Fifty Years on Changes and Continuities: Constructing a Social Memory of the Last Argentine Dictatorship

Abstract

Since December 10, 1983, following the restoration of democracy in Argentina, the country has implemented a diverse range of public policies aimed at addressing the systematic human rights violations that occurred during the seventies, including various memory initiatives. A truth commission was established to investigate the fate of the disappeared and subsequently published its report known as ‘Nunca Más’. The trial of the military juntas was conducted, resulting in the punishment of those responsible for the repression, and ongoing criminal trials are being pursued against those accountable for the disappearances. These initiatives were not consistently linear, laws were enacted and presidential pardons were granted which, for over 15 years, impunity. Policies promoting reconciliation, ‘pacification and forgetting’ were advocated and, even recently, the crimes of the dictatorship have been relativized by the executive power. Within this framework, the article reviews, through the examination of testimonies and documents, the struggles for memory in Argentina in the last 40 years. It proposes that the political and economic crises that the country went through were the frameworks that made possible significant changes in public policies on this past and these policies were driven by civil society organizations rather than by the State.