TheMemorial de los Detenidos Desaparecidos: Fragile memory and contested meaning in Post-dictatorship Uruguay

Recordar para reparar: la imagen de los desaparecidos uruguayos en el «Memorial a los detenidos-desaparecidos»1

“…Entre los trabajos dedicados a los lugares de memoria en Uruguay hemos localizado un abordaje general sobre los lugares de memoria (Allier Montaño, 2008), uno acerca de la nomenclatura de las calles en Montevideo (Allier Montaño, 2010b), uno sobre Punta Carretas (Guglielmucci & Scaraffuni Ribeiro, 2015) y otro sobre documentales (Tadeo Fuica, 2014). Existe también un texto sobre el Memorial a los desaparecidos (Levey, 2012), pero que tiene un abordaje diferente al nuestro, ya que se centra en un análisis de la materialidad del monumento y no tanto en los documentos que le dieron creación originalmente como lo hacemos en este artículo.…”

Urban photography as counter-monument in Urruzola’s Miradas ausentes ( en la calle )

“…During the Jorge Batlle (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005) and Tabaré Vázquez (2005Vázquez ( -2010 administrations respectively, the forced disappearance of Uruguayan citizens was offi cially recognized and documented, while legislative reform would eventually allow the prosecution of former members of the state security forces and even the imprisonment of the fi rst civil president sponsored by the military, Julio María Bordaberry. The increasingly effective popular mobilization to overturn the Law of Expiry culminated in the 2009 plebiscite which, although it resulted in another 'no' vote, nevertheless refl ected the fact that a fl ourishing culture of memory was exerting greater pressure for more dramatic legislative reform (Levey 2010(Levey , 2012Lessa 2011;Fried 2011). 3 Th is shift from post-dictatorship Uruguay's politics of silence of the 1980s and early 1990s to the memory politics of the 2000s cannot be better symbolized than in the contrast between two major 'monumental' urban projects in post-dictatorship Montevideo: the exclusive Punta Carretas shopping mall that opened in 1994 and the inauguration of the Memorial en Recordación de los Detenidos Desaparecidos ['Monument in Memory of the Detained and Disappeared'] in 2001.…”

“…Almost 200 Uruguayans have been confi rmed as 'detained and disappeared' during the dictatorship, but the predominant policy pursued by state security forces was one of incarceration and torture of political prisoners. By imprisoning the largest proportion of dissidents per capita in the world at the time, the Uruguayan military earned the country the unenviable reputation as the 'torture chamber of Latin America' (Fried 2011;Lessa 2011;Levey 2010Levey , 2012. 7.…”

“…4. On the transformation of the Punta Carretas 'prison-mall', see Ruetalo (2008), Achugar (2009), Lessa (2011), Draper (2011, Levey (2012). 5.…”