The “Forgotten” Disappeared

Alex Chapman

The Dictatorship. The Disappeared. Los Centros Clandestinos. I was surrounded by these words even before learning what they meant. In class, in passing, in the media, in casual conversation, they appeared continuously. The very makeup of the city holds and expresses the memory of this horrific past. “Nunca más,” never again. “Por ahora y siempre,” for now and forever. These acts of remembrance are acts for truth and justice. The rhetoric around them is forceful. The dates 1976 and 1983 are burned into my mind, more clearly than the wars I learned year after year in school.

As they bleed through the fabric of the city, another form of disappearance slips through the cracks. Black people have been in Argentina for centuries. Before independence, before the formation of a unified nation. Beyond the rhetoric that claims that all Argentines “son de los barcos,” beyond the prideful claim of being 97% European, the truth is that Argentina was once almost 40% Black.

In a culture defined by memory, when it comes to afroidentidad, the goal seems to be to leave no trace. As president, Sarmiento instituted policies to segregate and lead Blacks to their deaths. In the late 1800s, when the national census was being developed, afroidentidad was excluded as a category due to their supposedly low and therefore irrelevant numbers. It wasn’t until this year that afrodescendientes were finally included in 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.

There’s a sort of cognitive dissonance at play here. One moment, I’m walking through Parque de la Memoria, a physical space bringing the Disappeared back to the light, only to come back to school to hear claims that racism doesn’t exist in Argentina. These claims are heard everywhere. How can the people who developed such emblems of Argentine culture like tango simply not exist? How can one remember their products yet forget their existence? How can this forgetting exist in a country where memory defines history’s presence in the contemporary world?

We forget all the time. Things fall and fade just as they remain or are rebuilt. We reorganize and shift, make room for more, for new, 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. 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 into the light a harsh memory preferred to be kept hidden.