Cover page of the first issue of
the magazine B1 “Vitamin for
the memory of the war in the
‘70s”, 2006 | V. Salvi
Roberto Viola | Revista Panorama nro 4 septiembre 1976. Wikimedia
Commons
The book describes how the payroll of the
executed by armed organizations. Placing the focus
officers and their relatives murdered by the armed on the kidnapped military is not a coincidence and
forces was published and it begun with the murder responds, on the one hand, to the need to compete
of a 4 years old girl, Guillermina Cabrera, an army with the figure of the “detainee-disappeared” and,
captain’s daughter, which took place in March on the other hand, to the intention of making the
1960. The fact that a little girl is the protagonist image of the armed forces officers sacred. Major
of the kidnapping and assassination of General Julio Argentino del Valle Larrabure and Lieutenant
Pedro Eugenio Aramburu in 1970 carried out by Colonel Jorge Ibarzábal who were killed after
the Montoneros organization, which had always months of kidnapping, allow us to build a figure
occupied the leading position in the memory of the of “ideal victim of terrorism”. These officers were
military, proves that the rewriting of the military remembered as martyrs who “died defending their
memory around the figure of the victim seeks to fatherland” and have also replaced the generals of
conform to the socially accepted and recognized the National Reorganisation Process as memorable
stereotype of the innocent victim. Aramburu’s career soldiers such as Jorge Videla, Roberto Viola, Leopoldo
is too contradictory; on the one hand, it is strongly Galtieri or Luciano Menéndez, who were a symbolic
affected by the disputes between Peronists and anti- obstacle to the construction of the army as a
Peronists; and on the other hand, it is closely linked victim of the “subversive terrorist” violence. The
to the army’s coup d’etat and anti-democratic image crystallisation of the military memory in the figure
to still be considered the first and foremost “victim of the victims places the focus on certain features
of terrorism”. In turn, Aramburu represented of the officers while keeping silent other features
a problematic figure in the construction of the with the aim to strengthen the idea that the military
respectable and virtuous image of the army officers do not kill to “save the fatherland - but die for it”
who “died for the fatherland and fighting against (Portelli, 2003).
subversion”.
However, which are the criteria defining the
The consequences of this shift towards the
figure of military victims are many and conflicting,
quality of “victim of terrorism”? Although, both especially since the reactivation, in 2006, of the
the civilians and the military who were killed by trials for crimes against humanity. With this new
terrorist attacks, attacks on the army barracks as discourse, the Army intended to get out of the
well as in confrontations, were considered victims, closed space involved by the corporate memory to
the paradigmatic figure of the “terrorist victim” is go into the public arena with a realistic discourse
the officer murdered after months of kidnapping and compete for the meanings of the past that were
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