After researching Uruguay in comparison to the other Southern Cone countries for an entire day in preparation for a paper and wondering why it was unique, I ran into a pleasant surprise. A couple days ago, the Uruguayan Senate just (barely) passed a law project to judge the crimes from the dictatorship.This law would permit that the military personnel that committed crimes during the  years of the civil-military dictatorship might be tried despite the Ley de Caducidad that up until now has protected them from paying for their crimes. 26 years after the return to democracy, a major push for justice in Uruguay is finally happening. My topic is no longer in the past, but now a pressing issue of today. About time.

Senado uruguayo aprueba proyecto de Ley para juzgar delitos de última dictadura

       Modernization and Military Coups attempts to explain dictatorial relapse in Argentina after 1955. It suggests that authoritarianism develops out of a chronic governability crisis that encourages actors, whether in power or in opposition, to expropriate and centralize control as a means to cope with dire circumstances. In Argentina, the armed forces have a long-standing tradition of intense participation in national politics because past governments have failed to guarantee order and authority, raise and stabilize rates of economic growth, diminish inflation and carry out other measures required for development (p.417). Further, as high capacity states have greater susceptibility to de-democratization (as has been argued by Charles Tilly etc.), Argentina in the context of rapid modernization and weak institutional mediations was vulnerable to this highly professionalized military.

       Modernization and Military Coups attempts to explain dictatorial relapse in Argentina after 1955. It suggests that authoritarianism develops out of a chronic governability crisis that encourages actors, whether in power or in opposition, to expropriate and centralize control as a means to cope with dire circumstances. In Argentina, the armed forces have a long-standing tradition of intense participation in national politics because past governments have failed to guarantee order and authority, raise and stabilize rates of economic growth, diminish inflation and carry out other measures required for development (p.417). Further, as high capacity states have greater susceptibility to de-democratization (as has been argued by Charles Tilly etc.), Argentina in the context of rapid modernization and weak institutional mediations was vulnerable to this highly professionalized military.

http://news.yahoo.com/rules-dictatorship-crimes-south-america-083600460.html

http://news.yahoo.com/rules-dictatorship-crimes-south-america-083600460.html

This week’s readings focused on Argentina and the abuses suffered during the military regime in the 1970s. I found the firsthand account by a mother of a disappeared person to be particularly striking.

The mothers, or madwomen as the government called them, are interesting considering women, especially older and more traditional mothers, are never thought of as politically radical but are rather often seen as stubborn, meek and conservative. Due to the fact that they were older mothers, however, they were the only ones that had any ability to speak out against the government without severe punishment as murdering grieving mothers would really be seen as the most despicable crime. It is also interesting in how the traditional mothers were in exact contrast to the ruling military junta, who were cold, powerful, male, killers who were supposedly modernizing society. They are also in contrast with the traditional, branded radicals in Latin America, like Che Guevara or Zapata, who were young, violent and ideological. The mothers did not have any specific political ideology pushing them forward aside from a need for truth and justice following the disappearance of their children. It is interesting how grief and the need for truth is just as powerful a motivator for some as political ideology is for others. Perhaps it is an even stronger motivator as the mothers have a deep personal connection to the cause. Giving up the cause meant giving up on their children.

As go-betweens, the government used seemingly sympathetic, yet ultimately treacherous women to convince the mothers to leave their personal information with the government. The government and the mothers both needed each other in various ways – the mothers needed the government to find out information about their children and the government needed the mothers to continue their crackdown on dissent and opposition – so the female go-between was essential in facilitating this precarious relationship.  The idea of the female go-between is not a new one in Latin America, La Malinche is the ultimate example.

Trust played a big part in this story. In such a dangerous time, no one felt as if they could trust one another as anyone could be secretly working for the government and organizing against the government could equal imprisonment or death. But organizing their protests required the mothers to trust each other or else nothing would actually get done and they would just live in fear. The greatest tool governments can use against their people is fear so to move past that fear is really the ultimate subversion.

The discussion about the World Cup was also very interesting considering Vancouver’s recent brush with international spotlight during the Olympics. The Argentine government used many of the same tactics Vancouver used prior to the Olympics, namely sweeping homeless people away and trying to divert attention away from the dissent in the country. The human rights abuses were not as severe as in Argentina thankfully but it is pretty sad that such things still continue to happen. Rather than concretely dealing with social problems, governments almost always choose to try to sweep them away. Spending obscene amounts of money on sports arenas is apparently a better use of taxpayer’s dollars than actually healing the country’s citizens.

So the focus of my paper will be something to do broadly with food (production and security), property rights and economic relations (corporate control, institutional influence etc). What I really want to look at is how in the broad global arena of food production we are affecting the rights of farmers and margenilized communities.

So here are two interesting articles I found.

The first one looks at indigenous movements and democracy in Latin America. This is an important aspect for my paper because I feel that this view offers an insight into different ways we can imagine citizenship in democracy, especially the identity of citizenship which in many indigenous movements is strongly linked to property or territory rights with a strong focus on (traditional)food production.

The second article Proximate Causes and Underlying Driving Forces of Tropical Deforestation provides an interesting hypothesis that I am thinking I might use in my paper. It tries to find a balance between two prevailing theories of deforestation; one that looks at single-factor causation and one that looks at irreducible complexity. What I like about this article is that though using a very scientific approach it advocates for abandoning theories on proximate causes of tropical deforestization, putting emphasis on the local communities agency as a decisive factor.

Fitting with this week's reading, I found this article in the New York Times about an Argentine woman who lived her entire life up to now unaware that the man who said he was her father was in fact a colonel who murdered her true parents during the War. This story provides a very interesting insight into the woman's perspective - who despite learning that the man was not her father, still visited him in prison until his death,  and essentially grew up her entire life with a very different view on this period of Argentina's history than that which most others have. Though her "father" confessed to her in 2000 the truth about her real parents, the article mentions that it was not until a trial last spring that she shed the name he gave her and falsified her birth records.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/americas/argentinas-daughter-of-dirty-war-raised-by-man-who-killed-her-parents.html?pagewanted=1&ref=americas

Fitting with this week's reading, I found this article in the New York Times about an Argentine woman who lived her entire life up to now unaware that the man who said he was her father was in fact a colonel who murdered her true parents during the War. This story provides a very interesting insight into the woman's perspective - who despite learning that the man was not her father, still visited him in prison until his death,  and essentially grew up her entire life with a very different view on this period of Argentina's history than that which most others have. Though her "father" confessed to her in 2000 the truth about her real parents, the article mentions that it was not until a trial last spring that she shed the name he gave her and falsified her birth records.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/americas/argentinas-daughter-of-dirty-war-raised-by-man-who-killed-her-parents.html?pagewanted=1&ref=americas

I think in striving to be objective we underestimate the benefit there is in describing a situation from different lenses. Not only from different political stances of people that were involved and influenced a specific situation but also different literary perspectives.

In this sense this collection of articles, memoirs and poems about state violence in Argentina is not only insightful and interesting but also inherently necessary for fully starting to understand the scope of this problem. For me, the personal memoirs, both from the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the soldiers in the war of the South Atlantic are the most touching and honest accounts. What is noticeable is that one gets an impression of just how many different groups play a part in but are also affected by state actions. Pelongher’s poem “corpses” was as revealing as it was disturbing. I found it revealing as to Argentina’s social structure, just as much, if not more, than any prose essay could come near to describing. Combined with the reading about exiles and their experiences of assimilation (or non-assimilation) into Mexico’s culture I feel like I have an image of an Argentine in my mind. Proud bordering on arrogant, casual in a very bohemian sort of way, sexual and blunt within a predefined set of nuances and still very European, quite more so than Mexicans. Reading the poems made me reflect on most of the other poetry I have read from Latin America. Striking is that most of the poems I know are in fact about state oppression, economic injustice or related topics. It seems that there is a literary trend here or maybe just a human reaction to literary oppression by the state, alongside the allegorical novel from Piglia.

This set of literary works makes me reflect on a point we discussed last class. The only thing missing here is a common sense understanding of “history”. I mean history is referenced throughout. History IS the experiences of the Grandmothers, it is seen in the specific word chosen by the poets and writers, is can be explained by the state development theories but there is no “textbook history”. Although I would say I have a rough knowledge of Argentine history I am not as well versed in this as I am, say, in Cuban history. Therefore I fully embrace learning about the context of the history before learning about the chronology. One develops a more comprehensive view of history, seeing it as cyclical, interdependent and never right or wrong but simultaneously both. History is not apolitical, it never has been as cannot be as it is written, usually, by the winners and even if not is written by humans. Therefore one has to see it politically and see it as being relative, something this week’s readings do very well.

This week's readings provided a very interesting perspective of some of the human rights injustices which occurred in Argentina in the late 70s, early 80s as a result of the military dictatorship that was in power in this time. In my blog this week instead of recapping all the readings or the arguments presented in them - as some readings were testimonies, and some more artistic pieces like poems and stories, which I find pretty hard to recap -  I instead noted some quotes that I found affected me most from the readings and why.

Piglia: "They train us for so long to be stupid, and finally it becomes second nature to us" (470). This quote seemed to me to speak volumes of how people in repressive regimes are treated by their governments. They lose autonomy over their own decisions and ideas and are instead told what they should think, and how they should act. Piglia's story illustrated the dangers faced by intellectuals during the Dirty War, and indeed in many similarly repressive regimes, as a result of having ideas that those in power don't like.

Bonafini: "We are anonymous, distrustful people... a precarious company in the aloneness of bureaucracy" (430-431).
This quote by Bonafini, one of the founders of the Madres de Plazo de Mayo movement, describes how she and the other mothers of missing people regarded themselves and each other. Despite being united in their quest to fight the bureaucracy and find out about their family members, they are suspicious of each other and distrusting as a result of the regime in which they are forced to live under.
"We are in some way, the horrible worm that has wriggled out of a shining Argentina 'that is advancing'" (436). - This quote I read a few times, over and over, trying to decipher what she truly meant with this idea. At first it seemed to me to be a very scathing way to look at herself and her fellow Madres, but then I started to see it more as a comment on perhaps how the Madres were viewed by the government at the time - who believed they were "advancing" Argentina in this time and wanted to stop their movement.
"We had to work until we dropped [...] [t]hat way we could sleep at night" (439). - This quote, towards the end of Bonafini's recollection illustrates to me the horror that the Madres were suffering with but also their fiery determination and resolution to find their children. Despite the awful things they have gone through, they are working tirelessly to try and right the wrongs that have been committed.

Mercado: "Our bond to the country we were forced to leave conditioned our lives [...] there were affirmations of Argentine faith that were nothing but farces of patriotism [... as] these longing[s] for Argentine substance gave no respite, they adhered to one's body, suffused one's mind, absorbed the bodily liquids, and left behind a desert wasteland" (453). - This part of Mercado's story about her new life as an Argentine refugee (not sure if that's the right word or not) in Mexico really stood out to me the most. Despite feeling love and homesickness for Argentina, she points out that these feelings truly just made it harder to adapt to life in Mexico, and proved to be more harm than comfort. It's an interesting idea because I hadn't really noticed that homesickness, though an inevitable or uncontrollable feeling, is quite like that - almost more self-harming than comforting. These feelings probably as well offered "no respite" as given that her country forced her out, Mercado probably feels love for the Argentina she knew and grew up in before her eviction and probably sad to see how much the country has changed as a result of Videla's government.

This week's readings provided a very interesting perspective of some of the human rights injustices which occurred in Argentina in the late 70s, early 80s as a result of the military dictatorship that was in power in this time. In my blog this week instead of recapping all the readings or the arguments presented in them - as some readings were testimonies, and some more artistic pieces like poems and stories, which I find pretty hard to recap -  I instead noted some quotes that I found affected me most from the readings and why.

Piglia: "They train us for so long to be stupid, and finally it becomes second nature to us" (470). This quote seemed to me to speak volumes of how people in repressive regimes are treated by their governments. They lose autonomy over their own decisions and ideas and are instead told what they should think, and how they should act. Piglia's story illustrated the dangers faced by intellectuals during the Dirty War, and indeed in many similarly repressive regimes, as a result of having ideas that those in power don't like.

Bonafini: "We are anonymous, distrustful people... a precarious company in the aloneness of bureaucracy" (430-431).
This quote by Bonafini, one of the founders of the Madres de Plazo de Mayo movement, describes how she and the other mothers of missing people regarded themselves and each other. Despite being united in their quest to fight the bureaucracy and find out about their family members, they are suspicious of each other and distrusting as a result of the regime in which they are forced to live under.
"We are in some way, the horrible worm that has wriggled out of a shining Argentina 'that is advancing'" (436). - This quote I read a few times, over and over, trying to decipher what she truly meant with this idea. At first it seemed to me to be a very scathing way to look at herself and her fellow Madres, but then I started to see it more as a comment on perhaps how the Madres were viewed by the government at the time - who believed they were "advancing" Argentina in this time and wanted to stop their movement.
"We had to work until we dropped [...] [t]hat way we could sleep at night" (439). - This quote, towards the end of Bonafini's recollection illustrates to me the horror that the Madres were suffering with but also their fiery determination and resolution to find their children. Despite the awful things they have gone through, they are working tirelessly to try and right the wrongs that have been committed.

Mercado: "Our bond to the country we were forced to leave conditioned our lives [...] there were affirmations of Argentine faith that were nothing but farces of patriotism [... as] these longing[s] for Argentine substance gave no respite, they adhered to one's body, suffused one's mind, absorbed the bodily liquids, and left behind a desert wasteland" (453). - This part of Mercado's story about her new life as an Argentine refugee (not sure if that's the right word or not) in Mexico really stood out to me the most. Despite feeling love and homesickness for Argentina, she points out that these feelings truly just made it harder to adapt to life in Mexico, and proved to be more harm than comfort. It's an interesting idea because I hadn't really noticed that homesickness, though an inevitable or uncontrollable feeling, is quite like that - almost more self-harming than comforting. These feelings probably as well offered "no respite" as given that her country forced her out, Mercado probably feels love for the Argentina she knew and grew up in before her eviction and probably sad to see how much the country has changed as a result of Videla's government.

My initial thoughts when reading Eduardo Galeano were “this is all about context”. Even though it was only a section of book II, the history involved in this piece is quite vast. I had to Google a lot. So as I was searching on the internet I ended up getting way off track (as you do). But I kinda felt that in order to understand what I was reading, I needed the (other) “historical” context. I guess I was inspired to learn more. I feel like you’re not really “supposed” to talk about how smart other people are in University, but I find Galeano’s knowledge so impressive. I’m always impressed with the knowledge of my peers, especially when they’re only 20 years old.

Anyway, back to the article. The way that Galeano chronicles the history of America is stylistically interesting. The way that the word “The” is used to introduce a lot of the “chapters” or stories reminds me of a “Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels” style of film making. Weaving a story through fragments. On the other side, at moments when the context was over my head, I found the fragmentation style to be distracting.

Although, the fact that he writes in this manner is a nice, alternative way of examining history. Although he does not account the history as a specific event by event timeline or war by war, the story telling is more focused on people or characters. So rather than describe the historical event, he what it may have been like for a person during that moment in history. As cliche as it is, Galeano kind of breathes life into history.He writes so personally as if he could have been present at all the events he chronicles in the passages.

On a second look over, I was specifically intrigued by “You too can Succeed in Life” (221). The way he talks about the train track being reserved for business athletes, and the promise of what I gather is the beginning of capitalism. He mentions Horatio Alger, who according Galeano in this passage is more famous than Shakespeare, although I have never heard of him. Perhaps that was Galeano’s point.

The passage “Coca-Cola” made me chuckle, and I wondered if that was true. Well Wikipedia said that Coca-Cola came out of Pemberton trying to find a cure for his morphine addiction, while the Coca-Cola company said he developed for Coca-Cola and took it to a pharmacy to sell on its shelves. Thanks Google.

The Dominican Republic must urgently reform its police force to tackle “alarming” levels of killing and torture, Amnesty International says.

A report by the human rights group documents dozens of killings and other abuses by the Dominican police.

Violent crime in the Caribbean nation has soared over the past decade as drug trafficking has increased.

Official statistics show 10% of murders in 2010 were carried out by the police.

Most fatal shootings were described by police as the result of exchanges of gunfire with criminals.

But in many cases, Amnesty says forensic evidence supports allegations that police “deliberately shot to kill” to deter crime.

The police have stressed that the high number of killings is partly the result of their determination to confront rising levels of violent crime and drug-trafficking.

They also point out that many officers have been killed, and say unlawful killings by police are isolated cases.

‘Exacerbating violence’

But Amnesty says the problem is much wore widespread than the authorities admit, and is contributing to the rise of violent crime.

“We acknowledge that police officers usually face dangers while doing their jobs,” said Javier Zuniga, the head of Amnesty’s delegation to the Dominican Republic.

“However, we believe their conduct is actually exacerbating the violence and creating a climate in which human rights are completely ignored.”

Amnesty adds that the police are widely seen as “authoritarian, corrupt and ineffective,” with extortion and collusion with criminals believed to be common.

The Dominican government has acknowledged that there are high levels of corruption in the police, and thousands of officers have been dismissed from the force in recent years.

Amnesty is urging reform to the police and justice system so that killings and human rights abuses by police are properly investigated.

It says prosecutors must be given more independence, forensic services must be improved and witnesses must be given greater protection.

It further urges the Dominican state to accept responsibility for human rights abuses committed by police and recognise the extent of the problem.