Awhile ago, I received an email from Eileen Reardon, the director of Finding Mabel, a feature-length documentary film centered on Argentina's so-called "Dirty War." The film's synopsis follows:
Finding Mabel is
a gripping documentary that follows a young woman's journey to
Argentina, to piece together the enigmatic disappearance of the woman
she was named after, one of the 30,000 people whodisappeared during Argentina's last military dictatorship. Part scavenger hunt, part self-discovery, Finding Mabel intelligently weaves Argentina's recent dark past with today's polarizing struggle for justice.
The CCCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona) is currently showing the work of Gervasio Sánchez, a Spanish photojournalist that has spent a large part of his career documenting the "disappeared":
The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, La Casa Encendida de Obra Social Caja Madrid and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León simultaneously present the exhibition “The Disappeared”, curated by photojournalist Sandra Balsells. This photographic show by photojournalist Gervasio Sánchez addresses the theme of forced disappearance in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iraq, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Spain between 1998 and 2010.
“The Disappeared” represents a forceful document against forgetting and aims to salvage the suppressed memory of people disappeared during various wars and processes of repression. The presentation of the exhibition forms part of a major cultural action which, for the first time on the Spanish expository scene, involves the simultaneous exhibition in three cities (León, Barcelona and Madrid) of a macro photographic project centring on a single theme, by the same author.
Each centre will show a broad but completely different selection of photographs, making it a truly new expository proposal (MUSAC: 79 photographs and installation of portraits, "Cruelty and Pain", the joint work of Gervasio Sánchez and Ricardo Calero; La Casa Encendida: 73 photographs and 4 murals with 40 portraits; CCCB: 103 photographs and 4 murals with 40 portraits). The three exhibitions share the same narrative structure and thematic blocks, and all three end with a significant epilogue devoted to Spain, dealing with the present-day process of search for and exhumation of people who disappeared during the Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship.
In addition to photographic material, the exhibition includes two audiovisual recordings explaining the testimonies of the families of disappeared people and reproducing the ambient sound of detention centres and burial places.
In the framework of the exhibition, the three centres will also be organizing conferences to reflect on and debate the phenomenon of forced disappearance.
More information here (English) and at the photographer's personal blog (Spanish). Sánchez's blog, Los desastres de la guerra, which takes its name after the famous Goya grabado, contains detailed descriptions of some of the photographs displayed in the exhibit.
In this video, Sánchez describes his work on the "disappeared," the importance of documenting absence and the effects of forced disappearance on the victim's family members.He also discusses the world of (photo)journalism today.
We speak with Manuel Gonçalves, a "nieto recuperado," or a "recovered grandchild," in Argentina. He is one of the thousands of children born to parents who were disappeared during the dictatorship. These children were born in captivity, then kidnapped by the military and given away to government supporters or military families. Some of them have found their way back to their families. Manuel Gonçalves, son of Gaston Gonçalves, who was killed during the dictatorship. He was kidnapped as a newborn baby. His father’s alleged killer is now on trial.
In 2000, I decided to go to Chile during my spring break. I made the decision as I always made travel decisions back then -- hmnnn, I think I'll go abroad for awhile. It wasn't a completely random choice. Chile had been on my mind for almost 10 years by then. In high school, my mother had given me my first Neruda book, a bilingual edition with translations by W.S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, Nathaniel Tarn and Anthony Kerrigan (for the record, of the four translators, I tend to prefer Merwin and Reid. But why read Neruda in translation if you don't have to?). I absolutely devoured this book, especially the love poems. But later I discovered simple things Neruda (the odes), Spanish Civil War Neruda (Spain in the Heart), the Neruda I read with friends. I found out about Isla Negra, and I wanted to see it. I decided to go to Chile to visit Neruda's three homes in Santiago, Valparaíso (where my college friend Luis lives) and Isla Negra. Because my friend is a geologist, and was going to be doing field work in the Punta Arenas area, I also made plans to go there.
Before I went to Chile, I had only visited Mexico and Spain. Being in Chile was a little like going to California when you have only been to the east coast (or vice-versa). Stepping off the plane, there is a distinct sense that you are. . . elsewhere. Part of it has to do with the change in seasons, but it's also just the "vibe" of the country. I only saw a fraction of the country, but it made a big impression on me to go from Santiago to Viña del Mar to Valparaíso to Isla Negra to Punta Arenas. The difference in temperatures, pace, amount of people and general landscape was pretty significant.
My visit was incredible. I left the end of winter and entered the end of summer. People swarmed the beach at Viña del Mar. My friend and I started in Valparaíso, with its inclines and sea-worn buildings. Now that I've been in San Francisco, I can say Valparaíso reminds me a bit of being there. Or the other way around. I love being near "the sea" and having that smell in the air. I would love to wake with a view of water -- who wouldn't? In Neruda's house, one of his rooms -- I can't recall which at the moment -- looked right out onto the water. No one was allowed to photograph anything inside the house, but one could be photographed with the view of the sea in the background. I tried to imagine Neruda writing with that backdrop, drinking wine with friends, reading. I tried to imagine the house totally ransacked, his rows of books in ruins on the floor, after the '73 coup, just days before his death.
Recently, like many other people, I've had Chile on my mind for reasons other than Neruda. The earthquake, the bicentennial, the ongoing news about the miners, and the fact that I haven't stopped listening to this CD for the last month, have all put Chile (phonetically, she lay, as my friend would say) back in my everyday thoughts.
Driving home from work last week, I was listening to a report on the rescue of the miners. Isabel Allende was talking. Shortly after Chile's independence day (September 18), she had visited the mine site and now she was reflecting on this emotional moment for the country as a whole. She never mentioned a word about Chile's military dictatorship, never said a thing about the disappeared, but in my own mind, I could not help associating these "disappeared" miners, now being "appeared" and released from the earth, with those who were disappeared and never returned. Strangely, the rescue gave Chile back its own sons in a way that has never been possible for those who vanished under Pinochet. The fact that Isabel Allende - whose father was Socialist Salvador Allende's first cousin -- was standing beside President Sebastián Piñera, a right-wing millionaire, was also quite a symbolic moment, I thought. Perhaps it doesn't mean anything, but the image of the two together seemed to bring the past to a scene that had been concentrating very much on the present, on the extremely delicate, day-to-day, minute-by-minute operations of bringing the miners to the earth's surface.
Isabel Allende beside President Sebastián Piñera (photo from here)
Lo and behold, just one day after I heard the interview with Isabel Allende, I read this article in the NYT, which reflects on the site of the mine rescue as a site of memory inextricably linked to the crimes of the Pinochet dictatorship: "In the predawn hours of Oct. 17, 1973 — 37 years before the mine rescue, almost to the day — military personnel murdered 16 men near here, including some who worked for Chile’s state mining company." These men, the article goes on to say, were 16 of 70 that the "Caravan of Death" murdered that month in Chile. One of the victim's sisters said that "The experience with the 33 miners made us relive every moment. . . Finding them alive and then rescuing them was like finding my brother again.”
The mine rescue, and the connection of the site with a previous traumatic history, illustrate the fact that sites of memory do not just remain stable representatives of the same story, but evolve over time, depending on historical and political circumstances. Although it is quite different, I am reminded of the Valle de los Caídos site in Spain, currently back in the news again as the Spanish government debates whether or not to make it into a "center for memory."
The most striking symbol of Valle de los Caídos is the gigantic cross that marks its location. The site is visited largely by tourists, but also used to be where the ultra right gathered every November 20 (the anniversary of Franco's death), until the 2007 Law of Historical Memory made that illegal. Many people don't realize that Valle was built by slave labor under Franco in the 50s. Many also don't know that, buried on the altar (!) of the church inside are Franco himself and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Spanish fascist party, Falange. In addition to Franco, many of the Civil War dead are also buried in the walls of what some have called Spain's largest "mass grave." What to do with this enormous structure, which still houses a Benedictine monastery, remains unclear. However, one thing is certain -- the site's identity has undergone a series of revisions over the past several years. In my view, these revisions are necessary, and transforming the site into a Center for Memory would give Spain what is still lacks almost 35 years since Franco's death.
"Revising" a site of memory like the area of the mine rescue or the Valle de los Caídos site should not mean eclipsing its past history. Ideally -- and it sounds cliché -- we could use the past struggles there to inform the present use of the site. In 1973, miners were murdered where in 2010, they were rescued. What does this mean? Is it just a coincidence? Or can the rescue ultimately allow healing of other kinds?
I'll be writing a bit more about Chile here soon. I have a post planned about the rapper Ana Tijoux. For now, I'll just say that if you haven't been to this magnificent country, I highly recommend it. One day, I hope to return for a longer visit. In some ways, I know only an "imagined Chile" informed by Neruda and the folksinger Víctor Jara. What is the everyday Chile? It still seems a bit mysterious to me. So much is informed by what lies below ground -- fault lines, the disappeared, miners descending to the earth's pit. What is it to live with the knowledge of unstable tierra, the possibility of tremors and aftershocks? Surely, this awareness comes with its own kind of memory.
One of the blogs I read regularly is Memoriando, a documentary film blog based in Colombia. The blogger, who goes only by "Vica," has an unbelievable ability to track down documentaries -- mostly contemporary, but not always -- from all over the world. I am addicted to reading Memoriando, because I always discover films I've never heard of. Today's post is on an Uruguayan documentary, "Las manos en la tierra" ("Hands in the Earth"), directed by Virginia Martínez.
Martínez's documentary focuses on the disappeared of Uruguay's military dictatorship (1973-85), and, in the words of the synopsis on the official website, sees itself as "an arqueological thriller" that "marks a before and after in the history of the country." I cannot think of any other documentary on the case of the Uruguay, which tends to get overlooked when we speak of the Southern Cone dictatorships of the 70s and 80s.
Reading about this film reminds me of a conversation I once had with an Uruguayan friend who told me, almost as if she were embarrassed, "I mean, what happened in Uruguay is nothing like Chile or Argentina, but it was still bad."
The opening of a new Museum of Memory for victims of the Pinochet regime and the surprising election of a right-wing president have put Chile at the top of the "Americas" headlines in the NYT. The following article chronicles the justice-seeker Ana González, and talks about a recent TV DNA campaign to help families locate the remains of their loved ones who "disappeared" during the dirty war. This quote, from the end of the article, is worth highlighting: "'I don’t want my great-grandchildren to inherit the placard and the picture hanging on their chest,' she said, her eyes welling up for a moment. But, she said, 'How can they ask us to forget and turn the page, when the consequences for entire families and generations have been so terrible?'"
For those interested in seeing the videoclip to which the article makes reference, I've posted it below (it is in Spanish, but I've translated to English the words that appear on the screen):
"If you are the family member of a person who disappeared during the military dictatorship, a simple blood sample can help identify the remains located thus far and those yet to be identified. National campaign. Blood samples taken free of charge. Results confidential."
ON the morning of April 30, 1976, Ana González and her husband, a Communist Party member named Manuel Recabarren, were in a rush to get out of the house.
It was the third year of the murderous Chilean dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Two of the couple’s sons, Luis Emilio and Manuel Guillermo, along with Luis Emilio’s pregnant wife, Nalvia, had failed to return from work the evening before. Ominously, their 2 ½-year-old son had shown up later that night crying on a neighbor’s lawn.
Mrs. González was eager to get to her job at the water company to ask her manager for an advance on her pay and temporary leave, so she could look for her children. But she volunteered to stay behind to look after another grandson while her husband searched.
“You go ahead, and I’ll come later with the child,” she said.
She never again saw her husband, or her sons and daughter-in-law, nor did she hear a word about their fates. All four are believed to have been “disappeared” by the Pinochet regime, which came to power in a bloody 1973 coup that claimed the life of Chile’s Socialist president, Salvador Allende.
In the 34 years that followed, Mrs. González transformed her outrage and grief into a tireless advocacy for answers about the estimated 3,000 people who were killed or disappeared under the Pinochet dictatorship from 1973 to 1990.
She participated in hunger strikes and sit-ins during the Pinochet years, pushed judges to investigate suspected atrocities and traveled to the United States seeking to pressure Chile’s military government to release information about the missing.
Her broad face and sad eyes — and the way photographs of her loved ones often hung from her neck — became emblematic of Chile’s long struggle to unearth the truth. Beyond her courage, Mrs. González’s soothing voice, cutting sense of humor and unrelenting optimism helped break through the indifference of the many Chileans who were unaffected by the years of violence, human rights leaders said.
“They never thought that a woman, a housewife who didn’t know anything, not even where the courts were located, would take up the battle cry,” said Mrs. González, now 84, in an interview in the same modest home on Santiago’s outskirts where she lived with her husband and children. Faded pictures of her missing family members still hang in the dining room.
Last year, her grandmotherly image landed on posters and in television advertisements as part of a government campaign to link DNA samples from family members with the scattered remains of presumed victims of the regime’s torture centers.
In the posters and TV ads, Mrs. González, her gray hair pulled back into her signature bun, is reaching out with a red flower as men and women from younger generations stand behind her.
“Today, there are many bones that need to be identified so that one day families can mourn their losses,” Mrs. González said.
The new campaign was part of an effort by the departing president, Michelle Bachelet, herself a torture victim of the military regime, to revamp a DNA-matching program that previously had misidentified remains.
The campaign Mrs. González participated in — “You live in us, we carry you in our blood” — urged Chileans who lost loved ones during the regime to submit DNA samples that experts could then match with unidentified remains. So far, only six victims have been identified, but the government expects to announce more matches soon, officials say.
MRS. GONZÁLEZ was born in a small town in the far north of Chile. Her mother, who had been widowed with six children, married a railroad worker, and Mrs. González was one of their two children.
When she was 11 years old she took a trip to Santiago and ended up staying, living with an aunt and uncle in their house with a dirt floor and an outhouse.
Her uncle regularly bought El Siglo, a Communist Party newspaper, and Mrs. González would try to read it. At school, a classmate talked about Spain under the dictator Franco and the Spanish resistance. “I began to hate Franco,” Mrs. González said.
Her parents later moved to Valparaíso, outside Santiago, and Mrs. González joined them for a time, later returning to Santiago as a teenager. Then one day when she was 16, a young man invited her to a meeting of the Young Communists. “I discovered a new world at that meeting,” she said. “I loved it.”
It was among the Young Communists that she met the love of her life, Manuel Recabarren.
They were married in 1944. Over the years they had six children, and remained active in the Communist Party.
After Mr. Allende was elected in 1970, Mr. Recabarren headed a local Committee of Provisions and Prices, which distributed food. After the coup in 1973, the military disbanded the committees, which had been headed nationally by Alberto Bachelet, the future president’s father. As a former committee head, however, Mr. Recabarren was a marked man. So, too, were the three relatives who were snatched, all of whom were Communist Party members.
The day after her husband disappeared, Mrs. González found an anonymous note at her home that left little doubt that he had been seized by the regime.
“Go to the Vicaría de la Solidaridad,” the note read, referring to a human rights organization set up by the Roman Catholic Church. It was where everyone went for help once their loved ones vanished. Later, survivors of the Villa Grimaldi torture center said they had last seen her husband there in August 1976.
To this day Mrs. González feels blessed but sad to consider what might have been. “If the child and I had left with my husband that day, I also would have been disappeared,” she said, dragging deeply on a cigarette.
Instead, Mrs. González began to organize with other families of the disappeared, holding demonstrations that the Pinochet security forces would break up.
But Mrs. González was never intimidated. She continued to organize protests, including hunger strikes at churches, embassies and the offices of the Red Cross and the United Nations.
“SHE was on the front lines, showing tremendous courage,” said José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch. “Without her courage, more people probably would have been disappeared, and the national attention to this would have been close to zero.”
Mr. Vivanco said that Mrs. González symbolized something else. “She represents the voice of somebody with no hatred,” he said. “She talks about her case and human rights in Chile in a calm, serene way. She has been able to speak to many Chileans who never suffered in the dictatorship or who publicly supported the repression.”
Mrs. González remains active in human rights affairs and said she was working on a book about her life. She ran the large red beads of her necklace through her hands as she thought back on her campaign for the missing.
“I don’t want my great-grandchildren to inherit the placard and the picture hanging on their chest,” she said, her eyes welling up for a moment.
But, she said, “How can they ask us to forget and turn the page, when the consequences for entire families and generations have been so terrible?”
Pascale Bonnefoy contributed reporting from Santiago.
