“Fue la más fácil y también la más difícil”

This article revisits the shift from the case to the judicial proceedings known as the “Magistrates” trial, which focused on the role of judges and judicial officials during the last civic-military dictatorship in Córdoba. Drawing on an ethnographic methodology that combines the analysis of legal files with interviews conducted with judicial actors, victims, and their relatives, the article explores how the entanglement of legality and clandestinity structured the repressive apparatus, and how the local judicial bureaucracy operated within that context. In the 21st century, within a political climate that enabled the reexamination of civil complicities, this criminal trial brought to the fore disputes over memory, tensions around demands for justice, and a defense of judicial honor, which emerged precisely when the actions of the judiciary were placed under scrutiny. At the same time, its extended duration enabled alternative temporalities and understandings of how violence was produced and sustained during state terrorism, challenging historically constructed univocal narratives.