Today Fernando shared with us a compelling story about a woman named Alba. During la Guerra Sucia, she was detained as a teenager for six months following the disappearance of her parents. Having spent most of her life thereafter focusing her fight for justice towards her parents whom she lost, she realized 30 years later that she too had experienced a grave human rights violation in her detainment. Due to lack of documentation and evidence during her period of detainment, she has sought but not had success in receiving reparations from the government.

The story of Alba is an illustrative example of the ongoing impact that human rights abuses committed during the military dictatorship in Argentina still have today. Her narrative highlights the difficulties faced by many victims and their families in seeking justice and redress, even decades after the crimes were committed.

The Nunca Más report, which was produced by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Conadep) in Argentina in 1984, provides a powerful documentation of the human rights abuses that occurred during the dictatorship. The report includes detailed accounts of the disappearances, detentions, torture, and killings of thousands of people, as well as information about the structures of power and impunity that enabled these crimes to occur.

the pillars read: memoria, verdad, y justicia

While the Nunca Más report has been an important tool in the fight for justice and accountability for the victims of the dictatorship, I wonder how its impact has been limited. As the story of Alba illustrates, many victims and their families lack the documentation and evidence necessary to seek justice and reparations for the harms they suffered.

I expect this is a common problem faced by victims of human rights abuses in many parts of the world. In many cases, documentation and evidence may have been destroyed or lost, or victims may have been too afraid to come forward at the time the crimes were committed. Without this evidence, it can be difficult to hold perpetrators accountable and to ensure that victims receive the reparations and support to which they are entitled.  

The story of Alba is a reminder of the ongoing legacy of human rights abuses and of the importance of continuing to fight for justice and accountability, even decades after the crimes were committed. It is also a reminder of the need for continued efforts to document and preserve evidence of human rights abuses, in order to ensure that the voices of victims are heard and their stories are not forgotten.

This picture was taken along the walls of the river canal that runs through the city of Cordoba. When I was taking the picture I didn’t immediately know what the phrase translated to, but I recognized some of the words and something told me that the phrase potentially meant something really powerful. Something about the way the phrase itself was written drew my attention; the red paint catches your eye, forcing the reader to listen to what the author has to say. The all caps make the phrase seem less like a phrase but a command, a call to action. The phrase reads: “Ante la violencia patriarcal autodefensa popular votamos luchar”.   

After returning back to the hotel and with the help of Google Translate and Dee, I was able to piece together what the phrase meant. “In the face of patriarchal violence, we must defend ourselves, let’s vote and fight”. 

Knowing what the phrase meant and knowing Argentina’s history with democracy and government, this phrase spoke volumes. It told me that the society sees a problem that needs to be immediately be addressed and the best way the author sees to solve the problem is to democratically elect officials that can solve them. 

In “It Ought to Be A Crime: Criminalizing Human Rights Violations” Judith Blau and Alberto Moncada hypothesize that there is no real distinction between human rights violations and violations of humanitarian law. They go on to break down their argument and conclude with the insistence that denying people their human rights is a crime and a proposal to uphold this standard. Today this article became very relevant when we were visiting a memorial for women who disappeared and were killed after escaping captivity. Here Fernando told a story about his sister-in-law who was the daughter of militants who were disappeared. He spoke about how this impacted her and she did not realize her own imprisonment until decades later. She spent her life helping the children of the disappeared and It seems as though Argentina has monuments dedicated to those lost in the Dirty War. This has allowed them to never forget the horrors of that time. It also seems as though those who were witness to that period in Argentina are constantly doing work to ensure that their friends and family are never forgotten. Argentina also provides reparations to those impacted by the war. To me this means the government recognizes the crimes that have been committed in the past. While this is not gonna reverse the harm done in the past it is certainly a step forward. This is also comparable to one of the proposals written by Blau and Moncada which mentions that remedying human rights violations benefits societal and nonprofit organizations.

At the women’s prison site today, I noticed lots of graffiti on the columns memorializing the women who escaped the prison and were later disappeared. This one particularly caught my eye because it is something you would expect to see in a high school bathroom, not in a memorial site such as this. A lot of the graffiti was similar, though some had more political messages such as criticizing the police. To me, this demonstrates something I’ve noticed across sites we have visited so far: for the people who were alive at the time, the memories of the dictatorship are still fresh and visceral. For example, a friend of Fernando’s is fighting to receive reparations for her imprisonment at 14 years old in the very prison site we visited today. Many people weren’t able to process what they experienced until later, such as Fernando’s friend or “The Rabbit House” author Laura Alcoba, who detailed the need she felt to wait to write out her experiences until she returned to Argentina, learned more and was able to process her memories. However, to the younger generations, it seems more distant and may not color the experiences of everyday life in the same way. In both sites we have been to, younger people add graffiti and use the areas as gathering space. For them, they’ve become part of the landscape, like any other surface to put graffiti on. It is reminiscent of how 9/11 impacted everything in the U.S. but I, like many people I know, was not even born yet. While younger people of course know about it, it doesn’t hold quite the same significance as we haven’t experienced anything but post-9/11 life. Perhaps though this history surrounds younger people in Argentina, they feel distanced from it. However, on the other hand, this graffiti isn’t all about distance from the history. In many cases, graffiti can be used as a political statement, and much of the graffiti on the women’s prison was political in nature, in particular speaking out against the police. For some people, graffiti may be their way to engage with what happened in the past and relate it to ongoing injustices in the present.

¿Viste?

“Muitas vezes o coração
não consegue compreender
O que a mente não faz questão
nem tem forças pra obedecer”

Seu Jorge

El cielo cordobés

The first week

I think the best way I could describe my first week in Buenos Aires is as if it were a Scooby Doo villain: it’s felt like 30 days squished under a big trenchcoat made to look like 5 instead. Who does that make me, then? Velma, I hope.

Argentina is a lot like a lot of other places — something I was talking about with Rachita. We came to the conclusion that it isn’t necessarily that the rest of the world is by chance familiar, but it’s that the US is so extremely different from other places. I think this applies particularly to the Global South. Each day, I find little puzzle pieces I once only associated with Rabat or Sarajevo here in Cordoba: the kinds of tiles the sidewalks use, the way the trees line the riverfronts, the kinds of little sandwiches that kiosks sell. Sure, they’re little things, but they build off each other into something greater.

The Supermarket & E.

Yesterday, we stopped into a supermarket to get food and drinks after everyone got in. I got to talking to one of the people who works behind the counter (we’ll call her E), and I recited the little paragraph I have written on the whiteboard in my head:

1. Yes, we’re foreigners from this city in the American South. You might know it, we came up with Coke!
2. Not all of us speak Spanish, but we’re all sweet people and we’re very excited to learn about Argentina.
3. I’m here to learn about the “Dirty War” (made dubious with my intonation), and compare it with my family’s experiences in Chile under Pinochet.

It’s the third point that draws the reaction I’ve come to expect: the slight, but quick withdrawal from the conversation. Our talk is no longer about what E may be able to offer, but instead polite ways of saying “I don’t want to talk about that”. I’ve found that the most common way is for folks to tell me “ah well, I wouldn’t know about that” — which I still appreciate.

Internalized trauma across the world

E’s reaction was one I’ve heard talking to illegally-detained inmates at an ICE facility in Georgia, families of anti-monarchists in the Rif, and survivors of genocide at Srebrenica, Bosnia. Talking about human rights abuses that you personally faced may be emotionally taxing for anyone who experienced them — with many only being able to speak “candidly” about them decades after the fact.

The effects of these periods of terror live on not only with those who directly experienced them, but also in the next generations as they learn and grow from their parents — something certainly present in Argentina, but by no means unique to it. In lieu of knowing specific Argentine experiences, I’ll recall those described by my own family from Chile. Losing your childhood friends to night-raids and kidnappings means that you don’t feel safe going out at night anymore. Knowing your neighbors’ lives were taken at stadiums in your neighborhood means you don’t want your kids playing soccer down the line. Their fears, however complex or specific, can become internalized in the ways the next generations relate to the world around them.

No monoliths, except for the one in BA

There is no monolithic experience to describe the Argentine experience with the trauma of the State Terror, just as there is no singular way to describe any other community’s processes of grieving and resilience. From what I see so far, Argentina is a lot like the US: these years are far from forgotten thanks to the vigilance of survivors most affected by this repression, yet national dialogue is profoundly focused on the “present” and “future”. We all are approaching a boiling point where we will repeat the same cycles of violence and repression unless we properly confront our past — but it is not in the interest of the ruling elite to sacrifice their wealth or comfort to do so. Thus, these traumas continue to affect the most vulnerable and without intervention, will contribute to a larger scheme of socioeconomic violence which seeks to ensure the poorest will be indentured to the most wealthy. 

Looking ahead

I look forward to my time here in Argentina, even if it is with a heavy heart. I know that the only way to be prevent genocide, civil conflict, and human rights violations is to first be knowledgeable, and then to be vigilant with that knowledge.