Reviving Argentina

BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News
Sept. 8, 2009

Walking past the exhibit's dark basement walls, still images of bloodstained bodies, sobbing mothers and political protestors' determined faces suddenly become very alive, transforming the photographs into a jarring reflection on the so-called "dirty war" in Argentina.

On display now at the Tlatelolco Cultural Center in Mexico City's Coyoacán neighborhood, the 65-piece collection pulls together photographs from various Argentine newspaper archives as part of the project titled, in short, "En negro y blanco" ("In Black and White").

The two-toned presentation starts with 1969 photographs from a civil uprising in Córdoba, Argentina, that was crushed by police repression and later coined the "Cordobazo." The collection ends in 1985 at the "Juicio de las Juntas" ("Trial of the Juntas"), the judicial trial held for members of the de facto military government that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

The project will also be shown alongside a multimedia installation by Argentine artist Enrique Je<017e>ik, titled "Práctica: 200 cartuchos caliber 12, 78 balas 9 mm" ("Praxis: 200, 12-caliber catridges, and 78, 9 mm bullets").

Although both exhibits were inaugurated on Aug. 31, they will open today to the public due to renovations at the center. The programs will run through Wednesday, Sept. 30.

"'En negro y blanco' allows us to talk about a history that is not in the official books.it collects all this history that is dispersed throughout various photography and documentary archives," Sergio Raúl Arroyo, general director of the Tlatelolco cultural center, said in a late August press conference.

Alejandro Montes de Oca, who works with the Centro de Image (Image Center) in Mexico, added that while many efforts in the past have revisited Argentina's dirty war through artistic and creative expression, this exhibit is one of the few projects that take an unaltered, historical view of the events that occurred during this period.

The project began four years in ago in the Buenos Aires office of the Association of Graphic Reporters of Argentina (ARGRA), when the group began sifting through national newspaper archives and the personal collections of photojournalists.

By 2006, the group had amassed numerous materials that could give testimony to the bitter realities of Argentina's past.

Alejandro Castellanos, director of the Image Center, said the exhibit aimed to create a "dialogue in memory."

"For the photographers, this project has been very important to do after more than 30 years since the beginning [of the dirty war]," he said at the press conference.

"They have worked so that this project can be presented in various cities throughout Latin America, particularly in those that were capitals for Argentine exiles during this period," he said.

"IN BLACK AND WHITE"

The photography exhibit can be graphic, shocking and tragic, but mostly because the images are not fabrications - they're genuine.

A 1974 photo, for example, shows the bullet-riddled bodies of three Revolutionary Army of the People (ERP) soldiers spread across the sidewalk outside a Córdoba police station. Investigators and passersby assess the damage with their backs turned away from the carnage.

In a 1982 image from inside the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, a young man crouches against a wall as a police officer menacingly points an army rifle in the boy's face. Similar confrontations are seen in the periphery as police detain the protestors.

Another photo captures a man digging through common burial sites, part of post-war reconstruction efforts beginning in 1983 to identify the whereabouts or, in many cases, remains of the estimated 30,000 people who were disappeared during the military government's rule.

"En negro y blanco," however, does not set out to be entirely grim and morose. Many of the images speak to empowerment, justice and vindication.

A 1983 image shows a crowd of mothers and daughters standing in the Plaza de Mayo in the pouring rain and holding up posters illustrating the faces of their disappeared family members.

An earlier December 1982 photograph shows political protestors ramming a steel frame into the doors of the government palace as tear gas is thrown around them.

The image's caption explains that at this point in the dirty war, the government had progressively weakened following a June 1982 defeat to Britain in the Falklands War (or "Guerra de Malvinas" in Spanish) and a strong economic downturn.

At the end of the exhibit, a 1985 image captures a scene inside the Trial of the Juntas as an investigator flips through incriminating projector slides before a panel of judges.

Castellanos said that hosting the exhibit near Tlatelolco's Plaza de las Tres Culturas (Plaza of the Three Cultures) was an ideal location for the display, referring to the similarly violent memory of the 1968 government-sponsored attack on student protestors inside the Mexican plaza.

"The main idea here is to relate the collective Argentine memory with Mexico's own memory," he said at the press conference.

Argentine photographer Marcelo Brodsky added that the photography exhibit opens up discussion on taboo topics for both Argentina and Mexico.

"Through this controversial history.Mexico and Argentina can begin to share this memory," he said.

The project aims to teach younger generations from both nations about Argentina's dirty past, he said.