Reluctantly Blogtastic: Excursiones educativas

September 23^rd 1:50pm

Ok, yeah, I'm bad at updating. We've just done so much stuff, so it's kind of overwhelming to sit down and type this all up! I'm going to talk a little about some excursions that our group has done. Although our program is focused on economic development and regional integration, in order to better understand the history and culture of Argentina we've also done some visits that focus on the theme of memory of the political horrors that have occurred here.

On September 12^th, our group went to El Olimpo, a clandestine detention center (CCD) that was used during the dirty war in Argentina. In the 1970s, over 30,000 people were 'disappeared' (los desaparecidos) by the military junta that was in control of the Argentine government at the time. The disappeared were mostly students and intellectuals that were perceived as being dangerous to the government due to their political beliefs. They were held in secret prisons/concentration camps where they were tortured, and then murdered by the government. Their bodies were mostly never recovered so their families had no idea if they were alive or dead, although today a few have been found and identified with DNA evidence.

The sign at El Olimpo

El Olimpo held about 100 prisoners at any given time and it's estimated that 500 prisoners passed through the facility.

A photo of the disappeared who are confirmed to have been in El Olimpo

The building is in the middle of a busy, populated neighborhood, so it's hard to imagine that something so horrible could have existed here. Originally a bus station, while El Olimpo was being used as a CCD, the front part of the building was used by the policia federal as an auto storage facility, and the back area was where prisoners were held. You can't just go to El Olimpo and wander around, you need to arrange a tour. This is because they don't want people just gawking at the building and things like the rooms where they would torture people, they want people to really understand what happened and think about the individuals who were disappeared.

The marks on the floor are where the walls of the cells were. SO small.

After touring the facility, we went to the visitor center where there are a lot of materials discussing the history of El Olimpo, but the most interesting things are the books written by the families of the disappeared. The parents or siblings of the people who were disappeared have created books in memory of their loved ones, which vary quite a bit but typically include pictures, a biography, and things that they enjoyed like the lyrics to their favorite songs, or other things. I intended to flip through a few of them, but when I opened the first one I saw, I ended up reading it cover to cover. The book I picked up was about a boy named Carlos, called Carlito by his family. He cared about politics and liked to play the guitar. The book was written by his sister with some parts contributed by other family members, and I discovered that Carlito was the same age as me when he disappeared, had completed 3 years of economics at the university (as have I), and disappeared on my birthday in 1978.

His family knows that he was in El Olimpo because his brother was also kidnapped and held in El Olimpo for a few days, and was able to hear Carlito being tortured. I really thought that I had a good idea of the horror of this time period before, as I've read so much about it and watched numerous documentaries, but this still managed to make it so much more real to me, this personal connection. Memory is so important, and when you hear numbers like 30,000 people tortured and killed it's just impossible to imagine, so these books and records are an amazing thing to help people connect to what really happened.

The original cells and walls have been knocked down.

Inside the facility

Murales de memoria

The area that was used as an automobile storage area/bus station. Now full of murals.

The next day we had two visits. I'm going to talk about them out of order, because, well, you'll see why. Thursday afternoon we had about an hour and a half of Spanish class and then we walked with our teachers from the university to the Plaza de Mayo, where every Thursday las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo still march in memory of their disappeared children. The Madres are actually split into two groups today: La Linea Fundadora, which is mostly focused on the memory of their lost children and La Asociacion de La Madres which is focused on a lot of political issues like the sovereignty of Las Malvinas (the Argentinean name for the Falklands). La Asociacion is pretty tight with the current government and basically endorses whatever their policies are and get some money from them.

La Asociacion

La Linea Fundadora

Additionally, there are two other groups: Las Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo (abuela means grandmother, these are the women whose pregnant daughters were disappeared, the children were typically adopted secretly by members of the military and there have been many efforts to reunite them with their biological families) and Los Hijos de la Plaza de Mayo (the children of the disappeared). Normally I think I would be interested in this visit, but I'd forget about it fairly quickly, however with the recent visit to El Olimpo so fresh in my memory, this visit was actually really intense for me.

Looking at these women who have been marching for nearly 40 years (some of whom risked their lives to do so originally when they first started gathering: gatherings of more than 3 people were not permitted, and the government disappeared several of the original Madres) with the photos of their missing children, the children whose bodies they STILL haven't found was something that I don't think I really have the words to describe, in English or Spanish. I thought to myself that one of those women could be the mother of Carlito, that every one of them suffered such an unimaginable loss. I really can't even imagine what they've been through, but I'm glad I've had the chance to really try to think about it.

Deep in thought. This is not a very flattering photo.

In the morning of that day, instead of our usual morning class we visited a Fabrica Recuperada (reclaimed/recovered factory), which are factories that in some cases have been abandoned by their owners, sometimes not, but that have been taken over by the factory workers. Many of these were created after the economic crisis of 2001, but the process has continued until today. This factory produces books, and it was really interesting to see how they have organized themselves. The president of the workers collective led us on a tour and told us a bit about the history of the fabrica.

In 2003, the business was losing money and underwent some financial restructuring. One Friday, the workers left the factory and when they returned Monday, 8 of the machines had been sold and removed from the building. After this happened, the workers began to organize themselves and took turns guarding the factory 24/7 so that no more machines could be removed from the factory, and after some time had passed they took over the management themselves.