Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Aug 2014)
96/5000 Other literature Bureaucratic records and traces of disappearances in Argentina
Abstract
In this article I examine a series of bureaucratic records produced during the military dictatorship by workers in two state agencies, a morgue and a public hospital, located in two different provinces of Argentina, Córdoba and Buenos Aires. In these public documents, these workers left evidence, for several and different reasons, on the existence of practices that integrated phases or moments of the system of forced disappearance of persons, a crime which distinguished the last military dictatorship (1976-1983) of their predecessors. The analysis of these administrative records is an exploratory approach that aims to contribute to the understanding of the logic / s operation of state bureaucracies during the last military dictatorship, try to establish and understand the variety of relationships that a portion of its members established with the practice of forced disappearance of persons and other repressive practices unwrapped during this period and try to document the variety of ideas and emotions that, contemporary to the facts, were put into play in relation to the perpetrators of these crimes and their victims.
