Memorias de las desapariciones. Los vecinos del Centro Clandestino de Detención del Hospital Posadas, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

This article examines the memories circulating amongst neighbours of the Posadas Hospital, situated in Haedo, in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, concerning the political repression during the last military dictatorship (1976-1983). After the coup d’état, a clandestine detention centre operated in the Posadas Hospital where individuals were illegally held captive. Thus, in the Hospital practices devoted to health care and recuperation took place alongside torture and assassination. This study analyses the remembrance and forgetting of these acts shared by various neighbours who lived in the area surrounding the Posadas Hospital during the dictatorship. Specifically, it investigates their experiences of state violence, in particular the system for the forced disappearance of individuals, and how they have remained inscribed in personal memories. Finally, it analyses the information which circulated and the levels of knowledge which these neighbours had of the characteristics and nature of the disappearances within the hospital and of those responsible for them whilst this was taking place.

Keywords

• Argentina
• the ‘disappeared’
• military dictatorship
• Posadas Hospital
• memory
• political repression