Fictional and Non-fictional Narrative Representations of State Repression and Terror in the Dirty Wars in Argentina (1976-1983) and Chile (1973-1990)

Ritwik Ghosh

doi:10.47631/ijecls.v2i4.258

Abstract

I argue that fictional representations of the Dirty Wars in Argentina (1976-1983) and Chile (1973-1990) allow for the possibility of forgiveness and healing, while non-fictional representations such as testimonies and conversations do not. Focusing on a variety of fictional and non-fictional texts, I analyze why and how state repression inflicts trauma and violence upon its victims and survivors. The novels I analyze are no place for heroes by Laura Restrepo, El Angel’s Last Conquest by Elvira Orphée and Bedside manners by Luisa Valenzuela. The non–fictional works I analyze are Nunca Mas: A Report By Argentina’s National Commission on Disappeared People, That Inferno: Conversations of Five Women Survivors of an Argentine Torture Camp, Circle Over Death: Testimonies of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and We, Chile: Personal Testimonies of the Chilean Arpilleristas. The theoretical underpinnings of my arguments are Paul Ricouer’s Memory, History, Forgetting (2004) and Avishai Margalit’s The Ethics of Memory (2002), both of which attempt to think through the relationship between forgetting and forgiving.

Highlights

The fictional representations of the Dirty Wars in Argentina (1976-1983) and Chile (1973-1990) make forgiveness and healing possible and thinkable, while the nonfictional representations largely do not
The “Dirty Wars” in Latin American countries such as Argentina (1976-1983) and Chile (1973-1990) saw military regimes which abducted, tortured, murdered, and disappeared thousands of their political opponents in the name of anticommunism, and thousands were driven into exile (Kohut and Vilella 1)
According to M.L.R Smith and Sophie Roberts a “Dirty war” is a “systematic campaign of violence directed against a portion of the civilian populace where the perpetrators aim to conceal both the extent of the violence and the true extent of their involvement for the primary purpose of creating fear for political purposes” (Kohut and Vilella 2)

Summary

Introduction

Love and Politics in the Contemporary Spanish American Novel. Behind The Disappearances: Argentina’s Dirty War Against Human Rights. Historical dictionary of the dirty wars: Third Edition. Displaced Memories: The Poetics of Trauma in Argentine Women’s. The Fate Of Freedom Elsewhere: Human Rights and U.S Cold War Policy Toward Argentina. The Columbia Guide to the Latin American Novel Since 1945.

Works Cited