Between marginalization and decentralization of memory: Peripheral palimpsests in post-dictatorship Buenos Aires and Montevideo

Cara Levey

Abstract

Th irty years after the Argentine and Uruguayan dictatorships ended, the ways in which the past is addressed remains contentious. In 2010, controversy erupted over the cover up of the Memorial de los Detenidos Desaparecidos during an advertising shoot for Sprite in Montevideo. In neighbouring Buenos Aires, work on the Monumento a las Víctimas del Terrorismo de Estado was stalled in 2001 over lack of funding and again in 2008 over salary disputes. Th is article explores these ‘intentional’ monuments as examples of the palimpsest. First, in spite of their intended purpose, these memorials are subject to diff erent readings treatment and threats over time. Second, the urban settings of such memorials may be viewed as palimpsests, because the choice of location facilitates diff erent readings of the memorials themselves. Analysis of their palimpsestic features reveals the myriad ways in which the past is addressed, elucidating site-specifi c and general concerns about post-dictatorship memory-making.Keywords: Argentina, cities, memorials, memory studies, post-dictatorship, Uruguay

Th ere is nothing in the world as invisible as a monument.Robert Musil (quoted in Young 1993: 13)

Th ree decades after the end of dictatorial rule in Argentina (1976–1983) and Uruguay (1973–1985),1 the ways in which the past is addressed remain the subject of considerable contestation. In 2010, during the fi lming of an advertisement for the soft drink Sprite, the Memorial de los Detenidos Desaparecidos [Memorial to Disappeared Detainees], hereafter the Memorial, was covered up by the production company, temporarily ‘disappearing’ the names inscribed on its glass walls. In neighbouring Argentina, work on the Monumento a las Victimas del Terrorismo de Estado [Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism], hereafter the Monumento, housed at the Parque de la Memoria [Memory Park], stalled in 2001 over funding issues when Argentina was plunged into one of the worst economic and social crises in its history and in 2008, the park was closed as the guides went on strike over lack of pay in a dispute with the local government (this issue came to the fore again in January 2014, when park personnel were allegedly denied an annual pay increment). I consider these episodes and the surrounding debates as ‘irruptions of memory’2 (Wilde 1999), which throw into relief the threats to memorialization over time, long after the construction of a memorial or monument. Indeed, in Argentina, park staff

Journal of Romance Studies Volume 14 Number 3, Winter 2014: 67–85doi:10.3167/jrs.2014.140306 ISSN 1473–3536 (Print), ISSN 1752–2331 (Online)

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launched a campaign to denounce the city government’s action, claiming that the Buenos Aires government was attempting to empty the park of its ‘content’ and meaning,3 whilst in Uruguay, the Madres y Familiares de Uruguayos Detenidos-Desaparecidos [Mothers and Relatives of Detained-Disappeared Uruguayans], an organization of relatives of disappeared Uruguayans, wrote to Montevideo’s mayor, criticizing the local government for failing to protect and maintain the Memorial and adding that it ‘refl eja parte de la tragedia vivida de nuestro país por el Terrorismo de Estado’ [refl ects part of the tragedy of state terrorism which our country experienced]. In doing so, Madres y Familiares asserted that memorials are far from invisible. However, the suggestion that meaning and memory of the past is implicit or is simplifi ed in both memorials can be contested.

With this in mind, this article examines both the Buenos Aires Monumento and Uruguayan Memorial as emblematic of the ‘intentional’ monument – that is ‘a human creation, erected for a specifi c purpose of keeping single human deeds or events alive in the minds of future generations’ (Riegl 1982: 21). In contrast to the ‘return’ to sites of violence such as former secret detention centres and prisons or the places associated with an individual’s abduction and disappearance, I examine new memorials constructed in locations with less overt relationships to dictatorship-era repression. Th is article argues that the urban settings where such memorials are constructed, as well as the memorials themselves, can be viewed as palimpsests, because of the ways in which they are attributed diff erent meanings and signifi cance vis-à-vis the past and present, thus facilitating diff erent readings of and interactions with the memorials themselves.

Following a brief overview of the Monumento and Memorial’s emergence within the post-dictatorship context,4 I consider the contrasting memorials as palimpsests, focusing on their textuality, notably the signifi cance of inscribing the names of the dictatorships’ victims in stone/glass.5 I then examine their locations on the fringes of the capital cities, which can be viewed as establishing a link between past and present and local and national memories. Rather than promote a reductionist reading of sites of memory, a comparative analysis of their palimpsestic features reveals their multi-layered nature, as well as the myriad ways in which the past is addressed, elucidating both site-specifi c and more general concerns about public memorialization in the aftermath of authoritarian rule.

Local memory, national impunityTh e Buenos Aires Monumento and Montevidean Memorial share the accolade of being each country’s fi rst offi cial and national memorial to the victims of state terrorism of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. As Jelin and Kaufman posit, such commemorations are political in two senses: ‘fi rst, because their installation is almost always the result of political confl icts and, second, because their existence is a physical reminder of a confl ictual past’ (Jelin and Kaufman 2000: 96). Indeed, in both countries, the past was not only the subject of dissensus and debate, but the commemorative projects emerged ‘from below’ in the face of top-down impunity for dictatorship-era crimes.

Both projects have their origins in the latter half of the 1990s, a very diff erent context to the fi rst part of the post-dictatorship periods (1980s–1994). In the early

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1980s, Argentina had confronted past crimes through the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) and the 1985 trial of nine military leaders for homicides and torture, among other crimes, resulting in sentences of various lengths for fi ve members of the ruling military junta. Growing military unrest against human rights trials during the government of President Raúl Alfonsín (1983–1989) resulted in the Full Stop law of December 1986 and the Due Obedience law of June 1987 that ended the possibility of criminal prosecution for the most part. Presidential pardons for those convicted were issued by Carlos Menem in 1989 and 1990. Th e amnesty laws and pardons posed a real setback to the human rights community, which would gradually lose the ‘central political position’ it had enjoyed during the early post-dictatorship period (Jelin 1998: 38) although not for long.

In neighbouring Uruguay, in contrast, there were no landmark trials and sentences and no offi cial truth-seeking, in spite of the increasing number of denunciations of state repression lodged with Uruguayan courts following the 1985 return to democracy. In this context, the armed forces became increasingly restless, pressuring the Sanguinetti administration to resolve the issue of prosecutions (Lessa and Levey 2012: 155). Following Congress’s rejection of a series of bills limiting prosecution, Law N° 15,848 Derogating the Punitive Capacity of the State (known as the Caducidad Law) was passed in December 1986.6 Th e law, upheld by societal referendum in 1989 and again in 2009, protected members of the police and armed forces from prosecution for violations committed prior to March 1985, although it did not apply to civilian fi gures of the dictatorship. Uruguay embarked on the path of ‘no truth, no justice’ (Burt, Fried and Lessa 2013: 2). As in Argentina, the issue of past violations retreated from the government agenda and public sphere for a number of years, when debate was eff ectively limited to the human rights organizations and those directly aff ected (Roniger 2011: 704).

However, in the mid-1990s, the past was to return to the foreground once again in both countries. In Argentina, as the twentieth anniversary of the coup approached, in 1995, the armed forces’ pact of silence was broken when former navy colonel Adolfo Scilingo admitted to participating in the widely-suspected death fl ights, in which prisoners were drugged and thrown from planes into the Río de la Plata. Th is was followed by Chief of Staff of the Army General Martín Balza’s public acknowledgement of the armed forces’ role in repression. Similarly, in neighbouring Uruguay, ‘the offi cial policy of silence and impunity became increasingly untenable’ (Lessa and Levey 2012: 161). Events in Uruguay were undoubtedly aff ected by those in Argentina, unsurprising given that the majority of disappearances of Uruguayans were committed in Argentina. In April 1996, Rafael Michelini, the son of Uruguayan senator Zelmar Michelini (murdered in Buenos Aires along with fellow politician Héctor Gutiérrez), called the fi rst March of Silence for May 20 – the date when the senators’ bodies had been discovered in 1976 – calling on citizens to demand information about the past. In early May 1996, with the march approaching, a former Uruguayan military offi cer, Jorge Tróccoli, admitted that the Uruguayan armed forces had tortured people (Roniger 2011: 706). Although in both Argentina and Uruguay legal impunity encapsulated in amnesty laws remained fi rmly in place and

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the national governments remained opposed to addressing the past, from the mid-1990s onwards, confessions, commemorative activities and the renewed calls for justice ensured that questions surrounding the past remained persistent. Within this context, societal actors would fi nd opportunities and willing allies amongst local leadership for the creation and construction of national memorials located in the nations’ capital cities.

Following smaller scale and local commemorations around the time of the anniversary of the coup, on 10 December 1997, a group of representatives from the human rights community, including groups such as the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo [Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo], presented the newly elected Legislatura de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires [Buenos Aires parliament] with a proposal to construct a sculpture park and memorial near the river (the location will be discussed in the next section). Th e timing was crucial and demonstrated shrewdness on the part of the human rights groups. Not only was the new Legislatura deemed to possess a number of more progressive politicians (author’s interview with member of Buena Memoria organization, May 2007), but, as a result of the 1994 constitutional reform, the 1997 election was the fi rst in which the city mayor was no longer appointed by the president, at this time, Carlos Menem, markedly hostile to both commemoration and justice. Local government support proved decisive and Law 46 created the Comisión Pro-Monumento a las Víctimas del Terrorismo de Estado [Pro-Monument Commission] – made up of members of the human rights community and local government among others – to oversee the construction of the monument to victims of state terrorism and the selection of names to be inscribed on it (the issue of naming is discussed below) which was to be housed in the Memory Park, whilst the architectural fi rm Baudizzone-Lestard-Varas – selected by competition in 1998 – was charged with the task of designing the memorial and sculpture park. Construction began in 2001 and the monument was completed and inaugurated in 2007.

Similarly, the Uruguayan memorial project was the result of emergent opportunities at the level of local government. As Javier Miranda (a former member of Madres y Familiares involved with the Memorial project) points out, that is not to say that a memorial would have been literally impossible before this, but rather that by the late 1990s Uruguay was less polarized vis-à-vis the past (author’s interview, August 2013). Th is did not mean the past was any more ‘resolved’ than in previous years, but it was becoming increasingly diffi cult to ignore the issue, whilst the human rights community found a number of willing allies in the government. Indeed, the project emerged at the instigation of then Intendente (mayor) of Montevideo, Mariano Arana, who convened Madres y Familiares with a view to constructing a memorial to the detained-disappeared of Uruguay. As in Argentina, a competition was announced in 1998 to fi nd a suitable memorial project, won by a team of architects and artists led by Martha Kohen and Rubén Otero. Similarly, a Comisión Nacional pro-Memorial de los Detenidos Desaparecidos [National Pro-Memorial Commission] was formed in order to oversee the Memorial’s construction and raise the necessary funds. Th e Commission was comprised of a broad range of individuals, including a representative of Madres y

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Familiares, as well as members of the local government, the mayor’s offi ce and the Sociedad de Arquitectos del Uruguay [Uruguayan Society of Architects] and notable fi gures from the arts, religion and sport. Th e Memorial was inaugurated on 10 December 2001 and completed in 2003.

Although actors successfully exploited opportunities at the local level in order to pursue offi cial commemoration, the national governments were not altogether absent from the projects, emerging as latecomers to off er symbolic and nominal support to these memorials. In Uruguay, in 2000, whilst still under construction, the Memorial was declared a site of ‘national interest’ in an agreement with the Ministry of Education and Culture and then president, Jorge Batlle (2000–2005), the fi rst president to reopen investigation into dictatorship-era human rights abuses.7 In Argentina, the high-profi le inauguration of the monument in November 2007 was attended by incumbent president Néstor Kirchner and then president-elect, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, marking the symbolic participation of the federal government. Th is can be viewed as part and parcel of the government’s post-2003 strategy, which has facilitated a number of watershed changes, most notably the 2005 annulment of the Due Obedience and Full Stop laws. In other words, the context in which the memorials were constructed is not the same as the one which they continue to inhabit and, as the controversial episodes recounted at the start of this article elucidated, the past remains subject to debate and discussion. As Max Silverman reminds us, the palimpsest is ‘a dynamic and open space composed of interconnecting traces of diff erent voices, sites and times’ (2013: 8). Indeed, the diff erent actors involved in the memorials’ creation, construction and post-construction give the memorial a palimpsestic quality. Th e projects’ trajectories reveal an unprecedented coming together of and cooperation between state and societal actors (architects, relatives, survivors, local – and later, national – government) with diff erent goals, motivations and expertise, in the construction of public memory against a backdrop of on-going, yet shifting, impunity, resulting in diff erent approaches to memorialization and multiple interpretations therein. Th is assertion is scrutinized in the sections that follow.

Th e writing on the wall: Textuality and memorializationAs Otero – one of the architects responsible for the Memorial – argues, the role of architecture is to ‘represent the invisible’, in this case the permanent yet intangible absence of the disappeared.8 However, this is not a straightforward task and, in both countries, the creation of memorials to the disappeared provoked inevitable and necessary questions about who should be included, how they should be categorized and presented, as well as the question of how to engage with the broader context of their absence. Th e act of ‘writing’ on the monument may appear – at fi rst glance – to be the clearest embodiment of the monument as palimpsest, but, as I propose, such textuality may evade explanations and hegemonic interpretations vis-à-vis the past.

Th e Buenos Aires Monumento is comprised of four concrete walls containing marble plaques that bear the names of nearly 9,000 victims of the dictatorship (Figure 1). Th e 1998 Law 46 stipulated that names would be selected in accordance with those included in the CONADEP report (around 8, 900), as well as those that had been

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confi rmed subsequently as part of ongoing work by the nation’s Subsecretary of Human Rights. Nevertheless, this meant excluding a large number of the estimated 20,000-30,000 victims from the memorial, both those that had not been formally investigated or those whose deaths or disappearances were not covered by the timeframe considered in CONADEP. Th e Monumento thus remains a work in progress as individual names continue to be added, whilst the empty plaques are a stark visual reminder of the sheer number of ‘forever absent’ victims, emblematic of the Argentine experience of state terrorism.

However, although the Commission was explicitly entrusted with the task of paying homage to the those who were disappeared and murdered,9 it soon became clear that understandings of victimhood varied signifi cantly amongst commission members (Vecchioli 2001: 84), which meant that deciding who should be named was far from straightforward, raising questions about the political ideals of the victims and whether disappeared and murdered individuals should be categorized as such or grouped together. Unlike the Uruguayan Memorial, which names only those who were disappeared, the Monumento includes a broader range of victims including the ‘asesinados’ [murdered] and ‘los que murieron combatiendo por los mismos ideales de justicia y equidad’ [‘those who died fi ghting for the ideals of justice and equity’]. Signifi cantly, the inclusion of diff erent categories of victim, including members of the armed left, is a recognition that all of these individuals are victims of state terrorism and that no death at the hands of the state was justifi ed. As Feinmann points out, this

Figure 1: View of Monumento’s fi rst wall of names. (Photo credit: Cara Levey)

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is important because ‘ninguno merecía morir como murió […] no importa el número de muertos que provocó la guerrilla. ¿Qué “guerra” es la que origina seiscientos u ochocientos muertos de un lado y treinta mil del otro?’ [‘because nobody deserved to die in that way […] it doesn’t matter how many deaths the guerrilla caused […] what sort of war causes the deaths of 600 on one side and 30,000 on the other?’] (Feinmann 2007). Although the plaque that precedes the walls of names announces the three categories of victims, there is no indication on the memorial itself of which name belongs to which category; they are listed in alphabetical order and according to the year of their death/disappearance, rather than distinguished by their victimhood. On one hand, this could be viewed as a way of portraying all victims as equal, rather than privileging one type of victim at the expense of another. However, the lack of diff erentiation also could be viewed as a simplifi cation of the past – by divorcing the individuals from their political ideals and potentially the social and historical context from which they emerged.

Having said this, in contrast to the Uruguay Memorial, the Monumento indicates not only that the individuals named were the victims of state terrorism, but that this state terrorism took place within a specifi c timeframe, as the plaque that introduces the names, states, and the organization of the names clearly states. Th e vast lists of names begin in 1969, thus they are not confi ned to the dictatorship period, but indicate a longer-term historical trajectory of state repression that exceeded the parameters of dictatorial rule. Delineating an appropriate start date was not an easy task, as it eff ectively raised questions about what constituted state terrorism and when such repression had begun in Argentina. Given Argentina’s cycles of military intervention and dictatorship throughout the twentieth century, opinions varied signifi cantly, according to members of the Commission (Interview with Parque de la Memoria/Monumento staff , August 2013). For some, the late 1960s marked a period of intensifi cation of state violence, which became more systematic in the run-up to the coup, whilst, according to Vecchioli (2001: 97), others felt that state terrorism did not really begin in earnest until 1975. Eventually 1969 was selected, meaning that the Monumento makes reference to the repression that took place during the presidency of María Estela ‘Isabelita’ Perón (1974–1976), particularly the intensifi cation of the Triple A deathsquads and Operativo Independencia [Operation Independence], the military campaign launched in 1975 in the northern province of Tucumán which became a laboratory for the systematic and clandestine repression that would be applied to the nation at large after the 1976 coup. Meanwhile, 1969 was a watershed years in terms of the signifi cant social uprisings in Córdoba and elsewhere, which were met with extreme repression from the government. Although the selection of dates gives an indication of the longer trajectories of political violence, as well as the upsurges of disappearances and murders committed during the year of the coup and its aftermath, the 1969 cut-off date does not allude to the much longer historical trajectory of violence that distinguishes Argentina from its Uruguayan and Chilean neighbours. Indeed, in the discussion over the parameters of state terrorism, some commission members proposed 1955, the year of the coup against the democratically elected Juan Perón; a cut-off date that covered the cycles of military and democratic rule that

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followed and the upheaval and socio-political polarization that followed the overthrow of Perón (author’s interview with Memorial Commission employee, August 2013). Although there is a lack of explicit engagement with the longer-term historical background of state repression and violence, the spectator (both informed and uninitiated) is off ered some guidance to the historical context to which the names belong.

The Monumento also reveals more information about the individuals commemorated, not only the year that each disappeared, but also their age at the time of disappearance. In this way, it individualizes those listed and guides the spectator’s interaction with the memorial. As Feinmann points out, ‘uno no puede evitar estremecerse por las edades de las víctimas: veinte años, dieciséis, veinticinco, dieciocho, veintitrés, catorce. Hay, también “veteranos”, “hombres de edad”: treinta y dos años, veintinueve, treinta y uno, treinta y tres’. [‘One cannot help but shudder at the age of the victims: twenty, sixteen, twenty-fi ve, eighteen, twenty-three, fourteen. Th ere are also “veterans”, “men of experience”: thirty-two, twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-three’] (2007) (Figure 2).

Figure 2: View of selection of names and ages of those disappeared in 1976. Th e word ‘embarazada’ is visible against a number of names. (Photo credit: Cara Levey)

Peripheral palimpsests in post-dictatorship Buenos Aires and Montevideo 75

Indeed, the age of even the older victims is a stark reminder of the number of young lives cut short by state terrorism. It is, as Feinmann points out, impossible not to be shocked by this, even for the informed visitor. Furthermore, the Monumento has one additional biographical element: a number of the women’s names are succeeded by the single word embarazada [pregnant], an indication not only of the fact that they were pregnant at the time of disappearance, but also of los nietos [the grandchildren], the estimated 500 children born in captivity who were illegally adopted soon after birth and the majority of whom have still not been identifi ed (Figure 2). Th e disappearance of pregnant women and kidnapping of minors is a specifi c feature of the Argentine experience of state terrorism that did not take place on the same scale elsewhere in the region. Th e inclusion of ‘pregnant’ – even without elaboration – is a powerful indictment of the regime’s cruelty and systematic repression as well as the questions surrounding the past that remain unanswered in contemporary Argentina specifi cally; these events happened three decades ago, but their eff ects resonate in the present. Even very minimal biographical information can thus bring another dimension to our interaction with memorials.

Although both monuments are inscribed with the names of victims of state repression, they engage with this absence in diff erent ways, with the Buenos Aires Monumento indicating explicitly the context of the individuals’ disappearances as well as providing clues about the nature of repression. In comparison to the Monumento, the Uruguayan Memorial has limited textual references to the past. Th e two glass walls are engraved with the names of the 174 detained-disappeared Uruguayans which become legible only when one enters the space between the walls (Figure 3).

Figure 3: One of the Memorial’s two walls of names. (Photo credit: Cara Levey)

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Although disappearance was not as widespread or emblematic in Uruguay, the Memorial is limited to the detained-disappeared, which means that those murdered by the regime are not included. Moreover, as noted, the Memorial includes the names of Uruguayans disappeared not only in Argentina (where most Uruguayans were disappeared), but elsewhere in the region as part of the systematic hemispheric cooperation between diff erent regimes known as Plan Condor. Th e lack of diff erentiation between the individuals disappeared in diff erent countries and the fragmentary and non-chronological arrangement of the names (Figure 4), was designed to not privilege any of the Uruguayan victims, as well as to link domestic repression with the region-wide experience (author’s interview with Javier Miranda, August 2013).

However, given that the hallmarks of Uruguayan repression tended to be torture and prolonged imprisonment, rather than enforced disappearance, the Memorial only features a small snapshot of the impact of state repression on Uruguay. Furthermore, it is less ‘open-ended’ than its Buenos Aires counterpart in that it lacks designated space for more names. In recent years, more cases of disappearance have been reported10 and the Memorial should be viewed within the context of further developments to investigate the past that emerged around the time of its construction. Th e COPAZ (Peace Commission) was established under the Batlle administration in August 2000 with a view to investigating the disappearance of Uruguayans and it thus clarifi ed the whereabouts of a number of those named on the Memorial. Not only does this show that a memorial’s textuality should be considered in relation to the changing contexts which it inhabits, but it also raises questions about the kind of

Figure 4: View of names overlaid on landscape of Parque Vaz Ferreira from inside the Memorial. (Photo credit: Cara Levey)

Peripheral palimpsests in post-dictatorship Buenos Aires and Montevideo 77

closure the memorials can give to the past when that past is still very much under scrutiny in the present.

Moreover, although the Memorial includes victims who were disappeared before the 1973 coup, the absence of any indication of the dates of the individual’s disappearance hampers the spectator’s ability to ascertain the context of their absence. Whilst the visitor to the Buenos Aires monument arguably is likely to be moved or shocked by the large number of young people and pregnant women who were disappeared, the visitor’s experience of the Uruguayan memorial is very diff erent, as there are no indications of when they were killed, what happened to them and how old they were. Th e names are the only textual feature of the Memorial; there is no indication that these are detained-disappeared Uruguayans or victims of state terrorism. Th is presents a problem: how can the commemoration of victims be undertaken without any mention of what these individuals were victims of? Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz, analysing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (a comparable wall of names), assert that ‘anomalous names betray ambiguity about an event’s nature and uncertainty about how to react to the men who take part in it’ (1991: 386). In contrast to the Monumento, the limited information about the Uruguayan victims’ absence indicates a potential ambiguity or even ambivalence towards the victims. As I have argued elsewhere, the lack of contextual information, either in the form of dates or mention of state terrorism, means that the memorialization is undertaken without questioning whether the victim’s fate was due to dictatorship, state terrorism, a ‘dirty war’, which opens up the Memorial to distinct interpretations, the nature of which depends on the spectator. Mention of the state is thus absent from the Memorial. Rather than refl ect the ‘tragedia vivida’ of state terrorism, by divorcing the names from the context of state repression, the Memorial could be read as part of a broader state policy to limit debate and investigation into the past (Levey 2012). Moreover, it can be viewed as part of narratives of moving on, portraying the dictatorship period in Uruguay as a hiatus in otherwise longstanding democratic stability. Th e lack of important dates to indicate that repression was underway in advance of the coup therefore means that questions of when the democratic breakdown in Uruguay began are avoided and the notion that the dictatorship was a one-off duly upheld. However, although both mention of the state and a sense of who the victims were remain notably absent from the Memorial, the inscription of the names of Uruguay’s disappeared is significant in ensuring that the possible interpretations of the Memorial are not rendered closed or final – they will be experienced in diff erent ways depending on who visits.

Finally, both memorials reveal very diff erent approaches to memorialization and are open-ended in diff erent ways. On one hand, inscription of the names of victims is a means of removing their anonymity and symbolically ‘reappearing’ those who were made to disappear. Naming each victim individually gives some semblance of the extent of state terrorism, that they deserve to be remembered, particularly signifi cant in the case of Uruguay given the ‘no truth, no justice’ approach to the past pursued by successive post-dictatorship governments. What is literally inscribed on the memorials remains there, but it is the diff erent possibilities for interpretation that make it

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palimpsestic. As Myers reminds us, ‘a block of stone may be a powerful text with many subtexts, or it may be an inert simplifi cation of historical reality that assuages memory – it depends on the readership’ (1988: 190). In this sense, both memorials possess clues about the past, but neither meaning nor memory is guaranteed. One of the guides at the Buenos Aires Parque de la Memoria pointed out that people often visit the park without knowing what it is about, but, importantly the guides are on hand to explain and off er supplementary information. Visitors may also visit the documentation centre located at the end of the Monumento and seek more information on the database of victims contained therein (Jurado 2014). Th ere is thus an interrelationship between the monumental structure, the virtual database and human intervention in the form of a guide. In the case of Uruguay, there is no such guided intervention, which could result in an individual’s interaction being rather superfi cial. However, this does raise important questions about the role of abstract or implicit memorialization in contemporary culture. Maya Lin, the architect behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial – a comparable wall of names – tried to design a monument that ‘would not tell you how to think’ about the war (Hubbard 1984: 21). Similarly, Peter Eisenmann, the architect who designed the Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, was reluctant to add a visitor centre, alleging that ‘los monumentos no transmiten explicaciones’ [‘monuments do not transmit explanations’] (quoted in Sarlo 2009). Rather than a lack of explicitation being viewed as a problem, one can argue that although the Monumento explicitly points to the historical context, it does not necessarily elicit a predictable or pre-determined response to state terrorism. Indeed, for many local visitors, particularly in the current context when discussion of the dictatorship is frequent in the media, supplementary explanations about the relationship between names and an event are arguably unnecessary; however, this may not be the case in years to come when the living connection between dictatorship and the present is no more. In contrast, the uninitiated spectator must proceed inferentially; they may consider and speculate on the meaning of these names, or treat the memorials with indiff erence, passivity or as an obstruction (Levey 2012). To return to Huyssen, the memorial as urban palimpsest is more than what is architecturally set in stone, but ‘imagined alternatives’ remain well within reach (2003: 7).

Urban palimpsests at the margins Fundamental to the way in which its audience may interact with and understand memorials are their locations within the cityscape, which reveals another palimpsestic quality. In contrast to projects which seek to recover or mark the actual sites of repression such as the Memorial and Monumento, constructing a ‘new’ memorial posed the challenge of identifying a feasible and practical locale as well as considering what relationship (if any) the selected site would have to the past. Here an analysis of the Monumento and Memorial reveals a number of synergies. Both memorials were constructed on the fringes of the capital cities for diff erent reasons, projects which encompassed both urban regeneration and the commemoration of victims of state terrorism. Understanding the choice of location is a precursor to understanding and interacting with the memorial.

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Th e Monumento is located within the fourteen-hectare Memory Park close to the neighbourhoods of Nuñez (where the emblematic clandestine detention centre the ESMA – Navy Mechanics School – is located) and Belgrano, on the Costanera Norte, the promenade which runs alongside the Río de la Plata, the estuary that forms a natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. As noted above, the societal proposal to commemorate the victims of the dictatorship explicitly identifi ed the area near the river as the preferred destination for a memorial, because of the ‘la carga simbólica del río’ [‘the symbolic weight of the river’] (Melendo 2006: 86). Th e river was not only a local and national landmark which had played a signifi cant role in the history of the port city (whose inhabitants are known as porteños) and region (whose inhabitants on both Argentine and Uruguayan sides of the river are known as rioplatenses), but it later became associated with the chilling cruelty of the dictatorship. It was the river into which the bodies of those deemed ‘subversive’ were thrown during death fl ights in order to conceal the regime’s crimes. Th e Jorge Newbery airport – from where these fl ights departed after prisoners were transferred from the ESMA – is located close by so departing planes continue to fl y low over the park, off ering a momentary reminder of the airport’s prior functions. Th ere is thus an intimate connection between the river, dictatorship-era repression and the Monumento, which has a metonymic quality as it is near to the places where repression took place (the river, the ESMA and the Jorge Newbery airport), rather than constructed in the exact location.

Furthermore, the Monumento’s specifi c location was not entirely related to its identifi ed relationship with the past, but was selected as part of a broader initiative of the Buenos Aires government to regenerate an area of the city which is tantamount to a wasteland – between the university campus of the Universidad de Buenos Aires [University of Buenos Aires] known as the UBA. Th e place had previously been known pejoratively as the ‘aldea gay’ or ‘villa gay’ [gay town/neighbourhood] due to the community of homosexual men that had settled there in the early 1990s11 and later became home to families relocating there following the 2001 crisis, some of whom remained even after construction began. With the area identifi ed for regeneration, the city government undertook ‘Buenos Aires y el río’ (Buenos Aires and the river) (Aguilar 2005: 196), a project which aimed to integrate the university campus with the city by developing green space and parks and opening up this space for local residents along the river. Th e symbolism of the river gives an important and alternative layer of meaning to the memorial, but the practical goals of local government and the ideological or symbolic goals of the relatives and survivors converge, and multiple associations and meanings co-exist within the same site.

However, whilst the site of the Monumento bore some relationship to state repression, the ultimate destination of the Uruguayan memorial had a more nebulous relationship to the recent past, although location was not insignifi cant. Unlike the Monumento project, in which the river was viewed as part and parcel of the bid to construct a site of memory, in this case the location followed the decision to construct a memorial. Th e choice of location was therefore selected from those proposed by the local Montevideo government: the Rambla de Buceo (the busy esplanade running alongside the city centre) or the Parque Vaz Ferreira (on the south-western outskirts

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of the city) (see Demasi and Yaff é 2005 for more detail). Th e park, built in the 1950s, is located on the Cerro, the distinctive hill featured on the coat of arms of both the nation and the Department of Montevideo. Interestingly, its status as a local and national landmark – like the river in Buenos Aires – has been cited as a key reason why this site was chosen for the memorial’s construction.12 However, members of the group Madres y Familiares attribute importance to the neighbourhood around the Cerro, known as Villa del Cerro. Formally known as Villa Cosmópolis, the neighbourhood grew rapidly during the late nineteenth century, with the surge in immigration from Europe and the Middle East during the prosperous years of the Uruguayan frigorífi cos (meat refrigeration plants) many of which were located inthis area of the city. As a result, the neighbourhood not only grew in size, but a working-class community emerged (Esmoris n.d). Moreover, during the economic downturn of the 1950s, which led to the closure of a number of the plants, the neighbourhood became the site of working-class resistance. Although this working-class identity may have waned since the mid-twentieth century, according to Madres y Familiares its local history as the site of working-class struggle guided the decision to construct the Memorial there, drawing a parallel between the struggle for social justice and activism of many of those disappeared, and placing 1970s state terrorism within the longer term historical framework, in spite of the lack of dates or textuality on the memorial (author’s interview with Madres y Familiares, May 2009). In other words, the Memorial’s setting is not incidental, but is an integral part of how visitors may interpret the Memorial, including the names inscribed therein. Th e act of recovering local history and ‘memoria barrial’ [‘neighbourhood memory’] thus ‘functions as a precursor to understanding the process of memorialization related to the Memorial itself’ (Levey 2012). Th e close link between the Memorial’s textuality and the landscape thus reveals the layers of memory and meaning at play in the palimpsestic memorial.

Meanwhile, as in Buenos Aires, the Uruguayan memorialization project encompassed a number of diff erent goals and motivations of the diff erent actors involved, in this case a city government project to clean up the park and surrounding area.13 Again, as in Argentina, the projects brought ‘a memorial of signifi cance to a peripheral location’ (Kohen 2004: 284), a precarious neighbourhood, geographically distant from the city centre. Th e state-directed plans for urban regeneration reveal an ulterior motive for the state support of commemorative projects and one could be rather cynical about the choice of location. Furthermore, the remote location could be viewed as rendering the memorial itself peripheral as well as a refl ection of the low priority that successive post-dictatorship regimes gave to addressing the past. Given the national government’s lack of involvement in the projects and the textual/contextual absence of the state from the Uruguayan memorial, we might argue that these memorials are not only located in peripheral locations but are themselves peripheral memorials. Th e interplay between location and memorial thus elicits diff erent interpretations, but also brings with it a number of challenges. Indeed, peripheral locations may be diffi cult to reach and fi nd and this raises diff erent challenges. Ana Ros posits that ‘a majority of the population, including the inhabitants

Peripheral palimpsests in post-dictatorship Buenos Aires and Montevideo 81

of the Cerro, still do not know that it [the Memorial] exists’ (2012: 171), whilst although the Monumento generated signifi cant media debate and discussion, it remains absent from tourist maps and city tours. However, Graciela Silvestri points out, the Monumento’s liminality permits ‘la tranquilidad necesaria para el pensamiento y la refl exión’ (2000) [‘the tranquillity necessary for contemplation and refl ection’]. Likewise, beyond the symbolism attributed to the Cerro, the relatives’ organization opted for the peripheral location of Parque Vaz Ferreira because the Rambla de Buceo was a busy thoroughfare with considerable traffic (Author’s interview with Madres y Familiares, April 2009). Th erefore, the park was chosen for its relative tranquillity, in preference to a location where people may be in transit and ignore it.

Indeed, the construction of a permanent memorial away from the city centre points to what has been described as the ‘decentralization of memory’ (Schindel 2009), which leads to a diff erent type of encounter with the memorial. To take an example from an entirely diff erent context, the 1986 Harburg Monument Against Fascism was installed in a working-class neighbourhood of Hamburg, Germany (Lupu 2003). Th e idea behind it was that the monument would be met by the unsuspecting visitor and thus inhibit passivity, closure and disengagement towards the past. Indeed, as the architect Otero points out in the case of Uruguay:

hay dos maneras de acercarse. Una, de manera buscada, desde la calle secundaria que lleva al Memorial. Ese es el que busca el Memorial y lo encuentra. La otra puede ser una aproximación casual, a través de esas señales que van a aparecer en el bosque y que quizá lleven, sin que lo sepa la persona, a seguirlas y a encontrarse con el Memorial.14

[there are two ways of reaching the memorial. First, by looking for it, from the road that leads directly to the Memorial. Th is way involves actually searching for the memorial and then fi nding it. Th e other is a more random encounter, through following the signs that appear within the forest and that may lead the person to the Memorial without them realizing it.]

Undoubtedly the experience of the uninitiated visitor, in terms of the location of the memorial, will be very diff erent to the informed spectator, who may seek it deliberately. Not only is location given meaning and rationalized in diff erent ways, but the interplay between site as palimpsest and memorial as palimpsest is a central tenet of these memorialization projects. Th e choice of location accounts for how an individual may understand, experience or connect with the Memorial and imbues the memorial itself with another layer of meaning.

Concluding remarks: Peripheral palimpsests in the long aftermath of state repressionA comparative examination of the forms of the Monumento and Memorial shows how memorials are subject to distinct interpretations, and that the processes and outcomes of memorialization are contingent on both context and site-specifi c concerns, Moreover, the case studies raise questions about whether the construction of a monument actually closes the door on the past and leads to its eventual ‘invisibility’,

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to return to Musil. Whilst the memorials considered here are not literally palimpsests, they are open to continual evolution, both in terms of how they are interpreted and experienced, and in the ways in which they are threatened by state and societal forces, as illustrated in the introduction, or by marginalization and abstraction, as elucidated in the analysis that followed. Th e threats to memorialization are exemplifi ed by instances of vandalism of both the Memorial and Monumento. Several years after the Memorial was completed, the glass which bears the names was smashed which resulted in a guard being employed to ‘police’ the Memorial (Di Maggio 2004). In 2007, in Buenos Aires, while the Monumento was still being completed, some of the plaques were destroyed in an act of vandalism, whilst in 2011, various parts of the Memory Park were defaced with off ensive graffi ti.15 Th ese threats and diff erent types of interaction with the memorials give them another palimspestic layer. Th is is not to say that acts of vandalism or temporary cover ups should be condoned, but it shows that what is written on the memorial, or what is constructed in a historical or sacred place, may be overwritten and eff aced. In this sense, even permanent memorials reveal a certain amount of transience, running counter to what is set in stone, coexisting with narratives of remembrance and the connections to the past. However, cover ups and vandalism should not be viewed as destroying memory as such, as the memorials’ multiple meanings are still ‘perceptible’. Th e mobilization around threats to memory which unfold in the press and denunciations from broader society implies that the will to commemorate can – and does – transcend the invisibilization and destruction of monuments.

Th e palimpsestic nature of memorialization can be further understood by drawing on Jelin and Kaufman’s work. As they suggest, we should not conceive of memory (or, by extension, commemoration) as off ering complete visions and representations of the past, but as being constituted of ‘layers of memory’ which reveal ‘contradictions, tensions, silences, confl icts, gaps’ (2000: 90). Although this helps to elucidate the plurality generated by memory making, the notion of layering belies the co-existence of diff erent interpretations and narratives, because the diff erent narratives and rewriting do not necessarily replace one another. Th is is what makes the ‘palimpsest’ conceptually very useful; it is not about overwriting the past entirely, but about the coexistence of diff erent narrative threads within the same space. Furthermore, as Max Silverman points out, the palimpsest is more than just the coexistence of traces, but also ‘holds out the prospect of new solidarities’ (Silverman 2013: 8). In this way, the palimpsest points to not just a pluralistic co-existence of diff erent narratives but is itself transformative, making new forms of participation and addressing the past a reality. Indeed, as discussion of the memorials has shown, public memorialization marks the convergence of the local, national and regional, state and society, victim and activist, family member, survivor, professionals and architects, which results in productive interaction and creation. In other words, the delicate interplay of site as palimpsest and memorial as palimpsest with its multiple layers of meaning mean that the memorial evades hegemonic narratives and perpetually off ers ‘new hypotheses and conjunctures’ (Richard 2004: 17).

Peripheral palimpsests in post-dictatorship Buenos Aires and Montevideo 83

Notes 1. Th e dictatorships in Argentina (1976–1983) and Uruguay (1973–1985) were notably

diff erent in terms of their methodology and the scope of their victims. On 27 June 1973, President Juan María Bordaberry, backed by the armed forces, dissolved parliament and installed an increasingly totalitarian and repressive regime, an interruption to Uruguay’s tradition of stable democracy. Argentina, a country dogged by dictatorial rule and military intrusion into politics for most of the twentieth century, would follow nearly three years later with a more dramatic coup, on 24 March 1976, which installed a military junta representing all three branches of the Argentine armed forces. In what followed, Argentina would become known for the forced disappearance of its citizens. Th e fi gure of 30,000 has been taken up by human rights organizations and the media, and even the government, in reports, protests and slogans, as the actual number of desaparecidos. Indeed, recent offi cial statistics from the Argentine federal government’s Archivo Nacional de la Memoria cite 30,000 for the number of victims forcibly disappeared. (See Archivo Nacional de la Memoria, http://www.derhuman.jus.gov.ar/anm/inicio.html, accessed 4 June 2012.) In contrast to the assassinations and forced disappearances characteristic of its neighbours, in Uruguay state repression was characterized by the widespread and systematic use of long-term political imprisonment and torture. Around 500,000 Uruguayans were forced into exile and more than 60,000 people were arrested and detained. By the 1970s, Uruguay had the highest per-capita prison population in the world (Gillespie 1995: 64; Weinstein 1998). Moreover, 174 Uruguayans were disappeared in Uruguay and elsewhere in the region (mainly in Argentina). Th ere were twenty-six extra-judicial executions (Rico 2008).

2. Alex Wilde used the term ‘irruptions of memory’ to refer to ‘public events that break in upon […] national consciousness, unbidden and often suddenly, to evoke associations with symbols, fi gures, causes, ways of life which to an unusual degree are associated with a political past that is still present in the lived experience of a major part of the population’ (1999: 475).

3. See ‘Acusan a Macri de querer convertir el Parque de la Memoria en una plaza vacía de contenido’ Telam (3 January 2014), http://www.telam.com.ar/notas/201401/46895-acusan-a-macri-de-querer-convertir-el-parque-de-la-memoria-en-una-plaza-vacia-de-contenido.html (accessed 16 July 2014).

4. Th e section constitutes a brief overview rather than a detailed discussion of the controversies and complexity of these projects. For more on Uruguay, see Lessa and Levey (2012).

5. Th is article focuses on textuality and location, rather than materiality. For more on this see Levey 2012.

6. For the full text of the law, see http://www.parlamento.gub.uy/leyes/AccesoTextoLey.asp?Ley=15848&Anchor= (accessed 10 February 2014).

7. In May 2014 the Memorial was declared a national historical monument: ‘Memorial de los Detenidos Desaparecidos fue declarado Monumento Histórico Nacional’ (19 May 2014), http://www.presidencia.gub.uy/comunicacion/comunicacionnoticias/declaracion-monumento-historico-nacional (accessed 10 July 2014).

8. ‘Entrevista con el arquitecto Rubén Otero y el artista plástico Mario Sagradini’, Radio Espectador (22 February 1999), 11am. http://www.espectador.com/text/desaparecidos/des02233.htm (accessed 10 July 2014).

9. For the full text of the law see http://www.cedom.gov.ar/es/legislacion/normas/leyes/ley46.html (accessed 10 July 2014).

10. See ‘Revalaron ayer 8 nombres nuevos de desaparecidos’, La Red 21 (18 December 2000), http://www.lr21.com.uy/politica/31366-revelaron-ayer-8-nombres-nuevos-de-desaparecidos (accessed 10 July 2014).

11. ‘Alojarán en hoteles a los ocupantes de la villa gay’, Clarín (17 June 1998), http://edant.clarin.com/diario/1998/06/17/e-06701d.htm.

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12. See ‘Memorial de los Detenidos Desaparecidos Uruguay’, Trama: Arquitectura y Diseño desde Ecuador (March/April 2003), no page numbers.

13. Th e Intendencia de Montevideo published ‘Montevideo: Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial 1998–2004’ in which the Parque Vaz Ferreira was identifi ed as one of a number of areas which had fallen into disrepair and needed signifi cant regeneration.

14. ‘Entrevista con el arquitecto Rubén Otero y el artista plástico Mario Sagradini’,15. ‘Aparecieron pintadas intimidatorias en El Parque de la Memoria de Capital Federal’,

Reporte platense (26 March 2011). http://reporteplatense.com.ar/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1681:aparecieron-pintadas-intimidatorias-en-el-parque-de-la-memoria-de-capital-federal&catid=16:sociedad&Itemid=68 (accessed 10 July 2014).

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Cara Levey is Lecturer in Latin American Studies at University College Cork. Her research focuses on cultural memory and justice in post-dictatorship Argentina and Uruguay. She is editor of Argentina since the 2001 Crisis: Recovering the Past, Reclaiming the Future (Palgrave, 2014). Her monograph Commemoration and Contestation in Post-dictatorship Argentina and Uruguay: Fragile Memory, Shifting Impunity is forthcoming.