The Power of Absence:An Ethnography of Justice, Memories ofGenocide, and Political Activism of a NewGeneration in Post-Transitional Argentina (original) (raw)

For 30 years human rights groups have struggled for justice in Argentina. ‘We are born in their struggle and they live in ours’, thus goes the mantra of the second generation activists. In 1995, hijos, the children of the disappeared, murdered, unlawfully imprisoned and exiled victims of the 1976-83 civil-military dictatorship, decided to participate and created the association H.I.J.O.S. (Children for Identity and Justice, against Oblivion and Silence). Coming to the field in 2010, I arrived into a context radicalized through activism, campaigning, and a heightened level of legal activity in a temporality of post-transitional, pro-human rights. In this symbolic, discursive, and legal space of justice members of H.I.J.O.S. demonstrate why the violent past counts as genocide and promise not to forgive, not to forget, nor to reconcile. With their activism during the Escrache – H.I.J.O.S.’ practice of social condemnation and street justice – and in the current trials for crimes against...