Dawson describing the dirty wars and the role that women played in bringing down these oppressive regimes are the first time I\u2019ve ever heard about them. Hearing how these brave women protested their children\u2019s disappearance was truly remarkable. Reading that the \u201csecret police began stalking the Madres, even kidnapping and killing a few\u201d is really heart-wrenching. In addition, because the Argentine junta began to \u201cfear that these women might threaten the government\u2019s efforts to portray itself as a defender of family values\u201d, they began to \u201cpaint [the Madres] as terrorist sympathizers, and as the \u201clocas (madwomen)\u201d. The actions that the junta took to attempt to wipe out the Madres was truly ironic and absurd because they were anything but \u201cdefenders of family values\u201d. Putting a face to the thousands of people that disappeared really helped bring down the Argentine government, and these Madres must be applauded for their actions.<\/p>\n
Reading about the murdered female factory workers in Ciudad Juarez is a stark contrast to previous chapters regarding women factory workers. Previously, the women in factories would have \u201cpaternalistic factory owners who worried about their well-being or been overseen by government bureaucracies that wished to ensure they maintained proper comportment\u201d. However, something changed where these women factory workers began to be viewed as \u201csurplus poor, dark skinned migrants from somewhere else whose only value to foreign factory owners lay in their low wages and willingness to work long hours with a minimum of complaint\u201d. It is a truly sad transformation, but what changed?<\/p>\n
Reading about the United States\u2019 attempt at shifting their attention away from the cold war and onto the war on drugs is interesting. Governments such as Colombia and Mexico in addition to the United States have spent countless billions of dollars in attempting to stop the drug trade. It is really fascinating for me because in law class in high school, my friend and I debated with a pair of others for a project in which we debated about the legality of drugs. My friend and I found that legalizing all drugs and using the Portuguese model, where all drugs are legal, resulted in a decrease in the amount of drug usage in the population. The model is exponentially cheaper than the one currently being used by the United States because taxing the drugs and obliterating demand for the drug cartels would eventually lead to their demise. It is an interesting model, and I wonder if the United States government or any other government have ever considered using the Portuguese model?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dawson describing the dirty wars and the role that women played in bringing down these oppressive regimes are the first time I\u2019ve ever heard about them. Hearing how these brave women protested their children\u2019s disappearance was truly remarkable. Reading that the \u201csecret police began stalking the Madres, even kidnapping and killing a few\u201d is really …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44057,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1304763,1449212],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-last100","tag-week12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/austinchang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/austinchang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/austinchang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/austinchang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44057"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/austinchang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/austinchang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/austinchang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/austinchang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/austinchang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/austinchang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}