Posted on Feb 18, 2023
'El Juicio (The Trial)' details the 1976-'83 Argentine dictatorship's reign of terror
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https://www.npr.org/2023/02/17/ [login to see] /el-juicio-the-trial-argentina-dictatorship
Standing beneath the birch and flowering jacaranda trees at what used to be ESMA (the acronym in Spanish for the Navy School of Mechanics) it's not easy to picture the horrors that took place at this sprawling urban campus in Buenos Aires.
In the 1970s and '80s, ESMA was a clandestine detention center for a right-wing military regime brutally engaged in eliminating dissent through criminal practices that were exposed in gruesome detail in trial testimony two years after the end of the Argentine dictatorship.
In 1985, after briefly granting themselves amnesty, the leaders of the military regime were convicted by the new civilian government of crimes against humanity. The charges: kidnapping, torturing and murdering tens of thousands of their own citizens during a reign of terror that lasted from 1976 to 1983.
Forty years after the fall of that dictatorship, a video record of its trial – the only example of a Latin American democracy convicting its own oppressors — is being shown to the public for the first time at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Standing beneath the birch and flowering jacaranda trees at what used to be ESMA (the acronym in Spanish for the Navy School of Mechanics) it's not easy to picture the horrors that took place at this sprawling urban campus in Buenos Aires.
In the 1970s and '80s, ESMA was a clandestine detention center for a right-wing military regime brutally engaged in eliminating dissent through criminal practices that were exposed in gruesome detail in trial testimony two years after the end of the Argentine dictatorship.
In 1985, after briefly granting themselves amnesty, the leaders of the military regime were convicted by the new civilian government of crimes against humanity. The charges: kidnapping, torturing and murdering tens of thousands of their own citizens during a reign of terror that lasted from 1976 to 1983.
Forty years after the fall of that dictatorship, a video record of its trial – the only example of a Latin American democracy convicting its own oppressors — is being shown to the public for the first time at the Berlin International Film Festival.
'El Juicio (The Trial)' details the 1976-'83 Argentine dictatorship's reign of terror
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Nunca mas — never again
That duality of experience is, in a sense, the issue that Torras hopes releasing the tapes will rectify. Forty years later, the regime's savagery is becoming a distant memory, especially for a generation that wasn't alive at the time. A generation that can, in the trial tapes, hear the prosecutor conclude his summation with the words "nunca mas" (never again), and watch the crowd's explosive reaction wipe the smiles from the faces of the former dictator and his generals.
Memoria Abierta's mission is to keep that memory potent through broad access to the trial videos. The group will soon be making the digitized trial footage available on demand. The Berlin Film Festival's premiere of El Juicio is a first step."
..."Nunca mas — never again
That duality of experience is, in a sense, the issue that Torras hopes releasing the tapes will rectify. Forty years later, the regime's savagery is becoming a distant memory, especially for a generation that wasn't alive at the time. A generation that can, in the trial tapes, hear the prosecutor conclude his summation with the words "nunca mas" (never again), and watch the crowd's explosive reaction wipe the smiles from the faces of the former dictator and his generals.
Memoria Abierta's mission is to keep that memory potent through broad access to the trial videos. The group will soon be making the digitized trial footage available on demand. The Berlin Film Festival's premiere of El Juicio is a first step."
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