This dissertation examines memory as a critical political space for understanding how Jews in Buenos Aires, Argentina rebuild in the aftermath of violence. Specifically, it examines how memorial practices—new Jewish social movements, a Yiddish chorus, and a group of Holocaust survivors—represent instances of agency in the struggle for belonging, citizenship, and justice in the wake of a terrorist bombing. Violence fundamentally challenges the fabric of everyday life and representation, and yet, also critically frames belonging, citizenship and national order. While violence threatens the very possibility of representation, memories of this violence and the practices developed around those memories, have become important strategies Jewish Argentines employ to redefine their relationship to the state, expand the public sphere, and negotiate their belonging in the nation.

On July 18, 1994, a terrorist attack targeted the AMIA building in the center of Buenos Aires, killing 85 people, wounding hundreds, and generating a crisis of belonging for Jewish Argentines, forced to question their place as citizens in Argentina. Their response – social movements, other memorial practices, and new security procedures (which I argue has become a site of memory) strive to expand the public sphere and create a space for themselves as Jews and Argentines within the national fabric, to become, “citizens of the plaza.”