Heavier things

There's a lot I want to say about my first 5 days here. In such a short amount of time, I feel that I've been inundated with a million thoughts, experiences, questions a minute. It's not overwhelming in the sense of being stressful or unpleasant, but it's a lot to process and a lot to think about. I'm going to try to sort out some of my first impressions of the country here, but by no means are any of these thoughts fully-formed opinions; on the contrary, I have no doubt that my understanding of this incredible country will grow and expand and change every day, every week that I'm here.

Perhaps because I am really only meeting people in this specific circle of politically active, educated people, many of whom work at the Comisión or are family members of employees, I feel like Argentine life is extremely informed by the recent past and by recent and current politics, and it comes up all the time in conversation. One of the most puzzling/interesting/complex/upsetting topics that keep coming up:

Los desaparecidos: Although I'm having a great time here, every day at the Comisión I'm learning about the last military dictatorship and the human rights atrocities that were committed. We discuss it in class, in meetings at the Comi, over coffee after class...

For those who don't know, from 1976 through 1983 Argentina was ruled by a brutally repressive right-wing, anti-communist military regime. Argentines refer to this as "the last (most recent) military dictatorship," a distinction that is needed because in the 20th century, Argentina saw something like 5 or 6 military coups, resulting in periods of unstable democracy alternating with periods of military rule. During the last dictatorship, the regime systematically targeted leftist activists, journalists, intellectuals, college students, unionists, workers, teachers... basically anyone who dared voice an opinion against the regime. They justified their actions as a war against communist/Peronist/leftist terrorist groups-- which did really exist, but in relatively small numbers. However the regime used this excuse to implement a far-reaching system of terror, including clandestine prisons/torture centers and targeted any "subversive" -- including those whose thoughts, opinions, actions were viewed as subversive. All told, the military "disappeared" about 30,000 people: meaning they kidnapped and detained them in secret prisons, tortured them, and eventually killed them.

For years, impunity laws protected the torturers, military leaders, and everyone who was complicit in these human rights atrocities. Finally, in the last ten years, the perpetrators are being systematically tried. The Comisión that I'm always talking about is a governmental human rights organization that has several functions. One of them is to help provide evidence in the trials that are still going on. Another is to preserve memories of what happened and try to foster dialogue and understanding, particularly among young students.

To that end, they have started a project in which thousands of high school students embark on a research project that has to do with how the dictatorship impacted their own community in some way or another. They work for a year and finally produce a book, film, play, or something else that reflects their findings. We watched one of these, called "N.N." -- "No nombre" / No name. The documentary was about the cemetery workers and firefighters in their community who had the task of collecting bodies found in the river and burying them without names and off the records. The regime employed a practice of "death flights": flying plane-loads of drugged prisoners over the ocean or the river and dropping them alive into the water below.

The documentary was unbelievably powerful and subtly examined the issues of guilt/complicity that are so complicated...

those workers who buried those bodies clandestinely without saying anything played somehow into the machine of terror. A small role, perhaps, but a role nonetheless. So you could argue that they were in some way complicit, guilty.... but yet, on an individual level, what could they have done? Risked their own lives for people who were already dead? What responsibility do we have exactly do we have to speak out, to protest?

This is something that almost makes me sick to think about. There's just no satisfactory answer. This is how I see it: we could probably agree that the person who was dumping living people out of a plane bears a personal responsibility for their actions, is personally guilty. Same for whoever ordered them to do so. But then along down the line are the ordinary volunteer firefighters who also obeyed orders... but do they also bear guilt? If not, then where is the line drawn? What about the police officers who organized the burials and kept the victims' identities hushed up? When is there a collective guilt that society shares, and when does each person bear responsibility for what they did or didn't do?

Heavy, heavy questions, no?