This weeks readings focused on the brutal conflicts in late 20th century Latin America sometimes reffered to as “dirty wars”, “guerilla wars”, or even “the terror”. The amount of deaths that occured in these conflicts is so vast that even the estimated numbers are likely nowhere close to the true numbers. The different slang names reffer to the nature of the war tactics which including making the enemy unidentifiable by not using uniforms. The inability to identifiy who was the enemy as Dawson notes in the text, created wide spread paranoia because “…when you cannot identify the enemy by the uniform they wear, you see the enemy everywhere.” (Dawson, 284) One factor that Dawson attributes this “era of holocausts”(Dawson, 284) to is the massive changes in democratic rule seen over the 100 year period from 1880-1980. Although as Dawson points out there was never perfect democratic rule in Latin America there were some components in action, “By 1980 almost no government in latin america had come to power through the ballot box. ” (Dawson, 285) Reading about the violence that occured in this time in latin america is absoloutely horrifying. However reading about the counter-culture generation that retalliated against this was by far the most interesting part of this weeks readings. Regardless or perhaps because of the violence in latin america, it’s youth found a way to push back against a culture that in part had allowed for the violence to continue to exsist. The stregnth and demand for change demonstrated by those individuals can give hope for times in history where standing up for change is vital for the progress of hummanity.
The Terror
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