Extract

A devastating and disturbing documentary about the systematic participation of the great Argentine business community as civil responsible for State terrorism during the last military dictatorship, based on the report Corporate responsibility in crimes against humanity. Repression of workers during state terrorism, announced in 2015 by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights of the Nation, universities and NGOs (still unpublished, although available in Infojus).

Jonathan Perel won the Best Director award at BAFICI2021 for this film.

Review

Corporate Responsibility is a devastating and disturbing documentary about the participation of several of the main Argentine companies in the kidnapping, torture and disappearance of their own workers during the last military dictatorship, as jointly responsible for a systematic plan within the framework of State terrorism established in starting from the 1976 military coup in Argentina, and that for this reason should be understood as a civic-military coup. His intervention is classified as responsibility and not as complicity in crimes against humanity. It is based on the report Corporate responsibility in crimes against humanity. Repression of workers during state terrorism (released in 2015 by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights of the Nation, universities and NGOs, still unpublished, although available in Infojus)

The structure of Jonathan Perel's documentary can be arid a priori: fixed shots of each of the companies (or their successors) at present, filmed from a car (without authorization from the companies),as explained by the director at the time in that the workers and operatives were kidnapped, while Perel's own voice-over proceeds to read with bureaucratic parsimony the fragment corresponding to each one of the book, starting with the number of kidnapped and disappeared.

This structure configures a kind of horror movie where horror is always out of the picture.

The initial feeling of monotony turns into a cadence of horror and indignation, since it is verified that in all these companies the same repressive pattern was repeated: provision of lists of workers (especially union delegates) and access to their files, infiltration of the plants by repressors as operatives, kidnapping of workers from workplaces, use of part of the factory facilities as detention and torture centers, use by the repressive forces of company vehicles in operations, presence of hierarchical personnel of the companies in the interrogations, pecuniary contribution with the repressive forces.

Most of the operations were immediate to the 1976 coup, in a sort of planned anti-worker and anti-union Blitzkrieg.

In almost all cases, in this way the companies proceeded to get rid of union bodies and combative workers and proceed to a brutal reduction of their staff, increase their "productivity", take advantage of "industrial promotion" plans and some of them to accumulate a debt in dollars that was nationalized in 1982 by Domingo Cavallo, in the aftermath of the dictatorship, debts that in some cases exceeded 200 million dollars.

The list of companies is impressive, overwhelming, and there are all kinds of companies: sugar mills, mining, transportation, metallurgical, shipyards, petrochemical, food, textile, journalistic and automotive.

In short, a devastating and disturbing documentary about the participation of the Argentine business community as a civilian responsible and necessary participant in the state terrorism of the last military dictatorship.