The memory ofhuman rights violations that occurred under military rule has continued to haunt the Southern Cone societies following their transition to democracy. With the end in 1983 and 1985 of the respective military dictatorships, the massive extent ofsuch violations was made public in Argentina and Uruguay (as well as in Chile, following the return to democracy in 1990). Parallel to the institutional mechanisms elaborated for treating these violations, a politics ofmemory and oblivion was generated, which involved contrasting attempts to preserve and diffuse the memory of the past or move beyond past experiences and their varied interpretations.

This article analyzes the dynamics of diis politics of memory and oblivion in two Southern Cone societies, Argentina and Uruguay. While this selection is basically due to reasons ofspace, a comparative approach allows us to point out crucial elements in the ways in which intellectuals, victims' relatives, and other agents articulate distinctive patterns of collective memory and oblivion ofthe shared experience ofhuman rights