There is one element common to far-right leaders and parties: their denial of historical memory. A revisionism at will which erases fascist crimes and the various dictatorships. Everyone insists on minimizing the importance, looking the other way or, directly, saying that these atrocities did not exist. We have seen it up close, with Vox, which throws the ball when explicitly asked about the Franco regime, but takes the opportunity to justify it by secondary means. They do not attend tributes to the victims of the Franco regime; or their leaders say phrases like Pedro Sánchez is the worst thing that has happened to Spain in 80 years (including the dictatorship).
The chainsaw of the Argentinian Javier Milei has also reached the historical memory of the Latin American country. His government constantly claims that the number of victims of the Videla dictatorship is invented and describes the demands of those who still demand the remains of their loved ones or institutional reparation as a “case of the disappeared”. Something that particularly hurts in a country that judged and condemned the dictator in an era that Spain has always viewed with democratic envy.
Perhaps that’s why it’s worth revisiting the stories of those who experienced it firsthand. Who were victims of kidnapping and torture. That they had to flee their country. This is the case of Claudio Tamburrini, who in 1978 was illegally detained and tortured with other victims in the House of Seré. His case was a little more publicized, because he was a football goalkeeper for the Almagro club, and especially because after more than 100 days of captivity, on March 24, 1978, he escaped from this prison in an escape that has been told since fiction in films like Chronicle of a leak and in several documentaries.
His case has the particularity of football. Not only was he a goalkeeper, but the same year Argentina hosted (and won) the FIFA World Cup in an effort to sell an image of open-mindedness to the rest of the world. Society was torn between celebrating their team’s victory or refusing to take to the streets because there was nothing to celebrate. Tamburrini’s story illustrates this Argentine period very well, because not only did he experience first-hand the brutality of the dictatorship, but after fleeing to Sweden – where he earned a doctorate in philosophy – he returned to his country to testify at the junta’s trial. . military.
His story was told in the fictional film Chronicle of a runaway, based on his own novel Free pass: escape from Manoir Seré and now in the Movistar Plus+ documentary, Tamburrini: Escape of an archer, which can now be seen on the platform. Tamburrini recounts again what he experienced, but he does so in a new context, that of Milei’s presence at Casa Rosada. From Sweden, Claudio Tamburrini answers the phone and reflects on why it’s important to remember what happened again.
“I believe, speculating, that the reason why this story is interesting again is the special moment that Argentina is experiencing,” he says without hesitation. “There is now at least an attempt, I wouldn’t say it’s a denialist movement, but an attempt to test, to test a little to see what would happen if we started to relativize certain atrocities committed by the military regime of the time to see what the reaction of public opinion is. It gives me this impression and, therefore, the discussion on these issues is necessary again,” he emphasizes.
Argentina’s victory in the World Cup allowed citizens to regain control of public roads. I myself took advantage of the celebrations to go out hidden among the masses and lose my fear.
Claudio Tamburrini
— Philosopher and victim of the Argentine dictatorship
It doesn’t hurt him to talk about what he experienced. He does not have the feeling “of having been hurt” and emphasizes that his case had a happy ending on a personal level even if “several thousand people are still missing”. He defines this as “an experience” which “catapulted him towards a new life, towards a new destiny which he would not have had if he had not been a victim of the dictatorship”. Indeed, by reliving it in documentaries or interviews, he discovers “new aspects, contours and nuances of this story”.
His trip was a return trip to Argentina, as he returned to testify in a trial that, he recalled, was “the first time in the history of Latin America, in which putschists, soldiers and those responsible for human rights violations were condemned.” “This is a historic, legal and political step. It is a privilege to participate in this trial of the tips. It was a privilege to have been invited to join the prosecutor’s team, as I worked with them for seven months after my testimony and it is one of the experiences that I look back with the most pride and which I “also guided professionally, because the text I wrote, the research I carried out for the prosecution on the moral justification of punishment constituted the material I used for my thesis.”
The Movistar+ documentary highlights this contrast between a country torn between celebrating its team’s victories and the guilt of doing so while people were being tortured just a few meters away. Tamburrini has written several articles on this subject. He fled months before the start of the World Cup, but he personally suffered from what the dictatorship did to him and, nevertheless, he has “no problem wishing the team triumph Argentina”.
“It didn’t seem contradictory to me. In addition, I also saw how people reclaimed the street. After spending years without going out to hold any political demonstrations because it was forbidden and even dangerous, they took advantage of the World Cup celebrations to regain control of the streets. People took back control of the public roads and I myself took advantage of the celebrations to go out hidden among the crowd and lose my fear. I saw, when I went out to celebrate the World Cup victory, that in the middle of the celebration, people were already singing against the dictatorship, insulting it,” he recalls.
He also salutes the attitude of the Swedish and Dutch players who, instead of not being present, went to “fulfill a mission of international solidarity”. “They went to speak with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, with the relatives of the disappeared, and the diffusion that these emerging groups had in Europe, through their interviews with these footballers, meant that these events began to be known internationally,” he said. emphasizes and emphasizes the importance of these events even at the end of this era: “It was at this time that the dictatorship began to collapse.”
