“In Limbo”. The unstable City and the Memory of the clandestine Detention Center in La llamada. Un retrato, by Leila Guerriero

The conference aims to comment on the most recent published testimony about the experience of a woman survivor of ESMA, La llamada. Un retrato, by Leila Guerriero (2024). The portrait that the author displays of Silvia Labayru ranges from her youth and militancy in Montoneros to the present, passing through the years in which she was detained-disappeared in the former ESMA, her exile in Spain and the present. The interview is the device that structures the story. Silvia's voice complements and contrasts with that of her previous partners and her current partner, her former fellow militants, her friends from here and there. The meetings between the interviewer, Leila Guerriero, and the protagonist of the portrait, Silvia Labayru, connect two cities through time: Buenos Aires and Madrid. The impact of the concentration camp experience and exile on the life, identity and subjectivity of the interviewee is observed in the definition and the description of these cities as porous, unstable spaces –a limbo– in which the concentration camp is always revealed as a latent threat.