The Power of Absence:An Ethnography of Justice, Memories ofGenocide, and Political Activism of a NewGeneration in Post-Transitional Argentina (original) (raw)
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Journal of Human Rights, 2013 Vol. 12 (2)
The article analyzes how H.I.J.O.S. has rejuvenated the struggle for memory, truth, and justice in postauthoritarian Argentina, in particular through its carnivalesque demonstrations, the escraches. While they are often presented as a form of resistance that is democratic insofar as they foster participation in politics, the article warns against equating memory with both resistance and democracy. The relationship between them should be critically explored rather than taken for granted or ignored, which requires clarifying the conceptualization of democracy underling the analysis of memory struggles and practices. The article draws on theories of agonistic democracy to re-assess the politics of memory and highlight some of its limits and tensions through an analysis of the struggle and activism of H.I.J.O.S. in postauthoritarian Argentina. The implications for the (re-)construction of democracy are highlighted. The analysis of H.I.J.O.S. and the escraches is finally explained in the context of the reconceptualization of reconciliation as a political task by agonistic democracy. The conclusion reasserts the importance of exploring the relationship between memory and democracy for, if H.I.J.O.S. reminds us that remembering is as much about the past as it is forward-looking, it should not be forgotten that the future that memory struggles and practices envision is a democratic future.
This article explores human rights politics in the transition from dictatorship to democracy in Argentina. Its ethnographic focus is the phenomenon of families of victims associations, usually led by mothers , that fi rst emerged to protest against mass disappearance under the military dictatorship. Democracy has also produced new families of victims associations protesting against different forms of state abuse and/or neglect. They represent one face of the widespread protest against a 'culture of impunity' experienced as ongoing insecurity and injustice. Private grief is made an emotional resource for collective action in the form of 'political mourning'. The media, street demonstrations, and litigation are used to try to make the state accountable. State management of this public suffering has sought to determine legitimate victimhood based on a paradigm of innocence. The political mourning of victims and survivors charts the social margins of citizenship in the reduced, not expanded, neo-liberal democratic state in Argentina.
Acts of Repair: Justice, Truth, and the Politics of Memory in Argentina
2021
Acts of Repair explores how ordinary people grapple with political violence in Argentina, a nation home to survivors of multiple genocides and periods of violence, including the Holocaust, the political repression of the 1976-1983 dictatorship, and the 1994 AMIA bombing. Despite efforts for accountability, the terrain of justice has been uneven and, in many cases, impunity remains. How can citizens respond to such ongoing trauma? Within frameworks of transitional justice, what does this tell us about the possibility of recovery and repair? Turning to the lived experience of survivors and family members of victims of genocide and violence, Natasha Zaretsky argues for the ongoing significance of cultural memory as a response to trauma and injustice, as revealed through testimonies and public protests. Even if such repair may be inevitably liminal and incomplete, their acts seeking such repair also yield spaces for transformation and agency critical to personal and political recovery. https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/acts-of-repair/9781978807426
From Blanket Impunity to Judicial Change - HIJOS and Memory Making in Post-Dictatorship Argentina
With the increasing opportunities for justice ushered in by the repeal of the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws in 2005, the struggles for memory and justice by Argentina's H.I.J.O.S. (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence) have shifted focus. Pre-2005, the organization used escraches (public demonstrations in which the perpetrators of human rights violations are "outed") to respond to the problem of top-down impunity in Argentina, condemn the atrocities, and expose the legal immunity enjoyed by the perpetrators. Post-2005, it has employed escraches to bring to the fore shortcomings in the judicial sphere by widening its selection of targets. Furthermore, new activities outside and inside the courtroom reflect the new landscape of justice, celebrating the advent of justice and accompanying victims, survivors, and witnesses in this process while continuing to highlight persistent shortcomings and obstacles in the judicial sphere.