In 1976, a military coup unseated President Isabel Peron from office, inaugurating seven years of state-sponsored terrorism in Argentina. Estimates of the number of dead and disappeared in Argentina during those years range from between 10,000-30,000. The military came to power professing to stabilize the country, both economically and politically. It is an undisputed fact that Argentina's economy was in shambles by 1976, with inflation running at 1,000 percent annually. It was also true that political extremism on the right and on the left had generated high levels of social tension and conflict. Not clear, however, were the causes of the conflict and potential solutions to it. The generals who took over Argentina in 1976 claimed that left-wing terrorists were largely responsible for Argentina's woes and they were determined to eliminate them and restore stability to the nation. Argentina was at war within itself during during these seven years of "Dirty War." It was only after losing another war that the generals stepped down in humilliation, claiming that they had accomplished their goals of ridding the country of "subversion" and restoring the Argentinian economy to stability.
        After Raul Alfonsin assumed the presidency in 1983 Argentinians began to come to terms with the bloody legacy of the "Dirty War." Although many Argentinians prefer to leave the past behind, the whole of Argentinian society, culture, and politics was profoundly altered by military rule. Even when people deliberately choose to forget, the memory of violence continues to prevade and permeate Argentinian life.
        The sources listed below are not meant to be an exhaustive list of materials on Argentina available at Allegheny College. There are, for example, many general books on Argentinian politics from 1976 to 1983 that I do not include. I only list books and other materials that directly relate to the theme of political memory.

Books:

Andersen, Martin Edwin. Dossier secreto: Argentina's Desaparecidos and the myth of the "Dirty War." Boulder: Westview Press, 1993.

Brysk, Alison. The politics of human rights in Argentina: protest, change, and democratization. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.

Crelinsten, Ronald D. and Alex P. Schmid. The politics of pain: torturers and their masters. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995.

Feitlowitz, Marguerite. A lexicon of terror: Argentina and the legacies of torture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Guest, Iain. Behind the disappearances: Argentina's dirty war against human rights and the United Nations. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

Guzman Bouvard, Marguerite. Revolutionizing Motherhood: the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Wilmington,DE: Scholarly Resources Books.

Hodges, Donald. Argentina's "dirty war": an intellectual biography. Austin: University of Texas, 1991.

Koonings, Kees, and Dirk Kruijt, eds. Societies of fear: the legacy of civil war, violence, and terror in Latin America. London; New York: Zed Books; New York: Distributed in the USA by St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Marchak, Patricia M. God's assassins: state terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999.

Pion-Berlin, David. The ideology of state terror: economic doctrine and political repression in Argentina and Peru. Boulder: L.Rienner Publishers, 1989.

Roniger, Luis and Mario Sznajder. The legacy of human-rights violations in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile,and Uruguay. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Shua, Ana Maria. the Book of Memories, Jewish Latin America: a novel. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.

Sluka, Jeffrey A., ed. Death squad: the anthropology of state terror. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

Film and Video:

Video and Film: Argentina The Garden of Forking Paths [videorecording]: dilemmas of national development/a production of WGBH Boston and Central Television Enterprises for Channel 4, UK. S. Burlington, VT: Annenberg/CPB Collection, 1993.

La historia oficial [videorecording] = The official story / Almi Pictures, Inc. ; un film de Luis Puenzo ; uno cinematográfico de Aída Bortnik y Luis Puenzo. New York : Fox Lorber Home Video ; Los Angeles : Sold exclusively by Orion Home Video, 1995

Web sites:

On human rights, see http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/arg/

On the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo movement, see http://www.madres.org

On the state-sponsored human rights commission in post-Dirty War Argentina, the Comision Nacional sobre la Desaparicion de Personas (CONADEP), see http://www.nuncamas.org

Photos from June 2009 trip to Buenos Aires: Click to view

p to Buenos Aires