One of the most interesting aspects of this weeks reading\/video was the notion of \u201cterrors\u201d being a conflict between a terror state and a terrorist group. These conditions galvanized one another, with state military groups acting in a brutal and repressive manner due to the percieved threat of the terror group. This threat could find itself inflated and exaggerated in the media to great effect: in an authoritarian state, the press acts as a mouthpiece for the state, and can thius depict a one sided battle, a just cause for brutality.
\nThis worked in the opposite direction as well: state respression often had the effect of creating sympathy for guerilla movements. Already, an ugly picture is being painted, violence compounding violence, with civil liberties and stability eroding in the name of security and revolution respectively. Making the issue worse was the ongoing cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States. Access to large amounts of arms, and training (for example, Contras being given training and logistical support by the CIA), furthered the brutality of these conflicts.
\nThe shift away from democratic institutions in Latin America was a wave that had covered most of the region by 1980. Revolutionary movements around the world and within were marked as a serious threat to internal stability. This created an environment of fear, which helped give rise to numerous authoritarian regimes around Latin America, but also helped to justify the radical increase in United States military expenditure in Latin America, which largely served as fuel for various conflicts. One question, or maybe speculation, that I could offer: what was the role, if any, of the military industrial complex in Latin America? Or the continuation of the cold war as a whole?
\nWhen I think about the amount of munitions and arms that go into these conflicts, it is definitely worth considering who is profiting from that. In the Iran-Contra scandal, the US government sold arms to Iran, making a significant profit which was funneled to the Contras, which, in all likelihood, would in turn be spent on more arms and munitions. War profiteering has been around as long as war, but in the post-WWII world, we\u2019ve seen this industry expand exponentially. A statistic that I think illustrates this quite jarringly is the fact that eight bombs were dropped every minute during the US-Vietnam war (1964-1973), more than the entire number of bombs dropped in WWII. This was done despite the fact that massive civilian casualties and detrimental ecological impact were a direct result. To this day, there are millions of un-exploded arms that continue to cause harm throughout SE Asia. Some people made a lot of money because of that, and it\u2019s worth taking that into consideration when we consider the brutality of the Terrors in Latin America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the most interesting aspects of this weeks reading\/video was the notion of \u201cterrors\u201d being a conflict between a terror state and a terrorist group. These conditions galvanized one another, with state military groups acting in a brutal and repressive manner due to the percieved threat of the terror group. This threat could find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48789,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2082],"tags":[1572055,3009766,182251,3009950],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-week-11","tag-authoritarianism","tag-iran-contra","tag-military-industrial-complex","tag-terrors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last100cm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last100cm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last100cm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last100cm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48789"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last100cm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last100cm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last100cm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions\/32"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last100cm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last100cm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/last100cm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}