Reconstruction Vol. 15, No. 1
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Neighbourhood Memories: Accounting for Individuals Lost and Individual Loss on the Landscape of the Memory of the Argentine Dictatorship / Ana Laura Pauchulo
murdered
my brother her son his grandson
her mother his girlfriend her aunt
her grandfather his friend his cousin her neighbor (sic)
ours yours us
all of us
injected with emptiness.
We lost a version of who we were
and rewrite ourselves in order to survive (Strejilevich 171)
<1> Nora Strejilevich ends her semi-autobiographical account of the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in her book, "A Single Numberless Death", with the above poem in which she names her disappeared (or, as she writes, "murdered") brother both as "her" brother and "our" brother. Throughout the book Strejilevich combines autobiography, documentary journalism, poetry, and published testimonies of others who have written of their experiences during the coup to narrate the "chorus of voices" of the 30,000 who were disappeared by the military (171). As with the poem, her stories of individuals lost and individual loss are contained as the single story of a collective experience. As she writes, disappearance did not only leave an emptiness in "her", "him", or "me", but also in "us". Indeed, it is the collective that is at the center of both Strejilevich's poem and public remembrance of the dictatorship in Argentina - the collective Argentine public being called on to remember and the collective 30,000 disappeared persons being brought forth into the present. More specifically, human rights groups in the country often structure remembrance of "los 30,000" ("the 30,000") as a call for the construction of a public who, through its commitment to remember the disappeared, is subsequently committed to continuing the struggle for human rights for which the 30,000 were disappeared. Thus, through public remembrance practices such as commemorative marches, political protests, memorials and street art, the disappeared are remembered as a collective of Argentines who sacrificed their lives to construct a just Argentina. It is on this landscape of memory that the human rights group Neighbourhoods for Memory, has focused its remembrance of the disappeared on mapping the singular lives that were lost and, in turn, on mapping sites of individual mourning and grief. Through public memorials erected in remembrance of individual disappeared persons and remembrance events that invite family and friends to speak about their loss, Neighbourhoods for Memory reminds us that the 30,000 were not only political activists but also people who were loved and are missed.
<2> In this paper I draw from my conversations with members of Neighbourhoods for Memory as well as my participation in their remembrance practices in 2007 to explore the function of individualizing remembrance practices in the (re)construction of a public defined by its commitment to a struggle for human rights. In so doing, I grapple with these specific questions: a) How do these practices explicitly carve out designated moments and places to engage in mourning rituals?; and, subsequently, b) What are the implications of coming together in acts of mourning for the formation of a public defined by its struggle for human rights? These are important questions to consider in an analysis of the function of the group's distinct remembrance practices to public formation precisely because the context of public remembrance in Argentina is often characterized by persistent public displays of bare wounds and a refusal to participate in any notions of healing or mourning (Bevernage and Aerts; Di Paolantonio).
Present Absences: Public Remembrance and the (Im)possiblity of Mourning in Argentina
<3> The camp I was in was in the basement of the Sub-Prefecture of the Federal Police in the neighbourhood of La Boca, Buenos Aires. A big police station in a busy neighbourhood. There were small air holes between the ceilings and the walls, from which I could hear people walking by, cars and buses passing, life going on as usual - with us disappeared....In the afternoon, when the sun was at a certain angle, I could see on the floor the shadows of the people passing by, getting in and out of their cars. Yes I think that was the worst. To be so close to them, for them to be so close to us, and yet so far away. (Feitlowitz 51-52)
<4> Ana María Careaga was disappeared in June of 1977 and released ("reappeared") 4 months later. In the excerpt above, she speaks of her experiences as a disappeared person - a person that simultaneously exists in the everyday and is yet so far from that existence. It is this present absence that continues to mark how the disappeared exist in today's Argentina. Thus, any discussion of remembrance and mourning in Argentina requires an accompanying discussion of the meaning of disappearance because, undoubtedly, the simultaneous presence and absence of the disappeared informs the landscape of the memory of the dictatorship.
<5> Between 1976 and 1983 the Argentine military used disappearance as a tool for eliminating dissident voices [1]. In Argentina, and in many countries in Latin America, the term "disappeared" is a verb, a noun, and a condition of existence. As a verb, "to be disappeared" is translated from the Spanish "ser desaparecido/a" and refers to an act that one does to another. Specifically it is the "kidnapping and elimination of an individual by the state or allied apparatus" (Scruggs 269) - in the case of Argentina, by the military state or collaborators such as the police. As a noun "disappeared" is the translation of the Spanish "desaparecido/a". "It was coined by the Argentine military as a way of denying the kidnap, torture, and murder of thousands of citizens" (Feitlowitz 49). Today, the term "los desaparecidos" is commonly known to refer to the 30,000 who were disappeared between 1976 and 1983. Importantly, because there is no body to verify the death of a person who was disappeared, "death can never be interchanged with the word disappeared; nor can 'the disappeared' ever be equivalent to the word death" (Di Paolantonio 155). Following these two definitions, we can then understand the notion of "to be disappeared" as a condition of existence, for as neither dead nor alive the disappeared in Argentina exist as an in-between and in the in-between of present absence (Di Paolantonio; Huyssen).
<6> Despite the current federal trials of the perpetrators of these disappearances, information about the circumstances of the kidnappings, torture, and murders, including information about where the remains are buried, is still largely unknown [2]. Thus, in Argentina, "there is literally no body to confirm death - for there is no physical body or any body of the state to verify death" (Di Paolantonio 162). Drawing from Derrida, who posits that "nothing could be worse, for the work of mourning, than confusion or doubt [about]…who is buried where" (9), Di Paolantonio explains that, "in post-dictatorship Argentina, mourners-in-waiting are still waiting" (162). Writing about mourning and trauma in Argentina, Hollander has noted that mourning necessitates a body - "an acknowledgement of reality [that] the individual no longer exists" - because "without proof of death, to go on with one's life is tantamount to a kind of murder of the disappeared loved one" (283). Indeed, many relatives of disappeared persons have told stories about how they kept their disappeared loved one's room intact and set a plate for them at the dinner table every night for many years in the hopes, or belief, that she or he would return. Thus, without confirmation of death, the living who remain in the aftermath of disappearance are left waiting to transition to the status of mourner and, equally important, to facilitate the transition of the disappeared from life to death (Francis, Kellaher and Neophyto; Romanoff and Terrenzio).
<7> Drawing from Judith Butler's ("Mourning, Violence and Politics") reflections on Freud, I understand mourning as a process of transforming (rather than severing) the attachment one had to the individual when she or he was alive. This transformed attachment implies that the mourner is able to acknowledge a break of familiarity that has resulted from the loss and is willing first, to resist the desire to bring back "as unchanged and familiar what can no longer exist" and second, attend to the force the unfamiliar exerts on the present to form new attachments and new ways of understanding the present and one's self (Britzman 34). In circumstances where death can be affirmed, certain rituals have been established by societies that allow the mourner to participate in this process of transformation. For example, rituals such as funerals, which include the burial of the dead, "provide opportunities for public displays of grief, structures for the delimitation of grief, vehicles for affirming the relationship of the deceased to the community, and the continuity of the community in his or her absence" (Romanoff and Terrenzio 699).
<8> The present absence of the disappeared, and the absence of possibilities to participate in such normative mourning rituals, has had a significant impact on the construction of the landscape of public remembrance of the dictatorship in Argentina. Most notably, this landscape is characterized by ceaseless calls to remember that bring the disappeared forth into the present in order to honour their lives as social activist who gave of their lives for the betterment of Argentine society. Thus, the landscape of the memory of the dictatorship functions to affirm the lives of the disappeared to the living both because it makes them visible in the present and because to remember the disappeared - to honour their lives - is to assume their struggle for human rights.
<9> To understand how the impossibility and possibility for mourning in Argentina is situated within this particular landscape of memory, I turn to the ongoing public debates surrounding the "Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism" in Buenos Aires. The state funded Monument was officially inaugurated in 2007 and is located in the "Park of Memory" in the northern part of the city, along the banks of the well known river, Rio de la Plata (River of Silver) [3]. It contains approximately 8,700 names of persons killed or disappeared by state terrorism, spanning the 1966-1973 dictatorship and the 1976-1983 dictatorship, though it has come to be popularly known as the monument in remembrance of those disappeared during the last dictatorship (i.e., the 30,000). Specifically, the Monument is a series of four non-continuous walls jutting out from the ground in zigzag formation with the names of the "victims of state terrorism" sequenced alphabetically and by year. As visitors follow the path alongside the walls they walk upwards toward the river, where many visibly tortured bodies were found washed up during the 1976-1983 dictatorship [4]. An inscription on the last wall reads, "the list on this monument includes the victims of state terrorism, detained-disappeared and assassinated and those who died struggling for the ideals of justice and equality" (my translation).
<10> As Huyssen has written of the Monument, "these walls with their inscribed names…document the extent of state terror and provide a site [to engage in]…mourning" rituals (103-104). Throughout the Monument's various stages of construction, many people have praised its "cathartic qualities" (Bonet 25). Tati Almeyda, President of the human rights group Mothers of the Disappeared - Founding Line, "appreciated the tactility of the Monument, saying that 'we come and touch the names of our children. Every time I come, I touch his name'" (Bonet 25). Marcelo Brodsky, who was himself reappeared but has a brother who remains disappeared, noted that "'it is a place where one can come to reflect…[but] it is not a cemetery because, lamentably, there are no bodies'" (Bonet 25). Nonetheless, that this place is akin to a cemetery is evidenced by Leopolda Segalli and Mabel Gutiérrez, both members of Mothers of the Disappeared - Founding Line, who have asked that when they die, their ashes be placed alongside the wall that bears their sons' names (Bonet 25). Not surprisingly then, during my visit to the Monument I noticed flowers, some fresh and some dried out, placed beside the names of individual disappeared persons. My initial shock at the emptiness of the site of the Monument and the endless lists of names engraved on enormous slabs of black stone was subdued by these flowers - evidence that someone had been there and that these were not merely names, but markings of loss and absence, and therefore, of life. If we assume that these flowers were placed by family and friends over the engraved name of their loved one, we can understand such a mourning ritual as an example of people attempting to work through their individual loss by designating a contained place for grief and publicly caring for their loved ones.
<11> While public remembrance practices of the disappeared often draw anywhere from tens, to hundreds, to thousands of Argentineans (e.g., the Neighbourhoods for Memory events draw tens to hundreds whereas the annual remembrance march on March 24th draws thousands), there is some debate between human rights groups regarding the construction of the Monument because of the way in which it ties remembrance to mourning. For example, the human rights group Association of Mothers of the Disappeared has stated that "if necessary we will use pickaxes, hammers, and steel chisels to erase the names engraved on that monument" (Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo "Open Letter") [5]. The group's response to the Monument was not surprising considering its members' longstanding rejection of all "plaques and monuments because they signify the burial of the dead" and, according to them, their children "are not dead" (Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo "Our Principles"). Their refusal to name the disappeared dead and to participate in any kind of mourning ritual is also not surprising within the context of a history of post-dictatorship governments that have implemented policies and practices that champion forgetting over remembering and forgiveness over justice (For more detail, please see footnote 3). The Association Mothers' persistent denial of death and refusal to mourn stems from their initial call for the return of their children during the dictatorship. "Bring Them Back Alive!" began as a defiant response to the military's denial that it was kidnapping and disappearing people, continued as a rejection of "the theory of two evils" [6], and exists today as both a recognition that the revolutionary spirit of the disappeared exists in those that presently struggle for human rights and a demand for an Argentine public to take up this struggle so that the disappeared may live on in the future.
<12> Importantly, as Di Paolantonio has noted, their insistence that the disappeared are not dead is not a "simple 'denial' or 'melancholic pathos'" (175). For the Association Mothers, any notion of healing and mourning is incommensurate with remembrance and, importantly, the mobilization of the struggle for human rights through public remembrance. However, while many human rights groups have disagreed with this position throughout the years, the way in which Neighbourhoods for Memory has simultaneously articulated remembrance of the disappeared as an attempt to mourn and a call to continue their struggle for human rights is particularly striking to me because they do so through individualizing remembrance practices that highlight the singularity of loss in a way that no other group does. Below, I return to my conversations with members of Neighbourhoods for Memory and reflect on the significance of their unique remembrance practices to the formation of an Argentine public committed to human rights. Before doing so, however, I provide a brief history of the group's formation.
Neighbourhoods for Memory: A brief history
<13> Neighbourhoods for Memory emerged out of the "popular assemblies" that were formed in neighbourhoods across the country by "ordinary people who started to meet during the December 2001 economic collapse and political crisis...to analyze social and political developments and to respond with street protests" (Sutton 156). In 2005 members of these popular assemblies decided to gather as separate groups, "Neighbourhoods for Memory", to organize remembrance events specifically intended to mark the 2006 30th anniversary of the beginning of the dictatorship. Neighbourhoods for Memory is an umbrella group that in fact encompasses smaller groups that are differentiated primarily by the neighbourhood in which they exist and organize their remembrance practices. Each neighbourhood based group aims to remember individual disappeared persons within the neighbourhood in which they resided, attended school, or worked. In this paper I draw from conversations I had with members of two groups belonging to Neighbourhoods for Memory: "Commission for Memory Mataderos-Liniers-Villa Luro" and "Neighbourhoods for Memory Almagro-Balvanea" (every group that is part of Neighbourhoods for Memory includes the name of the neighbourhood or neighbourhoods they represent - in these cases, Mataderos-Liniers-Villa Luro refers to three separate neighbourhoods and Almagro-Balvanera refers to two separate neighbourhoods).
<14> The Neighbourhoods for Memory groups were formed during a time characterized by significant changes in government with respect to state policy and remembrance of the dictatorship. Self-titled "the government of human rights", one of President Nestór Kirchner's government's (2003-2007) first actions was to repeal the two amnesty laws of the 1980s (see footnote 2 for more detail). In 2005 the Supreme Court declared these laws unconstitutional, thus establishing the conditions necessary for the current trials of those who committed crimes during the dictatorship. The first of these trials took place in 2006 when former Buenos Aires Provincial Police officer, Miguel Etchecolatz, was tried for kidnapping, torture, and murder between 1976 and 1983. However, thirty years after the beginning of the dictatorship and amidst a government who "attempted to align state policy with the position of the victims" (Sosa 64), the apparatus of terror and violence that drove the dictatorship revealed its continuing existence. One day before the last day of the trial, Jorge Julio López, a witness who had testified against Etchecolatz, was disappeared. Human rights groups believe that López was kidnapped by members of the Argentine Federal Police because of his testimony. This and other similar kidnappings at that time sent a wave of fear across the human rights movement and all of those involved in the trials of those who had committed crimes during the dictatorship confirming that the possibility of disappearance in present-day Argentina was a reality [7].
<15> Within this volatile political and social context in which, on the one hand human rights groups' demands for memory and justice were legitimized by the state and, on the other hand, human rights violations similar to those committed during the dictatorship continued, Neighbourhoods for Memory created a new form and new objective of remembrance. Their practices of remembrance aim to remember the disappeared person in the neighbourhoods where they were "born, raised, did their activism, and/or worked" (Rosalia, Conversation, 25 August 2007, Commission for Memory Mataderos-Liniers-Villa Luro, my translation) [8]. Such practices are organized in the neighbourhood to which the disappeared person being remembered had a particular relationship and, in turn, for the residents of that neighbourhood (as well as others who may want to attend because of their personal connection to the person being remembered). In the following section I draw from my conversations with members of two Neighbourhoods for Memory groups with whom I spoke in 2007 and from my observations of remembrance practices in which I participated in order to examine the ways in which these practices structure distinct forms of engagement that attempt to bring the seemingly impossible work of mourning in Argentina into the realm of possibility.
Accounting for Individuals Lost and Individual Loss: (Im)possible Mourning
<16> Importantly, although the Neighbourhood for Memory groups share many defining characteristics, there are also many differences between each group's forms of remembrance. For example, like no other of these four groups the Commission for Memory Mataderos-Liniers-Villa Luro has designated a park for remembrance of the disappeared of these three neighbourhoods. There are two locations within the park marked for remembrance - a mural painted on the wall of a 6-story residential building at the back of the park and a gravel path at the front of the park that is lined by trees planted in remembrance of individual disappeared persons and that leads up to a plaque inscribed with the names of the disappeared from these neighbourhoods.
<17> The square shaped park in which these memorials to the disappeared are located (the mural, the trees/the path, and the plaque) is bordered by three separate streets and the residential building. The mural spans the entire width of the wall and ends mid wall from the ground up. Specifically, it depicts buildings of the three neighbourhoods (mostly residential houses) and a large white headscarf that is painted so as to appear to be hovering above the buildings of the neighbourhoods painted below it [9]. Painted within most of the buildings are blank white rectangles that mark a space where people can write (and have written) the name(s) of a disappeared person(s) or a message to a disappeared person(s). Further, painted within the white headscarf is a map of the area of the three neighbourhoods that marks the major streets that run through these neighbourhoods. This map is also marked by yellow circles that designate the approximate location of residence, work, or study of a disappeared person from one of the neighbourhoods. Below the map, within the white headscarf, are the words "THEY ARE HERE" (my translation).
<18> Both the plaque in remembrance of the disappeared as well as the gravel path leading up to it are located in a corner of the park in an area that is slightly more secluded from other park activity. The plaque itself sits raised on a four foot high pedestal. When I visited the park in 2007 the plaque contained approximately 60 names. Information about disappeared persons from these neighbourhoods was initially collected from the 1984 "Nunca Más" ("Never Again") report and from personal accounts given by neighbourhood residents [10]. However, every year new information surfaces of a disappeared person who once "lived, was raised, did their activism, and/or worked" in one of the three neighbourhoods. As the money to buy the trees is mostly collected from residents' donations, financial limitations dictate that the trees are planted for a number of disappeared persons, rather than an individual disappeared person. Further, the trees themselves are not marked to stand in remembrance of particular disappeared persons (i.e., there are no individual commemorative plaques indicating for whom the trees were planted). As such, the names of the disappeared of the three neighbourhoods (Mataderos, Liniers, and Villa Luro) appear in the park in one of two places - the plaque at the end of the path and the mural.
<19> Rosalia of Commission for Memory - Mataderos-Liniers-Villa-Luro has explained the significance of the annual event in remembrance of the disappeared persons of the three neighbourhoods that is held in the park with reference to the possibilities it presents people to engage in mourning rituals.
We wanted to take them [the disappeared] from the Plaza to the neighbourhoods where they came from…where they were born, where they were raised, where they did their activism, [and/or] worked. And we have an event to pay homage to them where we have a ceremony in the neighbourhood. It's so important that ceremony, no? Because we have somewhere to take the flowers. You can't do this in the Plaza de Mayo….And well, on a personal level this heals wounds. But, well, there are some wounds that can't be healed and so this helps to ease the pain [11]. (Conversation, 25 August 2007)
The ceremony that Rosalia refers to here is the annual remembrance event during which time the group plants trees in remembrance of individual disappeared persons, invites relatives and friends of those individuals to speak (the general public is also invited), and adds the names of those individuals being remembered to the plaque in the park. Within the context of Rosalia's comments about the function of these practices to "take the disappeared from the Plaza de Mayo and return them to their neighbourhoods" we might consider how both the event and the space allows individuals to "wrest… [the disappeared] from anonymity" (Robben 142) - that is, from the anonymity of the nameless collective of 30,000. In that the space physically marks the presence of the disappeared (vis-a-vis the plaque and the trees), such practices also allow individuals to, at least partly, remove the disappeared from the anonymity of that unrepresentable and incomprehensible state of disappearance. The space itself also provides a place where relatives and friends of disappeared persons can return to "place flowers" - to engage in certain mourning rituals that allow the living a place to contain their grief [12].
<20> Though I was unable to attend the annual event to which Rosalia makes reference, I was able to attend some events organized by Neighbourhoods for Memory and Justice Almagro-Balvanera where plaques are placed in the sidewalk in remembrance of an individual disappeared person [13]. These individualized plaques are usually placed outside of the location where the person was disappeared, where she or he lived, worked, studied (i.e., went to school), or, simply on a busy sidewalk of the neighbourhood. Most of these plaques have a common inscription: a phrase that marks the significance of the location of the plaque in relation to the disappeared person. For example, most plaques include the following: "here [person's name] was kidnapped", followed first by the date of disappearance and then the phrase "disappeared by the state terrorism of 1976-1983". Drawing from my observations of events in which these plaques are placed in the sidewalk, people do place flowers on or around the plaque once it has been placed in the sidewalk. In fact, in one particular event, a young boy selling flowers who was walking by stopped to watch and, before anyone else had placed anything on the plaque, he did so himself with one of his own flowers. These events are thus understood by a wider public (than those who organize these events) to call for this kind of participation. In addition to the placing of the plaque in the sidewalk in remembrance of an individual disappeared person, the speeches given by relatives and friends of the person being remembered also structure such participation because they serve to express lament for the dead. The following excerpt of a reading given by a relative of Eva, for whom a plaque was placed in the neighbourhood of Almagro on July 15th 2007, serves as an example.
I find it very difficult to speak about Eva. She is in my heart, everyday of my life. I remember that she was beautiful, intelligent, with a strong personality, a very good student. She wanted to be a lawyer….She always accomplished her goals. She got to university, she studied at night always with the radio on …..We were always very close, and more so when she told us that she was expecting a son…She wanted to raise her son and, unfortunately, she wasn't able to. I want to say that I am proud of my sister Eva…[her] parents died thinking of her, that she remains in the memories and hearts of…[her family]. She left an intelligent son, like she was, and surely, from wherever she is watching, she is proud of the family that he created, of her granddaughters and of her daughter-in-law. Eva, you are always with us.
<21> Indeed, the remembrance events organized by Neighbourhoods for Memory and Justice - Almagro-Balvanera allow opportunities for people to eulogize individual disappeared persons. These experiences can support a process of "easing the pain" because they allow mourners-in-waiting to participate in a ritual of transition in which their personal loss is acknowledged as such - as personal and unique. The public recognition of one's individual grief and loss, and the support one receives from those present at the event, might be important to alleviating the pain of the loss of a disappeared person in that it allows mourners-in-waiting to take steps towards transitioning to the position of mourner (albeit a transition that can never be fully completed). Nonetheless, while the varied events staged by different neighborhood-based groups offer such similar possibilities, the physical marker of disappearance which each event is aimed at installing, functions quite differently in regard to easing one's pain. For example, the plaque and tree memorials erected in the park by Commission for Memory Mataderos-Liniers-Villa Luro allow for the repetition of mourning rituals whereas practices such as the plaques placed in busy sidewalks do not. As Romanoff and Terenzio (698) have explained, this repetition is important since the possibility of repeating mourning rituals provides "a vehicle for expression and containment of strong emotions [and]…their repetitive and prescribed nature eases feelings of anxiety…and provide structure and order at times of chaos and disorder".
<22> In emblematic practices such as the annual commemorative march held on 24th of March to mark the beginning of the dictatorship, people carry large placards with black and white photographs of the disappeared. Similarly, in their weekly Thursday marches around the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, the members of Mothers - Founding Line wear large photographs of their disappeared children around their necks. In these events, individual disappeared persons are remembered through remembrance of the 30,000. In contrast, in the neighborhood specific practices, the 30,000 are remembered through remembrance of an individual person. This focus on the individual serves to account for personal grief and loss and to remember the disappeared as political activists that belonged to a family and a group of friends who loved them and continue to miss them. The question remains, however, how do these individualizing remembrance practices inform the construction of a public committed to human rights?
Accounting for Individuals Lost and Individual Loss: Instructing the Formation of a Public Committed to Human Rights
<23> As I have highlighted throughout this paper, within a landscape of ceaseless calls to remember the 30,000 and to commit to a collective struggle for human rights, Neighbourhoods for Memory and its practices stand out because of their focus on the individual - individual lives lost, individual loss, and an individual commitment to remember and guarantee human rights for all. More specifically, having participated in larger and more emblematic remembrance events in Argentina such as the annual 24th of March march, what is different about the Neighbourhoods for Memory events and practices is the focus on remembering the everyday of the individual lives of the disappeared. Through the invitation to participate in mourning rituals that are often reminiscent of a funeral (as opposed to a political march) Neighbourhoods for Memory provide spaces and moments that highlight the vulnerability of the ordinariness of life that we all hold in common (Butler "Violence, Mourning and Politics" and "Frames of War").
<24> Thus, the events organized by Neighbourhoods for Memory that ask "us" to come together to eulogize the dead, to acknowledge their continuing presence and the continuation of the community in their absence, and to cry together, have important political implications for the formation of a public. As Judith Butler ("Violence, Mourning and Politics" 22) writes: "grief…furnishes a sense of political community…by bringing to the fore the relational ties that have implications for theorizing fundamental dependency and ethical responsibility". In events and moments where victims of state perpetrated violence are remembered as a collective, people often express an incapability to comprehend what that kind of trauma and loss looks like - for some the 30,000 is an incomprehensible and daunting number. Remembering and, importantly, participating in mourning rituals in the name of an individual highlights "our" relationality and "how we are undone by those very relations" when we come face to face with another's grief and loss, with another's trauma, and with each others' human vulnerability (Butler "Violence, Mourning and Politics" 23).
<25> Indeed, the eulogy given in memory of Eva invites us to relate to Eva through the evocation of images of Eva doing things any one of us might do (e.g., "studying at night with the radio on"). Subsequently, this eulogy also invites us to relate to the orator - Eva's sister - who speaks about loving and missing her sister in a way that any one of us would in her situation. That said, though for some this relationality will undoubtedly be structured by their identification with the disappeared (i.e., a perception that "they are like you and I"), following Butler I hope that it is structured by the recognition of what violence does to all of us, whether we have experienced it directly or not. "Violence is, always, an exploitation of that primary tie, that primary way in which we are, as bodies, outside ourselves and for one another" (Butler "Violence, Mourning and Politics" 27). Importantly, this hope is not based on "blind faith" but, rather, on the call for public formation articulated through public remembrance practices of the disappeared - a call which, drawing from Strejilevich's poem, asks that "we" (i.e., Argentineans) "rewrite ourselves" as a collective committed to human rights and remembering the disappeared and that, subsequently, "we" mend the emptiness the dictatorship left in "us".
<26> Thus, the possibilities I see within the Neighbourhoods for Memory's remembrance practices for public formation is not in the way in which they
ask us to see ourselves as "the same" as the disappeared and, thus, as able to participate in the same struggle they did. Rather, when Neighbourhoods for
Memory invites us to come together to learn about, remember, and grieve a disappeared person, they offer "us" a space to position ourselves as a collective
of mourners-in-waiting for individuals that we do not know and cannot know but nonetheless find ourselves crying for, honouring, and naming as important to
our lives today. In other words, in asking us to grieve for an individual we cannot know and with individuals we do not know, the individualizing practices
organized by Neighbourhoods for Memory have important implications for "our" ability to construct "ourselves" as a public committed
to human rights because they not only highlight the vulnerability of the ordinariness of "our" lives and, thus, "our" relationality, but also instruct us
to come together time and time again to take care of each other - to take care of the dead, the living, those we know and those we can never know.
Notes
[1] According to the leaders of the military that orchestrated the coup, it had overthrown the democratically elected government of the time because it felt that the President was not responding to the threat of communism. Thus, in its own words, the military had orchestrated the dictatorship to deal with "Marxists", "communists", and "subversives" (Marchak). Between March 24th 1976 and December 10th 1983, the military used disappearance as a form of state terrorism and as their means of ridding the nation of the "ill" of "communism". Afraid of being persecuted by the military, many Argentineans turned a blind eye to this repression. Today, Argentineans recognize that the state did disappear and repress its own citizens and many of them join human rights groups across the country in annual commemorations of this past held on March 24th. Importantly, this and other public commemorations organized by human rights groups seek to articulate (among many other things) that the dictatorship sought to eliminate anyone who did not align themselves with, and resisted in any way, the neoliberal economic plan that it sought to instate. For more see Marchak and Calloni.
[2] Trials of those who committed torture, murder and kidnapping between 1976 and 1983 were reopened in 2006. Importantly, these trials were not the first of their kind. In 1985, the newly elected democratic government had taken nine of the top military officials to trial for kidnapping and torture. Though five of these men were convicted and sentenced, over the following two years the government passed two amnesty laws that precluded any further trials - the Law of Full Stop in 1986 which established an additional 60 days for processing future changes and the Law of Due Obedience in 1987 which stated that middle ranking officers could not be tried on the basis that they were simply following orders. Further, in 1990, the President of the time pardoned those who had been convicted in 1985. However, after almost 30 years of demands from human rights groups for truth and justice, the Supreme Court declared the amnesty laws unconstitutional in 2005 leading the way for the current trials. As such, trials have been ongoing across the country since 2006. Hundreds of former military, police and other perpetrators of torture and kidnapping have been convicted and sentenced (e.g., in 2012 86 people were sentenced across the country). Often, those on trial refuse to divulge information they may have about the remains of the disappeared, thus many families are still left without answers as to the fate of their loved ones. However, because of the perseverance of human rights groups and those who work with them (e.g., forensic anthropologists, researchers, lawyers) have uncovered some information pertaining to the location of former clandestine torture centers, who the torturers were, and the means of torture and disappearance. Today, many Argentineans support the trials as have the democratic Kirchner governments of 2003-2007 (President Nestor Kirchner) and 2007 - today (President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner).
[3] In 1997 a number of human rights groups and architects put forth a proposal to the municipal government of Buenos Aires to construct a space in memory of state violence overlooking the Rio de la Plata. In 1998 the city legislature passed a law that created the Commission Pro Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism comprised of human rights groups and city government officials to being working on the construction of this space. In November of 2007 the opening of the Park and the unveiling of the Monument was inaugurated. Today, the park, which sits on 31 acres of land on the shores of the Rio de la Plata, contains a series of "commemorative sculptures" (created by different artists chosen by the Commission), the Monument, and an "activity room" designated for social and cultural activities.
[4] During the dictatorship the military operated what later came to be publicly known as "flights of death" - that is, many of the persons who were detained were heavily sedated and thrown from airplanes into the Atlantic Ocean and the Rio de la Plata.
[5] Today there exists two groups of Mothers, the Association of Mothers of the Disappeared and the Mothers of the Disappeared - Founding Line. However, between 1977 and 1986 the members of these two groups all belonged to one group - Mothers of the Disappeared. Generally, the group split because the members were in disagreement about the exhumation of graves in the 1980s. Those mothers who formed the Association Mothers stated "'we need to know who the murderers were, not the murdered" (Femenia 17). As such, the members of this group opposed the exhumation of mass graves arguing that the state was attempting to replace justice with bodies. In contrast, those mothers who formed Mothers of the Disappeared - Founding Line disagreed with the other mothers' "stand against exhumations and applauded the work of Clyde Snow [the American forensic anthropologist who lead the team conducting the exhumations] as providing proof that the exhumed were indeed tortured and assassinated" (Guzman Bouvard 163).
[6] Initially put forth by the military who claimed that the dictatorship was necessary to combat "subversives" who were attacking the nation, the theory of two evils narrates the dictatorship as a war fought between two equally armed groups. Democratically elected governments in the 1980s and 1990s would also come to support and reproduce this narrative (Marchak).
[7] Jorge Julio Lopez remains disappeared (i.e., his body has not been found). Between 2006 and 2007 three other witnesses were kidnapped and later released. These witnesses came forward upon their release but the identity of their kidnappers has not yet been verified. In 2008 another was witness was kidnapped and later found murdered, and in 2011 a witness was kidnapped and later released.
[8] All of the conversations I had with members of these groups were in Spanish and all excerpts in this paper were translated into English by me. I use the real first names of the participants because on the consent form participants indicated that they wanted me to use their real names rather than pseudonyms. The consent form was approved by the Ethics Board at the University of Toronto in 2007.
[9] The white headscarf has been an emblematic symbol of both groups of Mothers since the 1970s.
[10] In 1984 the National Commission of the Disappearance of Persons published a report of the testimonies it had collected from reappeared persons and relatives of disappeared persons titled "Nunca Más" ("Never Again").
[11] In this excerpt, when Rosalia speaks about the Plaza she is referring to Plaza de Mayo - the central square in front of the Government House in Buenos Aires where many remembrance and other important political events take place.
[12] The mural also positions the disappeared in the present quite explicitly through the words "They Are Here". However, Rosalia did not mention the mural in our conversation and, considering that it is not as secluded as the space where the trees and the plaque are, it does not allow for the same kind of mourning rituals. As I stated earlier, however, it does allow for individualized remembrance.
[13] Specifically, that the plaques are placed in the sidewalk means that the plaques are flush with the sidewalk - a hole is cut into the
sidewalk by a city government employee (thus implying that permission from the city government is needed for this kind of remembrance practice), and the
plaque is placed inside of it.
Works Cited
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