DistantNews
Support us
🇦🇷 Argentina /Culture & Society

The Booksellers’ Heroic Resistance to Dictatorship Censorship

From Clarín · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

In-depth Named sources Context piece
  • Booksellers in Argentina continued supplying banned or censored books during the civic-military dictatorship, often hiding them under different subject categories or selling them discreetly.
  • Recollections from Horacio Tarkus, Héctor Yánover and Osvaldo Bayer describe secret sales, concealed stock, book destruction and military raids on bookstores.
  • The period brought widespread book bans and a decline in the publishing industry.

During Argentina’s civic-military dictatorship, booksellers turned the act of selling a book into an act of solidarity and resistance. Amid terror and censorship, many continued supplying customers with works that authorities sought to suppress.

Historian and archivist Horacio Tarkus recalled that booksellers often moved banned titles into less conspicuous sections rather than destroy them. A book called Marxism and Religion, for example, might disappear from the Marxism shelves and reappear under religion. Other books could be found in philosophy or sociology.

There were many banned books, but booksellers did not want to throw them away, and they could be confiscated, so in general they relocated them.

· Horacio TarkusTarkus explained how booksellers hid prohibited works by moving them into different sections.

When a bookseller trusted a customer, Tarkus said, the exchange became more discreet. The book was kept aside, wrapped and handed over with a warning: “Take it quickly.” Some stores were closed, but hidden or overlooked titles could still be found.

Take it quickly.

· Horacio TarkusHe recalled the warning booksellers gave trusted customers during discreet sales of censored books.

Héctor Yánover of Librería Norte remembered how the crackdown intensified in 1976. Booksellers who continued selling prohibited works began disappearing, while others hid their stock under counters. One distributor built a false wall in a warehouse to conceal books that represented a major financial investment.

Yánover also recalled gathering his employees in the bookstore basement to decide the fate of books that could endanger them. They selected titles one by one for destruction, placing the remains in large black garbage bags. The word sociology itself, he said, became threatening.

In 1976 the wind changed, and booksellers who continued selling those books began to disappear.

· Héctor YánoverYánover described the intensified repression against booksellers after 1976.

Writer and journalist Osvaldo Bayer remembered soldiers and an officer moving from bookstore to bookstore along Corrientes and Callao. The officer pointed out the books to be “liquidated,” while soldiers threw them into a truck. Among the books taken were Bayer’s Severino, the first two volumes of La Patagonia Rebelde and the newly published Los anarquistas expropiadores.

The officer pointed with his index finger to the books that had to be liquidated, and the soldiers threw them into the truck.

· Osvaldo BayerBayer recalled military raids on bookstores and the removal of prohibited works.
About this summary

Originally published by Clarín in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

More Stories

From Our Blog