Commemorating 50 years of the Argentine dictatorship

To mark the 50th anniversary of the military coup in Argentina, commemorative events, marches and protests took place across the country on Tuesday, March 24. Human rights organizations organized events under the slogan "More than ever: Never again!" (más que nunca, nunca más). Using this slogan, people also criticized the increasing denial of the dictatorship's crimes, both on social media and from the side of the libertarian government under President Javier Milei. For this reason, the marches this year were particularly large: According to city officials, between 150,000 and 200,000 people took to the streets in Buenos Aires. And closer to home, media reported over 200,000 people for the city of Córdoba.

Following the coup in 1976, the military dictatorship waged a dirty war against movements on the left until 1983. As part of this campaign, dubbed the "national reorganization process", "subversives" and sympathizers were imprisoned without trial, tortured, and murdered in around 800 secret prisons. To this day, the fate of many of the 30,000 Desaparecidos, those that were disappeared has not been discovered. Just last year, a team of forensic anthropologists and workers of a cooperative worked together to find thousands of human bones on land belonging to the former secret prison La Perla, leading to the identification of 12 people just days before the 50th anniversary of the coup.

In addition to the forced "disappearance", the regime also engaged in child abductions and forced adoptions that are similarly unresolved. Organizations like the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo have been fighting for decades for the prosecution of these crimes and for the investigation of the missing children & grandchildren. For that reason, many people who take in the marches continue to carry signs with the photos and names of family members and friends who have been made to disappear by the dictatorship.

Our small town in the north of the province of Córdoba organised a whole memorial week, including discussion rounds, cinema evenings to show movies about the dictatorship, and talks by witnesses who experienced persecution themselves. On the 24th of March, a commemorative event was held at the local Plaza de la Memoria, at which both city officials and members of the local human rights organization spoke. Shared among all contributions throughout the week was the sense that it is more than ever necessary to not forget and keep a living memory. Especially at a time where libertarian influencers and government officials are pushing their own brand of denial around the crimes of the dictatorship.

Seeing this denial is maybe one of the most disheartening aspects of these commemorations for me, as it shows that what in German is often called Geschichtsvergessenheit (maybe translated to amnesia of history?) is not unique to the German context of society's handling of the memory of the crimes committed by the Nazis. Instead, very similar mechanisms happen here too, despite the events being a lot more recent, and risk becoming mainstream if not forcefully pushed back by a broad consensus across society. And it's maybe also why Nie wieder, nunca más, or never again are needed in all languages.

If you read German, I also wrote about this year' commemoration for Amerika21. And if you want to use any images, they are openly licensed on Flickr, here and here. They are also on Wikimedia Commons in this category.