This decorative tile marks the sidewalk outside the house where state forces disappeared Alicia Pardo 37 years ago during Argentina's last military dictatorship.
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA – Every time Sebastián Pardo, 33, walks past the house where his father grew up in Buenos Aires, the nation’s capital, he moves close to the ground to view the colorful, rectangular tile in the sidewalk. He likes to look at it and remove any garbage on top of it.
The tile memorializes his aunt, Alicia Pardo, whom government forces kidnapped 37 years ago during Argentina’s last military dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1983. On June 2, 1976, military forces broke into her home and took her because they considered her an opponent of the regime, Pardo says his father told him. She was 23 at the time, and her family never heard from her again.
Pardo, a painter and musician, says that he and his twin brother, also a musician, never got to meet their father’s only sister. So they felt that they needed to reconstruct their family history, which her disappearance had disrupted.
They approached a local human rights organization that places the colorful tiles around the city commemorating “los desaparecidos,” or the tens of thousands of people who disappeared during the dictatorship. The organization, Barrios x Memoria y Justicia, had already created one for their aunt as part of its mission to remind the public of the disappeared and to seek justice for them.
The brothers participated in the placement of the tile in front of the home where their aunt had disappeared. They say it served as a symbol of reconstructing their family history.
“By chance, I live one block from the place,” Pardo says. “Each time I pass, I look at the plaque, and I remember my aunt. Perhaps I cannot resolve or work out anything, but physically, there is some gesture of relief or of recognition.”
The members of Barrios x Memoria y Justicia craft and set artistic tiles in the places where victims lived, worked or studied, leaving behind a concrete testimony of Argentina’s disappeared throughout the country. One of the principal objectives is to create and maintain their memory, with the end goal of ensuring that the events of the military dictatorship never happen again. For the family members of the disappeared, the tiles serve as physical objects where they can commemorate their loved ones.
With 10 offices throughout the city, Barrios x Memoria y Justicia brings together residents from various neighborhoods and of different political parties and ideologies. Some lost family members during the military dictatorship, while others see the initiative as a civic duty.
The organization began placing the tiles in 2006, the 30th anniversary of the military coup that brought the dictatorship to power, says Alicia Le Fur, a member from the Almagro neighborhood. That year, it placed 12 tiles in Buenos Aires. Today, there are more than 530 tiles throughout Argentina, with the majority in the capital.
Argentina’s last military dictatorship created 500 clandestine detention centers throughout the country, which it used in the disappearance of some 30,000 people and the kidnapping of more than 500 children, according to the Instituto Espacio para la Memoria. The city government institution aims to preserve the public’s memory of the events that took place during the dictatorship. The regime also detained 10,000 political prisoners in state jails, exiled more than 1 million residents, and terrorized a large part of the population.
Barrios x Memoria y Justicia places a colorful tile in the sidewalk where the disappeared studied, worked, lived, advocated, disappeared or died, according to the blog of the organization’s Almagro office. The tile – handmade with sand, cement and ferrite – is about 60 centimeters by 40 centimeters.
The organization embeds the story of the disappeared on the tile with plastic letters. It includes the person’s name, date of detainment, and the circumstances that led to it. It also highlights the person’s political activism, without mentioning any specific political affiliations. Colorful glass frames the tile so passersby do not mistake them for gravestones.
Fanny Seldes, one of the members of Barrios x Memoria y Justicia in Almagro, explains that the tiles are a way of returning to the community the people who were disappeared for their activism and for defending their ideals.
“What we propose is that the disappeared comrades recover their identity in the neighborhood,” Seldes says. “It is a way of bringing them back to the neighborhood, but in a setting of activism and of the fight for justice.”
Family members, friends and cohorts of the disappeared apply for the tiles, Seldes says. Before producing them, the organization checks the information rigorously in the archives of human rights organizations that have documented the disappeared.
Marisa Munczek, another member of Barrios x Memoria y Justicia in Almagro, says the construction of the tiles is a collective project. The members of the organization collaborate with the families to decorate and to set the tiles.
“It is very magical,” she says. “The thinking is united with the feeling and with being creative.”
Barrios x Memoria y Justicia does not receive subsidies, and it does not have affiliations with political organizations. It also does not charge for the production and placement of the tiles, although some relatives of the disappeared donate money to the project.
Luis Burstein, a member of Barrios x Memoria y Justicia in Almagro, says the principal objective for him and his colleagues is to preserve the critical memory of the military dictatorship.
“What the tiles do is contribute to the maintenance of the concept of memory and to the creation of history,” Burstein says.
History helps to construct memory and, in turn, memory projects itself back onto history, he says. Therefore, he believes that it is necessary to learn about history so that it does not repeat itself.
Carlos Susini Burmester, an architect of the civil organization Sociedad Central de Arquitectos who provides consulting services to the city government on architecture and urban patrimony, says that people use concrete objects to invoke the mind.
“Memory is fueled by concrete objects,” he says. “I think, then, that the way of making the past present, of evoking it, is through the presence of an object in the present.”
The tiles are testimonies that reach out to people in a simple, discrete manner, Susini says. Those who want to see the tiles can, and those who do not want to, can pass by them.
Some members of the community are not aware of them.
Rony Pinto, 15, sits on the steps that lead to his high school in the neighborhood of Caballito. In the sidewalk in front of him are four tiles commemorating teachers and alumni of the school who were disappeared during the military dictatorship.
“I never saw them,” Rony says of the tiles. “I do not know what it is about.”
Elena García, 75, a retired teacher who lives in the same neighborhood, has also never noticed the tiles in the city’s sidewalks. Lamenting her distraction, she says that the next time she walks by one, she will get closer to read it.
For Seldes, the tiles leave multiple marks: on the public space, the people who set them and the pedestrians who pass them.
“The idea is also that the person who did not wish to understand what happened sees themselves questioned by that sign,” Seldes says.
Diana Wasserman, a 45-year-old resident of Almagro, says the commemorative tiles move her each time she notices them in the sidewalk.
“I have seen many tiles close to my house,” she says. “Each time that I see them, a great sadness overwhelms me. I think that nothing is enough to remember all of those people who are not with us now.”
Wasserman says she first became aware of the tiles when her 8-year-old daughter saw the tile dedicated to Alicia Pardo one day when they were walking and asked her about it. They both stopped to read it, and Wasserman explained to her daughter what it signified.
Susini says that the tiles constitute a historical testimony that future generations should take ownership of. He emphasizes that the tiles provide a message to those who see it, who then give it the meaning they can.
For Sebastián Pardo, the tiles are reminders that state terrorism existed in Argentina.
“From an urban perspective, this is a sign that there was state terrorism here, disappeared people, that the state exercised violence on the civil population,” he says. “Each person gives it the significance that they want and that they are able to.”
For some family members of the disappeared, it is important to have a physical place where they can emotionally release the pain of losing a loved one.
“The body is not here,” says Gabriel Pardo, Sebastián Pardo’s twin brother, of their aunt. “We do not know where it is. It could not be buried. At least we have a place to go to unload.”
June marked another anniversary of the abduction of Alicia Pardo. Sebastián Pardo says he had the urge to buy flowers to place on her tile but refrained because he does not want to see the tile as her gravestone. As his brother pointed out, her body is not beneath it. It remains missing.
For this reason, the tile is what unites him with her, with his family history and with his country’s past.
“If the links are cut historically,” Sebastián Pardo says, “the recollection, the memory of the disappeared people – it is as if they never had existed. Only this tie can keep them present.”