Living with the Legacy of Disappearance
Robert, Karen & Hermello, Rodrigo Gutérrez
Human rights organizations in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala have been working together to understand the effects of state terror in second and third generations like Paula's. In...
...And because the society doesn't recognize that parent as a victim, he or she figures as a kind of idiot...
...But the children lived through the silencing of the dictatorship...
...The Movement's coordinator, Esteban Costa, was interviewed in his Buenos Aires office by Karen Robert and Rodrigo Gutirrez Hermelo...
...The youths have a big problem identifying themselves with their parents' history...
...Even afterwards the adult caregivers were afraid of them speaking out about their situation and attracting further repression...
...The youths imagine an ideal, unattainable figure to replace the missing parent...
...This brings us back to the social...
...Here in Argentina, what special challenges do the children of the disappeared face during adolescence...
...There was just a "war," an "unfortunate" situation...
...For these kids, the element that sets the limits to a person's conductwhich is one of the key issues of adolescenceis represented by the parent's absence...
...What we've found is that for these youths, the future doesn't exist...
...The contradiction at a personal level is that there is also a process of idealization...
...Why didn't my father have the sense to leave when it was inevitable that he would be killed...
...This transition when the child becomes an adult is such a critical stage in any person's life, when there are many crises of values...
...In Buenos Aires, the Mental Health Solidarity Movement (Movimiento Soildario de Salud Mental) has spent more than ten years conducting therapy and research with the children of the disappeared...
...So the history was silenced even within the family...
...There is no framework to help them recover that history...
...You're referring to the fact that the military personnel responsible for human rights violations were pardoned...
...One 19-year-old did not even know exactly which political group his father had been involved in...
...The serious crisis has to do with the incapacity of the society to assume its responsibility regarding the disappeared parent...
...This has occurred in some other countries, like Uruguay...
...This is an issue for any orphan...
...How do these adolescents feel about their parents...
...Exactly...
...What are the possibilities and mechanisms for recovering that history and building towards the future...
...But here it is also an absence in the society, and most specifically, in the government and the justice system...
...There is a huge weight of blame here...
...Everything is in the present...
...Here there is no recognition of any victims...
...The biggest consequence of this absence is the problem of building a future...
...When they tell their stories, they almost never mention the future...
...If we live in an Argentina governed by impunity, there is no social model to "replace" that absent figure...
...Unfortunately, in very many cases it is a kind of hatred...
...When asked about their plans for the next year, or next five years, they give answers like, "I'd like to be less crazy than I am now," or simply "I have no idea...
...At the social level, if the justice system were to recognize the disappeared as victims, through a monument or some public symbol, that simple fact would be significant for these kids' health...
...And then many things in their lives also become unobtainable: love, social relationships, emotional commitments...
...In most cases, the family members that raised these kids were fantastic...
...There aren't even many people in a position to help them...
Vol. 27 • March 1994 • No. 5
