Surviving State Terror

Women's Testimonies of Repression and Resistance in Argentina

Barbara Sutton

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781479856305
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

A profound reflection on state violence and women’s survival In the 1970s and early 80s, military and security forces in Argentina hunted down, tortured, imprisoned, and in many cases, murdered political activists, student organizers, labor unionists, leftist guerrillas, and other people branded “subversives.” This period was characterized by massive human rights violations, including forced disappearances committed in the name of national security. State terror left a deep scar on contemporary Argentina, but for many survivors and even the nation itself, talking about this dark period in recent history has been difficult, and at times taboo. For women who endured countless forms of physical, sexual, and emotional violence in clandestine detention centers, the impetus to keep quiet about certain aspects of captivity has been particularly strong. In Surviving State Terror, Barbara Sutton draws upon a wealth of oral testimonies to place women’s bodies and voices at the center of the analysis of state terror. The book showcases poignant stories of women’s survival and resistance, disinterring accounts that have yet to be fully heard, grappled with, and understood. With a focus on the body as a key theme, Sutton explores various instances of violence toward women, such as sexual abuse and torture at the hands of state officials. Yet she also uses these narratives to explore why some types of social suffering and certain women’s voices are heard more than others, and how this can be rectified in our own practices of understanding and witnessing trauma. In doing so, Sutton urges us to pay heed to women survivors’ political voices, activist experiences, and visions for social change. Recounting not only women’s traumatic experiences, but also emphasizing their historical and political agency, Surviving State Terror is a profound reflection on state violence, social suffering, and human resilience—both personal and collective.

1

Women, State Terror, and Collective Memory

The past lives in the present, and traumatic pasts still throb and ache. This is often true for individuals and societies, as memories of war, displacement, genocide, and other forms of “social suffering” are not easily stored away.1 Their painful marks defy oblivion, and past traumatic situations shape and erupt in present circumstances. Many of these memories are culturally mobilized and transmitted through oral and written narratives, ceremonial rituals, and political performances. They can also become embodied memories that inhabit the lives of both individuals directly affected by traumatic events and those who belong to the same mnemonic community.2 At stake are not only the lifeworlds of people who experienced unbearable loss and unspeakable suffering, but also broader society’s ability to learn, rebuild, and change. The recent history of state terrorism in Argentina is a case in point; and the survivors of this political repression have key stories to tell. This book focuses on the voices of women survivors of state-run clandestine detention centers (CDCs)—a group whose perspectives have not always been heard. What might attending to these voices reveal about the nature of state violence and its relation to gender and power? What might we learn from them about survival and resistance, about collective memory and human rights?

Three decades after her captivity in one of the clandestine detentions centers of the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976–83), survivor Marta García de Candeloro remembered a poignant lesson she learned from another former detainee called Ledda.3 The story featured unlikely protagonists: the ants that were free to move around in places of utter unfreedom, namely, the secret sites where so many people were tortured and “disappeared” during the period of state terrorism.4 Marta recounted the story in 2007, in the context of her testimony for the civil society organization Memoria Abierta (Open Memory). In this testimony, she wished to highlight more than horror. Although she did not remember exactly Ledda’s words, she offered the gist of the story:

[I]n summary, what I got from it was: That those ants should not be killed; they should be left alone because they were going to freedom and returning; and they were going in and out. That was the contact with the outside. [ . . . ] I will never forget that thing of Ledda’s as long as I live, because it had to do with the things that life clings to, no?—in order to live in a situation where you were . . . tortured . . . where it was as if your body did not belong to you, but where those things were a sign of life.5

In her testimony, Marta was apparently referring to survivor Ledda Barreiro, a woman who was detained in the same site as Marta. According to other sources, the story traces back to Ledda’s daughter, Silvia Muñoz, who was “disappeared” by the regime while pregnant. As Ledda explained in one of her public appearances, the exhortation to not kill the ants wandering around in a CDC reportedly came from her daughter and was witnessed by fellow detainees who survived to tell the story.6 Eventually this story was turned into an illustrated children’s book, Marimosa y las hormigas (Potes 2014), about colorful butterflies held captive by big and evil bugs and about the bonds of solidarity that the imprisoned butterfly Marimosa forged with a group of ants, which symbolized freedom. Various human rights organizations and public institutions then began to use Marimosa y las hormigas as part of their work to promote human rights education and collective memory among school-aged children.7

The journey of the ants’ story, originally told and retold by women survivors of state terror in Argentina, encapsulates many of the themes of this book. The story itself certainly takes us directly to a place of extreme oppression, but it does not end there. Importantly, as Dori Laub (1992, 62) mentioned in relation to Holocaust survivors’ testimonies, this story hints to “the very secret of survival and of resistance to extermination.” From this story we learn about resilience, compassion, and solidarity in the midst of horror; about the power of collective efforts and the unyielding pull of freedom. That these notions become salient in the memories circulated among survivors, and then shared with the public, also speaks to the desire to draw broader lessons from experiences of unimaginable suffering and terror.

In considering how the story was retooled for a children’s audience, another important theme addressed in this study emerges: the transmission of memory, particularly to future generations. The central role of women as transmitters of collective memory and culture also becomes apparent. While oftentimes these processes of transmission stem from women’s socially ascribed roles as mothers, grandmothers, or teachers passing on cultural knowledge, I would like to expand and problematize this frame. In Ledda’s memories of her disappeared daughter and the quest to find her grandchild, the centrality of gender-mediated family bonds is evident. However, Ledda and other women in this study have shared many other vital experiences and perspectives, including as political activists, beyond those associated with normative gender expectations.

Finally, as memories are repeated, transmitted, and resignified, variants of the ants’ story point to the social construction and “labors of memory” (Jelin 2003, 5) dedicated to keep critical insights alive. Consistent with Joan Scott’s (2001) elaboration of the notion of “echo,” the retelling of the ants’ story—as well as many other stories of survival—can create new resonances and meanings. Through echo, utterances are repeated but not exactly: “repetition constitutes alteration” (291). The innovations introduced through repetition prompt us to consider present investments in transmitted stories. That the ants’ story comes to us decades after its point of origin speaks not only to the open wounds left by the events that prompted the story but also to the lessons that contemporary societies still need to learn from these experiences.

***

During the last dictatorship in Argentina, the state armed and deployed a repressive apparatus that perpetrated massive human rights violations (CONADEP 1984; Duhalde 1999). This regime promoted a “culture of fear” (Corradi, Fagen, and Garretón 1992b, 1) and aimed to “discipline a society with strong political concerns” (D’Antonio 2009, 89), persecuting with special vehemence those whose social or political activities challenged prevailing power relations. In the geopolitical context of the Cold War and leftist and popular movements that sought major societal transformations—including through armed struggle—the dictatorship proclaimed itself in defense of “national security” and “Western and Christian civilization.” In the name of this cause the military regime kidnapped, tortured, and “disappeared” a wide spectrum of people. Among these were members of guerrilla, religious, political, student, labor, and social justice organizations as well as many other people categorized as “subversive.” Over five hundred CDCs proliferated all over the country (Ministerio de Educación n.d.). These were places where military, police, and security forces carried out a systematic plan of brutal repression. Women detained under the framework of “subversion” were disciplined using a variety of methods, including sexual violence and other gendered repertoires that intensified oppression (Aucía et al. 2011; Balardini, Oberlin, and Sobredo 2011; Bacci et al. 2012; Lewin and Wornat 2014).

This book is based on oral testimonies of fifty-two women who survived CDCs during the period of state terrorism in Argentina. While repression began before the 1976 coup d’état,8 I focus on the dictatorship period because this is when the methodology of torture and disappearance became systematized and implemented on a massive scale (Duhalde 1999). It is also the period in which the discourse of human rights gained a foothold and grew in Argentina, with long-term political and cultural implications (Carassai 2010). The testimonies I analyze were collected by Memoria Abierta, a consortium of several human rights organizations, some of which emerged as a direct response to the illegal and devastating violence that the state unleashed.9 Memoria Abierta’s Oral Archive provides public access to stories, experiences, and other information about the period of state terrorism as stated by the people directly affected by the events, literally in their own voices.

For much of the post-dictatorship period, the voices of survivors were scarcely heard outside judicial spheres (Longoni 2007), and this has been especially true for women, as aspects of their experiences became virtually unspeakable and inaudible. For instance, systematic sexual violence in CDCs was a seemingly taboo topic for decades. Even though testimonies of such actions were already present in the 1984 Nunca Más report by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP),10 judicial proceedings tended to subsume sexual violence under other crimes (Duffy 2012). Furthermore, Argentine society failed to fully reckon with the gender-based violence that women experienced in CDCs. However, in recent years, projects with feminist sensibilities have provided needed accounts and analyses to help reverse such trends, particularly in relation to the silencing of sexual and gender violence.11 In the past few years, advances have also been made in judging sexual violence in trials for crimes against humanity committed during the dictatorship (Balardini, Oberlin, and Sobredo 2011; Duffy 2012). This book adds to feminist works on the topic by developing an analysis that includes women’s body narratives and testimonies of survival as well as their assessments of their journeys and the messages they hoped to convey with their testimonies. These women’s testimonies contain more than experiences of suffering and horror. Their accounts offer an opportunity to reflect on visions and strategies for social change, for building a present and a future that take the recent past into consideration.

Furthermore, the voices of these women are political ones, not only because they speak directly to political issues, but also because many of them have had significant activist trajectories that informed their perspectives. During the democratic transition, survivors’ past political identities were often silenced. As Ana, a survivor quoted in Guillermina Seri’s work (2008, 12), argued, “it is as if the only respectable witness is the one who ‘had nothing to do’ with politics, the one who was there ‘by mistake.’” While the study of survivors’ political histories is not the central focus of this work, social and political activism was an integral aspect of many women’s testimonies. This background infused their experiences in the camps, their survival strategies as well as their more current viewpoints. Various survivors reclaimed aspects of these political experiences, but they sometimes offered critical retrospective assessments of them as well.

Women’s political voices defy the silent and subordinated place traditionally ascribed to women in the body politic and tell of the specific ways such subordination has been enforced and contested. Citing theorist Giorgio Agamben, survivor and scholar Nora Strejilevich noted in her testimony that the military regime implemented techniques aimed to turn captive people into “bare life,” stripped of rights, identity, and all traces of social belonging.12 In this study the testimonies of the women, who exercised their voices even when speaking from bodies marked by horror, strongly countered such attempts. These women offered their narratives not simply as traumatized, raped, and humiliated bodies, but as persons with other important things to say beyond victimization. Their varied, nuanced, and broader perspectives are critical contributions to collective memory.

Using Argentina as its case study, this book shows how centering women’s voices and experiences can offer a more complex and fuller grasp of how state violence operates, how it is countered, and how it is remembered. Based on testimonies of women survivors of state terror, the book accomplishes several goals: (1) it shows how state violence is gendered beyond the use of sexual violence; (2) it underscores ways in which state violence, resistance, and memory are embodied; (3) it expands our understanding of women’s experiences in relation to the dictatorship beyond motherhood; (4) it emphasizes women’s agency instead of simply focusing on victimization; and (5) it takes into account women survivors’ political voices as vital to the process of collective memory transmission.

To provide a road map to this book, I will briefly sketch its structure. The remainder of this chapter addresses important developments in collective memory and human rights struggles in Argentina, situating this case in the Latin American context. The focus on women survivors and the use of gender as a key analytic are explicated, along with my research approach and personal implication in the study. In chapter 2, I delve into the process through which women survivors come to “tell terror,” to give testimony about their experiences of clandestine detention. I offer an account of the tension between silence and talk and body and voice in this process. I also explore these women’s reflections about torture and the human condition as they grappled with memories of unimaginable cruelty. Chapter 3 focuses on women’s body narratives and examines the place of women’s bodies in human rights violations. I analyze not only repressors’ use of motherhood and sexuality as oppression resources, but also how gender scripts inflect torture and torments beyond overtly sexualized strategies or those related to the treatment of pregnant women. Chapter 4 presents an analysis of women’s embodied ways of coping with, negotiating, and resisting the oppressive conditions of the camps. I emphasize the role of the body in such dynamics and how the body became a carrier of memory and a vehicle for voice. Chapter 5 highlights the value of listening to women survivors’ testimonies as political accounts, recognizing these women’s political and historical agency and their contributions to the crafting of visions for the present and the future. The book’s conclusion, chapter 6, draws the political and theoretical implications of the study in relation to central themes: human rights, transitional justice, and collective memory; gender and state power; and bodies, vulnerability, and agency.

Collective Memory and Human Rights Struggles in Argentina

December 10, 2013, marked the thirtieth anniversary of the return of electoral democracy to Argentina. The administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner called for a people’s celebration (fiesta popular) at the emblematic Plaza de Mayo, the public square at the heart of Argentina’s political history. The fiesta—occurring in the midst of a polarized political climate and police work stoppages that gave way to lootings, violence, and deaths in several provinces—nevertheless commemorated three decades of constitutional governments uninterrupted by military takeovers. During the twentieth century, the military toppled constitutional presidents and established de facto governments multiple times. The last military dictatorship (1976–83) was notorious for its level of atrocity. December 10, which is also internationally celebrated as Human Rights Day, aptly symbolizes the connection between democracy and human rights aspirations in the Argentine imaginary. However, as much as different democratic governments intended to rein in armed and security forces, and to break from a past of blatant human rights violations, the process of democratization has been far from easy and straightforward.

The last decades of electoral democracy were not devoid of threats to the institutional order or major political crises. In fact, the legacy of state terrorism has continuously affected political developments. After the dictatorship and under the administration of elected president Raúl Alfonsín (1983–89), CONADEP documented the dictatorship’s human rights violations in the report Nunca Más (Never Again) and a civilian tribunal convicted members of the military juntas in a historic trial (Juicio a las Juntas).13 However, during the same presidency, and in the context of military rebellions, the laws known as Punto Final (Full Stop, no. 23492) and Obediencia Debida (Due Obedience, no. 23521) were enacted in 1986 and 1987, respectively. These laws limited further prosecutions and ensured the impunity of repressors for years. The next president, Carlos Menem (1989–95, 1995–99), pardoned convicted military officers and members of armed political groups, advocating national reconciliation. While justice was being denied via impunity laws, special judicial proceedings called Juicios por la Verdad (Truth Trials) took place in different parts of the country in lieu of regular criminal trials. The Truth Trials further established the record of the military regime’s atrocities, but could not impose penal sanctions.

As a grave economic crisis and concomitant social unrest unfolded in December 2001, the democratically elected president Fernando de la Rúa declared an estado de sitio, an exceptional measure that allows for the suspension of certain constitutional guarantees. The population responded with massive street protests rallying under the cry “Que se vayan todos!” (“They must all go!”), aimed at politicians. De la Rúa resigned, and four interim presidents followed until the 2003 presidential election of Néstor Kirchner.14 Among the groups agitating for social, economic, and political change during this activist surge were the formerly established human rights organizations. Activists in the human rights community made connections between the legacy of the dictatorship’s political-economic agenda and the contemporary woes of neoliberalism, including the rising sovereign debt, unemployment, and poverty. The administration of President Néstor Kirchner (2003–7) responded to some social movements’ demands through increased efforts to redress human rights violations of the past. Figuring prominently among the changes during his administration were the annulment of impunity laws and the opening of trials against people accused of participation in crimes against humanity. This commitment continued during the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007–11, 2011–15), including trials and convictions of hundreds of the military and security force members as well as some involved civilians (CELS 2013). In 2015, center-right candidate Mauricio Macri was elected president, generating uncertainty about the fate of state-supported initiatives in relation to the period of state terrorism.

Overall human rights advocacy and protests have shaped public discourse and influenced democratic governments’ transitional justice policies. Resorting to different strategies, depending on the political environment and the actors involved, human rights organizations have maintained an active presence (Andreozzi 2011a). During the democratic period beginning in late 1983, the Argentine state adopted various measures with human rights orientations, for example, the trial of the military juntas and ratification of a number of international human rights treaties.15 During the Kirchners’ administrations, human rights organizations’ concerns gained momentum after years of impunity. In addition to efforts to bring perpetrators to justice, state and nongovernmental initiatives fostered human rights education through schools and the media, held special commemoration days, created sites of memory, and organized cultural events in line with the theme of “Memory, Truth, and Justice.” Susana Kaiser (2015, 195) points out that besides the possibility of judicial accountabi...