Abstract

Two of the largest detention centers of Argentina’s last dictatorship were the Atletico-Banco-Olimpo circuit and the Naval Mechanical School, where over seven thousand people were interrogated and tortured, their bodies and rights violated. After decades of amnesty protections, the Argentine state reorganized the country’s politics and national identity and initiated criminal proceedings against the dictatorship’s perpetrators in 2005.

Argentina’s justice efforts vary fundamentally from the truth and reconciliation model of other societies. As glimpsed in the trials of the Atletico-Banco-Olimpo circuit and the Naval Mechanical School, the work of the judiciary has been arduous and incomplete, with proceedings documenting the depths of cruelty of the dictatorship, yet only partially able to resolve culpability and justice.