The moment when prosecutor Julio Strassera (Ricardo Darín) reads the indictment against the leaders of the Argentine military regime (1976-1983), asking for prison terms and concluding with an emotional: “Never again”, leads Argentines to applaud the standing scene in Buenos Aires movie theaters. Even in movie theaters in neighborhoods where family members of these repressors, as well as victims, still live, like the one in the room I went to, emotion takes over the general audience. It is as if, even for a moment, there was a consensus in this so divided society that this chapter of national history was really dark.
“Argentina, 1985” has a pretentious title, it is supposed to show the Trial of the Military Juntas, responsible for the death, torture or disappearance of more than 20 thousand people, as a kind of Nuremberg Tribunal. Perhaps the comparison is not exaggerated. No Latin American country, after all, has tried and condemned the repressors of its dictatorships as quickly and as harshly as Argentina. The Trial of the Juntas had just begun when the first democratically elected president, Raúl Alfonsín, had seated himself in the presidential chair, and while he was still listening to rumors behind him that the military could rise again and take power from him at any time slide.
The film premiered in theaters in Argentina before being made available on the Amazon Prime platform, on the 21st. After two weeks in theaters, it has already been seen by half a million people, and the theaters are still full. To get a seat, you need patience and, as in my case, settling for one of the last chairs left to sell, with your nose glued to the canvas. But it’s worth it, just when you thought that streaming had robbed us of the feeling of suspense and anticipation of seeing a long-awaited movie firsthand, and on the big screen. “Argentina, 1985” is chosen by the country to compete for the Oscar for best foreign film _category in which the country already has two statuettes.
The film tells the story of prosecutor Julio César Strassera (1933-2015), until then an outcast employee of the Argentine judiciary, who leads a middle-class life in an apartment so small that he can see what his neighbors are watching on TV every day. night. In those days, in Argentina, the newly elected Alfonsín wanted to set up the court to try the repressive military, something that generated huge debates in prime time. The voice of the military was heard not directly, but through ministers or TV journalists who were against the judgment. Early in the film, they repeat the misleading mantra that would be their defense in court as well: “that the military had been patriots, that they had controlled the communist guerrillas, that there had been no systematic plan for human rights abuses, but rather some ‘excesses’ ‘.”
Strassera and her family agree with the idea of the trial. But the prosecutor, who is guilty of not having acted in resistance to the dictatorship, is also afraid. His wife and children push him to accept to carry out the cause assigned to him, but his head is full of doubts. Doubts that it will in fact be a serious trial, that they will be heard, that they will be able to gather evidence for the prosecution without the help of the police, who did not want to collaborate in prosecuting the military, doubts that they could try to “smear” the trial, doubt that he or his family could pay a price _in fact, his home phone keeps ringing with threatening calls until someone manages to enter his apartment and leave a typed letter on his desk, sentencing him to death with a bullet on top of the envelope.
Although hesitant and scared, the prosecutor sees that he has no alternative but to be part of the story, after all, the feeling that this is morally correct is stronger. It surrounds a group of very young lawyers, led by Luis Moreno Ocampo (Peter Lanzani), who, after the Judgment of the Juntas, would become a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. Strassera and his young team start working with the documents gathered by Conadep (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons).
Also created by Alfonsín, and led by writer Ernesto Sábato, Conadep gathered thousands of testimonies from victims and relatives of victims and collected material provided by human rights NGOs. Strassera’s team gets their hands dirty and the prosecutor’s office is suddenly filled with people telling the most lurid things about their tortures, their captive births, their friends they never saw again. Some of these cases are taken to hearings.
Although at that time it was already known that the military regime had committed crimes against humanity, few had any idea of the scale and cowardice. The Judgment of the Juntas was not broadcast on live TV, but on radio. Even so, the victims’ report was far-reaching, to the point that Moreno Ocampo’s mother, who went to mass with General Videla and considered him a “good man”, breaks down and changes sides when she hears the report of a woman that she gave birth inside the car of repressors and that they did not help her at all, on the contrary, they put her to clean after delivery.
The Judgment of the Juntas was the first time that the whole of Argentine society, although many refused to see it, learned of the atrocities committed by the military. It would already be a historic moment for that alone. But he was also successful in lining up all the top commanders of the Armed Forces in the dock in a courtroom where fear, tension and hope were breathed out. There were also Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and relatives of victims. When Strassera makes the accusation, the place explodes as if it were the stands of a stadium, to which Videla just casts an ironic look with the air of a psychopath.
When choosing the cut of the story, some things, however, are left out. As the same treatment received, in another court, several guerrilla leaders who committed atrocities, such as Mario Firmenich, founder of the Montoneros guerrilla and responsible for the kidnapping and death of former dictator Aramburu. There is also a clear choice to show how that society just emerged from the dictatorship lived, with a fantastic period characterization and soundtrack, but little is shown behind the scenes of politics, where Alfonsín waged enormous battles to keep the democratic system working.
The choice is also made not to show the stumbling blocks that the process opened by the Judgment had in later years, when Alfonsín himself, under pressure, had to go back and allow laws that guaranteed impunity to some sectors of the military, those of Due Obedience and Punto Final, and which were later concluded with the pardons given by Carlos Menem.
According to the reading of the film, Judgment à Juntas only gains the importance it deserves in the light of history, when in the 2000s, during the government of Néstor Kirchner, all pardons fall and crimes of the State are judged again. According to this interpretation, the trial ends up being reduced to a kind of precedent of the trials carried out in recent years and which, in fact, today have thousands of repressors behind bars. This reading, which is a reading of Kirchnerism, has always generated friction between Strassera and this political group.
Shown in an isolated way, without knowing what came after, however, the Judgment of the Juntas was much more than that. It is not a story of heroism, but of courageous and somewhat romantic confrontation (on the part of the young people who followed Strassera). It is the story of a frightened society, still ignorant of the nightmare it had lived, and which is awakened thanks to a president’s initiative to establish a tribunal for the regime’s crimes. The fear that something terrible could happen again is palpable in the air, you can feel it in the gaze of a masterful Darín and in Lanzani’s panting breath. Although the scale of the crimes is different, it is no exaggeration to call the Nuremberg Trial Latin American.
No other country in the region has done anything like its former dictators and former repressors. And in this one, the Argentines are more than right to stand up to applaud with pride the moment when Strassera concludes his request for condemnation with the words: “Nunca Mais”.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
