After arriving in Buenos Aires, I was determined to undertake the ultimate challenge of cultural, linguistic, and sensory immersion: physically going to see (and hopefully comprehend) an Argentine movie—in Spanish, of course. For this reason, I jumped at the opportunity to venture to the cine, or the movie theater, as part of an actividad cultural (cultural activity) with my CIEE program to watch the award-winning Argentine film El Clan. Although movies are typically thought of as a two hour escape from reality, this box office success, which has just been nominated as Argentina’s choice for the 2016 Foreign Language Oscar race, instead serves as a chilling reminder of the harrowing—and very real—violence that was perpetrated by the government during the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983.
El Clan recounts the true horror story of the Puccio family, who kidnapped, and gruesomely tortured, wealthy acquaintances in their basement for ransom during Argentina’s transition from dictatorship to democracy during the early 1980s. The Puccios were extremely well-respected and well-connected in the upper echelons of Buenos Aires society. This is why family patriarch Arquimedes, who was a former military man with connections to the Argentine secret service, was protected from prosecution until the year of his arrest in 1985. Although these particular crimes mainly took place after the government’s transfer of power, they are reminiscent of the nearly 30,000 desaparecidos, or disappeared peoples, that were kidnapped and murdered at the hands of extremist right-wing groups and the military dictatorship.
One of the most fascinating components of this movie is the reaction it generates, particularly amongst the older generation of Argentines, who have physically lived through this violent epoch of their country’s history and can personally relate to the story. My host mother Gabriela, for example, was explaining to me the shock she felt during the mid-1980s when the Puccio family was arrested and jailed for their atrocities. Having lived in their neighborhood during the time of the kidnappings, she said that she would have never suspected the horrendous violence that was occurring behind the walls; they appeared to be a perfectly normal family.
In a class I am taking at the University of Buenos Aires called “La Construcción Social de la Memoria Colectiva,” or "The Social Construction of Collective Memory," one of the most prominent themes we discuss is the way that the desaparecidos have been portrayed politically in the collective and internalized personally by the individual since the start of the dictatorship. The memorialization and grieving process has been extremely painful for those whose loved ones were “disappeared” due to the lack of closure surrounding their presumed deaths. This struggle was then further exacerbated by the government’s denunciations of its responsibility for these murders. Perhaps even more compelling, however, is the fact that for the younger generation of Argentines, the violence of the military regime—and thus the story of El Clan—is a sensational and seemingly fictional story: a collective memory of the past.
The remnants from the dictatorship, however, have far from vanished from Argentine society today. The frustration, anger, and sorrow of the people of Argentina are visibly manifested in various forms of protests and demonstrations throughout the city. When I was visiting the governmental palace, or the Casa Rosada, an internationally recognized organization of mothers of disappeared persons—Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo—were marching through the central square in solidarity, nearly 40 years after the abduction of their children. Every morning on my way to class, I pass by graffiti scribbled on the walls of buildings calling for “Justicia para los desaparecidos” or “Justice for the Disappeared.”
After studying and observing firsthand the impacts of the military regime in Buenos Aires, my experience at the movie theater that Friday afternoon has led me to two important conclusions. Firstly, El Clan is a powerful reminder, albeit somber, that because of human memory, the past is never solely confined to the past. History is constantly being retold, reconstructed, and reinterpreted to adjust to the changing political and social climate of the time. And secondly, I know which film I will be rooting for at next year’s Oscars.
Marisa Hawley graduated from Georgetown's School of Foreign Service in 2017 with a major in international politics and a concentration in international law. During her fall 2015 semester abroad, she blogged for the Junior Year Abroad Network, expanded her knowledge on international political economy from an Argentine perspective, improved her Spanish, and explored the vibrant city of Buenos Aires.
