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The Consecration of Political Suffering: Martyrs, Heroes and Victims in Argentine Political Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2013

MARIA SOLEDAD CATOGGIO
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Abstract

This article addresses the various mechanisms by which the religious figure of the Christian martyr became a useful notion in Argentine political discourse. It argues that the process by which the idea of the ‘martyr’ was secularised and politicised was actually initiated by religious agents themselves. The analysis considers how commemoration initiatives devised by religious agents, social movements and political actors have brought ‘Catholic martyrs’ into the pantheon of national symbols. It also deals with the various semantic shifts seen in the public discourses of religious agents themselves, shifts that extend the boundaries of an eminently religious category by associating it with other figures in a more specifically political imaginary, such as that of the hero and the victim. The article shows how the political power of the religious figure of the martyr lay in the way various actors could use it to invoke the image of a legitimate and heroic victim of political violence. It thus allowed those actors to sidestep the vexed public question of whether those being commemorated had had any involvement in armed struggle.

Spanish abstract

Este artículo se propone abordar los diversos mecanismos por los cuales un modelo religioso, como es el del mártir cristiano, se convierte en una figura fructífera en el discurso político. La hipótesis de este trabajo es que el proceso de secularización y politización de esta figura es fuertemente vehiculizado por los propios agentes religiosos. El análisis contempla, por una parte, las iniciativas de homenaje tejidas entre agentes religiosos, actores sociales y funcionarios políticos que integran a los ‘mártires católicos’ al patrimonio de símbolos nacionales. Por otra, los diversos desplazamientos semánticos, plasmados en los discursos públicos de los propios agentes religiosos, que amplían los límites de la categoría religiosa, al asociarla a otras figuras del imaginario político, como son la del héroe y la de la víctima. Los resultados del análisis muestran que la potencialidad política de la figura religiosa del mártir es la proponer una víctima heroica legítima de la violencia política, evadiendo la difícil cuestión pública de elucidar las responsabilidades de la participación en la lucha armada.

Portuguese abstract

Este artigo trata dos vários mecanismos pelos quais a figura religiosa do mártir cristão tornou-se um conceito útil no discurso político argentino. Argumenta-se que o processo pelo qual a ideia do mártir foi secularizada e politizada foi, na verdade, iniciado pelos próprios agentes religiosos. A análise leva em consideração como as iniciativas comemorativas arquitetadas por agentes religiosos, movimentos sociais e atores políticos trouxeram ‘mártires católicos’ ao panteão de símbolos nacionais. O artigo também trata das várias mudanças semânticas observadas nos discursos públicos dos próprios agentes políticos, mudanças estas que estendem as fronteiras de uma categoria eminentemente religiosa ao associá-la com outras figuras em um imaginário mais específicamente político, por exemplo, o herói e a vítima. O artigo demonstra como o poder político da figura religiosa do mártir foi utilizado por vários agentes para evocar a vítima legítima e heroica da violência política. Desta forma, permitiu aos agentes desviar-se da controvertida questão pública sobre o envolvimento dos que estavam sendo comemorados com qualquer aspecto da luta armada.

Keywords

Argentinamartyrherovictimpolitical violencesocial memoryreligionsecularizaciónmartirioreligiónpolíticamemoriaArgentinasecularizaçãomartírioreligiãopolíticamemóriaArgentina
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 695 - 719
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

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4 Frigerio, José Oscar, El síndrome de la Revolución Libertadora: la Iglesia contra el justicialismo (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1990), p 78Google Scholar. This image of martyrdom would later be overshadowed in the social imaginary by the powerful iconography of ‘Saint Evita’.

5 Gillespie, Richard, Montoneros: soldados de Perón (Buenos Aires: Grijalbo, 1987), p. 150Google Scholar.

6 Vezzetti, Sobre la violencia revolucionaria, p. 141.

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8 As Émile Poulat neatly puts it, ‘Catholicism is a world’, so we should talk of Catholicisms in the plural, not the singular. Certain features have taken shape throughout the twentieth century and imbued Argentine Catholicism with a character of its own. The all-encompassing way of conceiving and practising Catholicism that held sway after the 1930s actually required adherents to follow a political logic contrary to Jacques Maritain's political doctrine, which advocated the formation of confessional political parties. This unwillingness to set up a specifically Catholic party for political action on the one hand enabled certain sectors of Catholicism to form alliances with the military – which in effect played the role of a Catholic party, responding to Catholic demands with every coup d’état – and on the other encouraged the pluralist integration of Christians into socially progressive movements, as Emmanuel Mounier proclaimed in the magazine Esprit. At the same time, early in the century Catholicism was key to the process of integrating, homogenising and disciplining the immigrant masses. There then occurred a process of symbiosis between Catholic identity and national identity, still in force today. Mallimaci, Fortunato, ‘El catolicismo argentino desde el liberalismo integral a la hegemonía militar’, in Cristina Liboreiro, M. et al. , 500 años de cristianismo en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: CEHILA–Centro Nueva Tierra, 1992)Google Scholar.

9 A martyrology is a calendar of martyrs or saints and the dates of their anniversaries.

10 The Alianza Anticomunista Argentina, known as the Triple A, was a state-financed paramilitary group led by Minister of Social Welfare José López Rega. It carried out illegal repression during the government of María Estela Martínez de Perón.

11 The state terror apparatus did not operate in a void but exacerbated to a certain extent existing tensions in the Catholic world. During the decade before the last dictatorship there were countless clashes between Church authorities, the military clergy and members of the armed forces whose indeterminate status led to extreme solutions such as, on the one hand, the military claim to defining Catholic ‘orthodoxy’ and, on the other, the involvement of the clergy in the apparatus of repression. The same decade witnessed a whole series of confrontations between ecclesiastical authorities and their own ranks over what conciliar ‘renewal’ should look like. These confrontations occurred at the same time that government propaganda was alleging ‘subversion’ and ‘infiltration’ within Catholicism itself. In the early 1970s, such accusations led to state violence and repression. The tensions built up then are still evident in the trials for crimes against humanity that have been reopened since 2003, when the ‘Obediencia Debida’ (Due Obedience) and ‘Punto Final’ (Full Stop) laws were declared null and void. For a deeper analysis, see María Soledad Catoggio, ‘Contestatarios, mártires y herederos: sociabilidades político-religiosas y ascesis altruista del catolicismo argentino en la dictadura y la posdictadura’, unpubl. doctoral thesis, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2010.

12 The transition to democracy, formalised by the election of Raúl Alfonsín in December 1983, had a strong religious dimension of legitimacy from the beginning. By 1981, the Catholic episcopacy had publicly declared its support for the democratic system in a key document, Iglesia y comunidad nacional, implying a change in its public discourse that put it at odds with the military junta. This support, symbolised by the slogan of ‘national reconciliation’, was used by political parties, from the Multipartidaria (1981) to the debates around the Full Stop (1986) and Due Obedience (1987) laws, often with contradictory arguments and effects. See Bonnin, Juan Eduardo, Génesis política del discurso religioso: Iglesia y comunidad nacional (1981) entre la dictadura y la democracia en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 2012)Google Scholar.

13 According to the Nunca Más (Never Again) report by the Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, CONADEP), religious victims of state terror account for 0.3 per cent of the universe of victims.

14 Conciliar renewal was a process undertaken at the time of the Second Vatican Council, held between 1962 and 1965, which transformed Catholicism and its relationship with the modern world.

15 For ten years, the murder of Carlos Mugica was the subject of controversy as the Montoneros opposition guerrilla group and the Triple A anti-communist death squad accused each other of having committed the crime. In 1984, Juan Carlos Juncos, the bodyguard of the minister of social welfare, confessed to Judge Eduardo Hernández Agramonte that he was the perpetrator. After that, Human Rights Secretary Inés Pérez Suárez ruled that, as a victim of state terror at the hands of the Triple A, Mugica's case should be covered by Law No. 24411 regarding reparations. See Verbitsky, Horacio, Doble juego: la Argentina católica y militar (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2006), p. 375Google Scholar. The murder of Bishop Angelelli was disguised as a traffic accident. Since the criminal file has been reopened, the court has prosecuted senior officers of the military regime for the crime. See ‘La justicia confirmó el procesamiento de Videla, Menéndez y Harguindeguy por la muerte del obispo Angelelli’, Página/12, 28 July 2012. Their deaths intended as a lesson to others, priests Alfredo Leaden, Alfredo Nelly and Pedro Duffau and seminarians Salvador Barbeito and Emilio Barletti were murdered in the San Patricio church on 4 July 1976, prompting unprecedented condemnation by the Argentine episcopacy. Some 36 years later, the reopening of the criminal file and the canonisation of the victims are still in progress. Finally, the French nuns Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet were seized during a police operation targeting the families of disappeared people who used to meet at the Santa Cruz church, in December 1977. The sisters were held captive for about ten days at the notorious Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada (Navy School of Mechanics, ESMA) and later disappeared. Léonie Duquet's remains washed ashore and were buried in 2005 at the same church. Their cases were part of the so-called mega-suit regarding the ESMA, which saw 12 perpetrators sentenced to life imprisonment and another four to imprisonment periods of between 18 and 25 years. See ‘Prisión perpetua para Astiz, uno de los símbolos del horror de la dictadura’, Clarín, 26 Oct. 2011.

16 For a more detailed analysis of the dynamics of the theological training seminaries in the Catholic world, see Béliveau, Verónica Giménez, ‘Carreras militantes: comunidades católicas y formación de sujetos en la Argentina’, Ciencias Sociales y Religión/Ciências Sociais & Religião, 9: 9 (2007), pp. 31–58Google Scholar.

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19 Achugar, Hugo, ‘El lugar de la memoria, a propósito de monumentos (motivos y paréntesis)’, in Jelin, Elizabeth and Langland, Victoria (eds.), Monumentos, memoriales y marcas territoriales (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2003), pp. 191–216Google Scholar.

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21 In Córdoba, Angelelli served as diocesan archbishop and rector of the Main Seminary between 1960 and 1968. His key role in the events related to the CGT's strategy for political struggle (Plan de Lucha) in 1964 caused him to be overlooked for promotion to the position of diocesan bishop, even though, as auxiliary bishop, he was the natural candidate. The newly elected diocesan bishop, Raúl Primatesta, reinstated Angelelli in his role as auxiliary bishop, from which he had been suspended, but moved him out of the rector's office in the seminary. In 1968, Angelelli was finally appointed diocesan bishop in La Rioja, where his innovative, hard-line style developed and became more radical.

22 Minutes of the 12th Ordinary Meeting of the Buenos Aires City Legislature, 1 June 2000, shorthand version, p. 142.

23 Achugar, ‘El lugar de la memoria’.

24 Two parish churches have been declared historical sites by the Buenos Aires City Legislature. The Santa Cruz parish church has held this status since November 2007, under Law No. 2494 (Official Gazette no. 2823). San Patricio parish church was declared such more recently, under Section 4(a) of Law No. 1227 of 22 June 2010. This status makes these churches part of the nation's cultural heritage.

25 ‘Monumento a los padres palotinos’, Clarín, 16 Sep. 2005.

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28 See www.facebook.com/Radiocomunidad1057.

29 An account of this commemoration is available in the newsletter Agencia Informativa Católica Argentina, 12 May 2009.

30 Pollak, Michel, ‘Memoria, olvido, silencio’, in Pollak, , Memoria, olvido y silencio: la producción social de las identidades frente al límite (La Plata: Al Margen, 2006), pp. 9–31Google Scholar.

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35 During the 1940s, priest Hernán Benítez had been prominent in the management of the Peronist imaginary. As Eva Perón's confessor, he became a public personality who, in addition to granting religious legitimacy to the government, was instrumental in secularising and reframing various issues in the Catholic world, such as ‘social justice’, which became part of the political imaginary. See Cucchetti, Humberto, Religión y política en Argentina y en Mendoza (1943–1955): lo religioso en el primer peronismo, Serie Informes de Investigación, 16 (CEIL-PIETTE CONICET, 2005)Google Scholar.

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40 ‘Testimonio de sangre’, Boletín del Centro de Documentación – Centro de Investigación y Acción Social, 25: 254 (1976), pp. 3–4, emphasis added.

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54 Carnovale, ‘Jugarse al Cristo’; Longoni, Traiciones; Vezzetti, Sobre la violencia revolucionaria.

55 Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Dai Martiri agli eroi e dagli eroi alle celebrità’, pp. 179–208.

56 Todorov, Tzvetan, ‘La memoria amenazada’, in Todorov, , Los abusos de la memoria (Barcelona: Paidos, 2000), pp. 11–60Google Scholar; Traverso, Enzo, ‘De la memoria y su uso crítico’, Puentes, 8: 25 (2008), pp. 6–21Google Scholar.

57 Todorov, ‘La memoria amenazada’; Traverso, ‘De la memoria y su uso crítico’.

58 Carnovale, ‘Jugarse al Cristo’; Longoni, Traiciones; Vezzetti, Sobre la violencia revolucionaria.