History summarized

Argentina's 200 years of history are crammed into over 4,000 tombs in the world's second largest cemetery in Recoleta, Argentina. The way it's set up makes it seem like a town for the dead, with streets names, avenues, and even numbers. Of course the streets and avenues are passages between tombs and the names and numbers are the surnames and death dates of those buried.

In Argentina, death often holds more symbolic presence than life had. Rather than commemorating historical figures on their birthdays or the dates of their accomplishments, they're celebrated on the day they died. Eva Peron's body was kidnapped and eventually traded for the body of a member from another political party, and even before she died they had begun the process to conserve her body. Evita's remains, which by the sounds of it are an almost intact body, are checked every year to ensure that she is in fact buried where she is claimed to lie.

Nora suggested this fixation with death and physical corpses might have something to do with the disappeared people, whose bodies never did show up to provide closure. And with the bodies that did appear, washed up along the shores of Rio de la Plata after being thrown from helicopters above.

This is a picture of the tomb of the first democratic president after the dictatorship. Alfonsin was in office from 1983 til 1989.