Militancy, dictatorship and sites for representation in Rio de la Plata: Museo de la Memoria and Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada

ABSTRACT

Though they deal with a similar time period and share similar aims, Museo de la Memoria in Montevideo and what was formerly Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (the Naval Mechanics School, or ESMA) in Buenos Aires present contrasting depictions of dictatorship, social mobilization, repression, and the return to democracy in the Southern Cone. The planning for both sites took place in the 21st century, drawing on new and more progressive political proposals with a focus on the issues associated with recovering memory. A comparative analysis of the sites, then, seems timely. The differences in the two sites are related to not only the exhibits themselves but to the role of government-sponsored memories, state agencies, and other social groups. There are similarities between the exhibits at MUME and the former ESMA, both of which gloss over the violence exercised by those who fought against the regime. At the same time, some degree of political indoctrination can be seen in the curatorial representation of this conflictive period at both institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Museums
• memory
• Argentina
• Uruguay
• trauma
• representations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. On the case of Uruguay, see Caetano and Rilla (1998), Nahum (2013), Demasi (2004), Schelotto (2015) and Yaffé (2010). On the case of Argentina, see Vezzetti (2002), Quiroga & Tcach (2006), Kaufmann (2003), Pucciareli (2004), Franco (2012, 2018), and Feitlowitz (2011).

2. The lost decade refers to the years between 1982 and 1996, a period characterised by an enormous foreign debt, rampant exchange rates, and volatile inflation (Lustig,1995).

3. The Supervisory Department of the Peace Commission, formed after democracy was restored in 1985, continued into Frente Amplia’s first administration (2005–2010). During this period, an institutional framework took shape for investigations into the detained-disappeared. An agreement was signed with Universidad de la República to form a forensic anthropology/archaeology team and a historical research team. The coordinators of these two teams were incorporated to the Supervisory Department in 2007 along with a representative of relatives of the disappeared. In 2013, under President Mujica, the department’s name was changed to Human Rights for the Recent Past (Marín Suárez and Cordo 2015).

4. The Final Stop Act (1986) and the Due Obedience Act (1987).

5. Militancia is the term used in Spanish to refer to intense political activism and engagement in members of social groups, especially the progressive left, in relation to activism and deep social transformation actions – among them, in some cases, taking up arms for the cause. In English-language translations about the detained-disappeared, militantes (militants) is often translated as ‘activists’, a linguistic underplaying of the confrontational and sometimes violent methods sometimes considered the only way to address widespread social inequality.

6. Soledad was later murdered in the north of Brazil while fighting against yet another Latin American dictatorship (Martínez, 2017).

7. See the characteristics of the building from 1976–1984 in the 3-D recreation available on Huella Digital: www.centrosclandestinos.com.ar/. Sitio Ex Esma,2018.

8. Each station has a movable glass panel with texts. According to the curators, these texts provide ‘(…) the most important information about the site, excerpts from first-person testimonies of survivors, documentations and reproductions of objects belonging to the detained-disappeared (the originals are stored as court evidence or part of family/personal archives)’..

9. The ‘theory of the two demons’ emerged in the prologue to the Nunca Más report (1986, Nunca Más 2006, Nunca Más, 2016) by the National Commission on Disappeared Persons (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas, or CONADEP). The prologue draws parallels between two types of violence in 1970s Argentina, that of the extreme left and the extreme right.

10. On this tendency to depoliticise the past, see https://ctxt.es/es/20221101/Firmas/41220/cine-argentina-1985-marisa-gonzalez-de-oleaga-memoria-crimenes-de-lesa-humanidad.htm.

11. On Lugar de la Memoria, la Tolerancia y la Inclusión Social (museum) in Peru, see museos.cultura.pe/museos/lugar-de-la-memoria-la-tolerancia-y-la-inclusi%C3%B3n-social-0. On Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (museum) in Chile, see https://web.museodelamemoria.cl/.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Territorios de la Memoria. Otras culturas, otros espacios en Iberoamerica, Siglos XX y XXI”. Ministerio de economía y competitividad [PID2020-113492RB-I00]; Ministerio de Universidades [PID2020-113492RB-I00].

Notes on contributors

Marisa González de Oleaga

Marisa Gonzalez de Oleaga professor of Social History and Political Thinking at the National Distance University in Madrid. Principal researcher in several research projects on colonial, national and ethnic museusm and memory sites in Latin America. Invited professor in national and international universities from Latin America and Europe. Among her publications: The Double Game of Hispanidad: Argentina and Spain during Second World War, Madrid, UNED, 2001; The Red Thread: Words and Deeds of Utopia in Latin America, Buenos Aires, Paidos, 2009; In the First Person. Testimonies from Utopia, Barcelona, Gedisa/NED, 2013; Transterradas. Infants an Teens Exile as a Place of Memory, Buenos Aires, Tren en Movimiento, 2019; Itineraries. Historiography and Postmodernity, Madrid, Postmetropoli, 2019.

María Silvia Di Liscia

Maria Silvia Di Liscia PhD in History from the Ortega y Gasset University Institute (U. Complutense, Madrid, 2000). Regular Associate Professor at the National University of La Pampa. Director of the Institute of Socio-Historical Studies. Author of Knowledge, Therapies and Medical Practices in Argentina, 1750-1910, Madrid, CSIC, 2010; co-editor with G. N. Salto Of Hygiene, Education and Discourse in Argentina, 1870-1940, Santa Rosa, EdUNLPam, 2004; with E. Bohoslavsky, From Institutions and Forms of Social Control in Latin America, 1840-1940. A Review, Buenos Aires, UNGS-Prometeo, 2005; with A.M Lasalle y A. Lluch, West of Paradise. The Transformation of Natural, Economic and Social Space in Central La Pampa, Santa Rosa, EdUNLPam/Miño Davila, 2008, in addition to numerous articles and book chapters refering to the history of health and disease published in Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Spain, the United States and Brazil.

María Del Carmen Ricchiardo

Maria del Carmen Ricciardo Research Asistant, she lives on an island in the Parana Delta and accompanies the team on their local, national and international trips in search of traces and memories Afro-descendants, indigeneous people and European inmigrants settled on the islands.