Mexico memory march ends in violence (LA Times blog)
Ya think? (The Mex Files)
Sunday, 5 October 2008
Cultural Sunday
The cultural round-up for this week:Latin American stars will gather to commemorate a hundred years since the birth of Chilean President Salvador Allende on 7-8 November in Santiago.
Multutudinario homenaje a Allende ya toma forma (La Tercerca)
An upcoming film, Matar a todos (Kill Them All) also deals with the crimes of the Pinochet dictatorship. A collaboration between the Argentine, Chilean, and Uruguayan film industries, the production was largely filmed in Montevideo, and will be screened in the ESMA on 25 October before going on general release.
Un film sobre los crimenes de Pinochet (Pagina/12)
Here's a trailer:
"Yes, I loathe the military, but I hate the Catholic Church as well that allowed it all to happen: the torture, the disappearances, the baby-stealing. They said that it was necessary to take the children of those who opposed the regime so that those children of Communists would become good Catholics. The worst thing that they could do: that those children would live with the families of the murderers of their parents: that was what the Catholic Church wanted while their priests were telling stories about the Holy Family."
A play called 'Elsa', by JW Berger, is a Goethe Institut-supported production taking place at the Espacio Callejon in Buenos Aires and dealing with issues of the Argentine dictatorship, family, and memory.
Guardar memoria (Pagina/12)
And finally on a light note, some charming old photos of central Lima and Miraflores from the 1960s from Gran Combo Club, songs about memory from commenters at the Guardian, and - though I'm no fan of the man, you can't deny his significance in Peruvian literature - an interview with Mario Vargas Llosa in the same newspaper.
Saturday, 4 October 2008
Argentina: Dictatorship in English
A intriguing article today from ñ, the magazine of Pagina/12, on books dealing with the dictatorship in English.
Now, I haven't read Imagining Argentina, by Lawrence Thornton, but I have seen the resulting film starring Emma Thompson, and it is truly terrible. It is a ludicrously inaccurate and even offensive take on the story of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, of which Guardian film reviewer Peter Bradshaw said,
and I can only agree.
So, it's easy to see why the Argentine article takes a dubious tone on foreigners scribbling about the Southern Cone. I was almost too irritated by superficialities to take in journalist Carlos Gamerro's points, though. He picks on the faulty use of accents on the Spanish in Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow; fair enough, but why, then, isn't the article itself well-researched enough to spell the name of its sources correctly?! It mangles both the title and the author's name of Marguerite Feitlowitz's A Lexicon of Terror, while blaming this book for containing an inaccuracy repeated in Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine (oh yeah, and Naomi gets an extra accent in her name too). A brief glance at the article revealed at least two more errors in the details of the English books. Incidentally, I own Feitlowitz's book and find it a generally good guide to the dictatorship, although admittedly with an occasionally casual, rather than academic tone. Gamerro also deals with Colm Toibin's novel The Story of the Night, which he finds more to his taste, but grudgingly and damning with faint praise ("Tobin has, at least, the minimal level of intelligence to find himself a plausible point of view; not to try to put himself into the skin of an Argentine").
So, if not these books, then which? I started thinking about which books I would recommend for someone wanting to find out about the Proceso in English. Here's a few ideas:
Non-fiction:
Rita Arditti's Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina
This was the first book I ever read on the dictatorship. It covers more than just the story of the Abuelas themselves and is engaging with has a lot of tough details. I wept. Important reading and approved of by the Grandmothers themselves.
Horacio Verbitsky's The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior
Translation of El Vuelo by one of Argentina's top investigative journalists. Verbitsky's interviews with naval officer Francisco Scilingo, who admitted to flying planes that dropped living prisoners into the sea to die, created a storm in Argentina on its publication in 1995.
Diana Taylor's Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's "Dirty War"
I think this is a completely fascinating consideration of public space, cultural productions, and the construction of the dictatorship, although I accept that the cultural theory and feminism may not be to everyone's taste.
Laura Alcoba's The Rabbit House: An Argentinian Childhood
A memoir which I reviewed just recently (but, as I stated in the review, I think you would get more out of this if you knew the basic facts about the dictatorship before reading it)
Fiction:
Of novels that I have read personally, I can only think of Elsa Osorio's My Name is Light and Alicia Partnoy's The Little School, although there are certainly more, and I'm not sure that I would unequivocally recommend either one of these.
Any more, to add to either list? Go ahead and comment if so.
The article that triggered my thoughts, of course, is here:
La dictadura contada en ingles (Pagina/12)
Now, I haven't read Imagining Argentina, by Lawrence Thornton, but I have seen the resulting film starring Emma Thompson, and it is truly terrible. It is a ludicrously inaccurate and even offensive take on the story of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, of which Guardian film reviewer Peter Bradshaw said,
Some films are so spectacularly misjudged they make you want to put a brown paper bag over your head, and roll off your cinema seat in a foetal ball of embarrassment and shock.
and I can only agree.
So, it's easy to see why the Argentine article takes a dubious tone on foreigners scribbling about the Southern Cone. I was almost too irritated by superficialities to take in journalist Carlos Gamerro's points, though. He picks on the faulty use of accents on the Spanish in Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow; fair enough, but why, then, isn't the article itself well-researched enough to spell the name of its sources correctly?! It mangles both the title and the author's name of Marguerite Feitlowitz's A Lexicon of Terror, while blaming this book for containing an inaccuracy repeated in Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine (oh yeah, and Naomi gets an extra accent in her name too). A brief glance at the article revealed at least two more errors in the details of the English books. Incidentally, I own Feitlowitz's book and find it a generally good guide to the dictatorship, although admittedly with an occasionally casual, rather than academic tone. Gamerro also deals with Colm Toibin's novel The Story of the Night, which he finds more to his taste, but grudgingly and damning with faint praise ("Tobin has, at least, the minimal level of intelligence to find himself a plausible point of view; not to try to put himself into the skin of an Argentine").
So, if not these books, then which? I started thinking about which books I would recommend for someone wanting to find out about the Proceso in English. Here's a few ideas:
Non-fiction:
Rita Arditti's Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina
This was the first book I ever read on the dictatorship. It covers more than just the story of the Abuelas themselves and is engaging with has a lot of tough details. I wept. Important reading and approved of by the Grandmothers themselves.
Horacio Verbitsky's The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior
Translation of El Vuelo by one of Argentina's top investigative journalists. Verbitsky's interviews with naval officer Francisco Scilingo, who admitted to flying planes that dropped living prisoners into the sea to die, created a storm in Argentina on its publication in 1995.
Diana Taylor's Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's "Dirty War"
I think this is a completely fascinating consideration of public space, cultural productions, and the construction of the dictatorship, although I accept that the cultural theory and feminism may not be to everyone's taste.
Laura Alcoba's The Rabbit House: An Argentinian Childhood
A memoir which I reviewed just recently (but, as I stated in the review, I think you would get more out of this if you knew the basic facts about the dictatorship before reading it)
Fiction:
Of novels that I have read personally, I can only think of Elsa Osorio's My Name is Light and Alicia Partnoy's The Little School, although there are certainly more, and I'm not sure that I would unequivocally recommend either one of these.
Any more, to add to either list? Go ahead and comment if so.
The article that triggered my thoughts, of course, is here:
La dictadura contada en ingles (Pagina/12)
Friday, 3 October 2008
Argentina: Disappeared Children
IPS has an important article (yet again... I love them!) on the search for the children of the disappeared in Argentina. Now, when you explain to people that during the Argentine dictatorship, military taskforces went into citizens' homes, abducted them, took them to secret locations without notifying any official authorities and then tortured them, and that very few of those citizens survived... well, people tend to think that was not a good thing, right? Some of those citizens were totally apolitical, some of them were left-wing and interested in social justice, and really, that was more than enough to attract the unwelcome attention of the ruling armed forces, and a small number were actually leftist guerrillas BUT the great majority of these last group were wiped out early in the dictatorship and even then, they did have a right to a fair trial, which they didn't get.
Now, on top of ALL THAT, when you hear that soldiers stole people's babies and gave them to military or associated families to be brought up, or that they held pregnant women until they have birth before murdering them and then selling the babies, it is quite mind-blowing. And for the past thirty years, a dedicated group of mothers of those female victims has been searching for the grandchildren they have never even met. And what is more, they are still finding them. It's thirty years on, the grandchildren are adults, the grandmothers are very old, but still they press on. DNA technology allows conclusive proof that an adopted child is in fact the offspring of 'disappeared' parents.
At this point, though, people's sympathies often waver somewhat. But, they say, wouldn't it be a horrendous shock to find out that your adopted parents were not the nice people you thought they were, but complicit with a brutal regime that tortured and killed your biological parents? (The answer is undoubtedly yes) What if you hadn't even KNOWN you were adopted? What if your adopted parents had been really nice to you? Would you have an identity crisis? Wouldn't it maybe be better to just let it go, live and let live, let sleeping dogs lie?
The Grandmothers are familiar with such arguments. You don't often see such a detailed consideration of them in English, however.
The Grandmothers also work with psychologists to ensure that the found grandchildren can access professional help if they need it. Moreover, the Grandmothers argue that a family in which a child was illegally adopted is a family based on a lie, a lie which twists and corrupts the relation between parent and child. They claim that a person has a right to their true identity. They also have a good relationship with the majority of the, to date, almost a hundred found grandchildren. No one could say that discovering that your biological parents were murdered, possibly with the knowledge and complicity of your adopted parents, is an easy thing, but in many cases, the adoptees do come to terms with their history and sometimes become involved in activism with, for example, HIJ@S, the organisation of children of the disappeared. Where this is not the case, the tragedy of their story is not the fault of the Grandmothers, but the fault of the military who committed these crimes in the first place.
Full article: New Methods to Identify Dictatorship's Missing Children (IPS)
Also a perspective on found grandchild no.93, who didn't want to have her identity confirmed, by Argentina Reporter.
Now, on top of ALL THAT, when you hear that soldiers stole people's babies and gave them to military or associated families to be brought up, or that they held pregnant women until they have birth before murdering them and then selling the babies, it is quite mind-blowing. And for the past thirty years, a dedicated group of mothers of those female victims has been searching for the grandchildren they have never even met. And what is more, they are still finding them. It's thirty years on, the grandchildren are adults, the grandmothers are very old, but still they press on. DNA technology allows conclusive proof that an adopted child is in fact the offspring of 'disappeared' parents.
At this point, though, people's sympathies often waver somewhat. But, they say, wouldn't it be a horrendous shock to find out that your adopted parents were not the nice people you thought they were, but complicit with a brutal regime that tortured and killed your biological parents? (The answer is undoubtedly yes) What if you hadn't even KNOWN you were adopted? What if your adopted parents had been really nice to you? Would you have an identity crisis? Wouldn't it maybe be better to just let it go, live and let live, let sleeping dogs lie?
The Grandmothers are familiar with such arguments. You don't often see such a detailed consideration of them in English, however.
Many of the young people who the Abuelas have helped discover their real identities have found the experience especially traumatic, when they find out that the people who they regarded as their parents were actually involved in the disappearance of their biological mother and father.
"We are very respectful of how fast each person can process things. Many of the grandchildren who initially refused or were reluctant to undergo DNA testing, but later did so, stop by the offices of the Abuelas every day now," Alan Iud, assistant coordinator of the human rights group’s team of lawyers, told IPS.
[...]
Given the persistent refusal to undergo DNA testing by a number of young people suspected of being the sons or daughters of some of the dictatorship’s 30,000 victims of forced disappearance, federal judges in Argentina began in 2006 to order searches of their homes, to find combs, brushes, toothbrushes or underwear, in order to obtain DNA to carry out the tests.
[...]
"We are the only DNA testing centre in the world created specially to clarify crimes against humanity," said Belén Rodríguez, a biochemist who runs the BNDG, an internationally prominent centre that was created in Buenos Aires in 1987, during the presidency of Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989).
[...]
Iud explained that in the case of "young people who have resisted undergoing the DNA test, once the judge has informed them of the results, they generally want to meet their (biological) family, and most of them say they feel a huge sense of relief, that it took a weight off their backs."
The Grandmothers also work with psychologists to ensure that the found grandchildren can access professional help if they need it. Moreover, the Grandmothers argue that a family in which a child was illegally adopted is a family based on a lie, a lie which twists and corrupts the relation between parent and child. They claim that a person has a right to their true identity. They also have a good relationship with the majority of the, to date, almost a hundred found grandchildren. No one could say that discovering that your biological parents were murdered, possibly with the knowledge and complicity of your adopted parents, is an easy thing, but in many cases, the adoptees do come to terms with their history and sometimes become involved in activism with, for example, HIJ@S, the organisation of children of the disappeared. Where this is not the case, the tragedy of their story is not the fault of the Grandmothers, but the fault of the military who committed these crimes in the first place.
Full article: New Methods to Identify Dictatorship's Missing Children (IPS)
Also a perspective on found grandchild no.93, who didn't want to have her identity confirmed, by Argentina Reporter.
Thursday, 2 October 2008
Mexico: More on Tlatelolco
From the LA Times:
Mexico remembers massacre 40 years later
From The Latin Americanist:
Tlatelolco four decades later
Mexico remembers massacre 40 years later
From The Latin Americanist:
Tlatelolco four decades later
Argentina: Honouring Alfonsin
Argentina is beginning to mark 25 years since the end of the dictatorship. Accordingly, President Fernandez de Kirchner unveiled a bust of the first democratic President after the junta, Raul Alfonsin, in the presidential palace. Alfonsin himself, now 81 and present at the event, stated that "there will be no more de facto Presidents here" (referring, naturally, to the succession of illegitimate presidents during the dictatorship).
Un simbolo de la democracia (Pagina/12)
Un simbolo de la democracia (Pagina/12)
Wednesday, 1 October 2008
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