Questions about the place of theater in a "well-run society," originally debated by Plato and Aristotle, take on a new meaning, as well as a special urgency, in criminal states in which theaters are bombed and spectacular acts of cruelty exceed the boundaries of the stage. In Argentina during the 1970s both State and anti-State terrorism competed to capture the public's attention and control its behavior by staging highly dramatic acts of violence.' Terrorism, with its scenes of torture and abductions, proved highly theatrical both on a practical and on a symbolic level. Terrorists dressed their parts and set the drama in motion. The victims, like actors, stood in (albeit unwillingly) for someone or something else. Antagonists appeared on the scene as if by magic; protagonists "disappeared" into thin air. The revelation of corpses at the appropriate moment was as typical of terrorism as of the Elizabethan stage. Crimes became "unreal," invisible in their theatricality. After all, doesn't theater allow us to deny what we see with our own eyes? Even with fifteen thousand people missing in