Daniel Feierstein warned a few years ago that it was emerging a new version of the two demon theory, more dangerous and tending to highlight the repressive state action. The centrality that he assumed in recent days Victoria Villarruelcandidate for vice president of Javier Miley and reference of a group of “full memory” As the Center for Legal Studies on Terrorism and its Victims (Celtyv)seems to have proven him right.
Feierstein, principal researcher at Conicet and director of the Center for Genocide Studies (CEG) at the University of Tres de Febrero, spoke with Page 12 about the disputes over memory and the construction of the future that the appearance of Freedom Advances (LLA) as the most voted force in the primary elections.
-What does the emergence of Victoria Villarruel on the national political scene mean?
– On the one hand, it is the ratification of a process of building counterhegemony that has been going on for many years. It is a call to attention of the advance of revisionist constructions in the battle for the meaning of how to implement the past in this present. On the other hand, it shows the seriousness of the political moment we are experiencing. With the type of positions that she has already made explicit publicly, the fact that this has not altered the level of support that Javier Milei was able to find in the primary elections speaks at least that the resistance to these denialist views has been weakening in society. You have to wonder how that happened. We have had a very strong consensus on the repudiation of the genocide and that extended until quite recently. We have a milestone such as the march against 2×1 in 2017.
– What happened in the last year, since it was released Argentina, 1985with the emotion that it provoked, until the PASO in which LLA was the most voted force?
– I don’t know if we were able to take advantage of all the impact that the film generated. The fundamental element that he put on the table is that the Kirchnerist story started two decades of struggle from us. The way 2003 was connected to the ’70s meant that the ’80s and ’90s were out of the picture. We lost track of how the achievements were achieved. The reopening of the judging process was only possible due to a long process of struggle that ended in 2001. By tearing that story out of the narrative, it prevents you from understanding the changes in recent years. Not having those tools, we couldn’t think about how to continue, but above all, we couldn’t understand how the opposite process occurred. The PASO of 2023 are a point of arrival in the process of accumulation of denialism, which we could say begins around 2006 or 2007 with the appearance of Cecilia Pando.
-There are those who propose that Villarruel’s speech is not denialist but apologist. How do you characterize it?
– Villarruel’s speech separates itself from the most open forms of demands, such as those of Relatives and Friends of Those Killed by Subversion (Famus). She builds a mirror of the struggle of human rights organizations towards the end of the dictatorship. It’s a bit of learning about what that process was like, which was that original version of the two demons. At the cost of depoliticization, this construction of the enlightenment of the victims and the level of horror implemented by the dictatorship generated social empathy. In this way, a generalized repudiation was built that lasted no less than 30 or 35 years and that still has a presence in society. Around 2006, this discourse appears with this logic of enlightening the victims of insurgent organizations and depoliticizing them. There is the understanding that Commissioner Alberto Villar does not seem like the most interesting victim to recover because he was one of the most tremendous torturers in Argentina. A very different case is that of Colonel Argentino Larrabure or a conscript who ends up being killed in the attempt to take over the Formosa regiment, a minor who suffered the consequence of an attack or even José Ignacio Rucci, general secretary of the CGT. Celtyv also seems to be a kind of mirror of CELS: professional lawyers placed at the service of the victims and attempting a dispassionate discourse that recovers the pain of the victims. It is true that due to his ideological identification, Villarruel sometimes misses levels of vindication of the facts, but his structure seeks to assume the classic procedures of denialism: minimization, banalization, false equivalences. If one confuses and puts all the proposals in the same bag, one cannot observe the effectiveness of these mechanisms compared to others that had never managed to sneak into Argentine common sense.
-Do you inscribe it within the logic of the two overloaded demons, which you proposed a few years ago?
-He is one of the main figures of what I called the recharged version of the two demons. This is not a remake of the two demons, but something much worse. In this overloaded version it comes with the objective of stigmatizing insurgent violence. The original version of the two demons sought to illuminate, put on the table and condemn repressive violence.
– Is there a possibility that these sectors generate a discussion about the armed struggle?
– This ability to interpellate the overloaded version of the two demons feeds on several problems of the consensus built in the human rights movement. One of these consensuses, very problematic, is that armed struggle became a taboo. In all these years there has not been a serious discussion that could put the question of armed struggle on the table. Since this theme is absent, it is what allows these overloaded versions of the two demons to put the focus there. The most misleading procedure is to connect two discussions that are different: the discussion about the balances, meanings and interpretations of the armed struggle in our country by insurgent organizations and the discussion about the characteristics of the genocide and its effects on the social fabric. .
– What is this reinterpretation of the genocide for: to legitimize repressive violence or to have revenge and judge the militants?
– The strongest effect is to relegitimize the repressive action in the present. It is trying to reverse a fundamental political achievement of the entire post-dictatorship in Argentina, which was the delegitimization of the military actor, especially in its repressive function. More than seeking impunity for those who are convicted or trying to open cases against some militants who are still alive, the deeper objective is to relegitimize the role of the Armed Forces and the security forces for what may come in the country. .
– Villarruel proposes an equality between victims or pain, which is something that is not politically measurable. How is this operation dismantled?
– Of many ways. We have to stop talking to ourselves. Many years passed. There are many generations that join the discussion today and new questions arise. It is necessary to abolish the taboo on the reference to armed struggle and put on the table the contextualization of the emergence of insurgent organizations – which appear as resistance to dictatorial orders, to proscriptions – as well as their errors and problems. We must be aware that this does not resolve the debate about the meaning of the genocide and its consequences in the present. There, the one who was very visionary was Rodolfo Walsh with his open letter when, already in 1977, he stated that the meaning of the annihilation is not in the anti-subversive fight, which was something that was resolved before the coup, but in the socio-economic transformation that It sought to generate through terror.
– Does this erosion of support for Never Again imply a right-winging of society?
– In this sense, I think so. Reality is dynamic. It is not irreversible. I think it has to do with the distance we feel from the ways in which the central voices of the human rights movement are referring to those events today. I believe that the identification of some sectors with a specific government generated a process of alienation of the human rights movement with respect to society as a whole. We have to rebuild that relationship. There are things that are new and that need to be listened to more. Today the voice of those relatives of genocide victims who condemn the actions of their parents, grandparents or uncles can have enormous power because they speak from another place. I find it very interesting what can emerge from an organization like Nietes, but this implies being able to contemplate today’s society. The human rights movement was very powerful when it had that capacity to change, to connect with what was happening in society.
– Disobedient Stories defined Villarruel as an obedient daughter of the genocide, do you share that characterization?
– It seems like a very sharp look to me. Indeed, she has a family connection to participation in the genocidal process. What is important to put on the table is that no one can be responsible for what their parents do, but what is interesting is what someone can do with it. The contrast between what Villarruel can do and what Historias Disobedientes can do is something that can be very enriching for society. If the relatives of the genocidaires can do different things with that legacy, society can also do different things with the legacy it receives from a genocidal process.
