an experience at esma, continued

the facade of ESMA's main building 

my first visit to the campus grounds of esma, where thousands of argentines were detained and tortured during the dirty war (full story several blog posts below for those that haven't read) was a rather powerful and eye-opening experience. i had spent a friday afternoon in the eerie buildings working on an enormous art project with a handful of argentine painters, one that would commemorate the desaparecidos and celebrate their appropriated children whose identities have since been recovered thanks to the tireless work of the abuelas de plaza de mayo.  i thought my first esma experience had been pretty moving, but nothing could possibly compare to the second time around.

my friend thomas and i managed our way through the insanity of buenos aires rush hour, arriving at esma just as the ceremony and presentation were starting. originally, i didn't think that i would be able to attend the culminating presentation of the piece that monday, due to a class conflict. the ceremony was scheduled to start at 5:30 and a class of mine at 7:00 on the opposite side of the city, which would mean a pricey cab ride and arriving at least thirty minutes late to class. i decided to wing it anyway, which turned out to be a good risk, since when we arrived, we found out there had been a bomb threat at my UBA literature building!! what wonderful news!! (apparently, as i was later told, during midterm seasons, bomb threats by students who want extra time preparing for exams are common. is that cultural or just plain ridiculous?? i'd say the latter). there was no way i was gonna haul ass through the city just to arrive and stress about a freaking bomb, so i ended up staying for the entire ceremony and soaking up the scene before me.

the cement blocks i had helped paint (which join together to reveal the face of a female desaparecida) were arranged in a circle in the main plaza of the esma buildings and each featured the photo of a disappeared individual who would be commemorated. several hundred people surrounded the blocks waiting for the ceremony to start. alejandro jodorowsky, the famous chilean artist and movie director who had commissioned the piece, welcomed everyone to the afternoon's "poetic act of peace" and explained his hopes and ideas behind the main event, something he dubbed as a "collective curing" of the profound damage left behind by the military dictatorship.

jodorowsky then handed the microphone over to estela de carlotto, one of the founders and current president of las abuelas de plaza de mayo, a woman with quite a heart and quite a resilient spirit. in 1977, she lost her daughter laura, a history student and member of the peronist youth party, mercilessly targeted by the military government's "national reorganization process". three-months pregnant laura was held in captivity at one of argentina's various detention centers (not esma) until giving birth to a son, and was then executed. estela's grandson remains missing, but she nonetheless works tirelessly looking for him and the several hundred other nietos desparecidos who have not been recovered. one tough cookie alright.

estela spoke to the crowd for several minutes about the event's significance, something that she viewed as a "symbolic event with a multiplicative effect" that would hopefully lead to the discovery of more disappeared grandchildren. other things she mentioned that stuck with me: "each cube is an act of defiance because it breaks the wicked plan of the dictatorship. we are restoring not just the victims and their families, but also the entire world itself, because what happened affects all humanity."

the following ceremony was beautifully orchestrated and emotionally potent like few thing's i've ever witnessed. each cement cube, representing a disappeared parent and their recovered child (102 blocks and 102 recovered children in all), contained a a cardboard box with a live dove inside. jodorowsky asked that each child, who are now in their late twenties and early thirties, find their parent's painted cube and prepare to let the doves go. one by one, set to a beautiful song composed by jodorowsky's son (shameless plug if there ever was one but oh well), each child released the birds and then spent several moments of reflection with their painted cube, what jodorowsky referred to as "physical manifestations of their parent's soul". the ceremony was simple and stunning, and practically impossible to put into words in something as informal as an online blog post.

when the music started and the first dove was let loose, i pretty much accepted the fact that holding back any tears would be a completely futile effort. just watching the grown-up children place their hands gently on the cement blocks of their disappeared parents was pretty intense. as if these recovered children haven't already been robbed enough in their lives--of their parents, of a normal childhood, of a solid identity--they've also been robbed of a space to grieve for their parents. it's not like they have cemeteries they can go to talk with their parents, to reflect, to mourn. even that has been taken away from them. for that reason, i think the cubes, symbolic incarnations of their parent's souls, were even more important. i can't personally imagine that such profound a pain can ever fully heal, but the symbolism of the ceremony and the cubes definitely provided a cathartic outlet. the doves were equally beautiful and metaphorical, freeing the spirits of their parents and their own spirits as well. as i mentioned in my first post about esma and los desaparecidos, and what i most hope that readers take away from reading these two entries, is that argentine's painful history is anything but history. it's something that continues to this very day. how else can you explain the nieto and her abuela clutching each other tightly in embrace and sobbing openly as the sun dropped over esma?? or the husband consoling his broken wife when she freed her mother's dove?? what i saw wasn't some historical commemoration of the past, but an emotional expression of the present, of the real and current pains that continue to exist decades later.

alejandro jodorowsky, surrounded by 102 cement cubes, each representing a disappeared parent of a recovered child. 

that's estela de carlotto with the beautiful white hair, chatting after the ceremony. 

after the ceremony, thomas and i meandered around the esma grounds together since it was his first time there. we spent a long time at the wall of los desaparecidos in complete silence, where the photos of all the desparecidos are mounted in a seemingly unending wall. hearing the mind-boggling statistics about how many people disappeared during the dictatorship is overwhelming to begin with, but actually seeing and feeling the faces of the real people who died is all the more painful and upsetting. it's one thing to hear a number, but a whole other thing to see a human face. to feel a smile. to feel the penetrating glance of their eyes. to think about the lives that were cruelly cut short. to imagine what their lives might be like today. to wonder what types of things they liked, what types of dreams they had, what types of hopes they had, what they prayed for. i'm far from argentine, but it was really hard to take in. like estela said, what happened affects all of us, all of humanity, in some way. she's right.