Drawing in shackles: Graphic witnessing and creative resistance in the drawings of Lelia Bicocca, an Argentine desaparecida

This article aims to analyse the graphic production of Lelia Bicocca, a political activist who was kidnapped and disappeared in 1977 during the last Argentine military dictatorship. The pages with cartoons produced by Bicocca during her imprisonment in the clandestine detention centre ESMA (Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada ‘Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy’) survived and were recovered many years later. We argue that this graphic testimony – ‘Il Capuchino’ – is not only exceptional for its characteristics and context but also holds significant importance in the reconstruction of memory in Argentina. Using concepts from the fields of memory studies and comics studies, we propose to review the plot of the history of these drawings and what place these objects occupy in the reconstruction of memory in Argentina.