I think that this is the topic that I’ve struggled with the most, because of how complex it is. The Terror encompasses so many different conflicts that it was very had for me to keep track of what was happening where, and why. The conflicts were all related but somewhat disconnected from each other, so it’s difficult to talk about all of them at once. There doesn’t even appear to be a consensus on what to call this period; the textbook calls is “The Terror”, but I couldn’t find many other sources that refer to it as such. The textbook says that the wars are also called the “Dirty Wars”, but other sources say that the term “dirty war” refers only to the war that occurred in Argentina. I got the best results from the term “guerilla wars”, likely because that is one of the main similarities between the many conflicts. Yet even the presence of guerillas in all of the conflicts seems questionable. Dawson mentioned Chile as one of the countries in which guerilla movements never threatened go to war. Can they be considered guerilla movements with so little fighting? When he later described the Chilean conflict in more detail, it didn’t seem like guerillas played much of a part at all. A socialist was democratically elected, then overthrown by a military coup, who immediately arrested, exiled, or killed most leftist opponents. If there were guerilla uprisings against the new military dictatorship afterwards, it wasn’t mentioned at all, making Chile seem a bit out of place among the other countries that had guerilla insurgencies. This stood in especially sharp contrast to Peru, the country that was discussed at length in the lecture. The entire conflict in Peru was caused by the war between the government and a guerilla insurgency, and the conflict mostly ended once the leader of the insurgency was captured. Strangely, while the video made it seem as if the Peruvian Civil War ended in 1993 with the collapse of the Shining Path, it apparently didn’t officially end until 2000, when Fujimori left office. Did fighting continue after the collapse of the Shining Path, and if so, who continued it?

I often forget that the Cold War was actually a relatively recent event. It seems as if it was so long ago to me, even though it didn’t end until the 1990s. Seeing that the Peruvian Civil War didn’t end until 2000, only a year before I was born, reminded me of how modern these issues are. I would be interested in learning about how the events of the Terror have influenced current events in Latin America, and how things have changed since this textbook was written. Dawson said that democratic institutions in Peru are healing, but not fully intact after Fujimori’s dictatorship, and that Peruvian people still fear any criticism of the government. I believe the textbook was written around 2014, so I imagine that things could have changed since then. I would guess that social media in particular could make a change in free speech and criticisms of the government by allowing people the anonymity to say whatever they want without fear.