“Remembrance Day” as a tool of power

Every March 24, Argentina says to remember. But he stopped doing it a long time ago. What is being commemorated is no longer a historical event: it is a story that was carefully constructed, promoted and sustained from power.

Kirchnerism turned the interpretation of the past into a political instrument.

Remembering ceased to be a free act and became a gesture of adherence. The idea was established that there was a single valid reading, a single legitimate narrative, a single moral framework allowed. To break out of that framework was not to debate: it was to deviate. And there was a cost to stray. Not always explicit, but real. Because control did not operate only through direct imposition, but also through incentives, signals and symbolic punishments that

aligned behaviors.

Thus, what should be an open process of interpretation ended up being transformed into a system of political validation. It was not a question of understanding, but of repeating. It wasn't about thinking, but about demonstrating belonging.

This does not imply denying what happened or relativising the seriousness of the events. It implies recognizing that the State did not limit itself to remembering, but that it advanced on the most delicate terrain of all, that of defining how that past should be thought of. And that's where the underlying problem appears.

No one can centralize something that, by nature, is dispersed. The past does not exist as a single block ready to be interpreted from above. It exists in the looks, questions, doubts and interpretations of millions of people. When power tries to fix an official version, it doesn't just close the debate: it impoverishes knowledge. Reduce the complex to the convenient. Replace the search with the slogan

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Therefore, when you define what you can think of, you also define what is left out. And what is left out does not disappear: it is silenced.

History ceases to be a tool for understanding and becomes an invisible limit that conditions what can be said at no cost.

In this context, March 24 ceased to be a space for reflection and became a ritual. A ritual where the important thing is not to understand, but to align. Where repetition replaced analysis and belonging displaced critical thinking.

Memory was not sought: discipline was sought.

For years, Kirchnerism administered that scheme. It defined which versions were acceptable and which should be marginalized. It turned dissent into a cost and coincidence into a sign

of legitimacy.

But no attempt to order what is, by nature, open and uncertain can be sustained indefinitely. Not because a new official version appears, but because something deeper begins to break down: the idea that someone can decide what the rest should think

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That is what is truly disruptive at the present time. It is not the replacement of one story with another. It is the very question of whether there is an authority capable of fixing it. It is to recover something more basic: the possibility of interpreting without permission.

Because a free society doesn't need scripts. It can live with different versions, with tensions, with discomfort. You can argue without fear, without sanction and without the obligation to align yourself to avoid being left out.

It does not seek unanimity: it tolerates conflict.

Memory, when free, is not tidy or neat. It's fragmented, uncomfortable, and sometimes contradictory. And that is precisely why it cannot be administered.

For years, the opposite was tried. They wanted to turn the past into a political resource, a tool for ordering the present and disciplining the future.

But that attempt is based on a wrong premise: that someone has the right - and capacity - to decide how others should think.

And that's the real point under discussion. It's not just about opening up the debate. It's about rejecting the very idea that power can shut it down. Freedom to reflect. Freedom to disagree. Freedom to make you uncomfortable

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Without that freedom, the past ceases to be a search and becomes a slogan. And when that happens, it's not just memory that gets lost. Something much more important is being lost: the exercise of thinking.

And only when that capacity is recovered, does the past cease to be a tool of power and returns to being an open field, where no one has a monopoly on truth.