9780230120600 Copyrighted Material – 9780230120600

Copyrighted material – 9780230120600 THE POST-DICTATORSHIP GENERATION IN ARGENTINA, CHILE, AND URUGUAY Copyright © Ana Ros, 2012. All rights reserved. First published in 2012 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 throught the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–12060–0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ros, Ana, 1976– The post-dictatorship generation in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay : collective memory and cultural production / Ana Ros. pages cm Summary: “Southern Cone post-dictatorship generations reshape the collective memory of the dictatorial past through political activism and forms of artistic expression (cinema, literature, comics and photography). The author situates their work at the intersection of the individual and the collective: it is enabled by changes in the political context and can have a profound impact on the collective level. At the same time, these projects help artists and activists work through traumatic events individually. The first part of the book focuses on Argentina, where this generation’s public interventions have broadened social involvement in remembering the past and encouraged learning from it for the sake of the present. In the second part, the author compares the exemplary achievements in Argentina with Chile and Uruguay, where political conditions are less conducive to genuine debate.” — Provided by publisher. ISBN 978–0–230–12060–0 (hardback) 1. Collective memory—Argentina. 2. Argentina—History—Dirty War, 1976–1983. 3. Collective memory—Chile. 4. Chile—History—1973–1988. 5. Collective memory—Uruguay. 6. Uruguay—History—1973–1985. I. Title. F2849.2.R663 2012 982.064—dc23 2011049335 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Integra Software Services First edition: June 2012 10987654321 Printed in the United States of America. Copyrighted material – 9780230120600 Copyrighted material – 9780230120600 Contents List of Images ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Why Write about the Post-dictatorship Generation? 1 Collective Memory and Intergenerational Transmission 6 Part I Pushing the Envelope: Memory Formation in Argentina 1 Collective Memory from the Dictatorship to the Present 13 2 Living the Absence: The Children of the Desaparecidos 25 “They Live On in Our Struggle” 28 They Live On in Our Everyday Struggles 30 3 Addressing Silences, Taboos, and Margins 37 Los rubios: Icebreaker and Trigger 38 The Quest for “Papá Iván” behind the Dead Hero 45 The Rabbit House: Remembering “that particular Argentine insanity” 51 “History Doesn’t Tell Itself”: Nicolás Prividera’s M 56 4 Building Bridges between Generations 63 Children and Revolution: El tiempo y la sangre and Encontrando a Víctor 64 El mar y la serpiente: “We Cannot Change the Past, But ...”72 Demasiados héroes: “I’d rather he was dead” 77 Copyrighted material – 9780230120600 Copyrighted material – 9780230120600 viii Contents 5 The Past in the Present, the Present in the Future 85 Diario argentino:WhereWereYouWhenHistoryWas Happening? 86 Cordero de Dios: On Life Priorities and the Priority of Life 92 ...Victory Always: Restituted Children Restore Politics 96 Part II Chile and Uruguay: Memory Struggles in Negotiated Transitions 6 Chile: Overcoming the Stunned State of the People 107 Collective Memory from the Dictatorship to the Present 108 Pinochet’s Children? 118 The End? Volver a vernos, Actores secundarios, and Apgar 11 121 El astuto mono Pinochet: The Dictatorship through Children’s Eyes 135 Jogging Memory: Reinalda del Carmen, mi mamá y yo, and La quemadura 144 7 Uruguay: Memory Struggles against the Clock 157 Collective Memory from the Dictatorship to the Present 158 The Post-dictatorship Generation: Unlocking the Past 177 The Predicament of Nostalgia: Acero y piel, Destino Final,andCrónica de un sueño 181 The Past as a Challenge: Two Short Stories and a Comic 190 Conclusion: The Never-Ending Path to the Never Again 201 Not Even Past: Unexplored Aspects and a Critical Relation to the Present 205 Notes 209 Bibliography 227 Index 245 Copyrighted material – 9780230120600 Copyrighted material – 9780230120600 Introduction Why Write about the Post-dictatorship Generation? This generation, to which I belong, inherited a painful past that also contains the promises of social change. The last wave of South- ern Cone dictatorships (mid-1970s to late 1980s) was an attempt to bring to an end a period of great politicisation that threatened eco- nomic, political, and military elites as well as U.S. hegemony in the region. The years of brutal repression deeply harmed societies and destroyed political projects, social bonds, and individual lives. The horror survivors had been subject to and conveyed to society at large was crucial to eliminating solidary and anti-establishment identities (Feierstein 2007). The military primarily targeted different kinds of political organisations: armed and unarmed movements but also the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile and the supporters and sympathisers of such groups. For decades, officers from the region had trained in French and U.S. institutions to fight their own citizenry, understood as poten- tial “internal enemies.”1 The Buenos Aires Chief of Police, Camps, “prided himself for synthesising both [the U.S. and French] perspec- tives, and, in the process, creating [a] unique brand of repression” (Arditti 1999, 11). The repression was coordinated between the countries through Operation Condor, a project facilitated by the United States through the Chilean intelligence agency CNI (Roniger 2010, 31). The military or paramilitary forces and police personnel (repre- sores in Spanish) organised a regime of terror through systematic abduction, torture, rape, and murder. The practice of disappearing Copyrighted material – 9780230120600 Copyrighted material – 9780230120600 2 Introduction prisoners was a defining characteristic of the repression: after indi- viduals were abducted, they were taken to a clandestine detention centre—of which there were hundreds throughout the region—and cut off from communication with the outside world. Many of them were sedated and thrown alive from planes into the sea or the Rio de la Plata while others were killed and buried in unmarked graves. Because their relatives were denied any information about their death or the location of their remains, these persons are referred to as desaparecidos (the “disappeared”). For those who remain behind, the loss of a loved one without a death confirmation is a catastrophe of meaning, as Gabriel Gatti (2008) observes. Disappearance defies com- prehension, as it defies language: the armed forces turned the adjective desaparecido into a noun. The disappeared women and men had parents, siblings, daughters and sons, spouses, friends, and fellow activists for whom disappearance was a tragic event that transformed their lives and confined them to the condition of victims. They responded to this condition by organising and demanding truth about and justice for the human rights violations. After the dictatorships, the governments of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay responded to these demands in different ways in a context still marked by the presence of the military in public life. The dynamics between these three actors—human rights associations, the governments, and armed forces—laid the basis for the subsequent development of collective memory in the three countries. In this book, I reflect upon the ways in which the post-dictatorship generations in the Southern Cone have reshaped the collective memory of regimes and revolutionary projects through activism and different forms of artistic expression: cinema, literature, comics, and photography. Who are the members of this generation, and why write a book about them? My biography can provide the beginning of an answer. I was born in Uruguay in 1976, the third year of the dictatorships in both my home country and in Chile, and the year of the military coup in Argentina. Being a child during those years meant taking part in a cultural project created by the dictatorship, which shaped not only the formal institutions of schooling but also our leisure readings (Guitelman 2006). However, the earliest events that stand out in my memory are connected to the first democratic elections in 1985. One of the televised campaign ads featured the image of a political pris- oner who was carried away by soldiers. They held him by his arms and legs as he formed a “V” with his fingers while a chorus sang: Copyrighted material – 9780230120600 Copyrighted material – 9780230120600 Introduction 3 “So certain things will not happen again.” My sister and I did not know or fully understand the meaning of the ad, but reenacted it with a friend, smaller and lighter than us, around the house. I also remember my excitement about a new girl at school whose family had just returned from exile in Holland, and my curiosity about the con- nection between politics—as I learned from the adults in my family, they were

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