Silhouettes symblozing the "disappeared", a popular human rights protest image
Historian Luis Alberto Romero of the University of Buenos Aires takes an analytical look at the collective nature of Argentines remembering and evaluating the traumatic period of El Proceso (The Process), which was the chosen self-designation of the brutal military dictatorshiop that ruled Argentina from 1976-83, in a paper he presented in August 2006 at a history conference in Rio de Janeiro. Romero also served as a principal investigator with the national Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET).
The published version from which I'm working is titled Memoria de El Proceso y problemas de la democracia: El historiador y el ciudano (Memory of El Proceso and problems of democracy: The historian and the citizen" and appears in Lucha Armada en la Argentina 10/2008. That journal title translates to "Armed Struggle in Argentina". But, despite its hair-raising title, it's not some Argentine neo-Weather Underground publication. It's an intellectual journal devoted to issues around El Proceso, the "dirty war" it conducted against guerrillas and dissidents, and the restoration of democracy in 1983. Romero's article actually reflects a conservative-leaning viewpoint on the issue he addresses.
What becomes history is first present-day life and current politics. At some point, events fade into the past. Presumably when there's no longer anyone alive who was around when the events were occurring, it becomes purely history.
But in between the events and that point, there is a process that occurs in which they gradually become more "history" and less "current events". Those who feel they have something to lose by the events being remembered honestly tend to want to declare them to be old news sooner rather than later.
Romero describes how the general public image of the dictatorshiop was established in the transition to democratic government. What he describs as the Nunca Más view developed in the time between the election campaign of 1983 and the conviction in 1985 of senior leaders of the fallen military junta on criminal charges, in which was known as the Juicio a las Juntas. It's worth noting that the generals had set up an amnesty arrangement for themselves to preclude being prosecuted before they surrendered power. But that indemnity was quickly rejected by the newly-elected President Raúl Alfonsín. Romero also reminds us that the trial included the leaders of the two main guerrilla groups, ERP and the Montaneros, whose violent actions had provided the ocasion/excuse for the military to take power in 1976.
The junta and El Proceso were ugly business for Argentina. The country had experienced other periods of military rule in the 20th century, most recently in 1966-1973. but those were relatively benign autocracies - though for their victims their benignity was very relative. But El Proceso was brutal and genuinely dictatorial.
Torturers- and murderers-in-chief: Junta leaders Jorge Rafael Videla, Emilio Eduardo Massera and Ramón Agosti
What finally ended the credibility and hold on power of the ruling junta was the Malvinas War of 1982, more familiar to American readers as the Falklands War. Argentina had never recognized the legtimacy of British control of the Malvinas Islands (and still doesn't!), which the Royal Navy seized in 1833. (It was actually an American warship that drove away the Argentines but the British claimed the islands.) The junta provoked the war by militarily occupying the islands in 1982. Britain drove them off in a short war.
The junta had miscalculated badly based on arrogance, ignorance, overconfidence and general bad judgment. But a big part of their motive in starting the war was to rally the Argentine public behind them.
And they weren't entirely mistaken in that. The Malvinas are seen as a patriotic cause by most Argentines and there was considerable enthusiasm for the war. Then they lost. Romero writes:
Desde junio de 1982, la opinión pública achacó a los militares la derrota en la de Malvinas y, sin distinguir demasiado, también les reprochó el haber ido a guerra, un hecho que apenas dos meses antes había sido ampliamente celebrado.Then as censorship began to be eased and more reports of the regime's torture, murder and kidnapping began to circulate:
[From June 1982, public opinion blamed the generals for the defeat in the Malvinas and, without distinguishing all that much, also reproached them for having gone to war, an act that scarcely two months before had been widely celebrated.]
En ese contexto, el Proceso, la dictadura, fue visto como una poderosa organización dedicada al mal: una imagen demoníaca, potente y perversa a la vez.This process continued into 1985. And it was most likely necessary for the dictatorship to be radially rejected, stigmatized in that way in order for democracy to flourish. Military officials tried more than once to stage a coup against the new civilian government, attempts that were successfully surpressed.
[In this context, el Proceso, the dictatorship, was seen as a powerful organization dedicated to evil: a demonic image, strong and perverse at the same time.]
This is what Romero calls the Nunca Más image of the dictatorship. The other side of this image was that the public had extremely high expectations for democracy. He quotes Raúl Alfonsín in what was presumably a moment of enthusiasm saying, "Con la democracia se come, se educa, se cura ..." (With democracy you can eat, you can get educated, you can get well ...). Alfonsín had a social-democratic viewpoint, so this could have been an expression of his more general vision of social democracy. But Romero takes it as a typical expression of overblown expectations.
Such expectations were far from fulfilled. The country still suffers from great poverty, a situation that was certainly not altered by the adoption of "neoliberal" economic policies readily embraced by Alfonsín's right-Peronist successor, Carlos Menem.
And over the years the public image of El Proceso has evolved in ways that Romero interprets as three distinctive trends. The Nunca Más viewpoint of the years just after the dictatorship, he argues, included a too broad assumption of public innocence, merging as it did with a kind of "a plague on both your houses" attitude that demonized the guerrillas, as well. Romero writes that "según esta versión, ambos demonios son en cierto modo ajenos a la sociedad" (according to this version, both demons are in a certain way separate from the society).
The three trends of memory that he sees as having involved include the following:
Emergió una memoria militante, que reivindicó las luchas previas a la dictadura y a los combatientes, hasta entonces presentados simplemente como “víctimas inocentes”. También emergió una memoria que llamaría rencorosa, preocupada por ajustar cuentas con el pasado, a costa del pluralismo construido desde 1983. Finalmente, ha cobrado estatuto público, entre quienes justifican la dictadura, o al menos no la condenan, una memoria centrada en la reivindicación de las propias víctimas de la violencia guerrillera.Romero isn't happy with any of these views and takes refuge in the identity of the professional historian who has to carefully sort through it all. He argues that the historian's work inevitably conflicts with the public functions of memory as expressed in his three trends of memory. Historians, he says in a memorable if not especially sympathetic phrase, "are closer friends to the truth than to Plato".
[A militant memory emerged which rehabilitated the battles previous to the dictatorship and the combatants even to the point of presenting them simply as "innocent victims". There also emerged a memory that we could call rancourous, pre-occupied with settling accounts with the past at the cost of the pluralism constructed since 1983. Finally, a public rule has gained popularity among those who justify the dictatorship, or at least don't condemn it, a memory centered in vindicating the victims of the very violence of the guerrillas.]
But despite this above-the-fray posturing, he does seem to have a more contemporary point to make. The potencial problems of the "innocent victims" viewpoint are fairly obvious: it can ignore the ugly reality of the excessive violence committed by both guerrills and the junta. And it can become an excuse to duck real questions of responsibility, and to avoid understanding and learning from the complex reality of what happened. The guerrillas of the ERP and Monteneros were supported in part by Juan Perón and the Partido Justicialista (PJ) of that time.
And, as he says, El Proceso had some significant level of public support:
Que en la "sociedad" el mensaje represor de la dictadura encontró una amplia recepción, debido a la tradición autoritaria y excluyente, que era un componente fuerte de la cultura política argentina.Those who justify El Proceso are either embracing anti-democratic ideology or they're looking for excuses for their own guilty actions, or those of their political parties.
[That in "society" [meaning respectable, prominent citizens] the repressive message of the dictatorship found an wide reception, owing to the authoritarian and exclusivist tradition that was a powerful component of the Argentine political culture.]
But Romero argues that what he calls the adherents of "rencorosa" (rancorous) memory are basically irresponsible fanatics, among whom he explicity includes the current president along with her predecessor and husband:
Autoproclamados catones y robespierres, muchos de los cuales ni siquiera estuvieron en la defensa de los Derechos Humanos en tiempos de la dictadura, encontraron en esos juicios retrospectivos la forma de construirse un pasado de militante, como le ocurre, por ejemplo, con Néstor y Cristina Kirchner.The online version linked above was amended for the journal version to explicitly include Cristina along with her husband in this criticism.
[Self-proclaimed censors and Robespierres, many of who weren't even active in the defense of human right in the time of the dictatorship, find in these retrospecitive judgments the form to construct a militant pass for themselves, as occurs, for example, with Néstor and Cristina [Fernández] Kirchner.]
Claiming that the Kirchners have been acting like Robespierres is just ridiculous. And Cristina Fernández was active as a human rights attorney during El Proceso.
There is a specific partisan context here. During the Presidency of Raúl Alfonsín (1983-89), which immediately followed the years of El Proceso, a number of official steps were taken to air the story of the ugly side of the dictatorship and its "dirty war" against guerrillas, dissenters and the inconvenient. Including what is known as the Juicio a las Juntas mentioned above and the establishment of the Comisión sobre la Desaparición de las Personas Comisión sobre la Desaparición de las Personas (CONADEP) that investigated those who went missing during El Proceso, most of them murdered. But, under the pressure of two coup attempts by the military, he later approved two laws known as "Punto Final" and "Obediencia Debida", that put an end to further prosecutions.
Leopoldo Galtieri, chief leader of the junta at the time of the Malvinas War
But Néstor Kirchner, (President 2003-2007)persuaded the Congress to annul those laws, opening the way for additional prosecutions, which have been taking place. The current President Cristina Fernández is also committed to continuing legal charges against those who committed crimes during El Proceso.
In an essay included in the collection El presidente inesperado: El gobierno de Kirchner según los intelectuales adrgentinos (2004), Jose Natason, ed., Romero talked some about Néstor Kirchner's policies in this area, and seemed to be particularly frustrated that Kirchner made it sound as though human rights organizations in Argentina had accomplished nothing important in the two decades since the Juicio a las Juntas, and even ignored the importance of that trial. He also complained in a general way about how Kirchner had gone about converting the notorious ESMA detention center into a national museum, though he didn't go into more specifics.
This article by Romero deals with related themes: Una necesaria relectura de la violencia política Clarín 23.01. 2007. It suggests that Romero may have regarded the Kirchners' politics of historical memory too solicitous of the record of their own Peronist JP party in the early 1970s. The JP had not only encouraged the ERP and the Monteneros when they were trying to return to power. They also formed right-wing death squads to suppress them after the JP came to power in 1973-6. Romero argues that those incidents need to be included when discussing the "terrorism of the state" in Argentina.
This article, La refundación de la política de Derechos Humanos, Parte 1 por Eduardo Pedro Reviriego El Diario (not dated, but is from 2008 since it quotes the journal article discussed here). Parte 2 is available here.
In any case, Romero doesn't seem completely above the fray as he seems to aspire to be. He sounds in "Memoria de El Proceso y problemas de la democracia: El historiador y el ciudano" as though he's ready to have the days of El Proceso become purely history.
Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, el proceso, luis alberto romero, néstor kirchner
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