Image and Disappearance in Argentina. Reflections on a Photo taken in the Basement of ESMA

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El secuestro de las monjas francesas, Alice Domon y Léonie Duquet, en diciembre de 1977 en Buenos Aires generó protestas internacionales y una fuerte visibilidad pública del caso, a través de la prensa francesa. Para tratar de evitar problemas diplomáticos con el gobierno francés, la dictadura argentina intentó endilgar la responsabilidad del secuestro a la organización guerrillera Montoneros. Para ello, fraguó un comunicado de la organización y lo difundió acompañándolo con una foto tomada a las religiosas en el sótano de la ESMA. Esta foto singular, sacada dentro de un centro clandestino de detención a dos personas ya desaparecidas, para ser mostrada públicamente, plantea una serie de cuestiones –que son tratadas en este artículo- en torno a la relación entre fotografía y memoria de la desaparición. Se analizan las noticias en torno al tema publicadas por la prensa argentina y francesa después de los secuestros, y se examinan algunos programas emitidos por la televisión francesa en las décadas de los ‘80 y ‘90. En primer lugar, este caso permite cuestionar el estatuto de huella y de “prueba” de la fotografía (Barthes, Dubois): ¿puede ser interpretada esta foto como “prueba de la desaparición”? En segundo lugar, el artículo problematiza el vínculo entre fotografía y representación del horror preguntándose, con Didi-Huberman, si más que el referente, lo que “da a ver” el horror en este caso son las marcas de las condiciones de enunciación de la imagen, es decir, aquello que permite inferir cómo y dónde fue tomada. Finalmente, el artículo analiza, a partir de esta foto y de sus sucesivas reutilizaciones, las tensiones entre visibilidad y secreto, entre imagen y memoria, y entre el “interior” y el “exterior” del centro clandestino de detención de la ESMA. La repetición constante de la imagen en distintos contextos, a lo largo de más de treinta años, permite preguntarse en qué medida esta “iconización” (Hirsch) termina borrando o amortiguando su carácter perturbador, su posibilidad de seguir comunicando algo del orden de lo intolerable. Estas cuestiones se encuentran en el centro del complejo trabajo de la memoria erigido, en torno a los desaparecidos, en los últimos treinta años.

Acknowledgements

The research that forms the basis of this article was carried out within the framework of the Hermès postdoctoral grant (2008) and the “Directeur d'Etudes Associés” programme (2010), both funded by the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris. I am grateful to Dominique Fournier of FMSH for his support. I also thank Natalia Fortuny, Jordana Blejmar, Luis Ignacio García and Cora Gamarnik for their comments on the first draft of this text.

Notes

 1 Alice Domon had arrived in Argentina in 1967 and Léonie Duquet in 1949. For a portrait of the two nuns and their activities in Argentina, see Cabrejas, 1998 and Pierron, 2009.

 2 The Navy Mechanics School (Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada, ESMA) was an important clandestine detention centre during the last Argentine dictatorship, through which passed an estimated 4000 prisoners–disappeared people, and of whom around 200 survived. Various testimonials exist from survivors of ESMA who saw Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet in captivity there. For a testimonial produced while the dictatorship was still in power, see C.A.D.H.U. 1979: 55–7.

 3 The body of Léonie Duquet, along with those belonging to two mothers of disappeared people, was found in 2005 in a tomb marked NN in the General Lavalle cemetery, after having been recovered on the coast of the Argentine Sea. Duquet was identified on the 29th of August 2005 and her remains now lie in the Santa Cruz Church.

 4 These are, in large part, photos of oppressors and some people who had been kidnapped, the negatives and copies of which Basterra was able to save from destruction and smuggle out. Some of these photos have been published in Brodsky, 2005. For reflections on the role of these photos in the memory of disappearance and in the debate surrounding the construction of a museum in the ESMA premises, see Bell, 2010 and Andermann, 2012.

 5 A special commando made up of prisoners of the concentration and exterminations camps, whose job was to incinerate the bodies of the people who were killed in the gas chambers.

 6 I shall not use the concept of Postmemory which is central to M. Hirsch's work, because I do not believe that it can be applied mechanically and unproblematically to this particular case, but I am conscious that the notion “iconisation” recalls this process studied by Hirsch.

 7 For this article the newspapers La Nación, Clarín, La Opinión, La Prensa, Crónica, La Razón, El Cronista Comercial and Buenos Aires Herald from the month of December 1977 were consulted. Given our focus here, we shall not include in this analysis the information relating to each one of the newspapers (their format and discursive style, their ideology, their economic structure, their target audiences) and we shall instead concentrate on the constant aspects, signalling only the differences that are significant in terms of this particular issue.

 8 As the French newspapers of the time pointed out: “Argentina signed a Vienna convention on diplomatic and consular relations which obliges signatory countries to inform an embassy when one of its citizens is arrested” (Le Monde, 16/12/1977, p. 10).

 9 Since 1976, the Herald had published numerous denunciations of disappearances. For a more accurate description of this newspaper's activity during the dictatorship see Schindel, 2004.

10 “Disappearances worry petitioners”, Buenos Aires Herald, 13th of December 1977, p. 1. As well as the Herald, the news appeared very early on in the newspaper La Prensa of 12th December 1977.

11 Libération, Le Monde, Le Figaro, L'Humanité, La Croix and France Soir from December 1977 and January 1978 were consulted.

12 For example, although the 13th December edition of Le Monde had reported the kidnapping of the group, on the 14th of December the kidnapping of the nuns was reported as a new story, without establishing a link with the previous one. “Deux religieuses françaises ont été enlevées par des inconnus”, p. 48.

13 See “Enlèvement de deux religieuses françaises / Argentine: deux disparues en un jour, 15000 en deux ans” (Kidnapping of two French nuns / Argentina: two disappeared in one day, 15000 in two years) (Libération, 14/12/1977, p. 11).

14 Le Monde, 16/12/1977, p. 10; La Croix, 16/12/1977, p. 7; France Soir, 16/12/1977, p. 5.

15 Libération, 14/12/1977.

16 The idea that there were “out of control groups” that acted repressively outside the orders of the Armed Forces high command is expressed in the newspaper Libération from the 14th December as a criticism of Videla. However, the Junta itself fed the rumour that these groups existed to hide the fact that the repression was, in fact, planned and systematically carried out by the State.

17 In September 1977, in a meeting with James Carter and in view of the concerns of the US envoy for human rights, Videla had promised a “Christmas in Peace” for Argentina (La Nación, 7/9/1977, p. 1). Throughout 1977, Patricia Derian from the US State Department made three visits to Argentina to ask the members of the Junta about disappeared people. In November, Cyrus Vance, US Secretary of State, also visited the country and held audiences with members of the Junta to the same end. At the same time, the US was threatening to embargo the sale of arms to Argentina if they did not improve the human rights situation. See Uriarte, 1991: 166–74.

18 This action was particularly important in France. The aim was to stop the Football World Cup taking place in a country where the State systematically violated human rights. According to Marina Franco, the first call for a boycott of the World Cup appeared in Le Monde in October 1977 and the el “Comité de Boycott du Mondial de Football en Argentine” (COBA) was formed at the end of that same year (Franco, 2008: 182).

19 For example, the kidnapping of the journalist Jacobo Timermann in April 1977 had had a big impact on the international press and external pressure brought about his release several months later. In July 1977 this same pressure was felt when the Argentine ambassador in Venezuela, Héctor Hidalgo Solá, disappeared.

20 This characteristic was important both inside and outside Argentina. As regards the image of the Junta within Argentina, in relation to this case, Estela Schindel states that: “For the Argentine oligarchy, allied with the military in the dictatorial project, all things ‘French’ represented an emblem of culture and elegance (…). In this class imaginary, French citizens must have had an additional symbolic credit. If to this we add the fact that women, destined for a domestic and private role according to traditional values, and the status of nuns, which immediately demands respect in those ultra-Catholic circles, the French nuns who were disappeared presented a difficult equation to solve for some sectors of the civil-military alliance in power” (Schindel 2004).

21 Clarín, 17/12/1977, “Government repudiated the disappearance of two French nuns”; La Opinión, 17/12/1977, “The disappearance of the two nuns”; La Prensa, 17/12/1977, “Government rejects the kidnapping of two people”; Buenos Aires Herald, 17/12/1977, “Nihilistic subversión blamed / Govt. Repudiates nuns’ abduction”; Crónica, 17/12/1977, “The government expressed its condemnation of the disappearance of a group of people, two of them nuns”.

22 The epicentre of the repressive activity at the clandestine detention centre which functioned on the ESMA premises was in the building called the Officers Casino. In its basement torture took place but there were also – at different points during the dictatorship – offices, an infirmary and a photographic laboratory.

23 The testimonial of Ricardo Coquet, ESMA survivor, in the oral archive of Memoria Abierta includes a section on the way in which, forced by the Task Force, he had to make the Montoneros banner for this photograph. See http://www.memoriaabierta.org.ar/materiales/fch.php.

24 Lieutenant commander Jorge Eduardo Acosta was head of the Task Force and the clandestine detention centre that functioned at ESMA.

25 The dictatorial regime in power in Argentina from 1976 to 1983 called itself “Proceso de Reorganización Nacional”, which many simply shortened to “Proceso”.

26 Buenos Aires Herald is the only newspaper that allowed itself to question the truth of the letter from Montoneros quoted by the Army communiqué. Its doubts, which were not made explicit, took the form of insistently questioning why the (supposed) communiqué from Montoneros fails to mention the other people kidnapped in the group. What the Herald implies is that if Montoneros really had the nuns and they had wanted to negotiate for those hostages they would not have omitted the fact that, as well as the nuns, 10 other people were in their power. See: “New call for information on missing”, Buenos Aires Herald, 20/12/1977, p. 1. For a detailed examination of the signs allowing the deduction that the Montoneros communiqué was false, see Bousquet, 1983: 84–7.

27 It is possible to infer that the photo did not reach the editors of the Argentine newspapers. Jean-Pierre Bousquet, the France Presse correspondent who received the envelope with the fake communiqué, recalls having sent all the documentation to the police, because it was an issue that went beyond his capacity, and says that he kept a copy of the document and the photo which he sent to France, to the AFP head office. According to him, the other copy of the documentation that arrived at the French embassy was not sent to the newspapers either (interview carried out on the 21st November 2010 in Narbonne, France).

28 Libération and Le Figaro 19/12/1977; Le Monde and La Croix 20/12/1977.

29 Libération, 19/12/1977, p. 9: “Argentine / La junte intoxique / Elle attribue aux ‘Montoneros’ l'enlèvement de deux religieuses françaises” (“Argentina/ La junta intoxica / Atribuye a los ‘Montoneros’ el secuestro de dos religiosas francesas”). We must bear in mind the fact that several French newspapers such as Le Monde did not publish photos at that time.

30 Libération, 21/12/1977, p. 11: “Argentine / Un document (mal) truqué du général Videla”. The emphasis is mine.

31 As Cora Gamarnik pointed out in a personal conversation, the person who took the photo apparently faced the problem, making all the necessary elements come together in that rectangular space. The photo remains “uncomfortable” even in this sense.

32 Given the lack of television archive material and systematic information about the programmes shown on Argentine television during the ’80s and ’90s, I have not been able to access Argentine programmes that deal with this issue specifically, produced and broadcast around the same dates as those studied here.

33 The genre of docudrama was at that time fairly new to French television. Thoulouze explains the characteristics of the genre in an interview for the magazine Telerama in relation to a docudrama about the disappeared nuns (Sorg 1982).

34 The scene of the conversation between them is unbelievable if we take into account the conditions of imprisonment in ESMA. What is more, it is known that Duquet's kidnapping was due to more complex reasons than a simple address found in a diary.

35 The method of torture known as “submarine” consisted in submerging a prisoner's head in a container of dirty water.

36 I must reiterate that this was a photo taken to be circulated outside ESMA at that time, as opposed to those smuggled out of ESMA by Basterra. In this sense, as I have already pointed out, there is something that the photo wishes to show to the outside, but in doing that it reveals that secret. In other words, the photo exhibits the secret in its role as secret.

37 The kidnapped people held at ESMA were “boarded up” with “little glasses” or “a kind of dark mask without holes for the eyes, which was used to impede vision, bandage over the eyes” over which a hood was often placed (Actis et al., 2001). Valeria Manzano refers to a “blindfold position” for the “subjective breakdown that entry into the clandestine centre produces” and which was used as mediation in the contact between kidnapped people and their captors. Cf. Manzano, 2009: 162–3. The incapacity of the prisoners to “see” in Nazi concentration camps has been signalled in many analyses, among others Levi, 1987 and Felman, 1990.

38 Sontag (1977) and Berger (1980) speak of the proximity between the act of killing and that of taking a photo: to shoot with a weapon, to shoot with a camera. Here I shall not analyse this issue, but it is evident that this photo calls into question this relationship between taking photographs and killing in this specific space of the clandestine detention centre. See Bell, 2010.

39 On the role of the Argentine media during the trial of ex-commanders, see Feld, 2002.

40 The images are almost all taken from a moving car, in which Vallejos is speaking. This is due to the fact that, according to the presenter, Vallejos was “pursued in Argentina” and taken, for filming, “secretly” to Buenos Aires from his home in Rio de Janeiro. The presenter says that: “The reconstruction of the two nuns’ itinerary would take place, as such, under probation and all areas would be filmed with a hidden camera.”

41 Vallejos's testimonial about ESMA Task Force 3.3.2, which concentrates almost exclusively on the kidnapping of ambassador Hidalgo Solá, appeared in the magazine La Semana, numbers 399 and 400 (July and August 1984). This magazine does not present Vallejos as a witness to the kidnapping of the French nuns.

42 In the programmes analysed there are many references made to Alice Domon with a religious slant. References to “martyrology” are central to many of them.

43 Due to the law of “Forced Obedience”, Astiz was not pursued at that time by the Argentine judicial system. However, he was tried in absentia in France in 1990 and condemned to life imprisonment for his involvement in the kidnapping and disappearance of the nuns. Since then, the French government has called for his extradition. President Menem denied the extradition several times. Since 2005, with the reopening of cases in Argentina, trials against ESMA oppressors have continued and Astiz was condemned to life imprisonment in 2011.

44 Programme made by the priest Bernard Marliangeas, coordinated by Marie-Bernardette Noël. This is a religious programme. The “pedagogical” tone cannot be ignored, and at times it seems as if the presenter is telling a children's story.

45 For an analysis of the images used on Argentine television to represent the disappearance of people see Feld, 2009.

46 Elsewhere (Feld, 2010) I have described this system and analysed these “borders”.

47 Without having researched this campaign exhaustively, as well as the case of the nuns, we can mention the case of Thelma Jara de Cabezas, detained and disappeared at ESMA, who was forced to give an interview for Para Ti saying that she hadn't been kidnapped (Para Ti, 10/9/1979); and the case cited by the testimonial of three ESMA survivors to C.A.D.H.U. in 1979: “After a few days, I saw in the paper an article saying that José María Salgado had died in a clash with the police. We said – because we had shared with him the cries of torture and the hooded silence – that this news was false. That José María Salgado was alive in ESMA and that he should be turned over to the federal Coordination” (C.A.D.H.U. 1979: 64).

48 “These photos bear witness to the impossibility of witness: the between-two-deaths, that spectral state between a first human death and a second biological death” (García, 2011: 66).