Abstract
On 1 August 2017 Santiago Maldonado, a young artisan and tattoo artist, vanished in the midst of a crackdown by the national Gendarmerie on a Mapuche community in the south of Argentina. Soon after, his disappearance became a theme of national anguish and debate. While seemingly quite different from forced disappearances carried out during the last civil-military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983) this case has been inscribed in the ongoing debate about the possibilities and implications of coming to terms with the past. In this paper I explore the different social, political and legal processes that followed in the wake of Maldonado’s disappearance. Through the case, I consider the power of human rights discourse in the country as well as the rise and institutionalization of an alternative narrative advanced by the right-leaning political elite. Ultimately, I show that the assumptions underlying transitional justice mechanisms, specifically, the possibility of handling the past to such an extent that it can be “put behind” and “overcome” are flawed.
Highlights
According to at least one testimony, Maldonado attempted to cross the river with the rest of the protestors but decided under the hail of bullets and stones to return to the bank (Goldschmidt)
Using the case of Santiago Maldonado’s disappearance, this article aims to interrogate the ways in which violent practices, state repression of demonstrations and forced disappearances are interpreted in Argentina many years after the fall of the dictatorial regime (1976–83)
I offer an alternative reading to a recent critique of Argentine memory politics (Robben, “From Dirty War to Genocide”) which has claimed that memorialization and the continuous narration of the past is reviving repressive practices and intensifying animosity between different groups in the country
Summary
According to at least one testimony, Maldonado attempted to cross the river with the rest of the protestors but decided under the hail of bullets and stones to return to the bank (Goldschmidt). Other misleading clues and traces included a report about a backpacker in Mendoza, a province to the north-west of Chubut, who resembled Maldonado, and a rumour based on footage from a security camera that was located in the Entre Rio province just north of Chubut, which showed a young man with similar features and build to Maldonado, placing him far away from the violent encounter in the Pu Lof community.4 These and many other stories that circulated in both official sources and on social media set the stage for Elisa Carrió, a prominent congresswoman and past presidential candidate, to state, almost two months after the disappearance, that there was ‘a 20% chance that Santiago Maldonado was in Chile’ (CELS, 9). I am at home, and I wonder: Where is Santiago Maldonado?’
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