Parque de la Memoria

The Parque de la Memoria is Argentina’s first state-funded monument dedicated to the estimated 30,000 desaparecidos (or “disappeared”) who were victims of state terrorism in Argentina between 1976 and 1983. The park’s web site describes the memorial as “a gash, an open wound in a grassy hill.” A jagged path dotted by sculptures winds past stone walls engraved with victims’ names to reach a promontory above the River Plata, where many of the desaparecidos are thought to have been drowned.

Scattered throughout the park are seventeen commissioned sculptures––some conceived by Argentine artists, some by foreigners––that commemorate the desaparecidos. The most famous of these works is Dennis Oppenheim’s “Monumento al escape”: three houses made of steel and colored glass, chaotically stacked to evoke the upheaval in the victims’ lives.

References

Parque de la Memoria, official site.
External Link

Discussions

Never Again: Memorials and Prevention

Over the course of the past fifty years, an increasingly global interest in constructing memorials to genocide and mass atrocity has emerged. This article will explore…

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Design Concepts for Parque de la Memoria

On July 21, 1996, the City of Buenos Aires passed Law 46, officially establishing the Parque de la Memoria project and creating the first state-funded…

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