The life I didn’t see

literature, childhood and dismemory during the last Argentine dictatorship

Abstract

This article addresses the theme of dismemory imposed on childhood, as a political-educational context and as a literary representation, during the last Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983). At the time, due to the determinations of Operación Claridad, the school was restricted by control over everything it proposed for the education of children and young people. Art, in turn, had to remain silent or seek forms of expression that could circumvent the system. Within the family, fear and the desire to protect children led adults to hide, when possible, the autocratic reality. Decades after those events, the voices of these sons and daughters rise to speak, through literature, about the impact of such a situation on their lives and identities. This is the case, for example, of the work El mar y la serpiente, by Paula Bombara (2016). In this study, therefore, we discuss a) the context of the erasure of memory brought about by the aforementioned dictatorial regime; b) forgetfulness, in Children’s and young adult literature, generated by the trauma of paternal absence and the manipulation of memory; and c) the possibility of the literary narrative contributing to overcoming the memory loss process and to a possible rescue of the childhood of those involved.