Removing the Blindfold: Power, Truth and Testimony

Adriana Spahr

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Removing the Blindfold: Power, Truth and Testimony

In: Monstrous Reflection

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Adriana Spahr

Adriana Spahr
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 29–37

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848884076_004

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From 1975 to 1983 Argentina was marked by internal conflicts which surpassed those lived through in its entire history. The rise of the military power started during the last period of Isabel Peron’s government and continued through the military takeover from 1976 to 1984. The excuse to overthrow the weak Argentine democracy was to end the ‘monstrous’ guerrilla fighters who wanted to destroy the foundations of Western and Christian society in Argentina. It did not take long for the media and society in general to support the military’s point of view that these ‘revolutionaries’ had to be destroyed (annihilated) so that it wouldn't contaminate the rest of the country. As a result, they were persecuted and exterminated in inhuman and ‘monstrous’ ways by the military and other members of the Argentine security forces. The extermination of thousands of Argentineans was possible by the implementation of the figure of the ‘desaparecido’ [the disappeared]. These measures allowed the military government to keep detainees in secret locations in terrible living conditions until they decided to kill them. Fortunately, some of these detainees survived and began to share their traumatic experience with the country since the return of democracy in 1984. Testimonies such as the CONADEP (1983) [National Commission for the Disappearance of People], compiled as ‘Nunca más’ [Never Again] (1984), removed the blindfold that had fallen on Argentinean society during the time of the dictatorship. It is the aim of my paper to analyse the way in which testimonies (written and oral) have contributed not only to unveil the truth but also, to give a voice to those silenced – that is revealing the monstrosity of official history and replacing it with a (re)writing that better reflects the atrocities of one of the darkest periods in Argentine history.

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Monstrous Reflection

E-Book ISBN:: 9781848884076

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 01 Jan 2014

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies
  - Comparative Studies & World Literature
- Social Sciences
  - Cultural Studies

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Removing the Blindfold: Power, Truth and Testimony

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Monstrous Reflection

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