3.10. [RG LatAm] Emotions, transgressions, and political and spatial displacements in the context of revolutionary militancy in the 1970s in the Latin American Southern Cone [ES]
The panel considers two areas of analysis and brings together researchers who analyze the memories of revolutionary militancy in the Latin American Southern Cone in the 1970s, focusing on the emotional dimension of the militant experience, transgressions (cultural, political, affective), and the spatial and political displacements that occurred before and after the military coups in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. The first panel focuses on analyzing the role of emotions in the experience of activists whose political horizon was revolution. The revolutionary organizations of the "long sixties" were emotional communities that established forms of political, cultural, and emotional modeling. All of them used an emotional repertoire to support their political decisions, but also to recruit new members to their ranks. Belonging to an organization established not only rational adherence to a specific project or ideology, but also to an emotional community understood as a social space in which affections and emotions circulated and which, in addition, established rules of feeling and sanctioned transgressions/betrayals of these mandates. Militant discipline produced codes and narratives that placed a heroic revolutionary subject at the center of their ideology, establishing guidelines for behavior in the sphere of political militancy and artistic and literary creation. These experiences can be approached from interdisciplinary perspectives in which literature, history, sociology, and audiovisual creation engage in dialogue, with the study of revolutionary ideology as a cultural, emotional, political, and aesthetic practice as their common ground. The second panel examines the spatial, territorial, and political displacements that occurred within the framework of militancy, both before and after the coups d'état. Militancy considered territorial displacements (within and outside the borders of each country) to be part of the demands of political work. Later, exiles took place, led by left wing militants from Conosur during the 1970s and 1980s as a result
El panel considera dos ejes de análisis reúne a investigadores que analizan las memorias de las militancias revolucionarias del cono sur latinoamericano de los años setenta, poniendo el foco en la dimensión emocional de la experiencia militante, las transgresiones (culturales, políticas, afectivas) y los desplazamientos espaciales y políticos ocurridos antes y después de los golpes militares en la Argentina, Uruguay y Chile.
La primera mesa está orientada a analizar el lugar de las emociones en la experiencia de las militancias cuyo horizonte político era la revolución. Las organizaciones revolucionarias de los “largos sesenta” fueron comunidades emocionales que establecieron formas de modelación política, cultural y emocional. Todas ellas usaron un repertorio emocional para respaldar sus decisiones políticas, pero también para sumar nuevos miembros a sus filas. La pertenencia a una organización establecía no solo la adscripción racional a un proyecto o una ideología específica, sino a una comunidad emocional entendida como espacio social en que circulaban afectos y emociones y que, además, establecía reglas del sentir y sancionaba las transgresiones/traiciones a estos mandatos. La disciplina militante produjo códigos y narrativas que pusieron al centro de su ideario a un sujeto revolucionario heroico, estableciendo pautas de comportamiento en el ámbito de la militancia política y la creación artística y literaria. Estas experiencias pueden ser abordadas desde enfoques interdisciplinarios en el que dialogan la literatura, la historia, la sociología y la creación audiovisual teniendo como punto en común el estudio del ideario revolucionario, como práctica cultural y emocional, política y estética.
La segunda mesa interroga los desplazamientos espaciales, territoriales y políticos ocurridos en el marco de la militancia, antes y después de ocurridos los golpes de estado. La militancia consideró desplazamientos territoriales (dentro y fuera de las fronteras de cada país) como parte de las exigencias del trabajo político. Mas tarde, se producen exilios que protagonizaron las y los militantes de las izquierdas conosureñas durante los años setenta y ochenta a raíz de los regímenes dictatoriales de la región. En efecto, durante dicho periodo se sucedieron desplazamientos espaciales y temporales hacia el resto de América Latina y Europa, que reconfiguraron prácticas, ideas, conceptos y subjetividades. Las investigaciones de este panel también presentan una perspectiva interdisciplinaria, que imbrica problemas de la historia política, la historia conceptual, los estudios políticos, los estudios de la memoria y la filosofía.
Maria Olga Ruiz, Universidad de la Frontera, Tradition/transgression/treason
This presentation analyzes experiences of transgression of political, moral, and cultural codes by three organizations in the Southern Cone: the Revolutionary Left Movement of Chile (hereinafter MIR), the PRT-ERP, and Montoneros of Argentina. These three organizations differ in terms of their political history, trajectory, strategies of action, and platforms of struggle, but they shared the same commitment to the ideology of revolution. In terms of time, I am interested in addressing the 1960s not in a strictly chronological sense but in relation to the political, ideological, and emotional commitment of the left to the certainty of revolution. In this proposal, I assume that cultural history and the history of emotions provide productive conceptual and analytical tools, understanding that revolutionary militancy was as much a political experience as it was a cultural one, since personal and collective choices were articulated with ways of understanding, representing, feeling, and thinking about the reality they lived in and sought to transform. I focus on different forms of emotional navigation that in that period were interpreted and punished as transgressions and betrayals of a revolutionary tradition that shared central tenets: heroism, sacrifice, and willpower. Organizations established codes to discipline and punish those who questioned this tradition—inherited from modern revolutions and reinvented in the context of the Cold War—penalizing a wide range of transgressions and their most extreme expression: betrayal.
Daniela Slipak (EIDAES-UNSAM-CONICET), "Discussions on revolution and democracy. Transnational dialogues between the political magazines of Argentine exiles in Europe. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, many militants, artists, intellectuals, and/or professionals fled the systematic repression of the military dictatorship in Argentina. In exile, some emigrants engaged in political activities and denounced human rights violations. Not without conflict, they established solidarity houses, human rights organizations, reading and debate groups, and newspapers and magazines of various kinds. In this context, they discussed their militant past, their present exile, and their plans for the coming years. This paper examines the discussions on revolution and democracy reflected in a series of political magazines published by exiles in Spain and France: Testimonio Latinoamericano, Resumen de la actualidad argentina, Cuadernos de Peronismo y Revolución, Convergencia y Divergencia. Using tools from recent historiography and political studies, we will seek to problematize the conceptual exchanges of these publications, their mutual references, their agreements, and their tensions in their interpretation of the recent past and their future perspectives.
Daniela Slipak (EIDAES-UNSAM-CONICET), “Discusiones sobre la revolución y la democracia. Diálogos transnacionales entre las revistas políticas de los exilios argentinos en Europa”.Desde mediados de la década del setenta hasta principios de los ochenta, muchos militantes, artistas, intelectuales y/o profesionales escaparon de la represión sistemática de la dictadura militar instalada en Argentina. En el exilio, algunos emigrados desplegaron actividades políticas y denunciaron las violaciones a los derechos humanos. No sin conflictos, constituyeron casas de solidaridad, organizaciones de derechos humanos, grupos de lectura y de debate, periódicos y revistas de distinta índole. En ese marco, discutieron el pasado militante, el presente exiliar y los proyectos para los próximos años. La presente ponencia interroga las discusiones sobre la revolución y la democracia plasmadas en un conjunto de revistas políticas editadas por exiliados en España y Francia: Testimonio Latinoamericano, Resumen de la actualidad argentina, Cuadernos de Peronismo y Revolución, Convergencia y Divergencia. Con herramientas de la historiografía reciente y de los estudios políticos, se buscará problematizar los intercambios conceptuales de dichas publicaciones, sus mutuas referencias, sus acuerdos y sus tensiones en su interpretación del pasado reciente y sus perspectivas futuras.
Yosa Vidal. University of Oregon, "Borges, guest speaker in the discussion on non-heroic betrayal in the Conosur dictatorships"
This presentation addresses the recurrence of Jorge Luis Borges in literary writings on unheroic betrayal, understood as that committed by someone who, having promised loyalty to a party or comrade under a specific moral code, cannot uphold that promise in the face of extreme conditions of violence.
Two Argentine texts are analyzed: the graphic novel Perramus. El piloto del olvido y el alma de la ciudad (1986), by Juan Sasturain and Alberto Breccia, and the biographical profile La llamada (2024), by Laila Guerriero, focused on the experience of Silvia Labayrú, a survivor of the ESMA and publicly accused of treason. In Perramus, Borges appears as a central character within a resistance group that seeks to save "the soul of the city," whose first verses of the sonnet "Buenos Aires" open the volume: "And the city, now, is like a map of my humiliations and failures." In La llamada, although his presence is more diffuse, Labayrú quotes Borgesian verses and motifs in her own poems, where she reflects on betrayal, defeat, and the dignity of the vanquished.
In both cases, the figure of Borges acts as a mediator between fiction and reality, allowing us to think about betrayal, guilt, and heroism in the context of the Argentine dictatorship. I propose that its relevance lies not only in the intertextual, but also in its ability to offer an epistemological model that places defeat at the center of experience, where searching for clues, deciphering enigmas, and recognizing symmetries becomes a rite of resistance and political renewal.
Rodrigo Marin, UACH, At the limits of representation. A proposed configuration for the case of La Conferencia (1975).The research carried out over the past four years addresses, in an exploratory and critical manner, the problem of representation surrounding an unknown episode in Chile's recent history, proposing this event as an inaugural milestone in the configuration of media terror and the legitimization of the nascent neoliberal model in Chile, combining media manipulation and televised political spectacle.
During February 1975, four militants of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) who were kidnapped and held in the former Terranova barracks (Villa Grimaldi), under physical and psychological torture, were forced to make a public appeal to lay down armed resistance against the dictatorship, declaring the defeat of their organization by reading a statement broadcast on television. Two days later, they held a press conference in front of national and international media at the former Diego Portales Building, headquarters of the military high command, which was then shown on national news and in the press.
At this stage, the paper highlights the final advances of the research, which has focused on the historical, audiovisual, and aesthetic dimensions of the case, opening up a proposal for a configuration that resists the official narrative and offering a substantial theoretical contribution on the relationships between memory, archives, and betrayal.
20260729T154520260729T1715America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires3.10. [RG LatAm] Emotions, transgressions, and political and spatial displacements in the context of revolutionary militancy in the 1970s in the Latin American Southern Cone [ES]SV201MSA Buenos Aires 2026buenosairesconference@memorystudiesassociation.org
