Perón’s death was recounted by my two oldest respondents within the frame of childhood memories. For them the event seems difficult to understand. For Mario, Peron’s death was connected to his first thoughts about death. For Antonia, the event was mostly linked to her first years in Argentina after living abroad.
Childhood memories of critical events sometimes seem to ‘screen memories’. Still,
although they remain somewhat obscure and fuzzy, they are noticeably framed by narrative templates and group memories.
In the context of such blurred memories, one of the most critical Argentine political events was recalled. In the early morning of 24 March 1976, a coup d’état threw out the government of Maria Estela Martinez de Perón (better known as Isabel Perón, the general’s third wife). The military junta behind it included all three branches of the armed forces: Army, Navy and Air Force. During the seventies, Argentina saw a climax of violence due to the strong Cold War polarization between radical left-wing guerrillas and radical right-left-wing groups. The so-called ‘process of national reorganization’ was supported by conservative powers: a great part of the business class, the media and the Catholic Church. It is rightly considered as one of the more violent and disruptive Argentine dictatorships. The military junta left behind a great number of victims and a widespread feeling of terror among their relatives provoked by systematic clandestine practices of kidnapping, torture, child abductions and murders, including throwing people out of planes into the sea. 27
For my respondents, such a dictatorship was primarily associated with common life-course spaces of childhood: home and primary school. Both settings entail particular features in terms of remembering dictatorship. To begin with, home was normally described as a space of communicative silence (kommunikatives Beschweigen)28 concerning what was occurring in Argentina. The interviewees consistently maintained that politics was hardly discussed. As Marcelo commented:
“We felt it [the dictatorship] as something tough when we were boys, it was (…) There was something that you felt whenever your parents (…) whenever you got close to the topic, they got nervous. It was this thing, you know. That nobody wanted to speak about it.” (Marcelo, 1968)
It has regularly been stated that broad sections of the Argentine population ‘didn’t want to know’ what was happening (Novaro and Palermo 2002:123-149). Yet,
‘looking the other way’ coalesces with fear of military persecution.29 Indeed, silence
27 For just one of thousands of historical – academic – accounts see the excellent work by Novaro and Palermo (2003). For a lucid discussion on memories of the Argentinean dictatorship see Vezzetti (2002). For a long history of Argentine traumatic violence, see Robben (2005b).
28 The term was introduced by Herman Lübbe, though I take it from A. Assmann (2013:42).
29 For such a ‘culture of fear’ see Corradi et al. (1992) and O’Donnell (1983a, 1983b).
as a requirement was a particular experience remembered: ‘You should not repeat what the adults said’ or ‘You should not say outside what you heard within the family.’ For some respondents, such silence was directly connected to their parents’ fear of being involved in politics. Those parents opposing the military regime might have had reason to fear children repeating at school what they had discussed only amongst their closest friends.
Under the orders of the military junta, schools were transformed into places of surveillance. Some respondents remembered books on civic education which encouraged the reporting of any signs of anarchism or Marxism amongst parents, friends, teachers, neighbours and so on. Indeed, for those coming from a middle-class background, school was vividly remembered as a military barracks. In addition to the atmosphere of control and silence, the military focus on controlling physical aspects (hair) as well as clothes (school uniforms) was engraved in their memories.
As Julio recollected:
“It was a very militarized school, where everyone had to dress rigorously in uniform, with short hair, with (…) I mean, where everything that stood out was a matter of (…) – so to speak – of punishment.” (Julio, 1967)
Further, as Rosario remembered, primary school was characterised by strong nationalism. She was proud of having been a flag-bearer in multiple national commemorations while not mentioning the militarized atmosphere of those times.
She preferred to remember such times as a beautiful period. Indeed, although all my interviewers attended – though differently– such militarized primary schools, this social site conveys a central rift in terms of generational memory. Most of those coming from upper-middle and low social contexts remembered primary school merely as a place of ‘friendship’, ‘harmony’, ‘good education’ and ‘fabulous times’. As a positive evaluative code (beautiful past/ childhood/ school), this account operates by drawing a hard boundary between past and present. Indeed, terms such as
‘individualism’, ‘insecurity’, ‘bad public schools’ and ‘ugly times’ prevail when describing the present. To be sure, this assessment is linked to the feelings of insecurity which emerged during the nineties and the nostalgic mode of emplotment of certain groups (see 3.7 below).
Both modes of evoking school (military barracks/ beautiful childhood) are linked to family memories. For my respondents, the authorized voice to speak about those
times comes from relatives’ experiences (‘my mother saw’, ‘my father commented’,
‘my brother participated’, or ‘none of them knew anything’). There are some blurred biographical memories of bomb explosions, soldiers in the streets, a prohibition to leave home or some distant neighbour who lost a relative (‘disappeared’ is a trope to indicate those victims kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the military). Yet, all the memories are mixed with parents’ or relatives’ stories. For instance, Marta remembered her father explaining:
“Well, dad always remembers this part of (…) that he never (…) He says that (…) Around dad’s house – I mean our house – there was always trouble, problems, but we were – never touched! Dad said: “They knew where they had to go”, the montoneros (RF: the leftist Peronist youth movement persecuted by the dictatorship), all these ugly issues (…) He said: “They met right there on the corner. We – me and your mother – watched through the window. The military police came, ‘they were picked up’,30 heads fell (volaban cabezas), but we were never touched!” (Marta, 1971)
Such indirect reporting is quite informative. The victims (montoneros) are firstly predicated through a moral-aesthetic term (‘ugly’). Secondly, military forces were sometimes simply omitted by employing a passive voice, e.g. we were never touched.31 Yet, it is clear that the military police are revealed as quite professional in distinguishing good and bad suspects (they knew where they had to go). In this sense, Marta repeats her father’s story which corresponds to the dictatorship’s passive or active adherents. According to Marta, her father – a German immigrant – hardly talked about those times. Neither did he speak about his former times in Germany (the Second World War). Marta’s father, according to her story, preferred hard work and to remain silent (although a very communicative silence). Finally, she seemed to be very convinced (and proud) of her family’s standing. Nonetheless, Marta expressed her conviction at the end of the interview that all the trials against the military perpetrators are appropriate:
30 ‘They were picked up or taken away (lit.: they were lifted up, se los levantaban) is a recurrent expression of those times to indicate the horror of kidnapping. The emphasis on the passive voice ‘se’ is part of the legacy of the communicative silence.
31Carassai (2014) reports the use of similar terms when describing how older people frame this period. Rosa’s father account probably coincides in the terms: “They never stopped me, I never had problems, absolutely, never, nobody” (Carassai 2014:164). Tellingly, the narrative template still circulates as a middle-class testimony.
“I find it good that they go jail – because of what I have heard – and what they (the government) have done, actually, I find it really perfect. You cannot take someone’s life in this way, and even less, take a child away from his or her mother. I find that abhorrent. It (…) it is very ugly, horrible! I find (the imprisonment) perfect.” (Marta, 1971)
There is no contradiction for Marta in describing this. She only repeated and justified two stories: on the one hand, her father’s story about the (justified) persecutions of the (ugly) leftist Peronists; on the other, the agreement to judge all perpetrators who committed (ugly) crimes against women and children (more
‘innocent and sacred’ victims). Present recollections are impinged upon by processes of understanding state violence. Argentina is well known as a country in which vigorous human rights movements have claimed measures of ‘truth and justice’, and a process of justice supported by the state has taken place over the last thirty years (albeit irregularly). Both human rights organizations and, especially, current state policy have made an important contribution to modern trends of transnational justice (Sikkink and Booth Walling 2006). However, these public accounts are also framed within the context of other group memories, a mix which sometimes results in, as in Marta’s statements, a somewhat odd and even contradictory outcome.
Marta’s ambiguities refer to innumerable stories from her childhood. Most participants – at least from the middle classes – gave a complex and detailed historical portrayal: the Cold War polarization of the 1960s and the role played by the generation that grew up in this context; the ambiguous role of Perón in the seventies; the climax of violence during Isabel’s government; the performance of extreme right civilian groups (the triple AAA – the Argentine Anti-communist Alliance) under Isabel’s government; the unjustified use of deadly violence against the left-wing movement; and the systematic extermination of left-wing ‘enemies’
which resulted in 15,000 – 30,000 victims32. There are multiple differences, for example, in terms of the vocabulary employed which ranges from the conservative name the process, through the old concept of dirty war, to the commonest military regime/government and dictatorship terms as well as the newest genocide one (cf.
Robben 2012). Other participants drew attention to the military economic project – the development of neo-liberalism – as a crucial raison d'être of the dictatorship. Yet,
32 The number is contentious as well as symbolic. Some official reports refer to 10000 - 15000 victims. Yet, the human right organizations neglect such minimal cipher, claiming for the double of victims.
such explanations were developed during their youth or adult life. A crucial element evoked by their childhood was, instead, mixed feelings of fear, ignorance, not knowing, silence and negation regarding what was occurring in the country.