On June 16, 1955, rebel aircraft fill the sky, tracing massacre across the heart of Buenos Aires in an attempt to overthrow presi- dent Perón. La Plaza de Mayo, flanked by the Casa Rosada (Govern- ment House), the Cabildo (Historical Administrative Council Build- ing) and the Catedral (Cathedral) is the epicenter of government power, the target and the scenario of this carnage. Some thirty airplanes pertaining to the Argentine Navy—North American AT-6s and Beechcraft AT-11s—swoop down over the civil population with machine guns blazing, launching 14 tons of bombs into just a few square meters. There are over one thousand victims between the dead and wounded.

Someone records what takes place on film.

The film is projected onto a notebook. The name was never more apt: writing with light is precisely what photography is. The ink used by a photographer is light, it is what he or she writes with, using an alphabet that is foreign to any code. A true artist invents a language and obliges us to learn a new tongue, makes us multilingual.

A hand tries to draw the planes that raze by, tries to trace the outline of the passersby that run for cover. In all its haste, the ges- ture cannot match the urgency with which the images change in the video. Only the corpses lend themselves to being drawn, only the dead remain still for the photo. Or to be drawn.

The drawings do not replace the photographs, but rather chase after them. Everything disappears in Aveta’s work, only scattered traces and the smell of gunpowder remain.

Only three photos are left. The Plaza de Mayo before the ca- tastrophe. During the catastrophe. After the catastrophe. There is no one left to tell the story. This is why the artist manufactures it. A series of stills constitute a portrait of a violent episode in history and at the same time, one of impotence and failure when the time comes to tell the story.

The impossibility of capturing yet another chapter of Latin America’s catastrophe in drawings presages that it will be repeated.