The period between the years 1960’s and 1990’s couldn’t be called any other way but “The terror”. Dawson wrote something in his book that opened my eyes and actually hurt me because I found it extremely truthful: “Latin America becomes a region of failed states, never quite modern, and forever destined to be second-class, unable to solve its own problems because they run so deeply through the “open veins” of the region”. The reason is because among almost every country of Latin America, struggles and conflicts occurred between terrorists and terror states. This situation hasn’t really changed in a significant way. It is hard to say who is actually to blame, but in some point I would agree that the people has the government it deserves. Dawson established Latin Americans become a shadowy people, unable to live by the rules of civility, I would add that since these dirty wars, many countries of Latin America have been taking more steps backwards than forwards. We still observe many acts and crimes that are against humanity. Sometimes, governments, political leaders and much elite population find the different ideology, occupation, rage and origin as an excuse to discriminate and hurt (physically, socially and emotionally those groups).

Moreover I’d like to focus on Mexico’s case; when many foreign movements were a strong influence for the young liberal students, who at the time of studying international affairs started to realize their country was not accountable to the citizens. The Mexican state started a fight against the different social movements who opposed the regime, either if the movements were pacific or armed. The state used its entire police, military and economic machinery to pursuit its enemies. By the year 1968, things were getting pretty violent, and the government was only waiting for another step from the “rebel students”, the massacre of Tlatelolco. Al though the book’s author establishes that radical students committed themselves to the violent overthrow of the system, and the guerrillas they formed would kidnap, assassinate and bomb campaigns in their attempts to foment revolution, there is of course another version of the story that was not written by the secretary of public education of the government, but written by the threatened activists by the regime; this other version can be accessed thanks to the huge amount of the remaining existing testimonies. Whatever the real history is, nowadays, we who study history can reconstruct with a more assertive approach what happened in Latin America during the 60’s. 70’s and 80’s. The main question I’d like to leave open; is it thanks to the “civil society” that the government’s impunity became visible?.