This photo was taken while we were taking our city of Cordoba tour, just across the street from Iglesia Capuchinos. The photo taken was of a memorial built in honor of the women illegally detained during the “Dirty War”. The memorial currently stands at the site of the old women’s jail. Along with pictures of women, who were detained at the prison are the words Memoria, Verdad, and Justicia (Memory, Truth, and Justice).

A story that was particularly moving to me was one told by Fernando of his sister-in-law named Alba, who at the time was just 15 years old. Both her parents had been kidnapped, and while she neither committed a crime nor had any information that was of value to the government, she was thrown in the women’s jail because they didn’t know where else to put her. She spent six months in jail before her grandparents knew where to find her and came to her rescue. There exists little to no evidence of her detainment and her time in jail.

I’m sure there are many such anecdotes of traumatic events associated with the “Dirty War” and the dictatorship’s human rights abuses. This serves as a reminder as to why it’s all the more important to keep the memory of what happened nearly 50 years ago alive; to ensure that time doesn’t bury what those who’d rather forget are already trying so hard to erase. 

I’d like to think that during her six months in detainment, Iglesia Capuchinos served as a sort of beacon of hope for Alba during a time when it might have seemed like hope was the only thing she had.