Living with Loss: Mapping Derechos Humanos on the Landscape of Public Remembrance of the 1976-1983 Dictatorship in Argentina

The Argentine landscape is marked by countless sites of remembrance of the 1976-1983 dictatorship drawn by human rights groups in Argentina, producing a seemingly infinite command to remember the violence of this period and the 30,000 who were disappeared. Though this landscape can seem chaotic, this impression discounts the context of loss on which it is constructed as well as the deeply affective and contested political issues that motivate its construction. This study thus maps the ways demands for human rights mobilized through public remembrance of the dictatorship articulate a continual learning to live with loss. Investigating the specificities of loss in Argentina, I explore how human rights claims are made in the name of the disappeared who, neither dead nor alive, are at once everywhere and nowhere. I draw largely from my conversations with members of human rights groups to illuminate how the demand for derechos humanos is articulated in particular ways to address present-day social injustices and to affirm the living’s relationship with the disappeared. The study aims to contribute to an understanding of public remembrance as a continual process of teaching and learning about the past that is intended to motivate the formation of a public committed to constructing a better present and future.Ph