Worried Dictators. The Problem of Truth During the “Process” (1976-1983)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to argue on the existence of a main concern between the military chiefs of the so called “National Reorganization Process”. This concern, according to our argument, turned around the revelation of the truth of the criminal and clandestine system, and generated an internal conflict between the military about the sense of the lie with which they hid that system. The analysis of the difficulty to name “war” the clandestine repression, of the instrumental use of the counter-subversion warfare convictions and of the problem of the “image” of the country, will allow us to give account of that concern as well as to show the limitations of the military representations system of “warfare” by means of which the military believed to be able to explain and to justify the central aspects of their regime of terror and disappearance.