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1.Operativo Independencia to dismantle the ERP. Tucumán, Argentina
(1975) | Public domain
2. Final session of the Trial of the Juntas, 1985. Video available on www.
euorpeanmemories.en/magazine
3. Ernesto Sábato delivers to President Raúl Alfonsin the report on the
Disappeared, known as ‘Nunca mas’. AGN_DDF / Inv: 346314. September
20, 1984 | Archivo General de la Nación
and with the message of the human right “saviours of the fatherland” and their enemies: the
institutions with which they compete for the sense “subversives”. At that time, the illegal repression
and truth about the recent past. At the same time, was publicly considered by the military through a
these memories swing between the demands to the tone of triumphalism and denial. In other words,
state to be acknowledged and the search of support the denied the clandestine and systematic nature
and legitimacy in a civil society that, depending of the disappearance of persons and the very
on the political and memorial situation, tends to existence of the disappeared, while they reinforced
reproduce the legacy of the last military dictatorship, an interpretation in terms of war and under the
while mainly rejecting and questioning it. prerogatives of the victors.
During the 1980s, in the early years after the
Within the military bodies, the military continued
dictatorship, the new army authorities refused to to identify the figure of the combatant of the “fight
reposition their place within the democratic life against subversion” with the ideal of the soldier
by questioning the legacy of the recent past and, to be followed in the speeches given by the senior
in particular, the fact that they had “defeated the officers to the junior cadres at military events. The
subversion”. On the contrary, far from taking “combatants” of the “fight against subversion” and
distance from the past, the present of the institution also their majors - who were held accountable in
was a result from it. The armed forces clung to the trial of the juntas (1985) during that time - were
notions such as “war”, “subversion” and “anti- honoured and constituted the proper actor proposed
subversive war”, since they were categories of as a model for the assertion of the vocation and
practice referred to the experience, training and the soldier’s agenda for the new generations of
ideology of a generation of officers who had been officers (Guber: 2007). The war narratives referring
involved in the “fight against subversion”. In turn, to the “fight against subversion” were a source of
they worked as political and moral categories that exemplary events worthy of being transmitted and
made a radical difference between them as the imitated between generations of soldiers. On the
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