio (Silent March or Vigil in the memory of the disappeared) celebrated annually every May 20 since 1996 on the anniversary of the murder of Uruguayan former legislators Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz, which has been growing every year, and has become the largest civic and intergenerational demonstration. The 2010 edition of the Marcha brought the largest numbers of demonstrators marching through the downtown main street, counting near 10,000 demonstrators. The activities commemorating the coup d’ état every June 27, and surrounding activities against impunity during that week have also become significant in the last years since the coup’s twenty-fifth anniversary. 17. On this association (called HIJOS) in Uruguay, see Gabriela Fried Amilivia, “Memorias que Instisten: La Intersubjectividad de la Memoria y los Hijos de Detenidos Desaparecidos por la Dictadura Militar Argentina (1976–1983)” in La Imposibilidad del Olvido: Recorridos de la Memoria en Argentina, Chile y Uruguay, ed. Bruno Groppo and Patricia Flier (La Plata: Al Margen, 2001), 127–149. 18. Groups emerged in recent years after 2005, like Niños Nacidos en Cautiverio Político (Children Born in Political Captivity, the case I am currently documenting and studying) and Memoria en Libertad (Memory Set Free).

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19. For further complementary and specific work on embodied and implicit, nonnarrative transmissions, see Gabriela Fried Amilivia, “Remembering Trauma in Society: Forced Disappearance and familial Transmissions After Uruguay’s Era of State Terror (1973–2001)” in Sociology of Memory: Papers from the Spectrum, ed. Noel Packard (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009); and Gabriela Fried Amilivia, “Piecing Memories Together. The Female Political Prisoners’ Testimonial Project after State Terror and Policies of Oblivion in Uruguay (1997–2004)” Social Identities 12, no. 5 (2006). 20. Some of these ideas are reworked from Danieli’s notion that trauma affects parental conscious and unconscious core values for “living, adapting and coping,” see Yael Danieli, International Handbook on Transgenerational Legacies of Trauma (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 9. 21. The original sample consisted of 12 families among the disappeared, political prisoners, and former exiles. In this chapter I have selected material from mainly two families, and other selected vignettes, a set of eight personal interviews and family observations conducted in Uruguay in 2000–2001 and follow up research in 2009–2010. 22. Pierre Legendre, L’Inestimable Objet de la Transmission: Etudes Sur le Principe Généalogique en Occident (Paris: Dunod, 1985). 23. All interviewees’ names are pseudonyms, and all recognizable data have been adapted to preserve their privacy and confidentiality. 24. Plan Condor was the cooperation program across all Southern Cone and military regimes (see note 5). All Uruguayans who disappeared beyond Uruguayan borders, mostly in Argentina, were disappeared under the jurisdiction of Uruguayan authorities operating under this transnational plan to combat “subversion” in the region. 25. Sofía participated in this study because she was in Montevideo while I was conducting my fieldwork, exploring possibilities whether to return to Uruguay. She would eventually form a family and stay in her country of acquisition. 26. A few of these Uruguayan children still remain at large. Many were located in Argentina and a few in Chile. The most recent case of a disappeared child’s spectacularly publicized recovery was that of Simón Riquelo, son of former prisoner Sara Méndez, located in Buenos Aires in April 2002, and Macarena Gelman, granddaughter of Argentinean Poet Laureate Juan Gelman, located in Montevideo in 2000. There are still 2 missing children disappeared in Uruguay from a total of 8, and over 400 in Argentina from almost 100 identified cases. These cases strike a deep chord with the public, as the abduction of innocent babies constitutes an abhorrent crime. While the crime is still covered in a mantle of secrecy by Uruguayan Ley de Caducidad, it is prosecuted in Argentina. 27. Grandmother Interview from archival material, courtesy of Radio Program “Programa Testimonios,” CX 44, aired in July 1999 (Thanks to Graciela Salsamendi, Raúl Zibechi, and Juan Pablo Martínez). 28. Sources here are my personal communications with Ana between 1996 and 2006, as well as an aired radio interview in “Programa Testimonios” (1999), and

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Enrico Irazábal’s (audio taped) focus group interviews with HIJOS (1998). I thank Enrico Irazábal and Graciela Salsamendi for access and permission to use their archival materials, in addition to my own. 29. Interview conducted by my colleague Enrico Irazábal in 1999 in the context of a group process, and a follow-up to my own interviews (1996–1998). I am grateful for his permission to use it in my work, personal communication with Enrico Irazábal, 2001. A different version is also cited in Fried, “Remembering Trauma in Society.” 30. Bar-On coined this term when he found that Holocaust-related topics were silenced in a study of three generations in families of Holocaust survivors in Israel. See Dan Bar-On, Fear and Hope: Three Generations of the Holocaust (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). 31. Mafalda is the name of a popular River Plate character by Master Cartoonist Quino, representing a critical, curious, alert and rebellious, environmentalist, pacifist, and socialist witty little schoolgirl. Her origins in the times of political censorship in Argentina made her a household celebrity. Many young and midage Argentineans and Uruguayans (and other Latin Americans) were politically socialized by this classic and widely read cartoon.

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CHAPTER 8

No hay que tener los ojos en la nuca: The Memory of Violence in Uruguay, 1973–2010 Francesca Lessa

ust like the rest of the Southern Cone, Uruguay too lived through a repressive military regime between 1973 and 1985. Uruguay was the country with the longest democratic tradition in the region; still, it similarly fell under the spell of military rule, bearing witness to grave human rights violations, including systematic torture and mass prolonged imprisonment. At the time, Uruguay earned the macabre title of the Torture Chamber of Latin America, due to the brutality of repression;1 there, over 60,000 people were imprisoned and, between 1973 and 1977, Uruguay had the “highest percentage of political detainees per capita in the world.”2 True to its democratic culture and national passion with voting, Uruguay is the only country in the world to have held in 1989 a referendum on its amnesty law, the Ley de Caducidad de la Pretensión Punitiva del Estado (Law on the Expiry of the Punitive Claims of the State, or simply Expiry Law), which exonerates military and security personnel from accountability for human rights abuses committed before March 1, 1985. After the Expiry Law was confirmed at the ballot box, over a decade of silence ensued regarding past political violence as the national government actively imposed silence and forgetting. This official policy of oblivion is best illustrated by the popular slogan “no hay que tener los ojos en la nuca” (you should not have eyes at the back of your head).

J

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This chapter argues that Uruguay was the most successful country in the Southern Cone in limiting the debate over the abuses committed during the dictatorship. In fact, until the late 1990s, several governments effectively restricted this discussion to the confined sphere of the human rights organizations and those directly affected (victims and their relatives, known as the afectados). This strategy of silence, however, proved ephemeral. Since the mid-1990s, the hegemonic role of the state in the politics of memory began to be challenged, as the human rights question resurfaced in the public and social arenas. Questions of accountability had eventually returned and, since 2000, Uruguay has made significant progress in terms of truth and justice—something unforeseeable just a few years earlier. The chapter begins with a brief discussion on questions of memory. Second, it traces the evolution of memory discourses by successive constitutional governments, focusing on the Two Demons Theory and the Peace Commission—different versions of the same desire to silence discussion. Third, alternative narratives alongside that of the state are outlined, looking at those proposed by the Armed Forces and human rights activists. Last, specific examples are considered, highlighting how memory in Uruguay is fragmented across dates, peoples, and places, like the small pieces of a memory kaleidoscope that, with their ever-changing colors, continuously take different shapes and forms. 8.1 The Question of Memory Since 1985, the landscape of memory in Uruguay has been characterized by a tension between the will to remember and the endeavor to forget. Numerous governments have tried to impose collective amnesia on society to anesthetize it from the pain suffered,3 a sort of official silence that wished to eliminate from memory both the repressors’ blame and the victims’ desire for justice.4 An antagonism, therefore, has existed between a majority that is willing to forget the burdensome legacy of terror, and a wounded minority that cannot do so.5 Confronting the legacy of military rule was particularly difficult for Uruguay, a country that until a few decades earlier had prided itself with epithets like “the Switzerland of America” and “the Athens of the River Plate” for Montevideo.6 The country’s self-perception rested on foundational images like “como el Uruguay no hay” (there is no place like Uruguay) and “el Uruguay feliz” (Uruguay, the land of the merry).7 These statements portrayed Uruguay as a European country, with high levels of education, peaceful and profoundly democratic, politically stable, and enjoying growing financial and economic markets.

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During redemocratization in the mid-1980s, the dictatorship became an unresolved question, to be reflected upon in terms of its genesis and impact.8 The previous foundational myths were reassessed and in this new context, civility and consensual mechanisms of conflict resolution became especially cherished, particularly to confront explosive issues like the human rights question. The basic myth was then that of “Democratic Uruguay,” where consensus had to prevail at all costs.9 The dictatorship triggered various interpretations. For some, the military interregnum was a phenomenon of cataclysmic character imposed on Uruguay “from the outside,” victimizing society as a whole and constituting an anomaly in national history.10 Others claimed instead that this experience was not fundamentally different, it simply being a further example of events that occurred much more frequently than Uruguayans would like to remember.11 Still, military rule and the political repression remain deeply disturbing events for Uruguayans. Therefore, it is important to investigate how these are remembered and what narratives exist to recount and make sense of them. The landscape of memory in Uruguay is composed of “broken memories,” as individuals remember differently depending on their personal contexts and experiences of military rule.12 Memories are fragmented, small pieces of a memory kaleidoscope that manifest themselves and change often in unpredictable ways at the individual, social, cultural, and political levels. Nonetheless, a shared social consensus exists that repudiates the dictatorship, depicting it as a period of strong authoritarianism and without freedom. The strength of social memory in Uruguay is partly the unintended consequence of state terrorism itself. The institutionalization of terror and fear generated situations in which the violence affected not only direct victims, but society as a whole.13 These “fractures of memory” occur because political terror produced long-lasting consequences for individuals, in tearing apart the social fabric and forever altering culture, social interactions, and the community.14 In fact, despite the initial success of the government’s policies of silence and forgetting, by the mid-1990s a combination of factors and the latent open wounds within society conjured for the return of the past onto the social and political agendas. The opening up of Uruguayan society to a public debate on the past can be explained with reference to local, regional, and international developments. Inside Uruguay, the reactivation of memory is partially a result of the passing of time: in the beginning, it was extremely hard for victims to talk about what they had endured, as this often meant reliving the traumatic experience of torture and imprisonment.15 Second, the arrival of younger

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generations forced society to return to all the unresolved and unanswered questions. In the mid-1990s, this coincided with the endeavors of committed individuals, such as Senator Rafael Michelini, and the establishment of new human rights organizations, including HIJOS, created in 1996 by the children of the disappeared, Memoria para Armar (Piecing Memory Together) in 1997, reuniting ex-female political prisoners, and CRYSOL in 2000, the Association of Former Political Prisoners. These added newer, fresher, and until-then silenced voices, to the much needed discussion on the past. Finally, the impact of changing presidential leaderships cannot be underestimated, as in the twenty-first century a more sympathetic environment to accountability existed. Regionally, a favorable context was already present, as similar accountability strategies were being adopted from Argentina to Chile, such as the identification of missing children and attempts to circumvent local amnesty laws. Further, in 1995, the declarations of Argentine Navy Captain (ret.) Scilingo on the use of death flights to murder disappeared-detainees reverberated in Uruguay too. This is not surprising, as most Uruguayans had disappeared in Argentina. Later on, the cases of missing Macarena Gelman and Simón Riquelo brought under the spotlight the situation of appropriated children. These discoveries demonstrated not only the close cooperation between Argentine and Uruguayan repressive forces at the time, but had an incredible impact on society, deeply moving the Uruguayan public. Internationally, in addition to the advances on human rights and international justice since the end of the Cold War, the 1998 London arrest of General Pinochet significantly echoed in the Southern Cone. It symbolically shattered the still powerful image and aura of the General, demonstrating that accountability was not beyond reach. 8.2 Discourses of Memory In the aftermath of authoritarian rule or conflict, a single, agreed-upon version of the events can rarely be found. Rather, disagreement reigns. Various actors take part in struggles over memory, coming to constitute what have been labeled as “communities of memory.”16 People develop and feel a sense of connection due to a collective experience, often of extraordinary, if not traumatic, nature. The shared meaning that is attributed to that event originates a bonding within the community, which comes to be defined by the personal relevance of the traumatic memory. Each community revolves around what Steve Stern defined as “emblematic memory,” namely a framework for collective remembrance that assigns meaning to the past.17

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In Uruguay, each emblematic memory has two features: a central nucleus that endures unchanged since its initial establishment, and an adjustable nature that allows the framework to evolve and adapt to new political, cultural, and social contexts. A consideration of memory discourses is essential, for these express the diverse ways in which the common but contested past of political violence and military rule is remembered by different groups in Uruguay. In turn, these narratives inform and are simultaneously sustained by memory markers, like places, dates, and memory activists that are considered later on in the chapter. The Government The Uruguayan Executive was successful for a long time in its hegemonic aspirations in memory. It developed and imposed specific discourses that sanctioned particular understandings of what had occurred during military rule and the repression. The government’s narratives were “mixed,” as they freely drew upon several elements of existing discourses within the Uruguayan collective imaginary on the recent past. Its lasting ingredients are the images of war, peace, and demons. The concept of war predates the military takeover. In the early 1970s, the dominant interpretation of unfolding events already depicted Uruguay as engulfed in a war against democracy.18 This perspective, endorsed by the Colorado government in power, presented the actions of the Tupamaros guerrilla as irrational and alien to the nation, while fallen soldiers were the heroes of the fatherland. This approach portrayed subversion as threatening the traditional harmony of democracy, but it simultaneously glossed over the violence from the extreme Right. Upon transition, the legacy of the human rights repression had significant disruptive potential and was likely to cause renewed social polarization and destabilization, similar to the one that had preceded the coup. As elsewhere in the Southern Cone, arguments of national reconciliation were thus adopted in Uruguay to facilitate social peace and reach a difficult balance between military demands of impunity and those of justice by the victims. Julio María Sanguinetti, Education and Culture Minister in the early 1970s and later President for two terms (1985–1990; 1995–2000), is a key figure in the construction of the memory of silence that was dominant until the late 1990s. Thus, his thinking deserves detailed consideration. For Sanguinetti, several reasons explained the onset of military rule, including the economic and social crisis, the confrontational and passionate political environment, and the unusual phenomenon of political violence.

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The president attributes particular responsibility to one factor, as in this excerpt: The incidental cause was the Tupamaros. I do not take the simplistic position that the coup is their exclusive responsibility, but there is no doubt that without them, the Army would not have gone onto the streets, reaching the position to carry out the coup.19 In a later instance, the president reasserted his view: “the military did not come out of the barracks because one morning they woke up and said: we will carry out a coup. It was the guerrillas that drew them out.”20 After defeating the guerrillas, “the military felt like the winners, acclaimed by their people for freeing them from the Tupamaros and for the tranquility achieved. Inebriated with power, the takeover then occurred.”21 Sanguinetti’s stand on the recent past is closely associated with his signature slogan “no hay que tener los ojos en la nuca,” which urges people not to look at the past, as it was a dark period that does not warrant analysis or consideration. Rather, “what occurred should be silenced and hidden, as if it had never happened.”22 According to this perspective, “talking about the past is like having eyes in the back of the head; people should instead forget, leave the past to the historians and simply look forward.”23 This approach was also functional in covering up the responsibility of civilian, economic, or political powers that “had cooperated with the military regime and later continued with other faces and discourses under democracy.”24 Further, this narrative embodied “a veiled but strong threat not to investigate; the past was the past and people should stop looking back, to avoid upsetting the military and provoking a return to authoritarianism.”25 In this sense, the Sanguinetti administration attempted “to generate an official history by omission, a policy of imposed oblivion, as official history can be produced both by writing it and by leaving the page blank.”26 President Sanguinetti believed that his modus operandi accounted for Uruguay’s political stability, the crux of his tenet being “either we’re going to look to the future or to the past.”27 Sanguinetti’s policies additionally drew upon one of the leading narratives of political violence popular in the Southern Cone: the Two Demons Theory. The theory—originating in Argentina—depicts political violence as a fight between two demons, the military and the guerrillas, while society is presented as caught in-between and totally alien to the situation. In Uruguay, the theory became “a convenient formula to re-edit and re-write the past, with the exaggeration of impunity and the obsession with covering up.”28 It was employed to substantiate the government’s approach favoring the adoption of parallel amnesty laws: Law 15,737 of March 1985 for

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political prisoners and Law 15,848 of December 1986 for the military. These laws implemented in practice the theory in Uruguay. President Sanguinetti maintained at the time that “it was a question of moral equivalency: we felt that if we were going to have a settling of accounts for the left and the terrorists, the military should be amnestied, too.”29 The president believed that “amnesties should be general” and that there was no difference between types of terrorism or violence.30 For the government, through the amnesties the two demons had been dealt with, and the country was then free to move on into the future. Between 1985 and the late 1990s the Uruguayan state, while completely absent in terms of transitional justice, was extremely active in the landscape of memory. The state’s enforced amnesia not only brought to a halt all judicial investigations, but also prevented any discussion of the dictatorship in the media and education, effectively silencing any consideration of military rule, the repression, and their social and cultural consequences. This memory of silence obscured and silenced key aspects of the past, conveniently reducing the official narrative to the actions of “a few half crazy military personnel that lost their point of references,” a perspective that was “not only extremely partial” but “downplayed a much more complex problem.”31 By 1989, a veil of silence had been firmly put in place, tightly sealed by the confirmation of the Expiry Law by voters. During the 1990s, whoever attempted to uncover the truth and demand justice was labeled as disturbing “the waters of the past” given that “Uruguayan society had already voted for peace,” referring to the 1989 referendum.32 This state of affairs began to change under the presidency of Jorge Batlle (2000−2005). His inaugural speech highlighted how We will be reaching out to all political and social sectors of our nation, to listen and inform, to engage in dialogue and to maintain, still with firmness and clarity, our ideas and points of view, in searching for understandings and agreements that will ensure harmony and seal, forever, the peace among Uruguayans . . . We have lived through so many things, and have suffered as many, but no one can affirm that somebody is guilty or innocent, this is not the result of a Manichean scheme of good vs. evil, we all share the fundamental obligation to seal forever the peace among Uruguayans.33 It has been suggested that these words hint to the desire of finding a solution to the question of disappearances, although the president still refers to a shared responsibility regarding past events.34 The Peace Commission— established in August 2000—did realize the president’s commitment, it being the first official transitional justice initiative ever instituted by the

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Uruguayan Executive. Fifteen years after the transition, this event indicated a tentative change in the government’s attitude toward accountability. In stark contrast to previous narratives, the commission highlighted the victims’ innocence and drew attention to the illegality of state repression. Still, despite this important acknowledgment, the aspiration behind this initiative was again closing the books on the past. Not only was the scope of the commission’s work explicitly restricted to enforced disappearances, avoiding any consideration of political imprisonment, torture, and political assassinations, but the Executive never followed up on the commission’s recommendations it had specifically requested. This demonstrates how President Batlle’s project of national reconciliation rested on a limited disclosure of truth and an even smaller dose of justice. Battle’s speeches frequently referred to the idea of peace. This emphasis, combined with the limited efforts in transitional justice, suggests that even this administration implicitly endorsed the vision of a war that had supposedly occurred during the 1970s. The truth commission’s name is significant here, as “a peace commission could only exist where there had previously been a war.”35 The Frente Amplio administration of Tabaré Vázquez (2005–2010) displayed for the first time a genuine concern with the past. Vázquez’s inaugural discourse exemplifies this: We want to know what happened, what happened to those citizens [the disappeared], if they are buried somewhere or not; if they are, they will be found and identified, their remains handed over to their relatives and if they are not, we will have to know why they are not there, where they are and what happened to them.36 The president depicted the question of disappearances as affecting the whole society: “The disappeared have transcended their families and are citizens of Uruguay, and the entire society has to know what occurred.”37 The president vowed to release information to achieve the truth. Still, even here, one already finds familiar images: “We will publish what we know . . . not to fuel hatred, . . . but . . . so that never again these things will occur in Uruguay, never again brothers vs. brothers, never again Uruguayans vs. Uruguayans.”38 These references to brothers vs. brothers and a war between two antagonistic groups constitute the building blocks of the war perspective and Two Demons Theory, portraying Uruguay as engulfed in an internal conflict. Further, the president mentioned peace and reconciliation, stating It is important to confront this burden as soon as possible . . . because we all want to live in peace . . . and we need to face the future that we want

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and deserve, . . . so that our children and grandchildren can live through better times than the ones we had to endure . . .39 Interestingly, the president combines traditional human rights demands, such as the discovery of the truth, with key concepts from opposite narratives like demons, war, and peace. Likewise, before the General Assembly, the president pointed to how “twenty years after recovering democratic institutions, there are still dark patches in the field of human rights.”40 Vázquez’s strategy for accountability aspired for peace to definitely settle in the heart of all Uruguayans so that Collective memory can incorporate yesterday’s tragedies with their stories of commitment, sacrifice and catastrophe as indelible lessons for tomorrow. And with the truth we shall seek to regain peace for our society, as well as justice and above all, that the horror of past times never happens again.41 These short extracts illustrate how the president’s discourses blend together new and old narratives. While there is an obvious desire to progress on truth and justice, the president’s approach subtly alludes to reconciliation and at achieving social peace. This ambiguity has left puzzled academics and human rights activists alike. For some, the president has attempted through several means, like the creation of Day of Never Again or the 2007 Historical Investigation on Disappeared-Detainees, to close the question of the past, but was unsuccessful. For others, Vázquez’s perspective of brothers vs. brothers dilutes “political responsibility and the obligations of the state towards the victims and society.”42 Human rights activists expected a more resolute approach from the first left-wing president; others stress instead how the president implemented unprecedented actions, like prosecutions within the framework of the Expiry Law or the 2005 reports on the fate of Disappeared-Detainees by the Armed Forces. The jury is still out on Vázquez’s actions. It could tentatively be suggested that the president’s discourses reflect his commitment to “work as President of all Uruguayans,”43 therefore, endeavoring to reach across the political spectrum and encompass all the different existing perspectives on the recent past. The Armed Forces Since the 1970s, the Uruguayan military embarked on a special effort to document and explain its actions during the dictatorship, standing out in the Southern Cone region for its obsession with justification and for going to great lengths to organize its thought in an intellectually coherent manner.44

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Military discourse has three lasting elements: the concept of subversion, the idea of war, and the justification of human rights crimes as excesses. The Uruguayan Armed Forces shared the regional narrative of “salvation,” inspired by the National Security Doctrine, which presented the motherland as threatened by external forces (Marxism) and their internal allies (“subversives”). Hence, the Armed Forces were the “guardians of the fatherland,” operating to defend it.45 Subversion is a fundamental concept providing justification for action both during and after the dictatorship. It was perceived as an intellectual and moral problem, which had an all-pervasive nature and unlimited reach. The military particularly believed that trade unions, communist parties, and the universities were its breeding grounds. Subversion was often conceptualized as a disease attacking the body of the nation; accordingly, the military presented itself as the savior of the patria (fatherland): In facing the aggression of subversion, that constitutes a disease of the Uruguayan nation, it must be concluded that the primary role of defense is, and always will be, that of protecting the fundamental basis of society, . . . against the disruptions that may threaten them, because the diseases of the social body are the same as those of human beings: it is necessary to prevent them and attack them when they manifest.46 The Armed Forces always portrayed themselves as the guarantors of order, people, and democracy, embodying the traditions upon which Uruguay was built, the orientalidad (orientality, from Uruguay’s full name as Oriental Republic of Uruguay). The Armed Forces forcefully argued that their services had been explicitly requested in the early 1970s by democratically elected governments that tasked them with fighting subversion during a state of internal war. This situation of chaos was attributable, in their opinion, to the actions of political parties and liberal democracy, which were seen as too weak and permissive to deal with communism. This called for the establishment of a new institutional structure with the military at its apex, the only actor able to detect and handle subversion.47 A common saying at the time was in fact poner la casa en orden (tidying up the house), in a country seen as on the brink of collapse. The failures of democracy and traditional parties, together with the subversive threat, provided the military with a sophisticated excuse for its intervention. Upon redemocratization, the Armed Forces employed justificatory elements based on the idea of excesses when responding to mounting accusations of human rights violence. They defended their behavior as errors and deviations that are inevitable during war, talking of “the loss of points

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of reference” but not accepting anything beyond this.48 These passages are exemplary: There may have been errors, or better said, there were errors. But in a war, when are there no errors? If a war is constituted by acts of violence, how can there be no errors? All wars are bad and there are no good wars.49 Similarly In no war, human rights have any priority. I don’t believe there was torture. There was a war of information. We did not know who the enemy was. Some errors were committed, but not abuse.50 Finally, General Hugo Medina stated: We have to consider that there was an armed confrontation. We recognise responsibilities and . . . that in cases of this nature one has lost points of reference with regard to rules to judge and to regulate human behaviour.51 These excerpts show how the Armed Forces did not contemplate having committed crimes: they had merely carried out the mission entrusted upon them by democratic governments. On the contrary, they considered their actions extraordinarily humane, especially when compared to what happened in Argentina. General Medina, for instance, stated: We do not reject the accusation of ‘apremios’ [instances of compulsion] in dealing with prisoners. Because there were apremios. But if we had done what they did in other countries . . . if we had given away to other kinds of repression, then of the five thousand or so prisoners that there were here, four thousand or so might have been killed.52 The Uruguayan military never expressed a commitment not to repeat the past, and continued to represent the military coup as resulting from armed subversion and the political vacuum of the time. Overall, a high degree of internal solidarity remained and the military kept on asserting that its actions had saved Uruguay from communism and anarchy. Unlike their Argentine counterparts, the Uruguayan Armed Forces never assumed responsibility for past abuses, nor asked for forgiveness. Both retired and active officers still vindicate the necessity of the antisubversive war against international communism.53 As recently as 2007, Army Commander-in-Chief Rosales

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implicitly denied the actions of state terrorism, labeling human rights abuses as “eventual incorrect individual actions” carried out by some officers, subscribing in this way to the idea of human rights violations as excesses, not a systematic policy of repression.54 Contemporary military discourse particularly focuses on the necessity of reconciliation and moving beyond past disagreements and ideological differences to concentrate instead on the future and work together for a harmonious community.55 As Valentina Salvi recounts for Argentina, in Uruguay too the reopening of judicial investigations and trials has triggered a return and reinvigoration of military discourses. Military officers detained in proceedings relating to past human rights abuses are frequently defined as “political prisoners” and the search for justice has been considered as “the political revenge of those that have been militarily defeated.”56 Despite over 30 years having elapsed, the logic of war remains the main explanatory paradigm of the military narrative, which now includes calls for reconciliation and looking to the future, a future to be reached by turning the page on the past. Human Rights Organizations Similarly to Argentina and Chile, Uruguayan activists depict military rule and repression as a time of “disruption and suffering.” The essential element of this narrative is the qualification of political violence as state terrorism, a specific type of brutality originating from the state and composed of systematic and methodical crimes that targeted victims and society. Violence particularly unsettled the victims’ world, causing the loss and/or imprisonment of loved ones, forever upsetting family relations and producing a world of horror and misery. This perspective emerged to counter military discourses that presented human rights crimes as inevitable excesses in a legitimate war against subversion. Human rights activists, conversely, drew attention to the harshness of repression, especially the fact that armed organizations had already been dismantled by September 1972, well before the June 1973 takeover. Activists argued that the state used all its powers and resources to violate the citizens’ rights and, later, to cover up and manipulate information, never assuming responsibility for the crimes committed. The popular representation of political violence as a war was challenged, highlighting instead how most victims were defenseless human beings and only a few had belonged to guerrilla organizations.57 The human rights discourse originated during the 1970s, when over 300,000 people left Uruguay for exile. At the time, Uruguayans abroad

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became pioneers in employing the language of human rights to denounce the repression before the UN, the Organization of American States, Amnesty International, and the United States. They appealed to international public opinion and moral ethics, putting under the spotlight the repeated human rights crimes, hoping this would stop the violence.58 It was the first time that the language of human rights was so used. In Uruguay, there were only some references to freedoms and guarantees in the Constitution,59 while, more broadly, human rights entered the public international agenda mainly as a consequence of the grave abuses witnessed in Latin America during the 1970s. During military rule, victims of human rights violations faced a difficult environment, characterized by denial, silence, and disbelief. Uruguayan novelist Eduardo Galeano wrote: For the twelve years of the military dictatorship, the word ‘libertad ’ [freedom] referred to nothing but a plaza and a prison . . . But every Uruguayan was a prisoner except for jailers and exiles—three million of us, though only a few thousand seemed to be. One in every eighty Uruguayans had a hood tied on his head while the rest, doomed to isolation and solitary confinement even when spared the pain of torture, wore invisible hoods as well. Fear and silence were mandatory.60 This culture of fear created what has been named as “inxile,” defined as “sullen wariness, self-censorship and longing to maintain anonymity against the brooding omnipresence of the state.”61 In Uruguay, inxile became as important as exile itself, as fear was ever present for internal exiles.62 The wife of a famous union leader disappeared in Buenos Aires in 1976, for instance, remembered how when her colleagues saw her outside of the factory where they all worked, they would tell her: “I am sorry but I cannot talk to you because you burn (i.e. you are dangerous).”63 Her colleagues were afraid of the risks they would run if seen talking to the wife of an important political and union leader who had disappeared. The general attitude was one of disinterest in the plight of the victims, with common sayings being “no te métas” or “algo habrán hecho” (don’t get involved/they must have done something). As Gabriela Fried Amilivia examines in Chapter 7, relatives of the missing faced enormous difficulties in coming to terms with the crime of disappearance and the impact this had on their families: What history can my son pass on about his disappeared father to his own children? It is hard, everyone wants to know what happened to their loved ones. You need to have something to tell to that the part of your

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family that continues to exist. This is why we cannot stop, with the hope that one day we will know.64 Human rights organizations focused on the plight of missing children to publicize disappearances. They drew attention to the violation of families, the children’s right to their legitimate parents, and especially the fact that these infants had been adopted and were often living with the same people responsible for the disappearance of their rightful parents.65 The innocence of these young victims widened the reach of the human rights discourse, keeping this question under the spotlight. In the early years of democratization, the human rights discourse flourished, especially in the context of the 1989 referendum (see below), but the loss at the ballot box represented a tremendous blow for human rights activism, silencing debate for over a decade. The discovery of human remains belonging to two disappeared in 2005 and 2006 eventually convinced even hard-line skeptics that disappearances had indeed occurred, giving further legitimacy to the human rights narrative.66 The remains of Ubagesner Chávez-Sosa, who had disappeared in 1976, were located on a farmland in Pando near Montevideo, on the basis of information provided by the Air Force.67 This first finding, in November 2005, constituted a watershed, marking a before and an after in terms of memory construction and the search for the truth: “you could no longer say ‘presumed disappeared,’ because this demonstrated that disappearances had occurred in Uruguay too.”68 Crimes until then denied had indeed taken place, as well as their cover up by the state. Ironically, to prove the existence of the disappeared, “the remains of one had to appear.”69 This return of the disappeared “fundamentally shook national reality,” changing the whole dimension of the human rights question, “allowing to touch and dedisappear.”70 This “materialization of the disappearance” had a profound social impact, for disappearances defy normal human life and death categories, as well as notions of time and space.71 The recovery of these two bodies finally undermined the government’s politics of oblivion and denial. Silencing the past with the mantra contending that nothing of significance had happened during the dictatorship could no longer be sustained. The disappeared had not gone abroad or left with another woman, as rumors always contended, but had been murdered by the state. 8.3

Memory Knots

Steve Stern’s concept of memory knots comes from a metaphor inspired by the human body: a knot in the stomach when one is nervous, or a lump in

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the throat that disrupts the flow of everyday life and routines, feelings and demands that call for our attention and action.72 Memory knots on the social body similarly disrupt regular social routines and habits, forcing charged issues of memory and forgetfulness into a public domain, making claims or causing problems, heightening attention and consciousness. Memory knots are multidimensional, “specific human groups and leaders, specific events and dates, and specific physical sites all seem to evoke, collect and concentrate memories, thereby ‘projecting’ memory and controversies about memory into public space or imagination.”73 These particular dates, places, or groups have the power to trigger memory debates within society, drawing its attention to issues of the past. These debates are always latent in Uruguay; still, memory discussions are reinvigorated and renovated at particular junctures of time, peoples, and place. Examining memory knots shows not only the practical expression of the narratives examined above, but also exemplifies how the memory landscape in Uruguay is composed of different discourses, markers, and initiatives happening both at the level of the state and that of civil society, which are in continuous evolution and transformation. Sites of physical matter or geography are places or artifacts that enjoy a unique and special connection to the past. These sites, whether old or new, are places where memory is continuously activated, triggering personal introspection and expressing the disputes over the various meanings of the past. The transformation of the Punta Carretas prison into a shopping mall (Photo 8.1) is the clearest embodiment of the policies of imposed oblivion of the 1990s. The prison, in the homonymous Punta Carretas neighborhood in the south of Montevideo, operated from the early twentieth century, witnessing the escape of a group of anarchists in 1921 and the emblematic flight of over 100 Tupamaros via an underground tunnel dug from inside in 1971. During the dictatorship, political prisoners were tortured there. The transformation into a shopping center occurred between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s. At the time, various governments endeavored to wipe out the memories of violence from public spaces to normalize the legacy of the dictatorship. Although prolonged imprisonment typified the repression in Uruguay, former detention centers have not been recuperated as “vehicles of memory”; rather, the government’s public politics of memory “favored the elimination of these spaces” both from the urban landscape and collective memory.74 Between 1989 and July 1994, when the shopping center opened, a new hegemonic discourse of public memory depicted Uruguay as a democratic community without significant violence.75 This image reflected an economic project aiming to present the country as a hub for the growth of

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Photo 8.1 Punta Carretas Shopping Center, Montevideo. Photo by Francesca Lessa.

the service sector, tourism, communication industry, and banking. This vision of Eden, sold by the ministries of Tourism and Economy, promoted the country abroad and defended its exceptionality as a refuge from the criminal violence and economic instability plaguing its bigger neighbors. Nonetheless, this representation glossed over significant features that contradicted such idyllic portrayal, particularly the years of the dictatorship that were described as an anomaly best forgotten and not warranting the citizens’ attention. This perspective denied that military rule had constituted a fundamental rupture in the national imagery. Thus, the Punta Carretas shopping center fit within this idyllic Uruguay, a safe space from which past violence had been eradicated. The site’s transformation was later completed with a luxury hotel. Few people are aware of what the shopping center used to be, and only the original main entrance and a side wall remain. The urban space of Punta Carretas has been permanently altered, in a “politics of destruction” that erased an emblematic legacy of the dictatorial period and obstructed the materialization of memory. The shopping center embodies a new memory of absence, reflecting the hegemonic discourse of democratic restoration and portraying military rule as an abnormality in Uruguay’s past. Unlike Argentina where several clandestine detention centers are now being transformed into spaces of memory, in Uruguay they continue to be invisible, their memory slowly

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fading away. In fact, the appropriation of symbols, spaces, and locations of memory is only a recent development in Uruguay. In the years of the Punta Carretas’ debate, “the collective debate was not strong enough to defend the place as a location of memory.”76 The discussion was restricted to former prisoners and human rights activists that considered it despicable that, where people had been detained and tortured, there would be a shopping center. The Memorial to Disappeared-Detainees represents, in contrast, an attempt to actively fight against silence, commemorating state terrorism with the establishment of a new physical marker of memory (Photo 8.2). The campaign for the Memorial was launched in 1998 by the NGO Mothers and Relatives of Uruguayan Disappeared-Detainees, Legislator Singlet and Montevideo Mayor Arana. The winning project, designed by Architects Kohen, Otero, Sagradini, and Dodera, was funded by a collection campaign of public donations. The Memorial, declared by President Batlle as a monument “of national interest” in August 2000, was officially inaugurated on December 10, 2001.77 The location, chosen by the Municipality of Montevideo and the ProMemorial Commission, is the symbolic site of the Vaz-Ferreira Park in the Cerro. This working-class neighborhood was selected for its importance as an “emblematic area of popular fights.”78

Photo 8.2 Memorial to Disappeared-Detainees, Montevideo. Photo by Francesca Lessa.

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The specific tranquil location, surrounded by trees and with a view over Montevideo’s bay, calls for rest, peace, and reflection. The two double walls are made of high resistance glass and framed by metal rest on a geometrical structure of concrete, on which side natural rocks are left visible as an aesthetic provocation. The names of disappeared-detainees are engraved on the walls. The site and the materials selected have specific meanings. The access route is like a pilgrimage to a place of meditation, while the trees suggest society’s support to the search for truth. The rocky surface and the excavations in the land represent the truth and its complicated search; the irregular rocky surface denotes the discomfort that the theme provokes. The surroundings of natural rocks symbolize the collective effort in finding the truth; the glass walls recall life, its fragility, and the respect it deserves. Finally, the location of the walls, partially obscuring the natural view, alludes to the mystery of disappearance.79 The Memorial powerfully defies fifteen years of governmental politics of silence that had wished to condemn victims to oblivion. It aspires to contribute to collective memory, by strengthening the bases of the commitment of “Never Again,” and a social coexistence based on respect, tolerance, and justice.80 The Memorial calls for sober reflection over what happened, perpetuating the memory of state terrorism through physical reminders, not just reliance on human memory. It exemplifies the recent concern with memory initiatives in Uruguay, together with the opening of the Museum of Memory and the Library of Memory, both inaugurated in December 2007. However, as Vincent Druliolle underscores in Chapter 2 regarding Buenos Aires’ Parque de la Memoria, here too the Memorial’s position is significant. There is a lack of publicity and there are no guided visits. Further, despite the important symbolism of the location, the far-out and difficult to access site creates a regrettable situation in which only activists and the afectados visit the Memorial, preventing its message from reaching out across the whole of society. Sites of humanity refer to particular groups or individuals who can project particular memories into the public domain. In the mid-1980s, a group of activists embarked on a project directly aiming to confront the official silence surrounding the recent past in Uruguay. The National Pro-Referendum Commission, established in January 1987, publicly questioned the recently enacted Expiry Law (approved by Parliament on December 22, 1986), by employing for the first time a provision in the Uruguayan Constitution, according to which referenda can be held if 25 percent of the electorate signs to support the initiative within a year of a contested law’s promulgation. The commission was composed of well-known

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Photo 8.3 Voto Verde, Museum of Memory, Montevideo. Photo by Francesca Lessa.

public figures, including writer Mario Benedetti, human rights activists, and politicians. Its message was simple: only by bringing to justice those responsible for past violations would the victims be afforded legal redress, such abuses prevented, and after learning the truth, the country would be finally reconciled.81 The commission’s chief argument was that signing the petition did not imply how citizens would vote on the day: signing would simply give society a chance to express itself.82 These goals were exemplified in the signature slogans “I sign for the people to decide” and “All equal before the law”83 (Photo 8.3). Supporters of the “yellow vote” to retain the Law (the Colorado party, the majority of the Blanco party, and the military) focused on the importance of consolidating and strengthening the recently restored democracy, arguing that this could be achieved only by ending confrontations and pacifying the country, through tolerance and reconciliation. It was necessary to forget the past to focus on the future. In addition, the risk of another military takeover was overemphasized. Those for the “green vote” (including human rights organizations, trade unions, and the Frente Amplio party) appealed instead to general principles of truth and justice, calling for the clarification of the whereabouts of the disappeared and the prosecution of human rights violators. They talked of ethics, hope, and the reaffirmation of the basic values of society. The referendum was presented as “part of the fundamental process

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of overcoming fear and learning again to trust people’s capacity for decision making after the military interregnum.”84 Between February and April 1989, the debate extended beyond the referendum itself to include broader issues like the type of democracy sought, its founding principles, ethics, and institutions. The campaign was a significant milestone in the fight against impunity and effectively turned Uruguay, a country largely structured around political allegiances and party lines into yellow vs. green.85 On April 16, 1989, 85 percent of the population voted: 41.3 percent cast the green ballot, while 56 percent the yellow. The referendum constitutes the only example of a society deciding through the ballot box that its security forces should not be rendered accountable for human rights crimes. Despite the negative result, the referendum and the preceding campaign remain noteworthy, as Uruguayans were given the chance to express their voices on this matter. Many blamed the result on the still persistent fear; nonetheless, the campaign successfully placed the human rights question at the heart of the political and public arena for a considerable time. This allowed society to acquire knowledge of the human rights violations, directly undermining the position of the Armed Forces denying their perpetration. The spotlight on past abuses, however, weakened after the referendum: the result was seen as definitively closing the debate from political and legal standpoints.86 Sites in time are particular events and/or dates with the symbolic power to convene or project memory, provoking debate and discussion. Concern with the recent past resurfaced onto the social and public agenda in Uruguay on May 20, 1996. On this symbolic date, the veil of silence began to be lifted. In May 1976, the ex-president of the Chamber of Deputies Héctor Gutiérrez-Ruiz and Senator Zelmar Michelini were kidnapped while in exile in Buenos Aires.87 Their murdered and tortured bodies later reappeared together with those of two alleged Tupamaro members. The Argentine police blamed subversive groups for the crime, while political leader Wilson Ferreira-Aldunate, who had narrowly avoided a similar fate, contended that the kidnappers were linked to state security organizations. Acts of remembrances on May 20 have unfolded in politically different contexts, but always repudiated state terror and violence. Until the 1980s, silence prevailed because of the lack of public space for expressing memory and the strict control over the media, and political and social actors inside Uruguay. Abroad, commemorations represented an opportunity for calling attention to the crimes perpetrated in Uruguay. The murdered legislators became symbols for those fighting against the dictatorship.88 In the mid1980s, commemorations condemned and rejected the dictatorial experience, focusing on the hope for the new democracy. The Municipality of

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Montevideo and other local authorities named streets after the legislators. By the late 1980s, remembrance was, however, overshadowed by the debate on the question of amnesty for the military, and eventually lost prominence after the 1989 referendum. On the twentieth anniversary in 1996, Senator Rafael Michelini, Zelmar’s son, called on human rights activists and political parties to hold a demonstration in Montevideo’s main avenue, demanding clarifications on the situation of the disappeared. This first “March of Silence,” supported by trade unions, the Students’ Federation, and various political parties, had around 50,000 participants and called on the Executive to investigate the fate of the disappeared. This event galvanized local actors and symbolically represents the beginning of the process of reawakening of Uruguay to its past. Since then, the march has become a yearly occurrence with durable features. It is carried out in absolute silence, a silence full of questions: When? Where? How? Why? People carry candles and photos of the disappeared, and the march resembles a funeral procession; no political symbols are permitted, only the national flag. The names of around 200 disappeared are read out, with people answering to each “present.” It begins at the same location, at the intersection of Rivera and Jackson streets, at the same time, 7 pm, ending in Liberty Square, where the national hymn is sung. Every

Photo 8.4 March of Silence, Montevideo, May 20, 2010. Photo by Francesca Lessa.

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year, it is carried out under a specific motto: “Truth, Memory and Never Again” in 1996; “Where are they? The Truth remains kidnapped. Never Again State Terrorism” in 2007; and “Without Truth and Justice, there cannot be Reconciliation” in 2010 (Photo 8.4). This event constitutes “one of the biggest demonstrations in Uruguay” for which there is very little publicity, but thousands of people always participate.89 This is significant, as in Uruguay you normally require a lot of publicity beforehand to gather such a crowd. Its significance transcends national borders, as the MERCOSUR has plans to commemorate all the victims of the Plan Condor on May 20. The selection of June 19 as the Día del Nunca Más (Day of Never Again) by the Vázquez’s administration has been perceived as a fresh attempt to move beyond the past. In December 2006, the presidency chose June 19 as the only commemorative date “so that these sad and negative events . . . will never again take place, never again brother vs. brother.”90 The president stressed that this does not imply cancelling the past, or creating a “punto final” (end point).91 This initiative reflects Vázquez’s endeavors to be “the President of all Uruguayans.”92 However, this largely backfired, giving origin instead to several disputes over the meaning of “Never Again.”93 Since 2007, official commemorations on June 19 have garnered good political support, but failed to become an occasion for national commemoration. Important figures, such as ex-Presidents Sanguinetti and Batlle, human rights activists and retired military officers, have dissociated from it. Human rights activists expressed various critiques: first, the Never Again commitment can become effective only when the state complies with its obligations of truth, justice, and reparations.94 Second, the date is perceived as “imposed,” lacking any connection with the decade-long “fight against impunity in Uruguay.”95 Third, the government is seen as wishing to reach a consensus and homogenize memory. The government’s talk of “Never Again Uruguayans vs. Uruguayans” constitutes a discourse that activists completely reject, for continuing to fuel the Two Demons Theory. They respond instead with “Never Again State Terrorism.”96 For the Right, the politician Diego García-Pintos declared that the call from the president was “not really peaceful, but provocative.”97 Conversely, Army Commander Rosales stated in 2008 how the Armed Forces accompany “the decision of the President,” while Air Force Commander Bonelli expressed his desire that “the country can start looking forward and leave the past behind.”98 Finally, ex-Senator Mujica commented that June 19 “is firstly the day of Artigas [founding father of Uruguay] and possibly that of the grandfathers; and then, the President is asking that people reflect. But there is no punto final.”99

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The president’s project left many perplexed.100 Some emphasized how the date already encompasses too many meanings, being the birthday of Artigas, the day of the flag and of the grandfather, underscoring how the president “should have selected a neutral day, without any prior history.”101 Others clearly considered the initiative as a clear but failed attempt by the president to impose a “punto final,” highlighting that “Uruguay is not ready for that.”102 In 2010, the new president, former Tupamaros leader José Mujica, decided not to celebrate the Día del Nunca Más. Mujica commented that “more than looking for reconciliation,” he believed in “coexistence between different social actors.”103 The Día del Nunca Más seems to have already come to the end of its brief but turbulent life. Concluding Remarks After over a decade of silence, in the twenty-first century Uruguay finally reawakened to its violent past and the scars it had left behind. Over 60 cases of human rights abuses committed during military rule have been excluded from the remit of the Expiry Law and justice is now running its course. Bodies of Uruguayans disappeared have been recovered both in Argentina and Uruguay and, in March 2009, a (second) Historical Investigation on the Dictatorship and State Terrorism between 1973 and 1985 stressed the total discipline and control exerted by the Uruguayan regime over society. Finally, in October 2008, Public Prosecutor Guianze presented to the Supreme Court an unconstitutionality appeal against the Expiry Law, which was declared unconstitutional a year later, but only in relation to the case of Nibia Sabalsagaray.104 These developments are remarkable considering that Sanguinetti’s slogan “no hay que tener los ojos en la nuca” effectively summarized Uruguay’s approach to the past until 2000: there were no accountability initiatives and any discussion on the past was silenced. For long, the memory of violence was tightly sealed: first, by the victims’ inability to recount and transmit to others the “unimaginable,” their limit experiences of torture and imprisonment; second, by a state keen to cover up these deeds with a mantle of national amnesia and denial. This chapter suggested that the Uruguayan state was successful in its hegemonic aspirations in the politics of memory until the late 1990s; still, its predominance was continuously challenged by the narrative of the Armed Forces and, in particular, that of human rights activists. In Uruguay, memory debates have occurred on several levels, political, social, and cultural, and through specific human groups, physical sites, and anniversaries, all pieces of a colorful memory kaleidoscope that never settles.

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The fragments of these different memory images are scattered all over the Uruguayan landscape of memory. The transformation of the Punta Carretas prison into a shopping center symbolically represented the government’s official policy of oblivion and amnesia regarding the recent past, which dominated for over a decade. Since 1996, when Uruguayan society began reawakening to its past of violence, the March of Silence has become a yearly event in which all the victims of state terrorism are remembered, with swarms of people spontaneously participating. Likewise, since 2001, the Memorial to Disappeared-Detainees exists as a permanent material and symbolic reparation to the victims, perpetuating the memory of state terrorism through physical reminders in the urban landscape. Finally, the 1989 Referendum and the 2009 Plebiscite on the Expiry Law “forced” an often unwilling society to face its uncomfortable past. In fact, the October 25, 2009, plebiscite, in which 52 percent of voters maintained the Law, originated from a grassroots initiative by social, human rights, political and trade union organizations, as well as culture and public figures, that promoted the Law’s nullification via a project of constitutional reform that required 50 percent plus one of the votes (Photo 8.5). Its principal objective was not sending more individuals to prison, but ending the prevailing culture of impunity. The problem of impunity thus returned for a second time to the center of political and public discussions,

Photo 8.5 Sí Rosado, Montevideo, October 2009. Photo by Francesca Lessa.

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raising a set of ethical, moral, and legal questions that demand answers from all Uruguayans. Notwithstanding the negative outcome, the questions surrounding the Expiry Law—the symbolic embodiment of impunity for many in Uruguay—are far from settled. A new administration was sworn in March 2010 and, despite the failure of the second vote on the Expiry Law, the fight against impunity has been gathering momentum since the summer of 2010. Much has changed in Uruguay since the government-imposed policies of silence and amnesia of the 1990s, but more is likely in the near future. Notes The author wishes to acknowledge the generous assistance received by the London School of Economics (Department of International Relations); the University of London Central Research Fund; and the Postgraduate Travel Grant of the Society for Latin American Studies (UK). The author would like to thank her Ph.D. thesis supervisor, Prof. Chris J. Brown, for his continuing encouragement; her family and friends for their unrelenting support; and, Raúl Alberto Álvarez Ortega for believing in her dreams. Finally, the author would like to thank Santiago López Cariboni, Vincent Druliolle, and Teresa Bean for their helpful comments and advice on earlier drafts of this chapter. Earlier versions were presented at the 45th Annual Conference of the Society for Latin American Studies in Leeds (UK) in March 2009 and at the 51st Annual Convention of the International Studies Association in New Orleans (USA) in February 2010. All translations from Spanish in this chapter are mine, unless otherwise indicated. 1. Jenny Pearce, Uruguay: Generals Rule (London: Latin America Bureau, 1980). 2. Paul C. Sondrol, “1984 Revisited? A Re-Examination of Uruguay’s Military Dictatorship” Bulletin of Latin America Research 11, no. 2 (1992): 196, Martin Weinstein, Uruguay: Democracy at the Crossroads (Boulder: Westview, 1988). 3. Adriana Bergero and Fernando Reati, eds., Memoria Colectiva Y Políticas De Olvido: Argentina Y Uruguay, 1970–1990 (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 1997). 4. Mabel Moraña, “(Im)Pertinencia De La Memoria Histórica En América Latina” in Bergero and Reati. 5. Marcelo Viñar and Maren Viñar, Fracturas De Memoria: Crónicas Para Una Memoria Por Venir (Montevideo: Trilce, 1993). 6. Luis E. González, Political Structures and Democracy in Uruguay (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 3; Juan Rial, “The Social Imaginary: Utopian Political Myths in Uruguay (Change and Permanence During and after the Dictatorship)” in Repression, Exile and Democracy: Uruguayan Culture, ed. Saúl Sosnowski and Louise B. Popkin (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993), 64. 7. Rial, 64.

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8. Luis Roniger and Mario Sznajder, The Legacy of Human-Rights Violations in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 9. Rial, 76. 10. Luis Roniger, “Human Rights Violations and the Reshaping of Collective Identities in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay” Social Identities 3, no. 2 (1997): 234. 11. Carlos Demasi, “La Dictadura Militar: Un Tema Pendiente” in Uruguay Cuentas Pendientes: Dictadura, Memorias Y Desmemorias, ed. Hugo Achugar, Carlos Demasi, Roger Mirza, Álvaro Rico, and Marcelo Viñar (Montevideo: Trilce, 1995). 12. Felipe Michelini, “Education and Culture Sub-secretary” September 11, 2007, Montevideo. 13. Viñar and Viñar, 124. 14. Marcelo Viñar, “La Memoria Y El Porvenir” in Uruguay Cuentas Pendientes: Dictadura, Memorias Y Desmemorias, ed. Hugo Achugar, Carlos Demasi, Roger Mirza, Álvaro Rico, and Marcelo Viñar (Montevideo: Trilce, 1995), 53, Marcelo Viñar, “Memorias Fracturadas” in Identidad Uruguaya: ¿Mito, Crisis O Afirmación?, ed. Hugo Achugar and Gerardo Caetano (Montevideo: Trilce, 1992). 15. Oscar Destouet, Ministry of Education and Culture, September 17, 2007, Montevideo. 16. Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory (New Brunswick and London: Tranaction, 1994), 47–49. 17. Steve J. Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London, 1998 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 105–106. 18. Aldo Marchesi, “¿’Guerra’ O ‘Terrorismo De Estado’? Recuerdos Enfrentados Sobre El Pasado Reciente Uruguayo” in Las Conmemoraciones: Las Disputas En Las Fechas “In-Felices”, ed. Elizabeth Jelin (Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores, 2002), 105–108. 19. Alfonso Lessa, Estado De Guerra (Montevideo: Editorial Sudamericana Uruguay, 2007), 189. 20. Julio-María Sanguinetti, President of Uruguay (1985–1990; 1995–2000), September 21, 2007, Montevideo. 21. Ibid. 22. Oscar Destouet, Ministry of Education and Culture, September 17, 2007, Montevideo. 23. Laura Balsamo, Peace and Justice Service (SERPAJ), September 7, 2007, Montevideo. 24. Oscar Destouet, Ministry of Education and Culture, September 17, 2007, Montevideo. 25. Human rights activist, CRYSOL Association of Former Political Prisoners, September 11, 2007, Montevideo. 26. Academic, Institute of Political Science, University of the Republic, September 4, 2008, Montevideo.

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27. Lawrence Weschler, A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 189. 28. Gerardo Bleier, Journalist, August 29, 2008, Montevideo. 29. Weschler, 188. 30. Julio-María Sanguinetti, President of Uruguay (1985–1990; 1995–2000), September 21, 2007, Montevideo. 31. Oscar Destouet, Ministry of Education and Culture, September 17, 2007, Montevideo. 32. Gerardo Caetano, “El Testamento Ciudadano Y La Exigencia De Verdad” Revista Derechos Humanos 2, no. 2 (2004): 27, Carlos Demasi, “Un Repaso a La Teoría De Los Dos Demonios” in El Presente De La Dictadura: Estudios Y Reflexiones a 30 Años Del Golpe De Estado En Uruguay, ed. Aldo Marchesi, Vania Markarian, Álvaro Rico and Jaime Yaffé (Montevideo: Trilce, 2003), 74. 33. Inaugural Address of President Jorge Batlle, March 1, 2000, http://www.presidencia.gub.uy/noticias/archivo/2000/marzo/2000030102.htm 34. Silvia Dutrénit-Bielous and Gonzalo Varela-Petito, “Esclarecimiento Del Pasado E Intervención De La Justicia: Conflicto Y Cambio De Las Historias Oficiales” in Sujetos Sociales Y Nuevas Formas De Protesta En La Historia Reciente De América Latina, ed. Gerardo Caetano (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales, 2006), 345. 35. Eugenia Allier, “The Peace Commission: A Consensus on the Recent Past in Uruguay?” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 81 (2006), 89. 36. Inaugural Address of President Tabaré Vázquez, March 1, 2005, http://www. presidencia.gub.uy/_Web/noticias/2005/03/2005030111.htm. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Speech of President Tabaré Vázquez to the General Assembly, March 1, 2005, http://www.presidencia.gub.uy/_Web/noticias/2005/03/2005030107.htm. 41. Ibid. 42. Human rights activist, SERPAJ, September 7, 2007, Montevideo. 43. Mariana Iglesias, “El ‘Día del Nunca Más’ en Uruguay (2006–2007): Estrategias Políticas y Luchas Interpretativas Sobre la Violencia Política de los 60-80,” 4, unpublished manuscript. 44. Mariana Achugar, “Entre La Memoria Y El Olvido: Las Luchas Por La Memoria En El Discurso Militar Uruguayo, 1976–2001” in Memorias Militares Sobre La Represión En El Cono Sur: Visiones En Disputa En Dictadura Y Democracia, ed. Eric Hershberg and Felipe Agüero (Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores, 2005). 45. Ibid., 36. 46. Ibid., 47. 47. Wolfgang S. Heinz and Hugo Frühling, Determinants of Gross Human Rights Violations by State and State-Sponsored Actors in Brazil, Uruguay, Chile and Argentina (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1999).

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48. Julián González-Guyer, Institute of Political Science, University of the Republic, August 29, 2008, Montevideo. 49. Aldo Marchesi, “Vencedores Vencidos: Las Respuestas Militares Frente a Los Informes ‘Nunca Más’ En El Cono Sur” in Memorias Militares Sobre La Represión En El Cono Sur: Visiones En Disputa En Dictadura Y Democracia, ed. Eric Hershberg and Felipe Agüero (Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores, 2005), 189–190. 50. Heinz and Frühling, 362. 51. Ibid., 295. 52. Weschler, 205. 53. Elbio Ferrario, Director, Montevideo’s Memory Museum, September 3, 2008, Montevideo. 54. La República, “Rosales Dijo Que El Ejército No Quiere Ser Juzgado Por ‘Eventuales Acciones Individuales Incorrectas,’ May 19, 2007, http://www. larepublica.com.uy/politica/258601-rosales-dijo-que-el-ejercito-no-quiere-serjuzgado-por-eventuales-acciones-individuales-incorrectas 55. Mariana Achugar, 57–58. 56. La República, “Acusaciones a Vázquez por ‘uso y abuso’ de la Ley de Caducidad” April 15, 2009, http://www.larepublica.com.uy/politica/360256-acusaciones-avazquez-por-uso-y-abuso-de-la-ley-de-caducidad 57. Human rights activist, SERPAJ, September 7, 2007, Montevideo. 58. Vania Markarian, Left in Transformation: Uruguayan Exiles and the Latin American Human Rights Network, 1967–1984 (New York, London: Routledge, 2005). 59. Cristina Mansilla, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, August 27, 2008, Montevideo. 60. Eduardo Galeano, “The Dictatorship and Its Aftermath” in Sosnowski and Popkin, 103. 61. Sondrol, 194. 62. Carina Perelli, “Youth, Politics, and Dictatorship in Uruguay” in Fear at the Edge: State Terror and Resistance in Latin America, ed. Juan E. Corradi, Patricia Weiss Fagen, and Manuel Antonio Garretón (Berkeley: University of California, 1992). 63. Human rights activists, Mothers and Relatives of Uruguayan DisappearedDetainees NGO, August 29 and September 1, 2008, Montevideo. 64. Ibid. 65. Carina Perelli and Juan Rial, “La Estrategia De Las Aparencias: Transición a La Democracia Y Derechos Humanos” in De Mitos Y Memorias Políticas: La Represión, El Miedo Y Después, ed. Carina Perelli and Juan Rial (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 1986). 66. In March 2006, DNA analysis confirmed that the skeleton found, in December 2005, at the 13th Infantry Battalion was that of Fernando Miranda, who had disappeared in November 1975. La República, “Confirmaron ayer en “un 99,96%” la identidad de Fernando Miranda” March 2, 2006, http:// www.larepublica.com.uy/politica/204013-confirmaron-ayer-en-un-9996-laidentidad-de-fernando-miranda

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67. Clarín, “Hallan Restos De Un Desaparecido En Uruguay” November 29, 2005, http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2005/11/29/um/m-01098728.htm 68. Oscar Destouet, Ministry of Education and Culture, September 17, 2007, Montevideo. 69. Ibid. 70. Human rights activists, Mothers and Relatives of Uruguayan DisappearedDetainees NGO, August 29 and September 1, 2008, Montevideo. 71. Ibid. 72. Stern, 120–121. 73. Ibid., 120–121. 74. Magdalena Broquetas, “Memoria Del Terrismo De Estado En La Ciudad De Montevideo” Studia Historica—Historia contemporánea 25 (2007): 233. 75. Hugo Achugar, “Territorios Y Memorias Versus Lógica Del Mercado” in Planetas Sin Boca, ed. Hugo Achugar (Montevideo: Trilce, 2004). 76. Cristina Mansilla, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, August 27, 2008, Montevideo. 77. La República, “Inauguran Hoy En El Cerro El Memorial De Los Desaparecidos” December 10, 2001, http://www.larepublica.com.uy/politica/65052-inauguranhoy-en-el-cerro-el-memorial-de-los-desaparecidos 78. Broquetas, 226. 79. La República, “Hermoso Parque Con Memorial En El Cerro” March 1, 2004, http://www.larepublica.com.uy/cultura/134145-hermoso-parque-con-memorialen-el-cerro 80. Carlos Demasi and Jaime Yaffé, Vivos Los Llevaron . . . Historia De La Lucha De Madres Y Familiares De Uruguayos Detenidos Desaparecidos (1976–2005) (Montevideo: Trilce, 2005). 81. Americas Watch, Challenging Impunity: The Ley De Caducidad and the Referendum Campaign in Uruguay (New York: Americas Watch Report, 1989). 82. Luis Roniger and Mario Sznajder, “The Legacy of Human Rights Violations and the Collective Identity of Redemocratised Uruguay” Human Rights Quarterly 19, no. 1 (1997). 83. Demasi and Yaffé, 67. 84. Roniger and Sznajder, “The Legacy of Human Rights Violations” 67. 85. Human rights activists, Mothers and Relatives of Uruguayan DisappearedDetainees NGO, August 29 and September 1, 2008, Montevideo. 86. Luis Roniger and Mario Sznajder, “La Reconstrucción De La Identidad Colectiva Del Uruguay Tras Las Violaciones De Los Derechos Humanos Por La Dictadura Militar” Araucaria 9, no. 3 (2003). 87. Marchesi, “¿’Guerra’ O ‘Terrorismo De Estado’?” 125. 88. Ibid., 129. 89. Oscar Destouet, Ministry of Education and Culture, September 17, 2007, Montevideo. 90. Presidential Resolution 832/006, December 26, 2006, http://www.presidencia. gub.uy/_Web/resoluciones/2006/12/CM246.pdf 91. La República, “El Día Del Nunca Más Será Para ‘Avanzar En La Reconciliación De Los Uruguayos,’ ” December 27, 2006, http://www.larepublica.com.uy/

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92. 93. 94.

95. 96. 97.

98. 99. 100.

101. 102. 103. 104.

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politica/238199-el-dia-del-nunca-mas-sera-para-avanzar-en-la-reconciliacionde-los-uruguayos Iglesias, 4. Ibid., 9–14. La República, “Rodeado De Todos Los Partidos Políticos, Vázquez Inició El Camino Del Nunca Más” June 20, 2007, http://www.larepublica.com.uy/ politica/262710-rodeado-de-todos-los-partidos-politicos-vazquez-inicio-elcamino-del-nunca-mas Human rights activist, SERPAJ, September 7, 2007, Montevideo. Ibid. La República, “Nunca Más: Una Fecha Para La Reflexión Y Significados Múltiples” June 19, 2008, http://www.larepublica.com.uy/politica/316327nunca-mas-una-fecha-para-la-reflexion-y-significados-multiples La República, “Las Voces De La Plaza Independencia” June 20, 2008, http:// www.larepublica.com.uy/politica/316455-las-voces-de-la-plaza-independencia Ibid. Carlos Demasi, Centre of Uruguayan Interdisciplinary Studies, University of the Republic, August 28, 2008, Montevideo; Oscar Destouet, Ministry of Education and Culture, September 17, 2007, Montevideo. Ibid. Human rights activist, Amnesty International Uruguay, September 2, 2008, Montevideo. La República, “Sin acto de Nunca Más” June 17, 2010, http://www.larepublica. com.uy/politica/414150-sin-acto-de-nunca-mas According to article 259 of the Uruguayan Constitution, the Supreme Court is empowered to declare the unconstitutionality of a law only in relation to the specific case brought before it.

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AFTERWORD

The Politics of “Memory” in the Long Present of the Southern Cone Vikki Bell

I

n the Aftermath, existence in the present, between past and future, is keenly felt. This enhanced sense of being in the present—both a gift and a responsibility to think and act between what has occurred, and what could and should be—rather than a sense of repetition, traumatic or otherwise, in which only the past and its repeated recall figure, is at stake here. So while some have come to be characterized solely by their relation to their pasts, drawn as melancholic figures who are pulled backward, as it were, by the enormity of past catastrophic events, the past is better understood as a force, rather than a weight, as Arendt argued; it does not pull us back but presses forward. And meeting that force is that of the future, so that “[i]t is, contrary to what one would expect, the future which drives us back into the past.”1 This is what makes these stories a politics of the present, rather than simply a politics of memory or loci of melancholy. For it is at the future’s insistence and for the sake of the future that the present has been extended, not in a limbo state exactly—because there is and has been so much activity—but because people are waiting for the future to begin, or to begin the future, one that many in the present feel they cannot yet embrace, because the past has still to be properly accounted for; there is still work to be done on the past, and that is why it will not leave them nor they it. That work is not for the sake of a scientific History or passive archives, but for the sake of a future that will require robust institutions with an accompanying historical imagination both critical and confident of the past and of the

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present’s relation to that past. This is an enormous and ongoing task for any society; in heightened form here, a politics inevitably arises because the past will not stand still to be dealt with—it will not simply be brought to account for the present to judge it—and because everybody is acutely aware that the instruments by which it is pursued, including the privileged instrument of law, are necessarily limited. They capture the past only partially, provoking political differences linked to the past, but configured in the present to be revealed and arranged around their interventions and their limitations. Collected memories do not give rise to a singular “collective memory,” and around the difference between collected and collective, present battles are fought.2 In the extended “post-transitional” present in the countries of the Southern Cone, one sees how, as Jean Comaroff suggests of the Postcolony,3 the “imagined communities” are having to be constructed out of difference rather than the homogeneity desired by the techniques Benedict Anderson described,4 often explicitly so. This difference is not to be understood as cultural or ethnic difference that replaces a notion of cultural homogeneity, as Comaroff details, but difference with respect to understandings of the past and how it should be dealt with in the present. Previous state-led attempts to build a unified vision of the past that could finally be put behind (and thereby constitute a reconciled) “us,” simply archived as neutral History, or to enforce a future orientation that simply surrendered in the face of the difficult question that the past raises, have given way to a political landscape in which governments partake and even encourage questions concerning the contested meaning of the past in the present. As Francesca Lessa describes in Chapter 8, Uruguay’s once President Sanguinetti’s slogan no hay que tener los ojos en la nuca (you should not have eyes at the back of your head) was a stunningly clear illustration of the attempt to persuade people to face only forward, with the development of Montevideo’s Puntas Carretas prison and detention center into a shopping mall being symbolic of that politics of erasure. But this approach for which he sought—and gained—public support in the referendum of 1989 now appears old-fashioned in the age of Memory, where since the mid- to late 1990s, and into the 2000s, there has been an unchecked rise in arguments that posit attention to a divided past as the very condition upon which nations face a shared future. Nowadays, “memory actors” come in many different guises. Government administrations have seemingly taken on the rhetoric and desires of those formally positioned in opposition to the state, while monumental projects abound, if somewhat unevenly, and even rightist groups such as those in Argentina who campaign for “Complete Memory” as Salvi describes in her chapter, mimic those longstanding campaigns of those who mourn for disappeared-detained relatives.

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Appeals for formal, legal justice have been given a new momentum as in some quarters long fought for trials begin, while the desire to document and reckon with past violence also exceeds the legal realm, with the safeguarding of that past requested not only in terms of prosecutions but also in other arenas, in archives and other truth-constituting processes, be they internationally funded memory projects, art-cultural spaces, or processes harnessing new technologies such as DNA tests. Across the countries discussed here this is not a singular story, but to explore this memory-work, as in the stories collected here, is to study something with wider relevance concerning the processes of constitution of conditions of political subjectivity and citizenship, with all that entails, including the assessment and investment in key institutions, as actors act together between past and future. One way to make the point I am pressing here is to insist that this memory work, even at its most “cultural”—the theater projects in Chile (see Chapter 5), the films of Albertina Carri in Argentina (see Chapter 3)—should be understood as political action, or as part of the society’s endeavors to place the past, and particularly those murdered in the past as the result of state action, in such a way that a future polity can be stable. To have some who are in a state of perpetual mourning undermines that possibility. This long-standing theme in political philosophy, the explicit interdependency between mourning and politics, was formulated by Derrida thus: “There is no politics without an organization of the time and space of mourning, without a topolitology of the sepulcher.”5 There are several passages in Plato’s The Laws that exemplify this claim;6 there, mourning is to be limited and placed as if the backward-looking activities of those in the present have to be carefully monitored lest they threaten the very existence of the state. For the good of the state, therefore, mourning has to be regulated, limited, and practiced according to certain rules, rules that contain judgments on the character and conduct of the dead. Heroic individuals should be celebrated upon death rather than lamented, even remembered annually as virtuous examples for citizenry. The mourning of one’s own kin was to be tolerated, but dramatic expressions of grief should be allowed only in private or outside the city walls, since they are likely to be disruptive, while those who have lived outside the law, the worst citizens, should not be mourned at all. It is clear that Plato envisaged these rites and rituals as important for reinforcing the glory and muting the shameful aspects of the past for the sake of the future of the polis. That is, although we can and should ask—what sort of mourning is this?—it is crucial to see that this mourning is not only, and sometimes not at all, about the bereft subject or psyche, but is also about the constitution of political subjects, their relationship to their social institutions, and their

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historical imaginations. In the contemporary examples of Southern Cone countries, various memory actors are typically engaged in concerted memory work that actually has its focus on the building of political institutions and procedures that are driven not by the past but by the desire to constitute the social and political worlds they are seeking to inhabit in the future. With a concentration beginning in the 1990s, new generations started to ask questions, as those who remember all too easily, started to tell their stories, from all sides of the political past (including the revelatory “confessions” of former naval officer Adolfo Scilingo broadcast in Argentina).7 This “memory work” is difficult precisely because each action is contested, each distinction is contentious; but it is in such work that these struggles suggest a polis imagining and forging itself in a continual process of reevaluation and emergence. Acting together, these actors are motivated just as much by a desire to instantiate a political ethic for a community to come as they are marked or dragged backward by horrors of the past. The freedom that postdictatorship politics allows is a “long present” then, imperfect as it is, nevertheless means that insofar as the movement of history and the present and future of the nation become revealed as performative possibilities, the people are released from the sense that History had to follow the singular direction that had been professed by former leaders as an inevitability. No longer are the actions of the people to be suppressed in the name of a grand idea of the Nation, its History, and its Future; instead history falls back into the hands of the people who must act in concerted and contested fashion to take on its demands and responsibilities, not least by ensuring the politically guaranteed public realm that allows freedom to appear as Arendt’s “demonstrable fact”8 into the future. Implicit in these first remarks is the premise that there is no simple dichotomous politics in the aftermath between state and nonstate actors, and certainly not between those for and against memory, for this would be to reduce the complexity of the politics and subjects of these contestations. Rather than envisage these struggles as state vs. civil society, it is important to emphasize the sense in which fundamental categories and key institutions are taking form through these actions and contestations. This attention to a becoming future allows one to see how these activities are significant but precarious affairs, not least because new generations appear and partake not only in the reproduction of the narratives they selectively inherit, but also as personnel in the institutions that will carry on that past in their orientation to history and in their procedural practices. How those institutions emerge from the transitional period, how historical imaginations are crafted and given space, be that in archival or other sorts of juridical and/or cultural spaces, matters because the future generations will inherit and become with

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these spaces and imaginations. This again is a very Arendtian theme, since for her the fact of new generations, of “natality,” poses inter alia precisely the question of political continuity, highlighting the importance of pedagogy in its widest sense alongside the desire to establish spaces, norms, and procedures. *

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Perhaps the clearest example of this pedagogic impulse have been movements to give a permanent space to remember those who fell victim to the violence of past regimes, a demand characteristic of all countries in the Southern Cone, and yet there is much debate about the locations and appropriate forms these should take. Over several years now, many scholars as well as those directly involved in these projects have drawn attention to the politics that surrounds these memorials; different investments surround them with diverse intended audiences and divergent ethics.9 Monument-memorials such as the Memorial to the Disappeared-Detainees in Uruguay or El Parque de la Memoria (Memory Park) in Argentina constitute attempts to literally make space for the dead, and to offer a permanent site for memorialization. Of course, the permanence suggests a concern with duration and the future, with the memorialization not only a backward-looking gesture, but also a gifting to young and future generations. Yet many of these projects have had and continue to struggle for funds to start and continue their upkeep, such that even if these are sometimes understood as state-led projects or concessions, it is clear that they will continue to need to assert their place. Oftentimes subject to critique by those who regard permanent sites as attempts to settle the frequently unsettled past, as signs thereby of too hasty a surrender from demands for justice pursued via juridical routes, the monument-memorials court the risk of being antipolitical, aestheticized, and co-opted in this sense. In recognition of these dangers, about which debates have abounded, the memorial approach has frequently sought to include a counter-monument or anti-memorial10 ethos. Thus the Paine project in Chile explicitly focused on recognizing the life of those left behind in their remembering, rather than those who died, in order to counter the accusation of being a graveyard, while the Memorial Park in Argentina, although dominated by the central memory wall on which the names of the disappeared are displayed, is predominantly infused with an anti-monumental ethos,11 and will furthermore also include the graphic signs of the Grupo de Arte Callejero (Street Art Group), which has been one of the main groups organizing the street interventions in Argentina.

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The contrast between the monumental and the temporary or more overtly performative politics of other interventions—the escraches in Argentina,12 the Colectivo 119 in Chile13 —is not absolute, therefore, but these latter certainly differ in their immateriality, and insofar as they—as do the dedicated trees and baldosas in local neighborhoods (see Chapter 1)—aim to entwine the past with present quotidian life, located in the midst of city life, to cast an explicit ethical injunction over the assumption of normality. So while the marking of anniversaries with marches and exhibitions and so on suggests that the nation as a whole is reaching for a narrative by which to locate the past, there remains across these countries a developed counter-discourse, a critical calling of the past into the present through much more explicitly accusatory practices, more as it were political practices that paradoxically perhaps suggest a more sustained—because more vital—demand than that which could ever be delivered via the monumental route. These practices are in this sense less irruptive14 or sporadic than indicative of continued and normative frustration infused with a faith that justice may yet be delivered, longing for a future that is in the hands of those in the present. This sense of a future-directed demand and longing exists even where the dead are recalled to present themselves, explicitly called to haunt the present as so many specters of the past. The call-and-response mode of the annual March of Silences in Uruguay (analyzed by Lessa in Chapter 8)—in which the names of the dead are read out and audience responds “present”—is an especially striking example of this performative politics in which those absent are brought to presence not merely to suggest that they are “remembered,” but because they are understood to be the condition of a peaceable future, forgotten at the peril of future generations. Those in the present who acknowledge those dead call them up not only to mourn or to remember them, therefore, but to enlist them in demanding of the present that it answer to those who have died. Of course, the ways in which the events of the past, and the circumstances by which they died, are understood remains highly political, so that present political divisions emerge and arrange themselves around the contested past. That these are unsettled means that this memory work cannot function as a simple totemic reaffirmation of the social in a functionalist sense; instead, such practices frequently mark the divided present, constituting a much more dynamic and contested politics in which the collectivity is also recognized as structured in many ways by the attitude and narratives one adopts in relation to that recent past. In the long present, this is a battle fought in many guises, and it continues to be fought, I am suggesting, because there is a sense that the processes that are put in place as a result of these present differences will inform, quite literally, the key institutions that will sustain or will, conversely, endanger the future.

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These are not battles merely about the status of history, about recording it correctly, but about how to receive the ethical force of the past. Preserving the past—such as the preservation of the buildings that were used as detention, torture, and extermination centers, for example, ESMA and those discussed by Druliolle in Chapter 1 in Argentina, Villa Grimaldi in Chile—has become a given human rights discourse principle, one that encourages the past’s insistence on the ethical landscape. The pathos of standing in the very space where atrocities have occurred that has been harnessed rhetorically—President Aylwin’s inauguration in Chile in 1990 in the stadium that had been used as a prison camp after the 1973 coup (see Chapter 5)—is here employed with a promised pedagogical function. The soon-to-be-opened (as long as money is forthcoming) vast art space, theater, collection of human rights groups’ offices, and promised archives at ESMA, are absolutely about giving something to the future. Some have criticized the triumphalist international self-presentation precisely because it erases present politics, such as the president’s presentation of Villa Grimaldi to international visitors as a sign that Chile has come to terms with its past. This was not because those voices wish to see such buildings demolished, as had one powerful 1990s version of “reconciliation.” Rather, it is because of an acute awareness that how the political ethic is allowed to be articulated, and how it is heard, at those sites is crucial to what the buildings and their preservation can “do.” Yet the preservation of materials—buildings, photographs, documents, letters—by itself does not solve the issue of how remembering takes place. The political questions, the modes of emphasis that are placed on the past are absolutely crucial in this present political complex. The “Complete Memory” associations that Salvi discusses in Chapter 2, engage in an unexpected mimicry, acknowledging the terrain of memory as the site of assertions about the reverberations of the past, their discourse a mix of the long-standing right-wing discourse that was articulated across the Southern Cone, that cast armed communist groups and their sympathizers as subversives who were to be thought as enemies of the nation. A language that insists, as did Bignone, de facto president of Argentina from 1982 to 1983,15 when sentenced earlier this year to 25 years’ imprisonment, that this was a war against terrorism, which, while not entirely new, attempts to appeal to contemporary antiterrorist notions of appropriate security. In his final statement to the court, Bignone justified the actions of the military as “an intervention to defeat terrorism”; the urban guerrillas, he said, “were not innocent tender students driven by ideology.”16 Bignone cast the period as one of war, adding that “in times of peace the disappearance of a single person means one thing and in times of war it means something else.”17

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The fact that Bignone was convicted at all, and so long after the event(s), shows the importance of the battles that have been fought to achieve convictions through the courts, and the remarkable change of sentiment that has occurred at the site of law allowing prosecutions to take place. The repeal of amnesty laws, and states’ agreements to allow prosecutions, has been a fascinating change of attitude across the Southern Cone, one with many contributing factors, including international dimensions. The pressure to achieve this needs also, to my mind, to be tied to the sense of the importance of institutions, since it has been a struggle to realign legal processes with an idea of justice that the people feel they can accept as just and that they would wish to institute into the future. In this sense, we can talk about the forming of a nomos, a tacit understanding that the law has to arise and be located within the nomos at the same time that it constitutes that nomos in the sense that Robert Cover gave to that term.18 It is a battle that has been won, but one must also note the present violence that greets these processes, such as the shocking 2006 disappearance of Jorge Julio López in Argentina after his role as chief complainant and witness at the trial of former police commissioner Miguel Etchecolatz, which indicates precisely the argument I am making here: this is a present politics. This relates, furthermore, to the arresting deployment of terms that are still openly articulated in right-wing discourse and that Bignone articulates here, including the use of the term “subversive,” and the presentation of the junta’s actions as saving the nation from an “enemy within.” It is striking how far these terms are being distanced from official discourses, but this does not mean that they are not being reproduced or that there are not young people who are articulating these versions. How past violence is explained and rationalized is understood as clearly part of the pedagogic effort that takes place through institutions such as law. But it also occurs in more intimate settings, as Alejandra Serpente’s Chapter shows. Sometimes the force of the past emerges there because of events taking place at the level of law, such as when governments have belatedly reversed amnesties and in this sense recognized past events. So a daughter hears from her father about his experience of torture when the Chilean government invites applications for compensation, a scene that illustrates Cover’s articulation of the dynamic relation between law and nomos. The sense of having a political subjectivity constituted through disaporic communities that joined and for a while, especially in relation to Chile, necessarily dominated resistance to Pinochet comes across strongly. Outside the country, and outside the efforts toward sustainable institutions, these children relied more on the articulations of those around them, who tend to offer mostly affective inheritances—such as the “anger and passion” that one

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respondent articulated. A young man whose parents left Argentina is left, he says, “with images,” such as that of soldiers entering his mother’s room, of them burning books and records they found and considered communist. “History breaks down into images,” said Walter Benjamin. If histories break down into images, the subjectivities those histories might foster in the future are also built up and inspired by images, which is why this memory work is so important, why people are so insistent that care is taken to place these histories. The histories need to be detailed, they need to be available, and they need to be discussed. And they need to be within “common” spaces, not to produce ethical “unease” as an end point, but to produce a productive concern for a “common sense,” a future-directed sense of possibilities of being-in-common. This is also why some within the Left are beginning the awkward but absolutely necessary discussion on how the violence of the Left might be remembered, a highly political question given that this history is precisely an ongoing question with criminal prosecutions taking place and scheduled to take place. Some in the present, and from the Left, are also arguing, with Bignone as it were, that the disappeared should not be remembered as merely victims, but that their political status and visions need to be remembered also. The small storm caused by Del Barco’s letter that spoke to a Leftist audience about that violence raised precisely the question of how that violence could be acknowledged rather than forgotten,19 since although many were accused of belonging to communist aligned groups when this was not the case, these political interventions are part of that history. But there is little agreement here. Some have wanted to recover and reassert the political imaginations of those groups—to counter a victim discourse with a celebration of the past’s visionaries, political agents. This is an understandable inclination, and although at its worst it veers toward a romanticization of political subjects, threatening to create hierarchies among the dead as the Complete Memory associations accuse the Left, one has to include it as part of a history of critique and the sentiment that enables political concern and engagement that the horrors cannot be allowed to crush, as Lazzara fears in his reading of Eltit’s Puño y letra. For these reasons—to sustain engagement without romanticization— furthermore, it is important that a new generation is able to work with the materials of the past and to be creative with them, not to dismiss accounts of the past but to assert their “newness.” The images of History cannot be burdens that foreclose the possibilities for social or political subjectivities. And nor should the fact that there are new generations imply obedience to specific familial lines. Cecilia Sosa explores the sense in which filmmaker Carri does just this, taking on her responsibility for the future through the

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countersignature that Los Rubios performs; the daughter of a well-known disappeared couple receives her name, as she receives her past, without becoming completely and solely defined by its significations. She does not remain facing the past, and although she does not refuse history, or the possibility of truth, she asserts a right not to be drawn by it, to pursue its implications differently, queerly perhaps. And through the critical reception of and through something akin to Derrida’s countersignature in relation to that which nevertheless contingently conditions one’s subjectivity, it is possible to inflect future conditions of possibility differently. The dramas that have been played out in the long present have frequently been shocking, frequently stranger than fiction, even at the site of law, in its pursuit of truth, as the “delirious testimony” of Zambelli in the Prats trial showed (see Chapter 4). Often the real and the fictional entwine, each citing the other, and frequently the proper name is the site at which that entanglement is displayed. Even in his “confessions” Scilingo spoke about a character who had in fact been created as a metonymic figure by survivors from ESMA, as if he were a real person.20 And the case of the Noble children (see Chapter 3) presents a scenario in which the technologies of DNA and YouTube vie for the chance to articulate the “proper name” of these young adults, according to competing logics of science or familial care, which the now-adult children claim makes them a family, a claim that has long been at the heart of feminist analyses of the family. What is the critical or “radical” perspective to take here? In these dramas one sees the dangers of deciding what is the correct critical perspective to adopt. What I have been suggesting in this Afterword is that the so-called transitional (and even post-transitional) period in the countries of the Southern Cone has been a “long present” marked by collective attempts to establish the political ethic, including that of key institutions, by which the future will be governed. The work that has gone into what we gather under the notion of a “politics of memory” has not been about a psychic need to remember, nor merely a cultural exercise or fact-finding mission, but also has been a struggle for the sake of the future. Collectively, in different groups and by different modes, the postdictatorship periods have seen various battles that are about attempts to establish the nomos by which people can live, as Robert Cover suggested, and to achieve that in some significant, durable way. Thus, for example, it was because people felt the amnesties could not do the work their proponents, whether in good or bad faith, said they ought, that they fought them.21 This long process has been exhausting for many.22 But this process—of establishing the political ethic(s) by which the institutions will

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operate—has no recognizable end; it is an ongoing process through which the past is incorporated in some manner into the forms of remembering and forgetting that necessarily structure the present polis. The battles about what form modes of remembrance should take implicitly recognize that how the past is organized allows one to embrace the future, not because the past is put to rest, but because that past is collected and organized in a vital way, in a way that guides the future, as the processes of justice, education, familial inheritance, and even of cultural pleasure emerge and proceed from the conditions of possibility that the present establishes for them. And from these processes, therefore, there is an attention to how the political subjectivities of the future are to be given their possibilities. These processes do not determine those possibilities, and they certainly should not inform the action that takes place within those conditions. It is a response to the past, one that is driven by responsibility, urged and urgent in the face of the unknown future. Notes 1. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1963 [1954]), 10–11. 2. On this point, see Leonor Arfuch, Crítica Cultural entre Política y Poética, (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 2008), 77–89 (Chapter 5, “Arte, Memoria y Archivo”). The difference between collected and collective is emphasized by Emilios Christodoulidis, “Law’s Immemorial” in Lethe’s Law: Justice, Law and Ethics in Reconciliation, ed. Emilios Christodoulidis and Scott Veitch (Oxford: Hart, 2001), 207–227. 3. Jean Comaroff, “The End of History, Again? Pursuing the Past in the Postcolony” in Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, ed. Ania Loomba et al. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 125–144. 4. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991). 5. Quoted in Michael Naas, Derrida from Now On (New York: Fordham, 2008), 172–176. 6. Plato, The Laws, trans. Trevor J. Saunders (London: Penguin, 2004). 7. See Horacio Verbitsky, Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior: A Firsthand Account of Atrocity (New York: The New Press, 2005 [1996]). As Crenzel suggests in his introduction, after a lull for a variety of reasons, the 1990s saw the “confessions” from some military officers, the emergence of HIJOS and other similar groups, fuelling the decade’s memory “explosion.” 8. Arendt, 149. 9. See, for example, Elizabeth Jelin, State Repression and the Struggles for Memory (London: Latin American Bureau, 2003). That transitional justice and memory

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220

10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

●

Vikki Bell

studies should be put more explicitly in dialogue is also argued by Alexandra Barahona de Brito, “Transitional Justice and Memory: Exploring Perspectives” South European Politics and Society 15, no. 3 (2010): 359–376. James Young, “The Counter-Monument: The Memorial against Itself in Germany Today” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 267–296. On the Memorial of Paine, see Katherine Hite and Cath Collins, “Memorial Fragments, Monumental Silences and Reawakenings in 21st-Century Chile” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 38, no. 2 (2009): 379–400. I discuss El Parque de la Memoria in more detail in Vikki Bell and Mario Di Paolantonio, “The Haunted Nomos: Activist-Artists and the (Im)possible Politics of Memory in Transitional Argentina” Cultural Politics 5, no. 2 (2009): 149–178. Susana Kaiser, “Escraches: Demonstrations, Communication and Political Memory in Post-Dictatorial Argentina” Media, Culture & Society 24 (2002): 499–516. Hite and Collins, 391. Alexander Wilde, “Irruptions of Memory: Expressive Politics in Chile’s Transition to Democracy” Journal of Latin American Studies 31 (1999): 475–500. At the end of the military dictatorship he was also commander of the Campo de Mayo clandestine detention center between 1976 and 1978. MercoPress, “Argentine Military Junta President Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison,” April 21, 2010, http://en.mercopress.com/2010/04/21/argentinemilitary-junta-president-sentenced-to-25-years-in-prison. Hannah Strange, “Argentina’s Last Dictator Jailed for 30-year-old Human Rights Abuses,” Times Online, April 21, 2010, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7103418.ece. Robert Cover, “Nomos and Narrative” in Narrative, Violence, and the Law: The Essays of Robert Cover, ed. Martha Minow, Michael Ryan, and Austin Sarat (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 95–172. There, Cover writes: “A great legal civilization is marked by the richness of the nomos in which it is located and which it helps to constitute. The varied and complex materials of that nomos establish paradigms for dedication, acquiescence, contradiction, and resistance. These materials present not only bodies of rules or doctrine to be understood, but also worlds to be inhabited. To inhabit a nomos is to know how to live in it.” Cover, 97. Andreas Hussyen made a similar argument about what needs to be forgotten for remembering to take place. Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). On Del Barco’s letter see Patrick Dove, “Memory between Politics and Ethics: Del Barco’s Letter” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 17, no. 3 (2008): 279–297. Munú Actis et al., That Inferno: Conversations of Five Women Survivors of an Argentine Torture Camp (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2006).

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221

21. See See Mario Di Paolantonio, “Tracking the Transitional Demand for Legal Recall: The Foreclosing and Promise of Law in Argentina” Social and Legal Studies 13, no. 3 (2004): 351–375. 22. The women who collectively wrote That Inferno, reflections on their time in ESMA, reported there about how exhausted they were from giving evidence, telling their stories, writing about what happened. And many of them have done so many more times since then, including in the present megacausa (megalawsuit) of ESMA now under way.

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Index Note: In this index, page references in bold indicate in which part of the book a given event, person, idea or concept is explicitly and substantively discussed. Ordinary-type references indicate where it is simply mentioned in the rest of the book. Alfonsín, Raúl, 3, 58 see also president, Argentina Allende, Salvador, 92, 99, 100, 110–112 see also president, Chile amnesty laws, 216 Argentina, 15, 30, 55; see also Due Obedience Law; Full Stop Law Chile, 3, 4, 123; see also General Pinochet Uruguay, 179, 182, 184; see also Law on the Expiry of the Punitive Claims of the State see also impunity; reconciliation Arendt, Hannah, 2, 9, 91, 209, 212–213 Aylwin, Patricio, 87, 88, 120–122, 215 see also president, Chile

Club Atlético, 20–21, 22, 23 see also clandestine detention centers; monuments commemoration, 7, 29, 45, 107, 110, 124–126, 127, 136, 145, 195, 198, 200 see also memory Complete Memory Associations, 43–61, 80, 210, 215, 217 Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia (Concertation of Parties for Democracy) (Chile), 87, 102, 120, 148 see also Aylwin, Patricio; Bachelet, Michelle; Frei, Eduardo; Lagos, Ricardo

Bachelet, Michelle, 148, 155 see also president, Chile baldosas (memorial plaques), 18, 23–24, 34, 214 see also memorials; monuments Batlle, Jorge, 158, 185–186, 195, 200 see also president, Uruguay Butler, Judith, 63–79

de Bonafini, Hebe, 31, 71, 72, 84 see also Mothers of May Square (Association) Derrida, Jacques, 75, 77, 105, 211, 218 direct victims, 64, 65–67, 73, 74, 81, 134, 136, 142–143, 160, 164–169, 180, 181, 191–192 see also victims’ organizations; trauma compare Complete Memory Associations Due Obedience Law (1987) (Argentina), 4, 43, 46, 55, 57, 59, 148 see also amnesty laws, Argentina

clandestine detention centers, 1, 5, 19–22, 24, 26, 32–34, 37, 46–47, 145, 194, 215 see also Club Atlético; ESMA (Argentina); Villa Grimaldi (Chile) compare Punta Carretas

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224

●

Index

ESMA (Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada; Navy School of Mechanics) (Buenos Aires), 5, 15–16, 26, 67, 215, 218, 221 see also clandestine centers of detention; monuments exile, 2–6, 10, 113, 119, 134–152, 158, 159, 164, 166, 190, 191 Fernández de Kirchner, Cristina, 82, 84 see also Kirchner, Néstor; president, Argentina forced disappearance, 1, 2, 6, 19, 48, 158, 159, 162, 174, 186 see also trauma forgetting, 8, 9, 16, 61, 89, 126, 157, 172, 179, 181, 219 see also impunity; memory; oblivion; silence Frei, Eduardo, 87, 112 see also president, Chile Full Stop Law (1986) (Argentina), 4, 43, 46, 55, 59, 148 see also amnesty laws, Argentina General Medina, Hugo (Uruguay), 189 General Pinochet, Augusto (Chile), 3–6, 8, 87–89, 92, 93, 94, 98, 100–101, 103, 111, 113, 121, 135, 148–149, 182, 216 Grandmothers of May Square (Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo) (Argentina), 47, 65, 67, 68, 73, 76, 81, 83, 136 see also human rights organizations; victims’ organizations guerrilla Argentina, 49, 53, 55, 56, 58, 215; see also Montoneros Uruguay, 183, 184, 190; see also Tupamaros H.I.J.O.S. (Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio, Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against

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Forgetting and Silence) (Argentina), 5, 12, 24, 39, 76, 77, 83, 136, 143, 148 see also human rights organizations; victims’ organizations HIJOS (Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio, Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence) (Uruguay), 5, 12, 168, 175, 182 see also human rights organizations; victims’ organizations Hirsch, Marianne, 138, 140–143, 152 see also Holocaust, and postmemory Holocaust, 29, 60, 98, 177 and postmemory, 136–138, 141–143, 152 human rights organizations, 151 Argentina, 2–5, 15, 17, 20–21, 28, 43–57, 64–67, 80, 81, 83, 135, 136, 143–148 Chile, 87, 117–118, 130, 135–136, 145–146 Uruguay, 9, 168, 180, 182, 187, 190–192, 195, 197, 200–201 see also victims’ organizations Huyssen, Andreas, 29, 153, 220 impunity Argentina, 5, 26, 30, 46–47, 55–56, 67, 72; see also Menem, Carlos Chile, 92, 101–102, 109, 113, 116–117, 123, 124, 148 Uruguay, 158–161, 172–173, 175, 183–184, 198, 200–203; see also Sanguinetti, Julio María see also amnesty laws; reconciliation Jelin, Elizabeth, 12, 13, 16, 37, 58, 64–66, 82, 83, 136, 145, 146, 152, 155, 204, 219 justice, 4, 8, 15, 30, 34, 48, 55, 65, 87–103, 121, 123–124, 135, 143, 149, 161, 180, 183, 186, 187, 190,

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Index 196, 197, 200, 201, 211–214, 216, 219 memory, truth, and, 5, 7, 15, 20, 22, 25, 29, 30, 34, 44, 47, 48, 55, 56, 67, 89, 180, 185–187, 197, 200 transitional, 4, 9, 10, 185, 186, 219– 220; see also truth commission see also Complete Memory Associations; human rights organizations; victims’ organizations Kirchner, Néstor, 15, 64, 67, 82, 148 see also Fernández de Kirchner, Cristina; president, Argentina Lagos, Ricardo, 87 see also president, Chile Law on the Expiry of the Punitive Claims of the State (Ley de Caducidad de la Pretensión Punitiva del Estado) (Uruguay), 4, 160–161, 175, 179 1989 Referendum, 4, 5, 160, 179, 185, 192, 196–198, 199, 202, 210 2009 Plebiscite, 160, 202 see also amnesty laws, Uruguay Los Rubios (2003), 74–79, 147, 218 Malvinas/Falkland Islands War (1982), 3, 48, 58, 135 Memorial to Disappeared-Detainees (Montevideo), 5, 195–196, 202, 213 see also memorials; monuments memorialization, 10, 17, 19, 24, 124–125, 127, 151, 158, 213 see also commemoration; memorials; memory; monuments memorials, 5, 6, 16–35, 72, 90, 124, 213 see also baldosas; clandestine centers of detention; Memorial to Disappeared-Detainees; Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism

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225

memory communities of, 125, 133, 147, 150, 152, 159, 182; see also Complete Memory Associations; direct victims; memory, emblematic construction, 7, 15, 18, 21–22, 23, 25–26, 32, 33, 44, 94, 183, 192 emblematic, 182–183; see also Stern, Steve entrepreneurs, 44–45 kaleidoscope, 180–181, 201 knots, 192–193; see also Stern, Steve policies, 6, 107, 124, 158, 173 politics of, 7, 10, 16, 24, 25, 35, 134–136, 152, 180, 193, 201, 209, 218 sites of, 10, 17, 18, 25, 29, 32–34, 67, 124, 195; see also clandestine detention centers; ESMA; memorials; Memory Park; monuments struggles, 6, 9, 11, 16, 18, 34, 51, 52, 56, 182 studies, 6, 133, 136–138, 140, 143, 219–220; see also Holocaust, and postmemory transmission, 6, 64, 133–152, 157–173; see also Holocaust, and postmemory work, 9, 10, 22, 25, 28, 137, 144, 151, 211–214, 217 see also Complete Memory Associations; Holocaust; justice, memory, truth, and; justice, transitional memorials; monuments; trauma; truth commission Memory Park (Parque de la Memoria) (Buenos Aires), 17, 27–32, 196, 213 Menem, Carlos (Saúl), 5, 46, 58, 148 Montoneros, 58, 142 see also guerrilla, Argentina

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Index

Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism (Buenos Aires), 28–32, 59 see also memorials; Memory Park; monuments monuments, 5, 6, 16–35, 145, 195, 210, 213–214 counter-, 213 see also ESMA; Memorial to Disappeared-Detainees; memorials; Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism; Villa Grimaldi Mothers and Relatives of Uruguayan Disappeared-Detainees, 195 see also human rights organizations; victims’ organizations Mothers of May Square (Madres de Plaza de Mayo) (Argentina), 31, 46–47, 65, 67, 68, 69–73, 74, 76, 136 Asociación (Association), 30–31, 71, 84; see also de Bonafini, Hebe Línea Fundadora (Founding Line), 31, 71, 84 see also human rights organizations; victims’ organizations mourning, 7, 10, 16, 17, 22, 28, 31–33, 63–82, 83, 90, 124–126, 145–146, 172, 211 Mujica, José, 175, 200, 201 see also president, Uruguay National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture (Chile), 87–88 see also truth commission National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) (Argentina), 4, 19, 46, 58 see also Nunca Más; truth commission National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) (Chile), 91–94, 101, 104

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Nunca Más (Never Again) Argentina, 4, 36, 58, see also National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons Día del Nunca Más (Day of Never Again) (Uruguay), 200–201 oblivion, 48, 52, 53, 100, 109, 146, 158, 160, 171, 172, 179, 184, 192, 193, 196, 202 see also forgetting; impunity; memory; silence Plan Condor, 1, 92, 94, 104, 164, 174, 176, 200 Prats, Carlos, 88–101, 104 president Argentina, see Alfonsín, Raúl; Fernández de Kirchner, Cristina; Kirchner, Néstor; Menem, Carlos Chile, see Allende, Salvador; Aylwin, Patricio; Bachelet, Michelle; Frei, Eduardo; General Pinochet, Augusto; Lagos, Ricardo Uruguay, see Batlle, Jorge; Mujica, José; Sanguinetti, Julio María; Vázquez, Tabaré Punta Carretas (Montevideo), 5, 19, 193–195, 202, 210 see also memorials; monuments compare clandestine detention centers reconciliation, 5, 43, 45, 89, 120–124, 158, 160–161, 173, 183, 186–187, 190, 197, 200, 201, 215 compare truth commission reparation, 30–31, 66, 71, 90, 107, 118, 120, 122–124, 200, 202 see also memorials; monuments; transitional justice Rettig Report, 4, 5, 112, 122–124 see also truth commission, Chile Sanguinetti, Julio María, 160, 175, 183–185, 200, 201, 210 see also president, Uruguay

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Index silence, 5, 9, 10, 46, 52–53, 95, 101, 115, 157–173, 179–187, 191, 195–196, 198, 201, 203 March of (Uruguay), 199–200, 202, 214 see also forgetting; impunity; memory; oblivion Solidarity Vicariate (Vicaría de la Solidaridad) (Chile), 117, 119, 145 Stern, Steve, 10, 103, 128, 141, 182, 192 trauma, 10, 22, 28, 49, 50, 63–82, 83, 87, 90, 91, 94, 99, 100, 101, 118, 125, 126, 133–152, 158, 159, 166, 169, 172, 182, 209 see also direct victims; forced disappearance; Holocaust truth commission, 4, 19, 90, 94, 107, 124 Argentina, see National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons; Nunca Más

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227

Chile, 87, 112, 121–123; see also Rettig Report Uruguay (Peace Commission), 185–186 see also National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture (Chile); reconciliation Tupamaros, 175, 183, 184, 193, 198, 201 see also guerrilla, Uruguay Valech Report, 88 see also National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture (Chile) Vázquez, Tabaré, 6, 158, 175, 186 see also president, Uruguay victims’ organizations, 28, 65–69, 78, 107, 117, 124, 136, 143, 144, 180 see also Complete Memory Associations; direct victims; human rights organizations Villa Grimaldi (Santiago), 5, 145, 215 see also monuments

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