Ramón Díaz Bessone, Argentine military, November 1976 | Magazine
Panorama no 6 November 1976 Author Unknown - Wikimedia
Commons
other hand, out of the military bodies, there was
a definitive disagreement between the victorious
story told by the military about their actions as
“victors” of the “fight against subversion” and
the sense of challenge and rejection that the civil
society attributed to the violence perpetrated by the
armed forces during the military dictatorship. For
the military, those who were definitely recognised as
Campo de Mayo - Buenos Aires, 2006 | Juan Manuel Gienini - Wikimedia
Commons
disappeared by the middle of the 1980’s in Argentina,
that is, as human persons who had been kidnapped
and tortured in clandestine detention centres, were
considered “subversives”, and what was socially
called State terrorism was defined by them as “war
against subversion”.
The 80’s was a context where the military
view was more and more adversely interpreted
and felt. The military version regarding the “war”
and the “victors” was finally eroded as a result
of the claims made by the relatives of the illegal
repression victims, the strengthening of the human
right perspective among the public, the increasing
importance within the society given to the victims’
words, the symbolic importance of the report drafted
by the National Commission on the Disappearance
of Persons (CONADEP) (1984), and the sentence of
the trial of the juntas (1985). Thus, the armed forces
had to do something that was definitely against
their interests: the demonization of their actions
and the humanization of their victims. As soon as
6
Observing Memories
ISSUE 2