In December 2010 H.I.J.O.S., the organisation created by the children of the disappeared, celebrated its 15th anniversary. A big party took place at a pub in San Telmo, a historic and bohemian area of Buenos Aires. ‘Our only revenge is to be happy’, ran the invitation flyer. Since the group was established in 1995 many fundamental aspects have changed in Argentina. While in the early 1990s those responsible for the dictatorship's crimes were free or had been ‘pardoned’, by 2010 huge trials were taking place. In 2005 the Supreme Court nullified the laws of impunity, and prosecutions were allowed once again. Today, 1,424 military personnel are involved in cases across all the country. In this context, H.I.J.O.S. became a prosecutor in court. Although these testimonies had mostly symbolic value – the descendants were children at the time of their parents' kidnapping – the courts became a major stage for witnessing the younger generation's accounts of the ongoing effects of trauma.

While attending these trials in December 2009 and January 2010, I was impressed by the affective investment of the descendants' testimonies. All those individual performances were strongly embedded in a collective spirit. I was especially moved by the words of Paula Maroni, a founder member of H.I.J.O.S., whose father was kidnapped and murdered and whose mother survived after three months of captivity and torture.