An interactive, free-access digital platform presents, in different formats, stories about the Popular Memory Center.
Agustina Foster Ferrer, recently graduated from the Bachelor's Degree in Social Communication at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, created as a dissertation work an interactive, free-access digital platform that presents, from different formats, stories about the Popular Memory Center that operated in the building of the former Clandestine Detention Center Information Service between 2001 and 2010. .
The Popular Memory Center had the participation of different Human Rights organizations from the city and the provincial state. The platform developed by Foster Ferrer is called “Voices for Memory” and compiles the voices of those who were protagonists, narrating their story, the way they thought about this space, and the importance of the construction of memory as a collective task.
“Throughout my history I have been linked to Human Rights organizations, due to my personal history and my training. My mother was a political activist, so I was born in a house with the issue very present. I entered the Faculty of Political Science and International Relations, I began to meet many people, and I was participating in the first Human Rights Commission there. There we managed to carry out the first search and identify the missing detainees who had attended the Faculty,” she recalled.
After completing all the subjects, Agustina began to work at the Human Rights Secretariat that had recently been formed in the Province of Santa Fe. “As a result of this work I began to have relationships with many people from the Human Rights Organizations. Humans and this deepened when the Popular Memory Center began to operate. In 2009, I returned to my degree to be able to carry out my thesis, I chose as a topic the tracing of representation strategies of the past around former clandestine detention centers, and I took the Information Service as my main topic.”
Ferrer Foster conducted in-depth interviews with different representatives of Human Rights Organizations so that they could give voice to the story. “Due to life reasons, I could not finish this work at that time. I remember that I had recorded them on cassettes, which had been stored in a trunk in my house. When last year I met with María Soledad Casasola, who was my thesis director on this new occasion, I told her that I did not want this material to end up forgotten. For this reason, we reformulated everything and decided to do a production project, where the voices can have the prominence they deserved.”
The material has valuable testimonies, even from people who have already died. “It had the voice of Elsa Pozzi de Massa, better known as Chiche, one of the references of Madre de Plaza de Mayo, Juane Basso, Elida Luna, Oncar Lupori, Norberto Olivares, and Ángel Florindo Ruani. It seemed like a crime to me that her stories and anecdotes were left lying in a trunk.”
The thesis presents the story of these references about the experience of the Popular Center of Memory within the period of ten years that included it. “I sought to recover their voices and that this could contribute to citizens to be able to think of ourselves as a society.”
This represented an evolution of their original idea, having to build an interactive, free-access digital platform. “That possibility did not exist when I first started planning the dissertation. Therefore, it was a somewhat unknown world for me because I had no knowledge of editing programs or web supports. At this point my co-director, Natalia Fernández Baez, appeared, who gave me a giant hand in this regard and helped me shape it.”
The brand new graduate highlighted that the final result was achieved by “playing with the formats, being able to imagine, experiment and prove that it was the most appropriate.” The first difficulty occurred when she could not find any way to digitize the content of the cassettes. “I couldn't find anyone to do it in Rosario, I asked colleagues who today work in radio stations but there was no way. It is a very old technology and most cassette players no longer work. Finally, a friend who is a musician gave me the information of a person who has a studio and I was finally able to digitize all the material," and added: "Once we solved that situation, I began to experiment with the sound, cut it, edit it to form a podcast series. It was completely changing the way of thinking and introducing me to this production methodology that did not exist when I was in college.”
The development carried out in this work represents invaluable material that recovers the essence of the movements “Memory is putting into debate, there is not a single memory, but it is a construction. "I am not trying to historicize the Popular Memory Center or what the Former Clandestine Center that functioned during the dictatorship was like, but rather to be able to present experiences and thoughts, based on these stories, that enable us to think, debate and construct these memories," summarized Foster Ferrer.
You can access the podcasts and all the extra material produced by Agustina Foster Ferrer through the website: Home | Voices for Memory (vocesparalamemoria.wixsite.com).
Return to University
“I continued to re-register almost every year. One morning listening to 'La Marca de la Almohada', a program that is broadcast on Radio UNR, they talked about a new program that the University was launching: REGRESS. It was a shock, an awakening. They were calling me,” she confessed excitedly.
The REGRESAR Program, which UNR launched for the first time last year, pays special attention to those students who have left their academic career and owe 30% of their degree and/or who have yet to complete their final work or thesis. to graduate, or who have not regularized/passed any subject in the last ten years of all UNR degree programs. During the first call, more than 1300 people registered, and in its 2024 edition, more than 600.
“I started in '95, I finished in a timely manner. Little by little I completed the subjects that I had left pending. Then life happened, but in 2009 I wanted to finish the thesis and again I couldn't do it. That this program happened changed everything for me,” he explained. Although the lack of a university degree did not determine her because she spent her entire working career in the area of communication, it was “something that she had pending and that she wanted to close.”
She recalled that the first time she met Soledad Casasola was at the Faculty of Political Science, and that she took her on a tour. “It was a terrible emotion, returning to that place where I was so happy moved me a lot. She gave me the energy I needed to be able to finish,” and she added: “I think the name is perfect because I really felt like I was returning to the University, and I also allowed myself to do so, reconnect and rehabilitate the space. That the University is looking for those of us who were not able to finish at the time and recognize that we are not only a number but that we are people who need support to obtain our degree, seems wonderful to me.”
Journalist: Gonzalo J. García/Photography: Camila Casero.