The afterlives of political violence in Argentina: The gendered body and everyday cruelty

Abstract

AbstractWhile the last decade in Argentina saw an expansion of civil rights and an increased awareness of gendered violence, prison conditions for women deteriorated. A prominent example took place in Buenos Aires in May 2014 when thirty women in ‘Unidad 31’ were violently transferred to make space for men convicted of crimes against humanity during the last military dictatorship (1976‐1983). This event reveals how the repercussions of the last military dictatorship continue to unfold, displaying new iterations of military power. As former military men settled into a women's prison, the privileges of high‐ranking men expose how the afterlives of political violence reproduce gendered inequities in the prison system and, more broadly, in Argentine society. Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork (2014‐2017), I consider how acts of resistance carried out by feminist collectives expose historical trauma and contemporary expressions of political violence.