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Document Type

Article

Abstract

[First paragraph]

Nora Strejilevich ends her semi-autobiographical account of the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in her book, "A Single Numberless Death", with the above poem in which she names her disappeared (or, as she writes, "murdered") brother both as "her" brother and "our" brother. Throughout the book Strejilevich combines autobiography, documentary journalism, poetry, and published testimonies of others who have written of their experiences during the coup to narrate the "chorus of voices" of the 30,000 who were disappeared by the military (171). As with the poem, her stories of individuals lost and individual loss are contained as the single story of a collective experience. As she writes, disappearance did not only leave an emptiness in "her", "him", or "me", but also in "us". Indeed, it is the collective that is at the center of both Strejilevich's poem and public remembrance of the dictatorship in Argentina - the collective Argentine public being called on to remember and the collective 30,000 disappeared persons being brought forth into the present. More specifically, human rights groups in the country often structure remembrance of "los 30,000" ("the 30,000") as a call for the construction of a public who, through its commitment to remember the disappeared, is subsequently committed to continuing the struggle for human rights for which the 30,000 were disappeared. Thus, through public remembrance practices such as commemorative marches, political protests, memorials and street art, the disappeared are remembered as a collective of Argentines who sacrificed their lives to construct a just Argentina. It is on this landscape of memory that the human rights group Neighbourhoods for Memory, has focused its remembrance of the disappeared on mapping the singular lives that were lost and, in turn, on mapping sites of individual mourning and grief. Through public memorials erected in remembrance of individual disappeared persons and remembrance events that invite family and friends to speak about their loss, Neighbourhoods for Memory reminds us that the 30,000 were not only political activists but also people who were loved and are missed.

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