The texts this week covered the conflicts that occurred within Latin American during the late 1900s. The main topic was the “dirty wars” or wars that were fought without uniform identification. Dawson describes this time as one of the bloodiest and cruelest since the establishment of independence. A normal civil war would have caused less fear as there would be uniforms to distinguish enemy from ally, but in dirty wars, there were no uniforms to be worn, therefore there was no way to identify the enemy. Due to this, everyone became paranoid because everyone could possibly be an enemy. This resulted in the entire population living in constant fear. Reading the text surprised me in the worst way possible, but I cannot imagine living through this time as I can only imagine the fear that would constantly haunt my mind.

The most interesting text was the interview of the century. Before, I believed that violence is not a required step in a revolution; that war was just something we created because we were too lazy to look at it through any other means. Chairman Gonzalo brought a new viewpoint to light during the interview excerpt. Gonzalo believed that “without revolutionary violence one class cannot replace another, an old order cannot be overthrown to create a new one.” This difference between my view and Gonzalo’s view may be my ignorance of what a revolution is meant to be or it may be because he just has a different view of revolutions. Regardless, he did give a completely different view on role of violence in the process of revolutions.