Notes on some Argentinian corpses

Abstract

Cinema takes part in the tradition of rites for evoking the dead that are also rites of separation from their corpses. Once the image is formed, the corpse can be buried. Sometimes this image is a tombstone, others a death mask or a photo. Cinema provided a new possibility: filming or recording the corpse whileit was alive. In this way, photography and cinema were the two most powerful instruments of immortalization (embalming) of the 20th century. This articleinvestigates immanent and transcendent corpses in Argentinian history: Evita Perón, the desaparecidos (“missing people”) of the last military dictatorship, andPedro Eugenio Aramburu (the de facto ex-President who overthrew Perón in 1955 and was murdered by Montoneros’ guerrilla organization), among others. Based on the cinematographic representations which evoke these corpses (with varying degrees of accuracy), as well as the popular expressions that accompanied them (militant songs, colloquial expressions, etc.), this text explores the transformation of a corpse, as such, to its consecration as the image of the people.