Saturday, November 21, 2009

Two articles on the lingering history of the dictatorship

Two articles I came across this week are fascinating windows into the ongoing debates over the memory of the dictatorship (the most recent dictatorship, that is).

First, the legislature approved a very disturbing law, which allows the government to force an individual to give up blood for a DNA test, in order to determine if he or she is one of the children of the desaparecidos. This is a law that was pushed by the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayoa) who have focused on identifying all of the estimated 400 children stolen by the dictatorship when their pregnant mothers were kidnapped and later killed. There is a suspected strong dose of political payback here, as the head of Clarin, the multimedia conglomerate that includes the newspaper that is often critical of the Kirchner administration, has two adopted children who many suspect are children of desaparecidos.


And my artist friend Julian d'Angiolillo brought to my attention an article from a few months back about the discovery of one of the planes used to drop the desaparecidos into the Rio. It is not clear what is going to happen to the plane, but I am hoping to see it in the coming weeks.



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