Between the voices of the state and the human rights movement: Never again and the memories of the disappeared in Argentina

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Nunca Más (Never Again) report issued by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP), created by constitutional President Raúl Alfonsín in 1983 to investigate the thousands of forced disappearances perpetrated in Argentina. Nunca Más provided a new interpretation of the country’s recent violent past, which combined Alfonsín’s intention to bring the perpetrators of political violence to trial with the humanitarian narrative forged by victims of the disappeared during the dictatorship. In doing so, the Report denounced the political repression, redefined the magnitude of the disappearances, and held the Armed Forces officially responsible for the human rights violations. CONADEP’s investigation and the Nunca Más report had a significant impact worldwide. As the first truth commission and report to expose human rights violations in the context of Latin America’s democratization processes, governments and human rights organizations viewed them as models for exposing the political violence suffered by these societies in the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, ‘truth commissions’ and their reports became the main vehicles for the construction of historical truth in several countries across the continent—many of them even using the title “Never Again”—and the production of transitional justice policies.