The Persistence of Silence after Dictatorships

This article describes the Argentina–Catalonia Project, a collaborative secondary school oral history project based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Tarragona, Spain. The purpose of the project is to engage high school students in an exploration of the persistence of silence that exists in contemporary Argentina and Spain concerning the impact of dictatorship on everyday life. Toward this end, students both conduct interviews and undertake analysis of them. The persistence of silence is examined from the testimonies of those who lived through the dictatorial regimes, and the process of engaging students in the recovery of the past is explored in depth.