Chronicle of a Childhood in Captivity: Ninos en Cautiverio Político and the (Re)Construction of Memory in Contemporary Uruguay

Impunity is a term that is all too familiar to the Uruguayan lexicon, often employed in relation to the gross human rights violations committed during the civil-military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s. However, since the mid 1990s, Uruguayans have witnessed an upsurge in the societal mobilisation around past human rights violations, as actors voice their demands for truth, memory and justice. This paper focuses on one of the most recent additions to the Uruguayan human rights movement: Niños en Cautiverio Político (Children in Political Captivity), a group formed in 2007, and assesses the role it plays in reminding Uruguayans of their recent traumatic past and the ongoing legacy of state terror in a context of continuing cultural and legal impunity.