The governing body of education in Uruguay has resolved not to call State terrorism the State terrorism perpetrated by the civic-military regime that governed this country between 1973 and 1985. This year, the emblematic concept has been eliminated from one of the history programs secondary school and replaced by the expression “suspension and subjugation of constitutional guarantees”, without any explanation.
The modification was noticed by teachers a few days before the start of classes and motivated the reaction of the Association of History Teachers of Uruguay.
“The change is not innocent,” they maintain in a statement.
For the group of teachers, it is a “political and ideological intervention” on historical events, which was also attempted to be introduced in 2022. At that time, they explain, the education directorate, which has an official majority (center-right), sought to suppress the notion of state terrorism in one of the programs, but the change did not prosper.
This time it was finalized, without the consent of the teaching staff, at the end of 2023. The teachers assure that the concept appeared in the preliminary version approved in November by technicians and teachers, but it was eliminated from the final program, now published on the ANEP portal ( National Administration of Public Education).
In the statement released days ago, the History teachers association condemns these types of decisions “that affect the approach to the recent past,” because they distance the contents of national and international historiographic production.
In that sense, remember that the concept “State terrorism” is the one used by historiography and social sciences “to describe and analyze the violations of human rights” committed by the dictatorships that occurred in the second half of the 20th century in America. Latina.
This change, the note states, damages the secular and scientific condition of the teaching of History.
The teachers also criticized the introduction into the program of an item called “guerrilla movements and human rights violations.”
“This statement is unfounded, given that it ignores countless legal regulations and bibliography,” the statement says.
In this regard, historians have explained that violent acts carried out by armed groups constitute crimes provided for in the Penal Code, but legally they do not constitute violations of human rights.
These can only be infringed by the state apparatus, responsible for protecting them.
“It is the State that can commit violations of human rights,” they say.
This last aspect of the teachers' complaint was postponed from the public conversation in Uruguay, which these days was monopolized by the elimination of the expression state terrorism from the History program.
“[State terrorism] is out of the question,” said the presidential candidate of the Frente Amplio (center-left), Yamandú Orsi, when the press asked him about the decision of the governing body of education.
History professor, Orsi said he was surprised that the facts were put into perspective and prefers to think that the measure was taken out of ignorance.
“I think they are wrong due to lack of knowledge, which is also worrying.
“If it were anything else I would panic,” he added.
Education authorities maintain that the modification aims to protect access to the truth.
“It was not with the aim of hiding State terrorism, but rather to inscribe it in a broader social, political and historical reality,” said Juan Gabito, a member of the ANEP board of directors for the ruling National Party.
In a debate program on channel 12, Gabito pointed out that the teachers' proposal was “partial and incomplete” because it included the concept of “state terrorism” without taking into account the historical background.
“Many were victims of state terrorism, I recognize it, but many more of us suffered from the lack of guarantees of our rights,” he said.
But he did not satisfy the commentators.
On the set, the difficulties that Uruguay still encounters in addressing its past were exposed.
Especially the period from the mid-1960s onwards, when the country was going through a rampant economic crisis, social unrest and the authoritarian drift of the Government were growing.
They were times of political violence, with armed groups from the extreme left and also from the most radical right as protagonists.
The policy failed, the coup d'état took place in June 1973 and the dictatorship lasted until 1985. The balance appears in the pages of the Presidency: more than 5,000 political prisoners, 197 disappeared detainees, 122 political murders, among other systematic violations of human rights.
If you recognize that there was state terrorism, why did you remove the expression? the commentators asked in response to Gabito's insistence on admitting its existence.
They went even further and asked him if the decision would not have to do with possible pressure from Cabildo Abierto, the right-wing party that is part of the ruling coalition.
They reminded him of a statement by Eduardo Radaelli, leader of that political formation: “State terrorism is a piscopolitical phrase created for publicity and nothing more.”
Gabito limited himself to responding that the change was made in compliance with the Education law.
“The decision was deliberate in order to protect the student's right to access the truth,” he said.
For the historian Carlos Demasi, a researcher specialized in that period, the seriousness of this suppression lies in the fact that it introduces a look at the dictatorship that seemed to have disappeared along with that regime.
“The dictatorship always justified itself as a consequence of the political and social disorder of the 60s,” he tells EL PAÍS.
In 1985, Demasi continues, no one thought that the dictatorship had been an effect of the action of the Tupamaros in the 60s. “The vast majority of legislators considered that the cause of the dictatorship was in the errors of the political leadership prior to the coup d'état," he explains.
Demasi points out that this story changes from the first years of this 21st century, when the archives begin to be opened and part of the truth about State terrorism begins to be known.
Then the so-called theory of the two demons appears: “a terrorist, guerrilla demon, provoked the reaction of the authoritarian, military demon,” says the historian.
But this version omits, Demasi continues, that the Tupamaro guerrilla movement had been dismantled around October 1972 (the coup d'état was in June 1973), according to documents from the time.
That month, the military published a report with the names of almost 2,000 Tupamaros detained and prosecuted by military justice.
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