Getting back to the subject of Argentina’s Dirty War, I recently had to renew my library card, which conveniently took me to the main branch of the New York Public Library at precisely the moment when I was realizing that I was going to need to go there in order to access Nunca Más, a book that consolidated the 50,000 pages of documentation that CONADEP, the National Commission on Disappeared People, put together in preparation for the 1985 trial of the three military juntas that terrorized Argentina for nearly a decade (really a decade if you consider that the terror started before the coup).
Sadly, Nunca Más is out of print, making it largely inaccessible to readers in the United States, which seems a pity in the Information Age that this report—part of the truth and reconciliation efforts—isn’t more widely accessible. In an ideal world it wouldn’t be so challenging to access this history.
But, aside from the pity that this documentary effort is widely forgotten in the Anglophone world today, it’s a pity from a publishing perspective that this book is out of print. The President of CONADEP, appointed by the at the time newly democratically elected President of Argentina, Raúl Alfonsín, was novelist Ernesto Sabato. And as I sat in the Rose Main Reading Room, riveted by the account I was reading, I kept thinking that the writing and translation were so compelling that they required no rewriting, no general public version.
I’ve been watching some true crime on Hulu, and I kept thinking this book had the same propulsiveness, if you’re interested in humanity and criminality. Similarly, with people reintroduced to Say Nothing, now in television form, the disappeared are certainly back in the public imagination.
Alas, Nunca Más remains out of print, so I’m going to do my best to give you a taste of it here over the next few weeks.
QOTD: Do you ever listen to true crime podcasts or television? Or did you watch Say Nothing?
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