Julio’s assertion that the Malvinas/Falklands War implied a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ was largely connected to the new cycle of public mobilizations. After the Malvinas, the military’s reputation was at rock-bottom (publicly blamed not only for incompetence, but henceforth also for corruption and multiple atrocities during its dictatorship). The military government could no longer block political participation.
After seven years of fear and silence, political parties recovered their standing and visibility in the streets and media. In 1983, after mass campaigns, the Radical Party under the lead of Raul Alfonsín won the election against the Peronist candidate (the first defeat in free and fair elections for Peronism since the 1940s).
Increasing political participation was particularly remembered by those attending secondary school and university. Those times are characterized by the emergence of numerous student councils and different youth organizations. Young people enrolled into political parties such as the Justicialist and Radical Parties (Peronists and Radical youth) as well as a variety of leftist organizations and nationalistic rightist Catholic unions. Decisively, political activism spanned secondary schools and university departments. Marcelo described such a period using a football metaphor:
“Adopting a posture was parcel and part of being adolescent and young in those days. You cannot say: I am independent nor am I apolitical (…) That is to say, it would be like attending a classic Boca (Juniors)-River (Plate) match and saying: “I come here just for the sport.” Of course, not!” (Marcelo, 1968)
Such political activism is relevant given the correspondence with their formative years. For my respondents living in Buenos Aires, the process of political activism is framed by youthful memories in which the collective historical sequence is matched with the cognitive and social stage of adolescence. Even though the dictatorship might be a more ‘traumatic’ event in national terms, their time began when democracy arrived. Whether the dictatorship and the violence of the past correspond to older generations (and indeed these generations draw a temporal boundary, thereby signalling that they really experienced the violence), they locate the narration of their lives in the context of the recovery of democracy. An intense feeling of ‘being there’ escalated with the political environment of democracy, touching on, as newly Marcelo recounted, sexual as well as political spheres:
“So, this is the period during which you discover the world, you accommodate it, a world view is adopted (…) At the same time, Argentina underwent so many changes during ’83, from TV to all the media (…) I mean, my political and sexual awakening coincided with a political and sexual liberation. Because before you didn’t see boobs anywhere, and from 83’, 84’ onwards, suddenly every magazine had something and so on; also regarding politics, you know. On the political side, you had a load of lists, political parties, ideas, coalitions, electoral platforms. I read everything during that time.” (Marcelo, 1968)
The re-emergence of political activism took place together with new social practices.
Not only were the media breaking censorship and authoritarian patterns but, as many respondents reported, forbidden artists or classical protest music (e.g. Leon Gieco, Victor Heredia, Sui Generis) were being intensely listened to. Clothes and hairstyles were no longer subject to authoritarian control.
But experiences of this time do, nevertheless, differ. Rosario was not allowed by her father to attend the national public university precisely due to its widespread political activism; instead, she had to choose a private Catholic college. Antonia had already studied medicine at the public national University of Buenos Aires and recollected negatively the atmosphere there (‘very dirty, full of slogans’).
Furthermore, the four low-class respondents had to abandon secondary school in order to help out at home. Luis and Mario were already working after the economic crisis at the beginning of the 1980s; both families had also suffered from the economic disaster at the end of the dictatorship. There were other more traumatic cases. Luciana, for example, does not have any recollections of the political events of those times (neither of the dictatorship nor of democracy). Rather, she remembered living in a shantytown (villa) where her father regularly beat her mother. During her adolescence she run away and lived with her mother and sister in squares or public bathrooms. All her memories centred on such biographical, traumatic events rather than distant political events.
The renewal of political activism is strongly connected to a more general process of coming to terms with the dictatorship. Crucially, even though the dictatorship does not form part of the formative years of this age cohort, the process of collective remembering does, and it leaves an important generational mark. I assume that this fact does not imply a process of unconscious ‘post-memory’ (cf. Hirsch 1997, 2008, 2012). Rather, by experiencing the construction of this ‘national trauma’, they were
overtly impacted upon by the past’s narrativization. That is, the critical conjecture of assessing the military regime provides different evaluative codes and narrative templates which are largely present in their stories. Let me report some of the most important components of this process of coming to terms with the Argentine dictatorship.
Alfonsín’s campaign was– in stark contrast to Peronism – characterized by the promise of uncovering and judging crimes against human rights. During the first three years of Alfonsín’s government, two significant processes of accounting for the past occurred: a human rights commission (National Commission for the Disappeared – CONADEP) and the trial of commanders-in-chief of the military juntas. Both procedures were unthinkable without a) the weak position of the military hierarchy after the Malvinas, b) Alfonsín’s willingness to set up a truth process and seek some kind of justice and c) the strength of human right groups against oblivion (already covering numerous organizations). Both processes were highly contentious, taking into account the ambitions of government, military forces and human right organizations.37 Still, the commission and trials represent a worldwide innovative step in terms of transitional justice (Nino 1996, Sikkink and Booth Walling 2006, 2007). The truth commission was the first historical case to accomplish its mandate successfully (Krüger 2014; also, for a remarkable analysis of the Commission, see Crenzel 2008).
What is significant to focus on is the public impact of both events. The report of the human rights commission – called Nunca Más/ Never Again (or also Sabato’s report, following the name of the commission chair) saw ten editions, reaching 270,000 copies by 1985 (Marchesi 2001). At its launch, 70,000 people gathered at Plaza de Mayo. The trial of the military junta was followed daily by press and media, even a special weekly newspaper was published (el diario de la junta, Feld 2002). In fact, from the very beginning of the democratic period, the media had reported testimonies and the discoveries of mass graves. This ‘show of horror’ (González Bombal 1995) was intensively followed and discussed in the Argentine public sphere.
All these processes altered the communicative frame of the Argentine past,
37 For different recounts of transitional justice processes in Argentina (literature never-ending) see: Acuña and Smulovitz (1995), Acuña (2006), Aguilar (2007), Barahona de Brito (2001), Crenzel (2008), Fuchs and Nolte (2006), Fuchs (2010), and Jelin (1994, 2007). For Alfonsín’s election and government I draw on Novaro (2009, 2011).
provoking a widespread ‘breaking of the silence’. The figure of the ‘desaparecidos’ and the heinous destiny of victims were publicly discussed thereafter.
‘Breaking of the silence’ is also part of my respondents’ biographical accounts.
Francisca acutely recollected the trial and still has copies of the special newspaper (el diario del juicio). Other interviewees remembered how tough it was to read the report. Now, given their childhood memories of silence and fear, it is worth wondering how the ‘breaking of the silence’ was experienced within the family. To be honest, the interviews did not offer sufficient material to sustain a robust explanation. Nevertheless, some points might be enlightening. The first point is somehow randomly mentioned as ‘discovering close victims’. Although most people affirmed that, within the family circle, nobody knew anything about the crimes, diverse cases of victims were ‘discovered’ in the near environment after the end of the dictatorship. It is often commented on that one’s mother/father realized that they had worked/studied with people who suffered persecution.
Some cases are striking. Antonia remembered that a brother of her father’s colleague was kidnapped. Antonia’s father realized that fact only after the dictatorship because his colleague had never spoken about it. Certainly, there were cases where victims’
relatives stayed silent (Vezzetti 2002: 52). However, doubts arose when the same interviewee – upper class and right-wing – remembered accurately the cases in which military forces were attacked (the most emblematic memory corresponds to General Cardozo’s death: a ‘subversive’ 18-year-old girl simulated a friendship with the general’s daughter in order to plant a bomb under the General’s bed). The uncovering of both victims in Antonia’s account closely resembles the script of the so-called ‘theory of the two demons’.
Such ‘theory’ used to prevail in Argentina and sustains that the responsibility for violence was twofold: the leftist guerrilla and rightist military forces. They both committed crimes, supported violent practices and polarized Argentine society. As I noted above, Marta’s recounts encompass both: the story of the ugly montonero rightly persecuted and the evaluation of a fair trial of ugly perpetrators. Precisely, such images of double evil were a common template at the beginning of democracy.38
38 This template was promoted by Alfonsín’s government, yet it was originated in a previous period. As Vezzetti (2009:61-69) demonstrated, it was fostered during the sixties by some leftist groups which took a stance against the guerrilla’s use of violence.
Alfonsín’s project was an attempt to reconcile divided memories and construct a new future. The written memory support of such a script is found within the prologue of the human rights commission. Years later, ‘the theory of the two demons’ would be gradually contested by different human rights organizations – something based on left-guerrilla violence cannot be compared with the systematic and clandestine elimination of left-wing political groups by military forces. Tellingly, the ‘theory of two demons’ projected an image of Argentine society as a victim of two such evils (Vezzetti 2002: 126-127). Supporters of the campaign ‘human and right’ during the FIFA World Cup in 1978, and the majority supporting the military campaign in the Malvinas, were not regarded as ‘bystanders’.
O’Donnell (1983) showed early on that a section of the ordinary population, at least in Buenos Aires, had probably accepted the military script proclaimed during the dictatorship. Such a script basically drew a line between the past (before 1976), as a context of sick violence and public chaos produced by left guerrillas, and the present (after 1976), as a context of healthy order and (self-)control brought about by military forces. For instance, Julio recognized that his parents felt quite safe having their children at a military school. What is fascinating is that O’Donnell’s repeat interviews conducted after the dictatorship collapsed, showing that the evaluative code (chaos/order) had been abruptly transfigured. It is worth reproducing O’Donnell’s description of his ‘experiment’:
“When the BA (Bureaucratic Authoritarianism) in Argentina was already collapsing, in a rather perverse move – with the pretext that I had lost the transcript of their former interviews and needed their help for reconstructing them – I reinterviewed some of the more depoliticized and acquiescent individuals in our sample. On this second occasion, most of them were full of rage against the BA, the armed forces, its behaviour in the war, and the atrocities it had committed in the country. Furthermore, some of those respondents had again become politically active. All of them ‘remembered’ what they had actually told us in a way that sharply contrasted with what they had actually told us. They were wrong, but evidently sincere, as they had been sincere before, in telling me, in the reinterviews, that they had always strongly opposed the regime and had never accepted its injunctions. In the first interviews some of those respondents had given distressing responses to our probing concerning the abductions, tortures, and murders that were going on: these where only “rumours” or
“exaggerations” and, at any event, “there must be some reason” why some persons were so victimized.” (O’Donnell 1999:75)
Such transformations of micro-narratives were indeed accompanied by the media, the human rights report, Alfonsín’s government’s script and the first popular films about the period (1985: ‘La Historia Oficial’ and 1986: ‘La Noche de los Lápices’, both films were repeatedly mentioned by my respondents). Particularly, all of them stressed an image of heinous perpetrators and massacred victims, leaving little space for other forms of accountability. Marta’s disapproval of perpetrators, due to their atrocities against children and women (sacred victims without political involvement) has as likely reference all these memory supports.
What is relevant here is not the entire discussion on Argentine collective memory, but the impact of the change of the narrative frame on both micro- and macro-levels in order to understand such a generational site. By assuming a rapid transformation of the narrative frame in micro- and macro-contexts, it is possible to assume that within the ordinary family the same change occurred equally fast. In this sense, I affirm that a conflicting process of ‘breaking the family silence’ barely took place in ordinary family memories. This is why some kind of broad generational acrimony (e.g. the son/daughter accusing the father of some kind of ‘conspiracy of silence’) was never experienced. In fact, what I found in some particular cases was rather the impression of some sort of ‘breaking the illusion of non-knowledge’: “We already knew about the victims but you (as a child) didn’t realize.” Marcelo acutely recalled a family conversation in which this sort of breaking occurred:
“I remember having arguments with uncles in which I said that we didn't know anything, and them replying, "No, we did know." Such a shock. "So you did know?", "Yes, we did".
Indeed, I had a relative, a second cousin who was picked up one day (lo levantaron) (...) I found that out when (…) during one of these discussions I said, "But no, no one knew anything" and then this story came out. “How could we not have known about that, if you have a second cousin who was picked up?” (Marcelo, 1968)
The trope of illusion-disillusion often appeared in their stories of childhood and youth. The first time was the 1978 World Cup, lived first as patriotic fervour and later remembered as a military fake. The second time was the Malvinas War which was firstly characterised by early support and public enthusiasm but which ended with blaming the military forces for incompetence, corruption and disastrous atrocities. The last illusion is family silence. After seven years of neglecting victims and in some cases blaming their actions (ugly subversives and terrorists), the frame
changed in order to claim justice. Promptly, the victims became close and the people always conscious of what had happened. For Marcelo, who believed in the football campaign as a child, in the Malvinas as an adolescent, and the not knowing of the family as a moral stance, the sequence left a bitter flavour: “Finally, the 1980s are not my favourite time.” Such an ‘evaluative clause’ in his narrative forms part of an
‘ironic plot’ elaborated years later after a new disillusion.