“The Fragile Elegance of Truth: The Trials Against Genocides in Argentina”

The military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983 left the country with evidence of more than 30,000 disappeared citizens. In 1985, Julio César Strassera was chosen as public prosecutor to make the new democratic government’s case against the military junta for alleged crimes against humanity. Claudia Bernardi’s presentation, using Argentina, 1985 as a backdrop, will focus on the effort to create a judicial paradigm of due process to investigate genocide; collect and present testimonies of the survivors of clandestine centers of detention, torture, and extermination; document facts about the disappeared; and try and convict the members of the military junta within a structure of constitutional law in Argentina. Claudia Bernardi is a community-based artist, printmaker, and installation artist whose artwork meets at the intersection of art and human rights and is impacted by the effect of war and political violence. She is an emerita professor of community arts at the California College of the Arts.