From Blanket Impunity to Judicial Opening(s)

The Evolution of Escraches in Post-2005 Argentina

In 2005, in the aftermath of the repeal of the impunity laws, H.I.J.O.S. reached an impasse. Indeed, this seminal moment precipitated “a discussion yet to be resolved” (Jorge, interview, Buenos Aires, March 6, 2008) within the organization, as members debated whether the escraches would and should continue, given that they had been initiated when “legal possibilities for bringing repressors to trial were nil” (Cueto Rúa, 2010: 137). Between the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, H.I.J.O.S.’s and its supporters’ critique of legal impunity focused on the impunity laws as persistent obstacles to justice. However, in the post-2005 context, escraches did not become obsolete, although they occurred less frequently. Escraches reject the anonymity and the impunity that many perpetrators enjoy by exposing their identity and transmitting vital information about their role in the repression, as well as transmitting broader contextual information about the dictatorship—particularly the part played by civilians—to society at large. A deeper understanding of why escraches persisted after 2005 in spite of and alongside increasing opportunities for justice can be gained from considering their targets. Usually the escrache process begins when H.I.J.O.S. receives an accusation from a relative, survivor, or member of the public about an individual involved in the repression. A file on the individual (the prontuario) is then created after thorough research, outlining the individual’s crimes and whether he is under judicial investigation (Francisco, interview, Buenos Aires, September 16, 2008; Jorge, interview, Buenos Aires, March 6, 2008). Therefore, an escrache might focus on someone already under investigation by the courts or someone relatively unknown. As Francisco points out, many of the targets of post-2005 escraches are civilian accomplices, highlighting the fact that “it was not only police or the military but also sectors of the civilian power that actively endorsed the regime.” Indeed, the dictatorship received significant support from politicians, the Church, and the judiciary and from big businesses including companies such as Ledesma, Ford, and Mercedes, which lent vehicles to the armed forces to kidnap people and had people detained and even tortured on their premises. State terror relied on the active and direct participation and complicity of a large number of civilians, such as priests, lawyers, and doctors, who either attended torture sessions or provided administrative and practical expertise.

Moreover, while many Argentines acknowledge that human rights violations occurred on a large scale and that state-sponsored forces were mostly responsible, the role of civilian accomplices has received significantly less attention. Drawing on research with young Argentines, Kaiser (2003: 19) concludes that “contextual information about the ideological, political, or economic angles of the terror has been largely ignored. Nor has the role of civilian accomplices been explored in depth.” The “theory of two demons,” which persisted well into the postdictatorship period, helps account for this. The doctrine explains human rights violations as the result of conflict between two opposing factions (the armed forces and the guerrillas) and ignores the broader causes of the repression and the different actors involved. In recent years individuals selected for escraches have often been less well-known repressors and civilian accomplices, many of whom maintained regular civilian occupations during the dictatorship and afterward and who are often not widely known or evading judicial investigation, such as the lawyer Oscar Hermelo. Francisco stressed that the move toward targeting civilian accomplices was under way in 2003 but increased after the repeal of the impunity laws.

A case in point is the 2007 escrache against Hermelo mentioned earlier. Accused of having worked in the notorious clandestine detention center Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (Navy Mechanics School—ESMA), where his job involved the illegal appropriation of the disappeared’s belongings (particularly cars, which were then used for abductions), and denounced by the former navy captain Adolfo Scilingo as one of the men under his command and by human rights organizations, Hermelo was subjected to judicial investigation in 1998 (Página/12, November 22, 2007). Although the lawyer admitted having worked at the ESMA, he denied having seen anything unusual or having been involved in repression; judicial proceedings stalled. Having evaded punishment since 1994, Hermelo was working as a public prosecutor for the Buenos Aires government, responsible for cases involving perpetrators of human rights crimes. The escrache against him can therefore be viewed as a means of sending a signal to society that impunity lingered not only in the immediate postdictatorship period but also in the post-2005 context and that even an individual known to the authorities may not face justice or be widely recognized as having been involved in atrocities.

By identifying the perpetrators of crimes and taking their message to the neighborhoods, escraches aim to shake people out of their passivity and dispel the belief that impunity is permanent and the dictatorship a thing of the past. To do this, prior to the escrache H.I.J.O.S. members prepare the targeted neighborhood, canvassing the area in which the targets live or work showing their photographs and disseminating information to residents. In the Hermelo case, the flyers distributed included his photograph, name, position under the regime, and current occupation, as well as the date of the escrache. On the day of the event, H.I.J.O.S. congregated outside Hermelo’s workplace singing and beating drums (Figure 1), reading out the accusations against him, before marking the street outside in yellow paint with the words “Hermelo—Fiscal de la impunidad” (Hermelo—prosecutor of impunity). Those living and working in this downtown neighborhood were forced to confront the crimes he had committed against their fellow citizens. This is a central aim of escraches: to ensure that society at large is made aware and invited to participate. Although participants denounced the lack of justice, as Francisco explained, “the ultimate objective of the escrache is social condemnation” as opposed to vigilante justice. The escraches draw attention to both past crimes and lasting impunity in the present, even in a context increasingly favorable for prosecutions. By individualizing responsibility and provoking societal condemnation, participants send a message to the perpetrator that they cannot hope for anonymity in spite of having escaped justice.

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Figure 1.

Escrache organized against Oscar Hermelo in November 2007. Photograph courtesy of Alessia Minarelli.

The escrache aims not to detract from judicial investigation or create an alternative form of justice but to ensure that the authorities fulfill their judicial responsibilities. As Cueto Rúa (2010: 175) states, “Although a few escraches have taken place since the nullification of the impunity laws, this is not because of the pursuit of justice independently from the state but arises from the need to put political pressure on the judicial institutions so that trials are sped up.” In other words, post-2005 escraches are undertaken to support stalled (or absent) judicial proceedings and to highlight cases in which the state is deemed to be failing, and they are often accompanied by an accusation to the judiciary. Subsequent to the escrache and the accusation, Hermelo was summoned before a judge and resigned from his post in September 2009 (Clarín, December 26, 2009). Thus the escrache is not just about galvanizing societal condemnation of the perpetrators but also about publicizing and provoking condemnation from the authorities. H.I.J.O.S.’s slogan “Si no hay justicia, hay escrache” can therefore be better considered as alluding to a more complete understanding of justice in which the overturning of the amnesty laws in 2005 is a step in the right direction rather than an end in itself. It acknowledges that the judiciary, executive, and penal system still have a long way to go and demands juicio y castigo (trial and punishment) for perpetrators and accomplices as on the mock street signs that accompanied the escrache, designed and placed throughout Buenos Aires by the art collective the Grupo Arte Callejero (Street Art Group—GAC) from 1998 on. ³ This demonstrates H.I.J.O.S.’s bottom-up understanding of justice, and it is also a realistic assessment of the vulnerable state of justice in Argentina—in H.I.J.O.S.’s own words (quoted in Druliolle, 2013: 270) “a justice founded on the conviction that genuine justice will not fall from the heights of power like a rotten fruit, a justice that understands that when crime is organized from the state, it falls on society to identify the criminals, judge them, punish them, chasing them even in their dreams.”

Indeed, even in the post-2005 context, many accused remain beyond the reach of the legal system (because they have died or moved abroad, because victims are unable to identify them, or because of insufficient evidence) while many who have been tried, convicted, and sentenced have not been sent to regular prison but instead held under house arrest or in military prisons. A large escrache organized in 2006 against the former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla saw members of H.I.J.O.S. dressed up as the former de facto president (1976–1981) in prison uniform, depicting him as a grotesque caricature and highlighting his house arrest, somewhat incongruous with his 1998 indictment for kidnapping of babies born to female prisoners. H.I.J.O.S. requests that those convicted not be offered preferential treatment, complying with the precept of “equality before the law,” which is seen as a crucial tenet of democracy. Moreover, in spite of increasing opportunities for justice, the sheer scale of the repression, the large number of perpetrators involved, and the 30 years that have elapsed since the end of the dictatorship (which hampers the collecting of evidence and victim statements) mean that the likelihood that the majority of those responsible will be called to account is slim. The impossibility of all the perpetrators’ going to trial explains why escraches have endured as an effective and provocative form of resistance in Argentina. As an H.I.J.O.S. Capital member (Jorge) explained in 2008, “While there is no justice, escraches possess the legitimacy to continue. . . . Up till now judicial processes have been incomplete or very slow, so escraches will persist.”

The escrache against Hermelo illustrated the scope of past repression and continuing impunity by targeting a civilian accomplice who had escaped judicial investigation and was working for the government and drawing a parallel between past and present—a key feature of the escrache since it was first employed in the 1990s. In this respect, H.I.J.O.S. and its supporters have demonstrated its flexibility and responsiveness to shifts in the judicial sphere. For example, Francisco points out that, now that there is a chance of justice, H.I.J.O.S. has to be careful; if its target has not been identified by the judiciary, there is a risk that after the escrache he may flee. The organization still takes its cue from limited justice, but what is possible has shifted considerably. Post-2005 targets are carefully selected so that the escrache can condemn perpetrators socially while simultaneously buttressing—never destabilizing—cases already under way in court.

It is helpful to consider an escrache that deviates considerably from those that target individual repressors—one that was organized in parallel to the unfolding of a specific trial, thus taking its inspiration not from the lack of justice but from justice taking place. The escrache organized in the winter of 2008 during the Masacre de Fátima ⁴ trial is notable because its target was not a civilian or a military perpetrator but a building. The case also offers an interesting point of departure for exploring the relationship between escraches and formal justice. The trial against three defendants (Juan Carlos Lapuyole, Carlos Enrique Gallone, and Miguel Ángel Trimarchi) began in April 2008 in Buenos Aires. As the trial reached its closing arguments, H.I.J.O.S. and survivors organized an escrache outside the federal police headquarters, the Coordinación Federal (Página/12, July 8, 2008), where the accused had worked and where victims of the massacre had been held before being murdered. Here we see that the mission of the escrache is different from that of formal justice and that it does not owe its existence solely to the limitations and discrepancies within the judicial sphere.

The escrache at the Coordinación Federal named and shamed the defendants on trial and brought public attention to a site central to the trial, as well as paying homage to the victims and giving a voice to survivors and family members. The focus of the escrache, in contrast to the trial, was not only on the defendants but also on victims, survivors, their families, and society as a whole. Without discrediting the judicial proceedings, the escrache publicized the case outside the courtroom by exposing the Coordinación Federal to neighbors and passersby as the scene of the crime. This was particularly significant because the building remained in the hands of the federal police. By identifying former clandestine detention centers and the homes of repressors, escraches make the clandestine world of the dictatorship known to society. By transmitting memories of human rights violations close to the locations where they were committed or near the workplaces and homes of the perpetrators, H.I.J.O.S. shows that repression and impunity persist in the present. Physical and social intervention in public spaces through escraches changes our awareness of the city in which we live and addresses ignorance. Like the targeting of civilians, the strategy is geared toward revealing less well-known aspects of the past and sending a message to society that the perpetrators have been exposed, the sites of atrocity are known, and that a trial is under way. The escrache was aimed at showing societal support for the trial and ensuring that the future of the perpetrators and the judgments to be passed would resonate far beyond the walls of the courtroom.

The escrache at the Coordinación Federal was the last to be undertaken by H.I.J.O.S. The suspension of escraches and the new focus on trial activities could mean that they are obsolete. However, analysis of escraches undertaken since 2005 that have occurred alongside trials demonstrates that they are simply in abeyance. Indeed, in 2009 the Grupo Arte Callejero (GAC) posed the question “Is this the end of the escrache?” and answered with an emphatic no: “Its principal objective is to reflect on the social disruption and the rupture in the network of intersubjective relationships that the genocide produced” (GAC, 2009: 62). In other words, the escrache is a form of resistance and defiance. As Kaplan (2004: 153) puts it, “The generation the dictators hoped would cower in fear or simply forget had jumped onto the public stage and would not leave.” A notable feature of the escrache is thus its resistance to succumbing to the passivity and obedience imposed by the dictatorship. It endures because the effects of the dictatorship are far-reaching and linger in the present. In 2011, in response to the controversial news that the escrache would be introduced to the school curriculum in the province of Buenos Aires as part of a broader course on citizenship (La Gaceta, 2011), H.I.J.O.S. added, “It is vital to assert that the escrache has not ended. It will always return, because there are many criminals who remain unpunished, because there are many civilians who have not acknowledged their direct responsibility in state terrorism” (H.I.J.O.S. Capital, 2011a).

Both the GAC’s words and H.I.J.O.S.’s response capture the dual goals of the escrache since its appearance in the mid-1990s and the suggestion that the protest may reemerge if necessary. Francisco said, “If at some point an escrache is deemed necessary, we will do it again.” Indeed, a reading of the escrache in the environment of increasing opportunities for justice demonstrates its challenge to judicial impunity (highlighting the impossibility of complete accountability and exhaustive judicial investigation into past crimes) and its propensity for challenging impunity by rejecting societal ignorance and amnesia and exposing the perpetrators’ anonymity.

Shifting Terrains of Justice and Impunity: H.I.J.O.S. from Neighborhoods to Courtrooms

A crowd was gathering outside the criminal courts at 2002 Comodoro Py Avenue in the Retiro neighborhood of Buenos Aires on a late spring day. It was just before midday, but several youngsters were already busy setting up the stage, testing the audio system, and arranging their banners and posters outside the gates of the courts. It was Tuesday, November 24, 2009, and the long-awaited trial of the ABO case was about to begin at Buenos Aires Federal Court No. 2. Under the operational control of the First Army Corps, the ABO network encompassed three clandestine detention centers during the dictatorship: El Club Atlético, which operated from mid-1976 until December 1977 in the San Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires; El Banco, in La Matanza in Buenos Aires province, which functioned until mid-1978; and El Olimpo, in the Floresta neighborhood of Buenos Aires, which operated until early 1979 (CELS, 2009a). These centers were part of a larger system of more than 500 similar sites throughout Argentina during the dictatorship. After decades of impunity, victims’ relatives and survivors would finally see 17 individuals in the dock facing justice. The defendants included members of the Policía Federal (federal police), the army, and the gendarmerie accused of illegally abducting, detaining, torturing, and disappearing 183 individuals out of the 1,500 estimated victims of the ABO network. It was one of the biggest trials for dictatorship-era crimes at the time (CELS, 2009b).

Since prosecutions resumed, H.I.J.O.S. has been focusing its attention on the criminal trials going on in Buenos Aires and across Argentina. In Buenos Aires, H.I.J.O.S. Capital began to organize events such as the one unfolding on that sunny November morning. These new activities can be considered heirs to the escrache that is the organization’s main form of mobilization, but, as Francisco asserted, the goal of justice for dictatorship atrocities—trials, not escraches—was always its raison d’être: “Many people thought and continue to think that H.I.J.O.S. formed in order to carry out escraches, but actually H.I.J.O.S. was set up because we demanded trial and punishment; given that those objectives were out of reach for a long time, we had to resort to escraches.” Francisco went on to say that “escraches were simply an instrument of social condemnation to expose dominant impunity owing to the existence of the amnesty laws”—“something necessary, that we had to do, but never the ideal. It was like a sort tool of ‘last resort.’” In H.I.J.O.S.’s own words: “The escrache has been and is a step toward justice” (quoted in Druliolle, 2013: 270). Simón (interview, Buenos Aires, August 14, 2009) stressed that escraches were not an end in themselves and never a form of revenge or vengeance (see also H.I.J.O.S. Capital, 2011a).

In this light, trial activities, while very similar to escraches, have a different agenda: they can be seen as the culmination and a celebration of the fundamental objective of justice, now closer than ever to being realized through the prosecutions of several individuals for state terrorism crimes. While escraches have endured, trial activities have taken place with increasing frequency in parallel to the start and end of numerous prosecutions. As did the escraches of the 1990s and 2000s, trial activities reflect the social and political landscapes in which H.I.J.O.S. currently operates. In fact, the organization welcomed the possibility of the occurrence of new trials, especially recognizing that “the government [of Néstor Kirchner] vindicated many of the struggles of human rights organizations, giving them a chance to articulate their demands directly with the state and resulting in important progress, as state policies in human rights are now partly shaped by the input of activists and militants” (Julián, interview, Buenos Aires, September 1, 2007). This marked a novel, more fruitful relationship between the government and human rights organizations than the tensions and constant confrontations of the 1980s and 1990s. Yet progress in accountability often fell short of expectations. In fact, H.I.J.O.S. hopes to tackle or at least call attention to some significant shortcomings of the current wave of prosecutions: many judges do not allow the media and the press to be present, judicial proceedings remain slow, relatively few Argentines are aware that trials are taking place, and newspapers and television devote little attention to these historic prosecutions (Francisco). In this way, as mobile memorials, H.I.J.O.S.’s activities have responded to developments in the judicial sphere, taking different forms in response to the shifting dynamics of politics, justice, and impunity.

Outside the court, the crowd had grown and music was playing. Soon members of H.I.J.O.S. and several mothers of the disappeared took the stage (Figure 2). At this event, H.I.J.O.S. also launched a new campaign, selling T-shirts with their logo and calling on people to wear the T-shirts and show their support for the cause. A message was read out providing participants specific information about the ABO trial, the 17 defendants, the 183 victims, and the crimes to be judged by the court. It felt like a celebration, the welcome of long-awaited justice, while participants simultaneously linked legal justice and events in the courts to people in the streets and society at large. The giant inflatable T-shirt had been blown up (Figure 3), the stenciled image of H.I.J.O.S.’s logo was being given its finishing touches (Figure 4), and a memorial plaque was being laid outside the court to commemorate the beginning of the trial. Music was still playing, but the crowd was beginning to disperse. Victims, relatives, and other witnesses entered the courtroom to participate in the trial, scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. Other participants left while H.I.J.O.S. activists were dismantling the scene. The event was over.

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Figure 2.

Members of H.I.J.O.S. and Madres de Plaza de Mayo speak and show photographs of the accused in front of the courthouse before the ABO trial. Photograph by Francesca Lessa.

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Figure 3.

Banners and artistic creations by H.I.J.O.S. and the GAC. Photograph by Francesca Lessa.

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Figure 4.

H.I.J.O.S.’s logo “Trial and Punishment” on the sidewalk in front of the Comodoro Py courthouse. Photograph by Francesca Lessa.

H.I.J.O.S. organizes a number of activities both inside and outside the courts; outside, events like the one just described occur on the first day of the trial but also on the dates of important phases such as the day that the charges are detailed, the testimony of particular witnesses, and the verdict. In the ABO case, on December 21, 2010, a gathering of people—H.I.J.O.S., mothers of the disappeared, survivors, politicians, and social, union, and political activists—awaited the sentence on a warm summer evening; for those who could not get inside the courtroom, giant television screens had been placed outside so that the crowd could watch the judges condemn 16 defendants to sentences ranging from life imprisonment to 25 years (1 was acquitted) (Dandan, 2010; Vales, 2010).

Other activities organized by H.I.J.O.S. in Argentine courtrooms also focus on facilitating and encouraging societal involvement and participation in trials. H.I.J.O.S. encourages people to attend trials and artists to produce drawings of what goes on inside the courtroom, particularly portraits of the defendants. The latter initiative, called “life drawing classes at Comodoro Py,” emerged because some judges prohibited filming or photography during the hearings. (While H.I.J.O.S. successfully lobbied for photography to be permitted during the first and last hearings, they remain otherwise forbidden [H.I.J.O.S. Capital, 2011b].) H.I.J.O.S. initially called on fine-arts students from the Instituto Universitario Nacional del Arte to attend the proceedings and prepare drawings to disseminate information about and give more visibility to the historic prosecutions and the faces of those being tried for crimes against humanity. ⁵ Later on, students from all departments of the University of Buenos Aires attended the trials and recorded them through interviews, drawings, photographs, and texts (H.I.J.O.S./Universidad de Buenos Aires/Instituto Universitario Nacional del Arte, 2012; see also Infonews, 2012).

There is much continuity between escraches and these trial activities. First, escraches enact collective trauma, making the crimes visible and illustrating the lasting trauma suffered by victims and the country (Taylor, 2003). Similarly, trial activities expose the lasting consequences of state terrorism for victims, who, even three decades later, in the majority of cases do not know the whereabouts of their loved ones and are awaiting justice, while society is still coming to terms with the loss of thousands of individuals brutally murdered by the state and searching for the missing children of the disappeared to recover their identities.

Second, on a social level, escraches interrupt the apparent calm of everyday life and, being disruptive, noisy, and provocative, are hard to ignore. They call on society to confront its own denial, ignorance, and apathy, emphasizing that everyone suffers from the long-term effects of violence (Taylor, 2006). Escraches have compelled society to become aware, informing people about past atrocities, their cohabitation with repressors, and the shortcomings of justice (Banega, 2006). They have also played a fundamental role in lifting the veil of anonymity of civilian and often less well-known accomplices and perpetrators, beginning to unpack the complex machinery of state terror beyond simplistic explanations focusing solely on the armed forces and the police. Activities outside and inside the courts adhere to a similar logic, attempting to inform society, participants, and even unsuspecting passersby about the trials, showing that justice is finally within reach and outlining the crimes prosecuted, the victims, and the defendants. While escraches forcefully and visually denounce the absence of justice, the new activities welcome instead the occurrence of trials for dictatorship crimes. Whereas individuals are always focused on day-to-day priorities, the key objective for H.I.J.O.S. is to communicate to society that these historic prosecutions are taking place, because if this is left in the hands of the media trials may well go unreported.

Third, the dynamics and aesthetics of trial activities also closely resemble those of escraches. Escraches are noisy and disruptive acts designed “to leave a mark on the place so that once we leave, in the days that follow people still wonder what happened there” (Francisco). Trial activities are similarly loud and almost festive. Escraches and trial activities reach out to society, going into the neighborhoods and the streets, attracting attention and expressing demands and sometimes anger and discontent while fighting for justice. H.I.J.O.S. Capital’s (2011a) statement about an escrache is applicable to all its activities: “If anything characterized this demonstration, it was joy: bands, colors, circus, noise.” In contrast to escraches, which endeavored to attract attention and even ridiculed targeted perpetrators, trial activities celebrate the possibility that legal justice is now within reach. The increasing opportunities for trials merit genuine festivity: “It is a source of joy that there are these trials, isn’t it? Their beginning is a reason for celebration; that the prosecutions are unfolding and that repressors are sitting in the dock” (Francisco). Reaching out through social media including Facebook, blogs, and YouTube, as well as colorful posters, the wider public is invited to participate. Trial activities have a similar generational imprint to escraches, since H.I.J.O.S. members and supporters are largely young adults and are accompanied by the familiar faces of mothers of the disappeared. As in escraches, a statement is read out—this time providing information about the trial, the crimes, and the defendants. There are banners, photos of the disappeared, and artistic creations by H.I.J.O.S. and the GAC; there is music and noise to attract attention. A variety of civil society associations also take part, among them the relatives of the disappeared, unions such as the Asociación de Trabajadores del Estado (Association of State Workers), social movements such as Tupac Amaru, and political associations such as Libres del Sur (The Free of the South) (Francisco). The slogan Juicio y Castigo is stenciled on the pavement to mark the commitment to justice at the start of the new trial for people to see and wonder about even days after the event took place.

Fourth, escraches call on society to understand state terrorism as a tragedy that concerns all Argentines (Taylor, 2003; 2006). Likewise, trial activities remind society that the crime of disappearance persists until the person is found and that the pursuit of justice for past crimes is not the exclusive remit of victims or their relatives but encompasses the whole of society in confronting the magnitude of the atrocities and establishing the basis of the commitment of nunca más (never again). Escraches during the 1990s exposed the weakness of the democratic governments and their refusal to deliver truth and justice; at a time of judicial impunity, they reminded people that that chapter of the past was still open, publicly challenging political amnesia and impunity and opposing discourses that encouraged artificial and premature reconciliation (Kaiser, 2002). Post-2005 escraches continued to point out the shortcomings in the judicial sphere and the difficulty of “complete” accountability. In this new context, trial activities are less a critique of government policy and mainly focus on the shortcomings of the judicial process, demanding that the government and the judiciary address issues such as restrictions on the dissemination of information about the trials.

Fifth, the street remains a central location for both escraches and trial activities. While escraches trapped “torturers and assassins by building metaphorical jails in neighborhoods throughout Argentina” in the 1990s (Kaiser, 2002: 512), trial activities unfold on the streets outside the courtrooms where prosecutions are taking place. These public spaces can be conceptualized as “transitory sites of memory” (Levey, 2010: 174), places where the collective memory of Argentina’s recent past is recurrently reactivated and recreated. Escraches and trial activities as transitory sites of memory are not anchored to specific locations within the city such as the recovered former clandestine detention centers or contingent on state action or financial resources (Levey, 2010) but emerge and reemerge in different forms and locations. In the words of Francisco, “The aesthetics of these two events are very much connected; we no longer march to the houses of the repressors, but we still go to the place where they are [the courtrooms]; there we will always be.”

The main difference between escraches and trial activities is that the latter have the more explicit support function that since the time of the dictatorship has typified the undertakings of victims’ organizations (Jelin, 1994). While escraches implicitly expressed support and commitment to the traditional demand of justice, trial activities are purposely organized so that H.I.J.O.S. can “be there with the witnesses, the plaintiffs, and the victims, so that they feel accompanied, so that they know that they are not alone” (Francisco). Indeed, participating and giving testimony at the trials is for relatives and survivors not simply a moment of celebration but also a complex endeavor, “as they have to go to the court and recount everything that happened to them,” whether it is the loss of a loved one or the torture endured. Thus, trial activities attempt to provide support so that relatives and survivors do not have to face the justice process on their own. This clearer focus on victims and then on perpetrators has also increasingly been part of post-2005 escraches. Both trial activities and escraches are active and dynamic ingredients of collective memory making through which H.I.J.O.S. actualizes the past and the present and their relationship with justice across the urban spaces of Buenos Aires. Similar to escraches, which left “impunity exposed yet unresolved” (Benegas, 2011: 27), trial activities welcome the new trials taking place while revealing the impunity intrinsic to the criminal justice system (as many dictatorship crimes will inevitably remain unpunished) and exposing the apathy and, in some cases, even enduring complicity of sectors of society and active collaborators with the dictatorship.

H.I.J.O.S. is aware of the challenges ahead and the enduring importance of collective memory making and fighting against impunity: “For those of us fighting for justice, we know much is still missing. We should still critique the present situation, despite the progress made in recent times. This is a path that is just beginning” (Julián).

Conclusion

This article has elucidated the relationship between H.I.J.O.S.’s strategies and the dynamics of justice, impunity, and memory making in contemporary Argentina through the analysis of its key activities, the well-known escraches and the more recent trial activities. In addition to H.I.J.O.S. in Buenos Aires, other branches exist in numerous Argentine provinces, where similar activities have been organized. Moreover, groups in Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Guatemala, France, the Netherlands, Mexico, Spain, and Sweden have employed similar means to contest impunity relating to dictatorship-era crimes. Their appeal is indeed long-lasting. In March 2012 social movements in Brazil held an escracho (or esculacho) outside the houses of individuals accused of torture, sexual abuse, and murder during the dictatorship (1964–1985) in six Brazilian states; the organizers openly recognized having been motivated by similar activities in Argentina and Chile (UOL Notícias, 2012). More recently, in June 2013 an escrache was held by human rights and social groups in the city of Corrientes in northern Argentina to denounce the special benefit of a home visit granted to Juan Carlos de Marchi, a retired military man sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2008 for the disappearance of university students and other crimes against humanity; when the escrache was announced, Federal Tribunal No. 5 of Corrientes, which had originally awarded the special benefit, decided to revoke its decision (La República de Corrientes, 2013).

Our reading of escraches and trial activities is that they are transitory sites of collective memory through which the judicial, political, and societal struggles for the past are articulated in the present. By reactivating the collective memory of past crimes in the streets and public spaces of Buenos Aires, H.I.J.O.S. shows that repression and impunity are not things of the past but part of the present. In this sense, quotidian landscapes may be given different meanings through the transmission of memory: occupying urban spaces through escraches and trial activities is a mode of escaping temporal boundaries to connect with past events and send the message to those who wish to forget the past that it will be remembered (Levey, 2010). H.I.J.O.S. reject static embodiments of memory such as museums or memorials, pointing out that “spaces of memory should be dynamic, they should not crystallize a fixed or solid image or narration of a past event but should reflect the long-lasting consequences and ongoing contemporary effects of the dictatorship” (Julián). Such endeavors are invariably complex and perpetually evolving. The Argentine academic Hugo Vezzetti (1998) asserted that escraches activated memory in the city. Similarly, trial activities bring the past and its memory once again onto the streets of Argentina, activating remembrance and collective memory, as well as the inherent tensions within justice and impunity. As Nelly Richard (2004: 17) has argued, “Memory stirs up the static fact of the past with new unclosed meanings that put its recollections to work, causing both beginnings and endings to rewrite new hypotheses and conjunctures and thereby dismantle the explanatory closures of totalities that are too sure of themselves.” Such processes are characterized as provoking debate and opening up memory making to participation by a variety of actors, including victims, survivors, relatives, torturers, the state, and society at large. H.I.J.O.S.’s activities do not aim to render authoritative accounts of the recent past or bring closure but are intended to activate and reactivate the memory of that past across different locations in the city, disseminating information about the dictatorship and getting society involved. In a constant evolution and interaction between time, space, and individuals, the collective memory of the recent past is continuously created and re-created across the city. As Camilo Juárez, a member of H.I.J.O.S. Capital, says, “Memory is constructed every day by everyone, and places are reinscribed with meaning.” ⁶ In this way, escraches and trial activities, through broader societal participation, give new connotations to clandestine detention centers, courtrooms, streets, and the homes and workplaces of repressors. However, while escraches highlight and mark out different spaces and places, homes, or workplaces as places of impunity, trial activities map out a different Buenos Aires, one moving away from places and individuals of state terror and injustice toward places of justice, accountability, and hope.

Throughout the postdictatorship period, escraches have progressed in tandem with the changing relationship between memory and justice in the political sphere. H.I.J.O.S. is no longer working against the state; a new relationship has been articulated and new strategies have been adopted as a result of the overturning of the impunity laws. This has led to the continuation of escraches and given rise to new forms of political participation. Because escraches and trial activities are intended not to undermine developments in the judicial sphere but to strengthen and complement them, they represent the societal and participatory dimension of transitional justice while trials and convictions are its legal manifestations. Although the two are inextricably linked and mutually reinforcing, there is a clear division of duties, as H.I.J.O.S. Capital’s slogan makes explicit: “A court tries them, we condemn them” (2008). Although escraches were conceived as a means to an end, it would be erroneous to describe them as such today. Indeed, post-2005 escraches and trial activities constitute ends in themselves, serving as vehicles for transmitting memory beyond the courtroom and the neighborhood and rejoicing in the arrival of long-awaited justice.