A topography of memory: Reconstructing the architectures of terror in the Argentine dictatorship

Abstract

This essay introduces the work of Memoria Abierta (Open Memory), a non-governmental organisation that compiles, organises and distributes the mass of documentary evidence from human rights organisations and other personal and institutional archives connected to State terrorism in Argentina. It collates testimony on social and political life of the 1960s and 1970s and works on the territorial and spatial memory of the period of political violence in Argentina. Specifically, the ‘Topography of Memory’ section collects, systematises and produces documentation about sites, buildings and spaces that were used as spaces of temporary detention and clandestine detention centres, as well as spaces of recognition and remembrance. The decision to include architecture among the disciplines contributing to the organisation’s memory work has opened up possibilities for visualising the spaces that form the backdrop to the victims’ experience, as well walking through them. I shall discuss spaces where crimes were committed, including clandestine detention centres in urban, semi-urban and rural areas. Architectonic memory involves territories where traumatic events happened, ones characterised by the systematic use of repressive practices.