By Jorge Auat on July 27, 2024
Nunca Mas!, Never Again!
The scenario that, strictly speaking, has always haunted the Human Rights policy built in Argentina and admired around the world, has started to be agitated these days. The intention of this attack has a slogan: oblivion, and this objective has a marginal gain: the impunity of the genocides. But the most serious thing is what comes before, “oblivion”, because what is at stake is the second death of the victim – the one Benjamin talks about – which consists of turning the page, as if nothing had happened.
That is the crux of the matter, because in this post-dictatorial context, memory is the center of gravity of our democratic paradigm. It “opens files that the law considers archived” as clearly defined by the same author. Consequently, what memory does is to keep alive the injustice of the past, and that is when the Nunca Más (Never Again) arises, whose content is a terrifying cry: Never Again State Terrorism, no more death flights, no more appropriation of babies, no more clandestine torture centers. To stir up violence by vindicating the perpetrators of the most aberrant crimes in history is to turn the page and open the road to oblivion. Nevertheless, certain facts “possess a force in themselves: no matter what those in power invent, they are incapable of discovering or inventing a viable substitute (for the facts)” (Arendt, 1968:259). Unfortunately for the powerful who try to deny or recreate an uncomfortable past, “the facts are sustained by their own obstinacy”. In any case, these facts “transcend all agreement, litigation, opinion or consent.” (Beatriz Manz’s quote from The memory and the reconstruction of history).
A few days ago some deputies visited the repressors convicted for crimes against humanity in a clear campaign for the impunity of the crimes. And it is there where forgetting is the axial element for the desired purpose, because it ends up extinguishing the crime. But, the crime survives in the collective memory and found the moral response in Justice. The reaction of the judges was proverbial in reading the fact as a warning of the fire, because strictly speaking there is no way to avoid the denialist message.
Mother carries a photo of her missing son. photo: Bill Hackwell
If the genocidal crime is a project of oblivion, denial is part of the strategy and, in such a case, the denialists “are vultures circling the fields of death. They feed on what is left of the corpses.” “They return to the death camps to complete the crime” (Donatella Di Cesare). To prevent denialism is the slogan of the Nunca Mas (Never Again).
It is an inexcusable duty of the institutional agencies and of the people as a whole, to guard the process of Memory, Truth and Justice as a preserve forbidden to any maneuver of dismantling. The elementary input of its construction was none other than the pain of the mothers, grandmothers, relatives and society as a whole.
In short, it is the same and non-transferable Never Again that Pope Francis speaks of, that of the CONADEP, that of Primo Levi when he tells what the survivors of the camps expressed. It is a moral imperative, an incontrovertible social paradigm.
The future is not built with impunity but with memory. That memory is the resignification of the victims. As Reyes Mate says, one is either with the dead or for the dead. Only with memory is it possible to prevent the return of barbarism. That is what it is all about.
Source: Página 12, translation: Resumen Latinoamericano – English