The "Forgotten Disappeared

Alex Chapman

The Dictatorship. The Dirty War. The Disappeared. Los Centros Clandestinos. Before even learning about what these words meant, I was surrounded by them. In class, in passing, in the media, in casual conversation. The very makeup of the city holds and expresses the memory of these horrific pasts. “Nunca mas”, never again. “Por ahora y siempre”, for now and forever.” These acts of remembrance are acts for truth and for justice. They serve not only to commemorate but to remind. The rhetoric around these acts of memorialization are forceful. The dates 1976 and 1983 are burned into my mind, remembering them more clearly than the wars I learned year after year in school. The very environment and culture is saturated in remembrance, memorial, and repetition. As they bleed through the fabric of the city, another disappearance slips through the cracks to be more than forgotten but buried. Black people have been in Argentina for centuries. Before independence, before the formation of a unified nation, before its very name was codified, they’d been here. Among modern rhetoric such as all Argentines “son de los barcos”, the heavy racializing of neighbors like Brazil, and the prideful claim of being 97% European, the truth that Argentina was once almost 40% seems anything but fact. This transformation from fact to the unbelievable was no accident. In a contemporary culture defined by memory, when it came to afroidentidad, the goal was to leave no trace. Afrodescendientes were segregated into sectors of cities where death was imminent. To force a whitening of the country, it is said that as President, Sarmiento entered military operations he knew would be lost in order to be conscripting Black men to their deaths. In the late 1800s, when the national census was being developed, it was decided afroidentidad would be excluded due to their supposed low and therefore irrelevant numbers. After nearly two centuries, it wasn’t until this year that afrodescendientes were finally included on the census. It wasn’t until this year that afroidentidad could be claimed and recognized on official, national documents. It wasn’t until this year that the “97%” was called into question on such a scale. There’s a sort of cognitive dissonance I see play out everyday. One moment, I’m walking through Parque de la Memoria, a physical space bringing the Disappeared back to the light, only to then come back to school that same day and hear of a professor who says racism doesn’t exist in Argentina, seemingly forgetting how active a process disappearing is. These claims are heard everywhere–there’s no racism in Argentina, there’s no black people in Argentina, that doesn’t exist here. How can the culture and people who birthed such giants of Argentine culture like tango simply not exist? How can one remember their products yet forget their presence? How can one do that forgetting in a country where memory defines history’s presence in the contemporary world? We forget all the time. Memory isn’t a locked box. Things fall and fade just as they remain or are rebuilt. Consciously and unconsciously, we reorganize and shift, make room for more, make room for new, or make room for better. In a society soaking in memory–deliberate, conscious, and loud–forgetting appears as a choice. It is not the simple, slow dripping of a faucet coming to quiet over time but a forceful twist of a knob to silence and suppress. If what Argentina has done for the crimes of the dictatorship is pry eyes open, what it’s done for afrodescendientes is wrap its hands around their throats to stifle the smallest of breaths. Yet, even in this suffocation, afroidentidad screams out. The very act of existence loosens the grip, twists the knob. The very sound of rushing water from the pipes before it exits is enough to be evidence of presence. It is that presence that exposes the “forgetting” for what it truly is, that forces a harsh memory preferred to be kept hidden.