Pacification or Impunity?

Abstract

Since transition in the mid-1980s, the Uruguayan political and social context has often been characterized by a tension between the will to remember and the endeavor to forget. Numerous governments tried to enforce collective amnesia upon society to anesthetize it from the pain suffered (Bergero and Reati 1997)—a sort of top-down imposition of official silence wishing to eliminate from memory the blame laid upon human rights violators and the justice desired by victims (Moraña 1997).

están en algún sitio / nube o tumba

están en algún sitio / estoy seguro

allá en el sur del alma

—Mario Benedetti, poem “Desaparecidos”