Our Disappeared Like many modern-day quests, OUR DISAPPEARED/NUESTROS DESAPARECIDOS starts with an innocent search on Google. But what begins with filmmaker Juan Mandelbaum's mild curiosity about a former college sweetheart soon leads to a gripping personal journey into a world of brutality, repression, torture and death as he traces the fate of an estimated 30,000 Argentine citizens known as los desaparecidos, “the disappeared.” Film still: The 30th Anniversay March In 1976, as the United States celebrated its 200th anniversary as a democracy, a far-different scenario was unfolding six thousand miles away in Argentina, where a military junta seized power in March of that year. The ensuing seven-year crusade, known as Argentina's Dirty War, unleashed a vicious campaign of state-authorized kidnapping, detention, torture and murder designed to quash a radical leftist movement powered by the idealistic dreams of Argentina's young people and progressive leaders. Because the corpses of the disappeared were secretly disposed of, the junta that ruled Argentina until 1983 denied its role in the disappearances. But for those who lived through the terror, the memories of the dead cry out for their stories to be told. Mandelbaum undertakes this mission with painstaking sensitivity, aided by home movies and rare archival footage from news organizations, the military junta and from inside the revolution itself. Interviews with surviving family members and the now-grown children of the disappeared reveal the loss of loved ones, and call attention to the countless contributions these young, bright citizens might have made-young people whose bodies now lie buried in mass graves or at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and the Rio de la Plata where they were thrown from military airplanes. Before the repression, Juan Mandelbaum was an idealistic university student studying sociology and working with impoverished Buenos Aires youth whom he took every summer to a camp in Patagonia. At the time, many of his socially conscious peers, including fellow camp counsellors Jorge Chinetti and Mini Viñas, were already entangled in a far-flung net that eventually ensnared them along with tens of thousands of others-union organizers, students, journalists and workers who believed in the dream of a more equitable Argentina. The filmmaker escaped the pervasive atmosphere of intimidation by moving to the United States in 1977. Thirty years later, seeing Patricia's name listed as one of the desaparecidos compelled Mandelbaum to journey back to Argentina to find out what happened to her and others he knew who had disappeared. Mandelbaum explores the motivations that led his friends to make the choices they did and traces their last days of misery during the brutal crackdown. Along the way, he discovers that Patricia had become involved with the Montoneros, a massive leftist movement of mostly young people who did extensive political work but also supported armed struggle. Although she was probably no more than a foot soldier, Argentina's repressive regime was ruthless, hunting down, torturing and killing even the mildest dissident. Because Mandelbaum knew intimately the victims he documents, their portraits are vivid and their suffering at the hands of the torturers is visceral, not obscured by the passage of time or anonymity. In today's wired world, all of humanity now watches in real time as repressive regimes seek to squelch those who rise up against totalitarianism. Argentina's Dirty War, however, was cloaked in obscurity. Through Mandelbaum's patient re-creation of events that occurred more than 30 years ago, the voices of los desaparecidos are not lost to the ages. They whisper encouragement and caution from their watery graves and shallow mass burial plots. They warn us that when brutal regimes are allowed to terrorize and repress the dreams of citizens, the damage and the suffering last for generations. This website: Copyright © 2000 - 2009 Dream World Media, LLC. / Urban Mozaik Magazine. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in Urban Mozaik Magazine are not necessarily those of Urban Mozaik Magazine and the publisher cannot be held responsible for them. This website/publication, in whole or in part, may not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Go to Urban Mozaik Magazine This website: Copyright © 2009 Dream World Media, LLC. / Urban Mozaik Magazine. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in Urban Mozaik Magazine are not necessarily those of Urban Mozaik Magazine and the publisher cannot be held responsible for them. This website/publication, in whole or in part, may not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher.