Collective Memory from the Dictatorship to the Present

Abstract

As Jelin observes, “controversies over the meaning of the past surface at the very moment when events are taking place” (2003, 30). The Argentinean armed forces described the comprehensive set of policies implemented after the 1976 coup d’état as “Proceso de Reorganización Nacional,” indicating that they aimed at transforming not only state institutions but also society as a whole. As Daniel Feierstein (2007) observes, the systematic repression sought to destroy the solidary bonds and anti-establishment ideas consolidated during the first government of Juan Domingo Perón (1946–1952).