When I approached the study of the episodes in our History linked to the dark 70s of the military coup of March 24, 1976, I warned my students about
the partial and biased views
that they were going to encounter.
Those half-hearted glances had a deep impact on a part of our society that did not experience that painful stage
nor was it properly informed of what happened
.
Although it hurts to accept it, the first thing we must remember in honor of historical truth is that in 1976 the majority of Argentine society was crying out
for the military to assume its role as guarantors of order, which it itself had assigned to them.
Democratic values were relegated to the background.
The general commanders of the Army, Navy and Air Force, Jorge Rafael Videla, Emilio Eduardo Massera and Orlando Ramón Agosti, took office as the new heads of the Executive when forming the Military Junta.
The deceased Bulgarian philosopher and historian, Zvetan Todorov, upon returning from a trip to Argentina in 2010, wrote a column in the Spanish newspaper El País that provided me with the right words to explain to my students where we had to position ourselves to study this era:
“A society
– Todorov said –
needs to know history, not just have memory.
In the Argentine case, a revolutionary terrorism preceded the State terrorism of the military,
and one cannot be understood without the other.”
It was not said by a recalcitrant figure from the extreme right, but by a foreigner
stripped of all interest or political intentionality
, willing to learn “in situ” what happened in the country.
“Foreigners
,” he continued, “
see things that the locals miss
. ”
Because Todorov had written about various traumatic events of the 20th century such as genocides, totalitarian regimes and war crimes, the authorities who received him (the first Cristina Kirchner government was then in place) took him to visit the ESMA, emblem of the clandestine detention centers that operated during the dictatorship, and did the same with the Parque de la Memoria, erected on the banks of the Río de La Plata on the northern coast.
At that time there were
10,000 names
of victims registered on that memorial, which continued to be fed with other names.
Isabelita Perón, detained after the military coup.
It was later shown that some of these alleged victims of the dictatorship lived or had died in exile, fell while trying to take over a military regiment, or lost their lives when perpetrating a terrorist attack.
Even some “traitor” executed by his own comrades was registered as a victim of the dictatorship.
The objective was
to reach 30,000 missing people,
an emblematic number denied by the documentation and evidence collected by Conadep during the Alfonsín government.
All this does not exempt the military from responsibility for the horrors committed in the past.
However, history is written with documentary sources and not only with fragmented accounts provided by a biased memory.
In the aforementioned column, titled “A trip to Argentina,” Todorov stated: “... the term 'state terrorism' used to designate the process commemorated by these places is very appropriate.
Detainees were mistreated in the absence of any legal framework.
First, they subjected them to torture aimed at extracting information that would allow other arrests.
A hood was placed on the detainees' heads to prevent them from seeing and hearing;
or, on the contrary, they were kept in a room with blinding light and deafening music.
They were then executed without trial: often drugged and thrown into the river from a helicopter;
This is how they became "disappeared...".
On April 30, 1977, in the midst of the civil-military dictatorship, the Mothers marched for the first time.
But later he adds
“... in neither of the two places I visited did I see the slightest sign that referred to the context in which, in 1976, the dictatorship was established, nor to what preceded and followed it.
The period 1973-1976 was one of extreme tensions that brought the country to the brink of civil war.
The Montoneros and other extreme left groups organized assassinations of political and military figures, which sometimes included their entire family, took hostages in order to obtain a ransom, blew up public buildings and robbed banks
...
The Memory Park is a public space located in front of the Río de la Plata in the northern area of the City of Buenos Aires, with the purpose of remembering the victims of State terrorism.
It is clear that the historian suspected that a part of the past was deliberately hidden from him, and that worried him especially:
“...
a society needs to know History, not just have memory
.
Collective memory is subjective: it reflects the experiences of one of the constituent groups of society;
That is why it can be used by that group as a means to acquire or reinforce a political position (…) History helps us get out of the Manichean illusion in which memory often locks us: the division of humanity into two watertight compartments. , good and bad, victims and executioners, innocent and guilty.”
In short, as the historian states,
“the way of presenting the past in these places surely illustrates the memory of one of the actors in the drama, the group of the repressed;
but it cannot be said that it effectively defends the truth, since it omits entire sections of History
.
It is therefore necessary that any reflection that is made regarding these painful events of the past take into account the historical truth.
Therefore, every March 24th
it is essential to remember
, yes, but always within the context that History offers us.
Gastón Bivort /
gastonbivort2@gmail.com
THE EDITOR'S COMMENT
By César Dossi
The perverse library of '76
“Madam, the Armed Forces have decided to take political control of the country, and you are arrested,”
General José Rogelio Villarreal sentenced President Isabel Martínez de Perón.
With those sharp words, at three hours and ten minutes on March 24, 1976, the coup d'état in Argentina began, the black leather boots trampling the votes.
Today,
that era is a perverse library of colorless photos
.
The truth usually has its twists and turns and not telling it completely presumes a lie, because
a half-truth does not have the weight of sincerity.
That is why
Argentine history told by ear loses credibility
, the coincidence of the statement of facts disagrees.
And there is an urgent need to proclaim that biography in one's own words.
The
“Never Again”
, from the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CoNadeP), is a testimony to this.
And despite the 48 years that separate us from those disastrous days, which occur today, society does not distance itself from its history.
It is still a recent past and
it is necessary to remember it
.
The dictatorship, the process, state terrorism, repression, de facto government, are already arid ballast words but
the remembrance has to be fertile and unalterable
.
For this reason, the rhetorical technique of the demonization of History, of terror as a strategy, was condemned.
On the National Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice, as a society and together with the Human Rights movements, let us reconstruct the family tree of the country's dark period, let us teach the new generations to interpret them
without political considerations,
because historical time He demands it from us.
And because the truth is written without ideology.