Argentina: The ESMA then and now

I enjoy looking at those photos where they juxtapose old and new images to highlight where past events took place. There's been a flurry of them to coincide with European anniversaries of the Second World War, and I previously noted these of Chile.

Now it's the turn of the ESMA. These photomontages are not quite like the other ones I've seen, as there is little attempt to join up the old and new scenes, but they are still interesting.

See more:

La ESMA en 13 fotos: del horror a la memoria (Infojus Noticias)

Peru: Retablos by Edilberto Jiménez

At the Biblioteca Virtual del Genocidio en Ayacucho, you can now see photographs of the amazing retablo scenes made by Edilberto Jiménez (who I previously wrote about here and here) from his book "Universos de memoria".They really are amazing depictions of the violence in the Ayacuchan region of Peru.

Follow this link to get the list of images and then click on "Detalles" to get to a large image.

Argentina: Revenge is a dish best served cold

Here's a fantastic radio documentary about Victor Basterra, who worked as a photographer while detained in the ESMA (Spanish only). "Revenge is a dish best served cold", he comments as he explains how he smuggled images of military personnel out of the detention centre, which were later used to convict human rights abusers in court.



El fotógrafo (Radio Ambulante)

Thanks to Steven for drawing my attention to it.

Argentina: Photos of 1930 coup

When I write about a coup in Argentina, it's almost invariably the 1976 one - but in fact, this was the sixth coup of the 20th century in the country. Infojus Noticias has some amazing photos from the national archive of the one that kicked them all off, in 1930.

See more here:
Quince fotos inéditas del primer golpe de Estado argentino (Infojus Noticias)

Argentina: The Madre with the camera

Infojus Noticias has a great piece on Adelina Dematti, a member of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo who photographed the group's struggle using a Kodak hidden under her clothes. She said she did it so that her disappeared son Carlos "would know he was not alone, that we were looking for him". She never found out what happened to him.

Her act of recording meetings and demonstrations was extremely dangerous under the dictatorship and provides us with a record of the Madres movement from an insider's perspective. The Madres are now active on social media and I think we can be sure if those options had been available to them in the 1970s and 80s, they would have used them, but as it is, Dematti's photos are unusual.

She photographed the Mothers' gatherings, the participation in the large Marches of Resistence, meetings with Nobel peace prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, writer Julio Cortázar and, later, president Néstor Kirchner. I particularly like the picture of the 1983 Marcha de la resistencia showing the silhouette cutouts of the disappeared - the "silouetazo".

See more here:
Las fotos de Adelina, la Madre que documentó la búsqueda de su hijo (Infojus Noticias)

Urbes Mutantes: Latin American Photography 1944-2013

A new exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York surveys photographic movements in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela.

One of the images shows the word "Evaporados" - evaporated - pasted in huge letters on an expressway wall in Lima, Peru. As the Lens blog writes, the artist Eduardo Villanes put them there in 1995, to protest the abduction and murder of nine university students and a professor by a military death squad (this is referring to the La Cantuta case), as well as the subsequent amnesty granted to the killers by Alberto Fujimori.

The exhibition, curated by Alexis Fabry and María Wills, runs until 7 September 2014.


Tales of Many Cities (The Wall Street Journal)
Latin America’s Mutating Cities, in Photographs (Lens blog, NY Times)

Yuyanapaq visits Colombia

The Bogotá international book fair is currently going on and is featuring Peru as its invited country. As part of this, a selection of the Yuyanapaq photographic exhibition of the Peruvian truth and reconciliation commission is going on show in Bogotá. 

The exhibition is taking place at the Centro de memoria, paz y reconciliación until 22 May. So if you're in Colombia, take the opportunity!

Muestra fotografica itinerante "Yuyanapaq para recordar" (Centro de memoria)

Sebastião Salgado as migrant

The Lens blog of the New York Times has an interesting piece about Sebastião Salgado's early work. It notes that he led dictatorship-era Brazil in 1969 for France, where he came into contact with other Latin American exiles.

“We were migrants and we settled in a world of migrants,” he recalled. “We worked a lot at that time with Brazilians who arrived in France after having been tortured. Today we don’t talk very much about this period, but it was brutal. All those people who in 1973 left Chile and came here after the overthrow of Salvador Allende. And Paraguay, Uruguay. …” 

The photography that came out of this period - immigrants at work and at home with their families in the high-rises of the Parisian outskirts - seem a far cry from the work of Genesis, but I think you can see the echos in the landscape shots of the tower blocks.

See more:
Sebastião Salgado: Migrant in a World of Migrants (NY Times)

Peru: Yuyanapaq exhibition to stay open until 2026

The Yuyanapaq photo exhibition will remain part of the permanent exhibition of the Museo de la Nación in Lima until 2026, according to the terms of the renovation agreement signed by the Peruvian govenment ombudsman and the culture ministry. The exhibition has already been seen by over 240,000 people in the last seven years and is part of the legacy of Peru's truth commission. It contains more than 200 photographs from various sources depicting the armed conflict of 1980-2000. It can be viewed for free on the sixth floor of the museum, every day of the week except Monday.

Very pleased to read that the immediate future of Yuyanapaq is secure: it's such an important exhibition for the country.

Exposición fotográfica “Yuyanapaq: para recordar” se quedará en Museo de la Nación hasta 2026 (Idehpucp)

Places of memory in Santiago: La Moneda

Chile's presidential palace, November 2013 (image mine):

Chile's presidential palace, September 1973 (image from here):

Memoria Chilena (5)

Exiled Chileans, 1973.

Image credit: Exiliados chilenos . Disponible en Memoria Chilena, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-70719.html .

#10añosMCH

Memoria Chilena (4)

This is the cover of APSI after the victory of the "no" campaign in the 1988 referendum. 

Image credit: APSI: n° 272, octubre de 1988 . Disponible en Memoria Chilena, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-81480.html .

#10añosMCH

Memoria Chilena (3)

Poet Pablo Neruda at a Communist Party event, around 1970. 

Image credit: Neruda en un acto del Partido Comunista, hacia 1970 . Disponible en Memoria Chilena, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-72668.html .

#10añosMCH

Memoria Chilena (2)

To mark the tenth anniversary of the Memoria Chilena project, I'm going to show a few of their images over the next few days. This man needs no introduction, but this kind of unposed, partial shot of him is not that common.

Image credit: Augusto Pinochet. Disponible en Memoria Chilena, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-98660.html .

Memoria Chilena

The national library of Chile's fantastic open-source project Memoria Chilena is celebrating its tenth anniversary. The site is well worth checking out.

Image credit: Ehrmann, Hans. Víctor Jara, ca. 1970 . Disponible en Memoria Chilena, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-75031.html .

Chile's anniversary in photos

Just a quick link to two great blog posts by Emily Achtenberg on the NACLA site about Chile's 40-year anniversary. Lots of interesting photos, of which I'll add just one here to tempt you to go and check out the rest.

Chile’s 40 Year Anniversary in Photos: Part 1, Recovering Memories (Rebel Currents)
Chile’s 40 Year Anniversary in Photos: Part 2 – Resistance, Past and Present (Rebel Currents)

Argentina: 30th anniversary of El Siluetazo

Nothing to make you feel old in blogging terms like doing a "30th anniversary" post and realising you did a 25th anniversary one as well...

Anyway, 21 September is the 30th anniversary of the public art event known as the Siluetazo ("big silhouette"). This was part of the Marcha de la resistencia of 1983, a huge demonstration in support of human rights and democracy which took place under the military regime. By 1983, the junta was weakening and protest was easier than it had previously been, but still, it was not a risk-free undertaking. Activists cut out life-size silhouettes to draw attention to the issue of disappeared people. The idea was simple but highly effective. The symbol has become one of the lasting icons of the dictatorship and has been referred to and re-used in various contexts (see, for example, here).

It is remembered largely through the work of photographer Eduardo Gil, and an exhibition of his work opens tomorrow at the Centro provincial de la memoria in La Plata.

The image for this post was sourced from this excellent article, published earlier this year, on the origin and impact of the Siluetazo. There are more, larger images there.

Photo of the day: Chile

Only one choice really.

Source

Peru: El ojo que llora

Image source

I was looking at the pictures of the Lima memorial El ojo que llora (the eye that cries)  and its role in the recent marking of the decade since the truth commission report in Peru. I'm really pleased to see this memorial space actually being used and acting as a focal point for commemorations.

I saw the memorial being constructed and I don't seem to have shared many of those images, so I thought I'd put that straight. These were taken at the end of 2005.

Argentina: Remembering the AMIA in images

The 19th anniversary of the AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires has just passed, so I thought I'd mark it with an image post.

 (Credit: Nbelohlavek)

This banner makes a deliberate link between the Holocaust (approx. 6 million victims) and the victims of the Israeli embassy bombing (22) and AMIA attack (85).

(Credit: Pablo D. Flores)

The monument in Plaza Lavalle, Buenos Aires, uses the names of the victims.

(Credit: Roblespepe)

(Credit: wallyg)