Reading about Argentina’s Dirty War, I began to ask myself why I had not heard of this meaningful historical event before this course. To some degree, this is due to my own ignorance, but I can’t help but wonder why, as someone who reads the news regularly and is interested in global social issues, that this was never presented in mainstream news or in any of my schooling.<\/p>\n
Hegemony over news and information<\/span><\/p>\n A striking constant throughout this course has been the repression of certain voices and stories. To some degree, this must be the case. As we saw with L<\/em>as\u00a0Madres de la Plaza de Mayo,\u00a0<\/em>their stories were not shared until they fought with considerable strife and protest. According to Dawson’s reading, their story did eventually make international headlines. However, the fact that this was never given coverage in my schooling, unlike other stories of state-sanctioned violence or genocides with similar or smaller death tolls, shows that Latin American stories and voices, along with those of the Global South, are subordinated in Canadian news and information sharing.<\/p>\n Even as recently as this week, more military officials responsible for thousands of deaths and abductions during Argentina’s dirty wars are being sentenced to life in prison. However, few Canadian or U.S. news sources (with the exception of Al Jazeera) are reporting on it.<\/p>\n Willfully Forgetting:<\/span><\/p>\n As we saw in lecture, when Dr. Beasley-Murray dissected the La Alegr\u00eda Ya Viene\u00a0<\/em>video, the topic of willful forgetting came up. When history is painful, is it better to acknowledge the past or forget about it in order to move forward? Today’s conservative federal government in Argentina has adopted an approach that is underreporting the amount of people killed by the Dirty Wars, and advocating for the release of war criminals responsible for killing thousands. Does the government’s will to forget (or perhaps, cover up?) contribute to the fact that the Argentine Dirty War is seldom talked about here in Canada?<\/p>\n Or perhaps it is more psychological than political. Just this week, I was listening to an episode of the NPR podcast, Hidden Brain, called the Ostrich Effect. It talked about how people avoid unpleasant information, even if that information may benefit them (ie. avoiding repeating history). And I wondered if perhaps this played a role in media like\u00a0La Alegria Ya Viene\u00a0<\/em>or, more generally, the form of ‘forgetting’ as a means of peace and moving forward.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reading about Argentina’s Dirty War, I began to ask myself why I had not heard of this meaningful historical event before this course. To some degree, this is due to my own ignorance, but I can’t help but wonder why, … Continue reading