Copyright by Celina Van Dembroucke 2010 The Thesis Committee for Celina Van Dembroucke Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Absent Yet Still Present: Family Pictures in Argentina’s Recordatorios APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Andrea Giunta Naomi Lindstrom Absent Yet Still Present: Family Pictures in Argentina’s Recordatorios by Celina Van Dembroucke, Lic. Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin May 2010 Dedication Para mi tía Sylvia, que sobrevivió una época vertiginosa y apasionante. Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my advisor, Andrea Giunta, for her kind words, thought-provoking comments to the manuscript, and smart suggestions. Also, thank you for your efforts in creating spaces for emerging scholars in meetings and debates and for treating me as if I were your colleague instead of your student. I am also enormously grateful to Naomi Lindstrom, my second reader, without whom I could never have completed the task of writing in a foreign language. With her knowledge, intellectual guidance and fantastic editing eye, she enhanced this thesis in so many ways. Gracias! Thanks to Elizabeth Jelin, who not only generously read the manuscript and gave me insightful feedback, but also accompanied me throughout this master from the very outset sharing her ideas and suggesting bibliography. Thanks to all who let me interview them and shared their time and stories with me, even if some of them are not named in this writing: Aurora Morea, Enriqueta Maroni, Aída Sarti, Alicia Furman, Estela Barnes de Carlotto, Gustavo Germano, Virginia Giannoni, Carlos González, María Eva Fuentes Walsh (qepd), Ana Paoletti, José Luis Meirás and Florencia Amnestoy. The artist and photographer Gustavo Germano kindly sent me the pictures that comprise his photographic exhibition, Ausencias . My friends Lindsay Adams and Amethyst Beaver helped me with the translation of several recordatorios. Also, many thanks to Laura Schenquer, another friend of mine, for always being ready to answer all my questions and for sharing resources. Thanks to Kimberly Terry and Henry Dietz from ILAS, for helping me solve several funding issues and for their support. v I am grateful both to Nicolás Casullo, who is no longer with us, for his generosity and to Alejandro Kaufman for his patience and advice. I am also indebted to my aunt Sylvia Viscay, who keeps collecting the recordatorios for me in Argentina and to whom I owe my broader interest in the memories of state repression. I owe special gratitude to my father, Daniel Van Dembroucke, for always supporting and helping me whenever I need it and to my mother, Mercedes Nuss, for keeping me updated in the field of literature, for her suggestions and illuminating comments. Finally, my husband Manuel Balán helped me in more ways that I can begin to explain. Not only did he patiently read and edited every single word that I have written since I arrived to Austin, but he also discussed and shared ideas, underlined quotes for me, helped me organize my thoughts. Thank you for being so generous! During the writing of this thesis I enjoyed his company, love and laughs. He became my security blanket and made all the difference. 5 May 2010 vi Abstract Absent Yet Still Present: Family Pictures in Argentina’s Recordatorios Celina Van Dembroucke, MA. The University of Texas at Austin, 2010 Supervisor: Andrea Giunta This study analyzes one of the most active memories of state repression during democracy in Argentina: the memorial advertisements ( recordatorios) of those disappeared by the most recent military dictatorship (1976-1983), which are published on a daily basis in the newspaper Página/12. In this thesis, I focus on the pictures of the victims of state repression that appear within the frame of these memorials as the expression of both cultural and personal memory. The leader of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Estela de Carlotto, published the first recordatorio on the tenth anniversary of her daughter’s death, in August 1988. During that same year, 20 relatives of disappeared people went to the newspaper and followed Carlotto’s footsteps, publishing advertisements themselves. Currently, more vii than 20 years after the first advertisement was published, three to five recordatorios appear in the newspaper every day. The emergence of the recordatorios inaugurates a new discursive genre as contradictory as the disappearance itself. On the one hand, they are connected to the announcements related to the search for missing people (serving the goal of finding a person alive). On the other hand, the recordatorios also resemble obituaries (making a tribute to someone that has passed away). The recordatorio thus emerges as an impossible reality, following the logic of both genres, thus performing both functions in a paradoxical way. This study focuses on the family pictures that appear in the recordatorios and sheds light on how they illustrate the entanglement of the family and the public sphere, and contribute to the debate on the role of personal subjectivity in the construction of collective memory. From a multidisciplinary perspective, the present thesis aims to capture the complexity surrounding these texts and the familial imagery they include, looking at the inherent tension between the private tragedy of a family that has lost one of its members and the public character that stems from their publication in one of Argentina’s national newspapers. viii Table of Contents List of Figures ........................................................................................................ xi Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Chapter I. Argentina: Reconstructing the Political Context ..................................10 1. The Dictatorship Takes over Power ..........................................................12 2. A Summary of the Argentine Revolutionary Organizations .....................14 3. The Dictatorship and its Repressive Policy ..............................................16 4. Who Did The Dictatorship Disappear? .....................................................20 5. The dictatorship’s last rasping breath .......................................................23 6. The Transition and Affirmation of Democracy ........................................25 7. Tracing Memories’ Trajectories and Different Versions of the Past ........31 8. A New Social Actor: The Human Rights Organizations ..........................34 9. Addressing the Disappearances in Culture ...............................................36 Chapter II: The Recordarios...................................................................................39 1.The First Recordatorios..............................................................................39 2.Dealing with the Publication of the Recordatorios ....................................44 3. Describing The Recordatorios ..................................................................47 4.The Recordatorios as a Contradiction in Terms ........................................57 5.A Demand For Justice ................................................................................63 Chapter III: Family Pictures in the Recordatorios .................................................69 1.Photography: A Medium For Memories ....................................................69 2.Familial and Bureaucratic Images .............................................................72 3.Portraits ......................................................................................................74 4.Family Pictures ..........................................................................................86 5.The Displacement of Once-happy Memories ..........................................103 6.The One and the Many .............................................................................109 ix Closure .................................................................................................................113 Works Cited .........................................................................................................125 Vita .....................................................................................................................146 x List of Figures Figure 1: Rec. Carlotto, Laura Estela. Página/12 [Buenos Aires] 25 Aug 1988. 8. 42 Figure 2 : Rec. Acuña Baravalle de Galizzi, Ana María. Página/12 [Buenos Aires] 27 Aug 1988. 4 43 Figure 3: Rec. Morresi, Norberto Julio and Luis María Roberto. Página/12 [Buenos Aires] 23 Apr 2005. 4. 49 Figure 4: Rec. Almeida, Alejandro Martín. Página/12 . Part of Virginia Giannoni’s exhibition. 50 Figure 5: Rec. Lombardi, Edgardo H. Página/12 [Buenos Aires] 11 Sept 2005. 53 Figure 6 : Rec. Castellini, María Eloisa and Petrakos, Constantino. Página/12 [Buenos Aires] 15 Apr 2007. 7 62 Figure 7 : Rec. Dricas, Benjamín Isaac . Página/12 [Buenos Aires] 30 Oct 2007. 7. 79 Figure 8: Rec. Goldstein, Mónica Liliana. Página/12 [Buenos Aires] 6 Oct 2007. 6. 81 Figure 9: Rec. Dorigo, Pablo Hermes . Página/12 [Buenos Aires] 20 Aug 2009.14. 83 Figure 10: Rec. Álvarez, Gerardo Julio. Página/12 [Buenos Aires] 21 Dec 2004. 6. 85 Figure 11: Rec. Maddalena, Patricia Rosana and Romero, Juan Ramón. Página/12 [Buenos Aires]. Part of Virginia Giannoni’s exhibition.