How can we hold those people who commit horrible crimes accountable when the state will not? I am thinking in particular of the murder of people by police officers, but one can imagine other scenarios I am sure. When there is no prosecution, what can we do that is non-violent, but also has serious weight and repercussions? How do we act as a movement, not as individuals, to hold those specific people responsible for heinous crimes they have committed? One thought is an experience from Argentina, where for twenty years people who were part of the military dictatorship were not prosecuted under the guise of keeping peace in society. The children (hijos) of those who were murdered by the state came together and created noise in this “peace”. They “outed” those who were responsible and organized in neighborhoods so as to not allow them to live in any sort of peace. This article briefly tells the story of how HIJOS organizes to break a social silence and hold murderers accountable.

The Madres of the Plaza de Mayo, the brave mothers who have been organizing since during the time of the dictatorship, have been demanding the appearance of their children who disappeared as well as punishment of those responsible.  HIJOS the children of the disappeared (Hijas y Hijos por identidad y justicia y contra el olvido y silencio – Daughters and Sons for Identity and Justice and Against Silence and Forgetting) has also been organizing, since the 1990s, though they are not placing demands upon the government, and instead speak to society as a whole. Participants in the movement address society as a way to break with the silence around what took place, something they call ‘social silence’, as well as find a way to punish those who are responsible without demanding it of the state.

HIJOS, the Mesa de Escrache (the ‘table’ of organizing the escrache) and GAC (Grupo de Arte Callejero – Street Artists Group) have worked together to create this break with social silence.  All three of these groups, to varying extents, are comprised of the children of those who disappeared during the dictatorship; their contemporaries as well as the relatives of the children of the disappeared. With 30,000 disappeared, the number of children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, cousins etc, the number of family members who could be a part of HIJOS could easily reach many hundreds of thousands.

Most members of the military who participated in the dictatorship were left untouched by the transition to “democracy” in 1983 (most people show this with quotation marks to reflect that it was not a true democracy). This protection was legislated with the Ley Punto Final, (final end or full stop law) which was passed at the end of the dictatorship. The law prohibited not only the prosecution, but also the investigation of people accused of political violence during the dictatorship. These laws were not made unconstitutional until the end of 2005, and were not repealed until 2003 – 20 years later.

There was not a public outcry at the Ley de Punto Final, nor at the fact that military officials and torturers from the dictatorship were living, seemingly happily enough, among everyone else in society. People were afraid. People were silent. HIJOSorganized to speak specifically to this silence. Many in HIJOS have and had little confidence in the government, whether “democratic” or otherwise. When HIJOSformed in 1995 there were 100s to thousands of known genocidas (those who committed genocide) living in society. Unpunished. Free. But not only unpunished by the State, they were living in peace in society as a whole HIJOS’s goal is not to speak to the genocidas, but their neighbors and society in general. Those who were letting people who committed such atrocities live in peace and silence.

The form their protest took was more of a public outing than a protest, and one that was part of a serious and long campaign. It became known as the Escrache. An Escrache is this process of outing, it is a tactic for social awareness, using direct action, theater and education against silence and forgetting.

Another important aspect of the speaking to the neighbors and community goes back to the time of the dictatorship itself as according to reports in CONADEP (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas) the majority of the kidnappings occurred in the person’s home, in front of witnesses, usually neighbors.

Un Escrache: An Action

An escrache, or to make an escrache (escrachar) in slang means ‘to put into evidence, disclose to the public, or reveal what is hidden.’  Escraches begin with research. The person who is “outed” has been researched in great depth. There are often people who can testify directly that he tortured them, or that they witnessed this person carrying out torture. There are oral or actual records of his participation in or with the military. Once the person’s actions have been confirmed, the education in the neighborhood begins. Maps are made, based on the city maps used by tourism or the subway system, and they have a location pointed out that says “AQUI” (HERE), as many maps indicating where one is have, and then it says “Aqui vive un genocida” (here lives a person who has committed genocide). The map contains footnotes which go into detail as to who the person is, what atrocities they have committed etc. These maps are pasted over the local maps, on street lamps, newspaper stands, store fronts, walls and throughout the neighborhood.

HIJOS and their supporters distribute informational leaflets to the people who live in the neighborhood, asking if they know that a genocida lives there. The flyering continues for a few weeks and then the action is scheduled. Actions take on different forms. There is the one I describe above, outside of a hospital, but most often they are in front of a person’s home. Police are always there, in large numbers, protecting the house. The intention of HIJOS however is not to attack the house. They instead do street theater, sometimes acting out what the person did, the horrors they committed. Sometimes it is more informational, and the HIJOS state what the person has done and then at the end the throw red paint ‘bombs’ at the door and the house or apartment. Sometimes they create songs, and go through the neighborhood singing about what happened, as is the case with the escrache against a priest and church that collaborated with the military in the neighborhood of Paternal in Buenos Aires. One of the main chants at an escrache is “Si no hay Justicia, Hay escrache!” (If there is no justice, then there is an escrache!) Justice here signifying both definitions of the word, as in social justice and the making equal or fair of a situation, and justice referring to the legal process in which one is accused by the state and judicial system. In Spanish the word is the same.

The point of this action however is not for justice, with either definition. The point is that there is no justice by the very nature of the person living freely in society, without any social outcry. HIJOS makes that outcry. HIJOS takes the silence and breaks it. HIJOS speaks to neighbors, to society and makes people uncomfortable. HIJOS makes noise in the silence. The point is that there cannot be silence.

The way that HIJOS organizes is an important part of the vision of holding people accountable, a structure that includes both those directly affected and creates space for the support of others. One needs to have organization, research and internal accountability, as HIJOS does, so as to successfully be heard in society. As explained by Diego Benegas who wrote, base on his personal experience in HIJOS as well as his research into the group:

H.I.J.O.S. emerged as a network, a loose collective that evolved into a union of groups, thus it rather looks like a federation. The different local chapters, called “the regionals,” do not respond to a central authority. The principle of group autonomy was present from the start and H.I.J.O.S. members defended it consistently throughout the years (Mendoza interview 2002c), but they remain one national organization rather than an articulation of local chapters. Local groups are autonomous and all their members meet weekly in an assembly that makes all the decisions for the regional (group). The commissions are smaller subgroups that perform the actual work. They are for example: Legal Matters, Siblings, Direct Action, Anthropological Investigation, Schools, Reception, Archive, and Radio. Recently, individuals outside of the organization have begun to participate in the commissions without becoming full (organic) members. In addition, other formations called “spaces of participation,” or other similar names, have emerged; they are not properly “commissions” and constitute projects in which other people engage without the intention of becoming part of the organization. These partial memberships show what I call the politics of partiality, which consists in pursuing partial goals, reaching partial agreements. It is a politics that emerged more from practice than from dogma and it allows collectives to collaborate in action pursuing immediate goals without needing to agree on long term projects. (Benegas forthcoming)

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