en negro y blanco

recently i've come across some photo & film documentation from the dictadura years in argentina, before the restoration of democratic elections in 1983...

the following film was released in 1979 by raymundo gleyzer's cine de base (cinema from below). gleyzer was an argentine filmmaker & journalist and leader in the third cinema movement, and had already been disappeared by the time this film was made.

the narration comes from the text of a famous open letter to the dictatorship by rodolfo walsh, a journalist and militant, written on the first anniversary of the 1976 military coup d'etat. the letter is a scathing indictment of the dictatorship, its repression of dissent and pursuit of neo-colonial economic policies. walsh was shot in an ambush and disappeared the day after writing the letter.

the film is called las aaa son las tres armas / the armed forces are the aaa. the aaa, the argentine anti-communist alliance, began operations as a right wing clandestine death squad in 1973. with the escalation of the dirty war the lines between this paramilitary organization and the official armed forces in control of the executive branch of the state were increasingly blurred.

of course all this had the blessing and assistance of the u.s. government. kissenger in 1976, a couple months after the coup: we have followed events in argentina closely. we wish the new government well. we wish it will succeed. we will do what we can to help it succeed... it is a curious time, when political, criminal, and terrorist activities tend to merge without any clear separation. we understand you must establish authority."


las aaa son las tres armas : cine de la base





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the following are images from en negro y blanco : fotografías del cordobazo al juicio a las juntas, an excellent archive of photos which trace the development of state terrorism in argentina from 1969 to 1985 (in black & white : photographs from the uprising in córdoba to the trials of the military junta)...



foto: gerardo horowitz, 1975. the military occupies tucumán province.



foto: archivo clarín, 1976. prisoners in the month following the coup, under federal juristiction.



foto: archivo clarín, 1979. military police break the floor of a house, looking for a guerrilla hideout.



foto: jorge durán, 1981. raids in the villas miserias (shantytowns) around buenos aires are commonplace.



foto: jorge rilo, 1982. during a violently repressed public demonstration against the dictatorship some demonstrators reach the door of the casa rosada.



foto : adriana lestido, 1982. various generations participate in demonstrations to demand justice for the disappeared.