Judicial investigations, anthropological investigations. How anthropological work intervenes in the reconstruction of cases

Abstract

Based on the analysis of the case of a young woman whose relatives were murdered by the Armed Forces in 1977 in the city of Buenos Aires, this paper reflects on the intervention adopted by various state bureaucracies in the crimes committed by the Dictatorship, as well as the role played —in different historical and political moments— by law and social sciences in the reconstruction of these stories. On the one hand, it seeks to reflect on the heterogeneity of the State even in circumstances in which power seemed armored and concentrated —the terrorist state of the dictatorship— and on the other hand, on how Human Rights activism, personal trajectories and the work of the anthropologist can reconstruct stories that terrorism power has covered and distorted.