The Disappeared Are Appearing: Murals that Recover Communal Memory

Abstract

Relatives of the disappeared during the last civic-military dictatorship in Argentina who were able to recover the human remains of their family members through the work of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense, or EAAF), painted a mural in March 2014. 'The Disappeared Are Appearing' is a collaborative and community-based mural project designed, rendered and completed by the relatives of victims of state terror in Argentina. The participating family members of the disappeared had recovered the human remains of their beloved relatives through the tenacious and constant work of the EAAF, a nongovernmental, not-for-profit, scientific organization. It was established in 1984 to investigate the cases of at least 9,000 disappeared people in Argentina under the military government that ruled from 1976 to 1983.