00:17The Remembrance Park was built as a tribute to those who were forcibly disappeared during the civil military dictatorship in
00:24Argentina.
00:24Three years after the terror period, former exiles returned to visit the graves of their loved ones and honoured their
00:30memory.
00:31A correspondent, Fabián Restivo, with the story.
00:36On the banks of the Río de la Plata, along one of Argentina's borders, the Park of Memory was inaugurated
00:43in 2007.
00:44It is a monument to the victims of state terrorism, built with 30,000 bricks representing the 30,000 people
00:51who disappeared during the dictatorship.
00:53We went with Claudio and Ana, former exiles who have many lifelong friends and comrades buried there.
00:59Every year there are people I've been having coffee with, hanging out with, playing Ravi, Don Julio Pronsano.
01:08But sometimes words just aren't enough.
01:19In this place, with all this history.
01:23But this part of the history has to start at the beginning.
01:30I had just turned 20 and I left with a minor's permit.
01:36But things, just like the killings, took 17 years to settle down.
01:46I had to finish my early childhood education degree, which is what I was studying and still had left to
01:54complete.
01:55Anyway, in a few months, when things settle down, I'll go back to finish my degree.
02:00And fate brought them together more than 40 years ago.
02:03I met Claudio. We started a family. I studied in Barcelona. I worked in Barcelona. And we came back in
02:151994.
02:16The tragedy and the horror led to some unexpected coincidences.
02:22I have 17 classmates, three friends from my neighborhood, friends I've known since I was a teenager there, and dozens
02:35of fellow activists.
02:41I have friends, friends children, and friends siblings. Yes, I do. And that's what happened with Claudio.
02:49As we read the walls, we kept discovering that we knew people in common.
02:55The guiding principle since their return has been to preserve the memories, and at times, to overcome our fear.
03:06I brought my granddaughters along, and the youngest one, who was nine at the time, and was reading the signs,
03:14noticed the word pregnant.
03:17The dictatorship certainly showed no mercy of humanity.
03:26So little.
03:32Nothing disrupts the tradition of coming, even outside of March 24.
03:38Every March 24, we come here. We come here on days other than March 24 as well. We've also brought
03:44our children here.
03:49This place really moves me.
03:55Because beyond everything it tells you, let's say, the way the tour is put together, it all gives me a
04:07real sense of what actually happened.
04:10And sometimes, as Eduardo Galeano said, we have to help people see.
04:18It is a place we've explored both on our own and with others.
04:30We've even accompanied people who had a missing immediate family member, and who had never been there before, and who
04:39encountered for the first time a name and a place that was very moving.
04:44From Buenos Aires, for Telesur, Fabián Restivo.
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