Rubén Chababo

* 1962

  • “I always believed that the perpetrators of state repression should be made accountable for their crimes at the law court; at the same time I believe that even the surviving chiefs of the armed groups should publically confess the harm and effect, caused by their violent acts. By that I don’t mean that their kind of violence is comparable to what the state has done, but I only mean that they too should accept responsibility for that way they would contribute to our better understanding to this complex historical period. Yet if a man expresses this opinion in Argentina, the others place him among supporters of so called theory of two demons, which equates these two kinds of guilt. I don’t believe in two nor three demons. It was not the demons but people, who committed evil in Argentina. And on the contrary I believe that the state had to accept responsibility for caused harm and civic society perpetrators, who committed crimes against valid legislative, should also be judged and accept the responsibility for their acts.”

  • “Compared to other countries in our region only the right wing part of the wide public and the catholic church offered the idea of reconciliation. From the very beginning of their movement human right activists were asking truth and justice from us as they guessed that proponents of the idea of reconciliation target only and only to pardon and forgetfulness done by crime; and it has to be said that the later development confirmed their assumption. Personally I believe that we have to accept not the perpetrator, but our own history, with our painful past; but for this to happen it is first necessary that the truth and justice come out. The idea of reconciliation cannot be accepted, if it is not preceded by recognition of the damages that the society suffered.”

  • “In Argentina, compared to Guatemala or Salvador, the repressive apparatus had an effect on the members of working class unions, organised by students, the middle class, intellectuals, which are just the groups, which have the power to raise their voices and get attention. In Argentina each lawyer, judge, architect, engineer, psychologist, pedagogue and doctor at least one friend, who suffered directly from repression, and these institutions of these professional groups alone were managed, destroyed and enslaved by the dictatorship. In other words, violence concentrated mainly at those parts of society, which can address their rights, and I believe that this fact was the main reason for the historical experience from the break of the 1970s and 1980s was not forgotten following the renewal of democracy. I don’t mean that is the only reason; but it is one of more variable we have to consider, if we wish to understand why memory obtained such importance in a social dialogue.”

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    Rosario, 24.09.2015

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    duration: 01:17:40
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We got to work actively with the dilemmas of present time

Rubén Chababo
Rubén Chababo
photo: Pamět národa - Archiv

Rubén Chababo, who was born on 23 February 1962, is a professor of the National university in Rosario, where he teaches a seminar specialising at the human rights and memory. Further he is active at the Rosario university of cultural studies, holds a post of a director of the Rosario Philosophical Faculty Publishing, a member of the consultation board of the Columbian National Centre of the Historical Memory in Bogota and from the position of the main human rights coordinator at the Rosario Town Hall is active in public politics. On the issue of current historical memory and related dilemmas had lectures at various universities in Argentina and abroad. In 2002 - 2014 held a post of the director of the Memory Museum in Rosario, one of the first museum institutions of its kind in Argentina.