This week one of the things that I would like to talk about is the Argentine regime of the 1970s and 1980s, where there were widespread protests due to the disappearance of various individuals as a result of their perceived dissidence against the state’s authoritarian government.  What intrigued me about this was the prominent involvement of women within political affairs during this time, a rejection of gender norms even as the reasons for their involvement reinforces it, as they were mainly made up of mothers whose children had disappeared (‘Mothers of the Disappeared’) and were searching for answers as to what had happened to them/where they were.  The insistence of these women in their protest against the regime was admirable, furthermore, the ways in which they channelled their grief into action – action that arguably had significant consequences within the political fabric of Argentina (e.g. mobilizing foreign nations to get involved).  What particularly intrigued me about this was how to protests haven’t stopped, and how to this day, there are mothers who are still hoping to find closure, who haven’t stopped looking.  The new political agency of women, though borne out of negative events is interesting because it creates a different dynamic within Latin American society with regards to the changing role of women.

I also found the war on drugs particularly fascinating this week as many of its themes are still relevant in the world today.  However, it’s interesting to examine how the drug trade at the time contributed to the economy as exemplified by the line “at a time when the economy was worse than anyone could remember, they may have been the most important source of export revenues in the entire region” in the Dawson textbook.  The drug trade also seemed to contribute to the larger society in many different aspects.  Though their activities were illicit, they contribute to their communities by building schools, hospitals, housing, and other infrastructure.  Drug kingpins were the quintessential janus figure that’s unable to be clearly categorized into good and bad – bringing us back a full circle that we’ve talked about the entire semester, this idea of ambiguity surrounding Latin America and the peoples within it.

My question for discussion is week is whether the Mothers of the Disappeared movement would have gained as much momentum as it did if the government had regarded it as a threat from the start?

Thank you for reading!

What fascinated me in this week’s material about the uprisings and conflict within Peru were the comparisons that I found I was able to draw between it and The Slaughterhouse that similarly illustrated the discord within Argentina.  Although conflicts within both regions share similarities and have their own distinct differences, what stood out to me the most was the emphasis on ritualistic killings and the justification of them through the notion of ‘cleansing’ the society.  What I found most curious about the way in which people were killed was that though religion was not really at the forefront of the conflict, it was often used within a symbolic context during burials.  For example, the convention of mutilating the eyes and tongue as well as breaking the ankles of the corpse so that the victim theoretically could not recognize, denounce, or retaliate against their killers has many religious and/or supernatural undertones which I found unusual.  Even the symbolic nature of burying the bodies outside of community limits to highlight that these individuals were classified as ‘strangers’ or ‘outsiders’ is interesting as it demonstrates the amount of value that many Latin Americans placed on symbolic representations.

I found that this week’s material aptly encompasses many of the ideas that we’ve already previously discussed throughout this course.  The start of the chapter cautions against putting figures on a pedestal, advising that while “this may allow us to tell stories with definitive heroes and villains, to satisfy our desire for moral clarity. What we risk is gaining that clarity at the expense of understanding the past for all its ambiguity… If we view these events simply as horrible crimes committed by evil men, we capture only a small part of this history” (284).  This idea of ambiguity can be applied to the material of virtually every week thus far – I think that this notion is valuable because often when we learn about the darker corners of history there is a temptation to put various people into neatly categorized boxes of good and evil when it is often a lot more complicated than that.  Some other lines that I really liked from the reading are “this is the problem with paranoia; when you cannot identify the enemy by the uniform they wear, you see the enemy everywhere” (284) and “the actual existence of the threat mattered less than the belief that the threat was real” (288).  I liked these quotations because for me they gave a deeper understanding of why people behaved the way that they did and gave a degree of humanization to many of these unknown individuals that I have been reading about. 

My question for discussion this week is how the convention of ritualistic killings began – the textbook does not really discuss its origins so I am curious as to whether anyone knows specifically how it came about/became as widespread as it was.

Thank you for reading!

This week, one of the things that stood out to me the most was the use of media, particularly the radio in promoting political messages.  Though I had always known that the use of the radio played a large role in creating a shared community between the people and their leaders, I don’t think I really ever realized the full extent and the power that it wielded in Latin America up until reading the textbook this week.  What I found interesting about why the use of the radio was so effective, was because of its way of promoting a message without having people express dissent to that message (with the exception of turning off the radio).  In that sense, leaders had a tool that enabled them to speak publicly about their political intentions to a widespread group of people regularly without the inconvenience of constantly making public appearances and speeches – this was a more informal way of doing virtually the same thing.  I also found it interesting that Dawson noted the intimacy that the radio provided between the listener and speaker, describing it by saying “to hear the voice of a leader was to see them face to face, and to somehow be connected to power in that moment” (208) which is something I had not thought of before.

Another thing I found interesting about this week’s material was the loyalty that much of the working class held towards President Péron’s wife Eva Duarte, more affectionately known as Evita.  This fascinated me because within that time period it was rare to see a woman so politically involved as Evita was and so popular (overall at least, while she had her opponents it’s the general consensus that she was an extremely charismatic and well liked woman).  Furthermore, it is arguable that she was even more well liked than Péron by some, to the point where her name, along with her husband’s “can stir up visceral feelings to this day” (218).  For me, while Evita’s political power and charm made her an engaging leader to examine, the way in which she broke some of the gender norms of the day without necessarily setting out to do is what makes her someone to admire.

To end off, something that I took notice to within the documents was Evita’s speech in the to the people as they were clamouring for her to run as vice president alongside her husband was her description of herself as a “frail Argentine woman” (230).  Frail is not the word that comes to mind when I think of Evita, so I am wondering why she would have wanted to frame herself as a frail individual, and thus I am posing this as my discussion question for the week.

Thank you for reading!