Latin American Dictatorships Research Articles

Témoigner aux procès après une catastrophe sociale : une tentative de restauration des garants métasociaux démocratiques

ContextThis study explores the subjective and group repercussions of forced disappearance in the context of Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s. To comprehend the dynamics of such state violence, the study draws on a psychoanalytic approach of groups and institutions. The political repression during this era leads to a “social catastrophe” (Puget et al., 1989): following the collapse of democratic meta-social guarantors, the socio-political and institutional context becomes unrecognizable. In the aftermath of numerous crimes legitimized by the juntas, relatives of the disappeared have been fighting for decades against the impunity of the culprits, demanding justice be served. ObjectivesThe study aims to explore the various functions associated with testifying in trials for relatives of the disappeared. MethodAs part of a qualitative study, we interviewed twenty-nine relatives of disappeared people living in Switzerland. We analyzed the semi-structured interviews using thematic content analysis. We present some of the results of the cross-sectional analyses, illustrating them with a case study emblematic of the whole. ResultsFor relatives of the disappeared, testifying in a trial seems to be a royal road to actively participate in the restoration of democratic meta-social guarantors. In doing so, these relatives seek support from a collective and particularly from institutions, especially when these institutions regain their protective function against state violence. By testifying, they contribute to revitalizing narcissistic contracts and, more broadly, attempt to humanize not only the disappeared person but also their relatives and the perpetrators. InterpretationMemory work and the struggle for justice appear to be prevalent in the practices undertaken by close relatives of the disappeared, even fifty years later. Some of these relatives feel invested with a mission to memorialize and denounce political crimes in order to place them within history and to combat systematic erasure of crimes. This mission also allows them to symbolize, as far as possible, the catastrophe and their own history. This research is of course limited by the number of participants and the unique research interview. Further studies on the subjective and group repercussions of such state crimes and their transgenerational impact would be relevant to promote clinical listening to the relatives of the disappeared and their descendants.

Beyond Rape Culture? Toward A Theory of the Work of Rape

Beyond Rape Culture? Toward A Theory of the Work of Rape

Picture-Skin, Music-Muscle: The Intersemiotic/ Intermedia Body of Olney São Paulo’s Manhã Cinzenta

The film Manhã cinzenta (1969), by Brazilian filmmaker Olney São Paulo, is a fictional documentary in a short film, which works with fictional space scenes and real elements (clipping from newspapers, movie posters, radio news, images from student marches, and police repression). As a political-artistic form of resistance to the 1964 Brazilian civil-military dictatorship, it is a manifest against authoritarian regimes, also referring to the Latin American dictatorships of 1960-1970. Based on the work of Rajewsky and Clüver, we analyzed, from the intermediate texture, the relationship between image and music, respectively, “epidermis and muscle” by Wingstedt, threads of an artistic and political texture as elements of the constitution of a multimedia body: metaphor of resistance. The film can contribute to breaking with the logic of domination - a logic that is structured by the monopoly of discourse about the past, which in current times has been trying to extinguish from history, from memory, the violent event of the Brazilian civil-military coup. For this reason, it is important to study it, due to the importance of this film as one of the most significant films about resisting, having also been a metaphor for the life of the filmmaker himself.

Americánas, Autocracy, and Autobiographical Innovation: Overwriting the Dictator by Lisa Ortiz-Vilarelle

Reviewed by: Americánas, Autocracy, and Autobiographical Innovation: Overwriting the Dictator by Lisa Ortiz-Vilarelle Renata Lucena Dalmaso (bio) Americánas, Autocracy, and Autobiographical Innovation: Overwriting the Dictator Lisa Ortiz-Vilarelle Routledge, 2021, ix + 236 pp. ISBN 9780367893477, $170 hardcover; ISBN 9781032335919, $48.95 paperback. Lisa Ortiz-Vilarelle's Américanas, Autocracy, and Autobiographical Innovation: Overwriting the Dictator investigates life narratives by women who have attempted to counter discourses about womanhood and personhood in Latin American dictatorships. Throughout its five chapters, the author explores different dictatorial contexts in the Americas and how women have employed innovative techniques of self-representation to establish themselves as subjects against authoritarian regimes or in the aftermath of regimes that spanned most of the twentieth century. Each chapter presents the historical context of a specific country and its corresponding dictatorship, along with works by writers who sought to overwrite the constraints of writing the self in such repressive situations. The efforts of these writers in finding novel ways to approach life writing—be it through poetry, aliases, or autofiction—subvert what Ortiz-Vilarelle refers to as the impossible character of autobiography under autocratic governments. The book's main question is how these authors have been able to write the self in the midst of censorship and the actual danger of challenging expectations of womanhood in repressive contexts. However, the book does not only include those who opposed dictatorial regimes. It also explores how the wives, children, siblings, and grandchildren of dictators have attempted to overwrite history through their own perspectives. These works offer ambivalent memories of the dictatorships, ones often imbued with nostalgia for the rulers they represent. The impossibility of writing can be seen both in the works that write against authoritarianism as well as those narratives that attempt to deny, downplay, or even defend these regimes. Faced with such impossibility, Ortiz-Vilarelle argues that the "diversity of voices and experiences represented here demonstrates how autocratic methods of control can actually give way to autobiographical methods of self-construction and establish shared, global-practice autobiographical work for Américanas both in their countries and in exile" (5). The first chapter, "I Remember Trujillo/Trujillo en Mis Memorias: Denial, Shame, Martyrdom, and Nostalgia in Dominican Women's Memoir," explores the impossibilities in life writing by women dealing with Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961. Specifically, it focuses on the publications [End Page 107] marking the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination. Four works that examine the "Era of Trujillo" are analyzed: one of artful abnegation by his granddaughter Aída Trujillo (2008); one of shame and psychological trauma by his troubled daughter, Flor de Oro Trujillo (2009); one of testimony and martyrdom by Dédé Mirabal, sister of the three murdered heroines involved in an assassination attempt against Trujillo (2009); and one of privileged nostalgia by his favored daughter Angelita Trujillo (2010). (18) Each memoir proceeds from a different perspective of memory in relation to the Era of Trujillo, competing for the authority of remembering the dictator, the closeness to his many public and private personas, and the impact of his years in power. The second chapter, "Dueña y Señora de Su Canto: Autobiographical Depictions of the New Nicaraguan Woman," focuses on Nicaragua, which was controlled by the Somoza Dynasty from 1936 to 1979, a period combining the dictatorships of Anastasio Somoza Garcia, his older son, Luis Somoza Debayle, and his younger son, Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Fighting against the dynasty was the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) movement, in which women played a strong role. Drawing from the Sandinista movement and its poetry programs, Ortiz-Vilarelle analyzes six authors published between the 1960s and 1990s—Vidaluz Meneses, Daisy Zamora, Gioconda Belli, Yolanda Blanco, Michele Nails, and Rosario Murillo—who attempted to reconcile their womanhood with the Somoza years through autobiographical writing. Their autobiographical poetics overwrite the restrictions forced on the female subject by both the Somoza family and the Sandinista regimes that followed. In the third chapter, "'Distinguished Ladies' and the Doctrine of Chilean Womanhood: The 'Anti-manuals' of Diamela Eltit, Isabel Allende, and Marjorie Agosín," Ortiz-Vilarelle explores the three authors' works for "echoes" of...

The Kennedys in the World: How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade America's Empire

Perhaps no trio of brothers has impacted American history as much as John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy. In his most recent book, The Kennedys in the World, Lawrence J. Haas—whose career includes senior communications posts in the Clinton White House and frequent appearances as a pundit in national newspapers and cable news outlets—uses the Kennedy brothers as a lens to examine US foreign policy since World War II. Given the significance of international diplomacy to all three brothers and their combined engagement in foreign policy debates from the 1930s through the 2000s, this is an intriguing, if novel, approach.Divided into three parts, each one tracking the foreign policies of John, Robert, and Ted respectively, the book begins with the evolution of John from a “schoolboy diplomat” (xvi) into the world's preeminent Cold Warrior. Thrust into the touchy sphere of Anglo-American diplomacy in 1939 by his father Joe, then serving as US ambassador to the United Kingdom, it was clear to observers on both sides of the Atlantic that the Harvard senior was being groomed for a career in international politics, a role he embraced a decade later as a congressman and senator. As president, he combined humanitarian aid and soft power directed towards newly independent African and Asian nations with hardline stances against the Soviet Union in Cuba and Berlin, leaving an indelible mark on the world.Similarly primed by their parents into a life of public service, Robert and Ted Kennedy shaped US foreign policy in their own important ways, argues Haas. Robert's shift from a Cold War hawk to dove made him the establishment's foremost voice of conscience against the horrors unleased by the war in Vietnam. In the book's strongest section, Haas portrays Ted as “the family's best politician” (xxiii), who, while lacking the idealistic grandeur of John or the moral fortitude of Robert, had firm command over the arcane rules and palm-greasing culture of the Senate. And while his brothers’ assassinations at the peak of their careers left historians with a myriad of “what if” questions about their foreign policy legacies (counterfactual scenarios that Haas dabbles with in the epilogue), it was Ted whose career spanned for nearly half a century, decades longer than either of his brothers. As Massachusetts's senior senator, he led campaigns to levy sanctions against South African apartheid, highlighted America's unsavory role in fostering authoritarian Latin American dictatorships, secured the release of political prisoners around the globe, and was among the most vocal critics of George W. Bush's war against Iraq.Some readers may be leery of the book's elitist approach to foreign policy that maintains a relentless focus on the role of three white men in shaping history. Given the author's current position as a senior fellow with the conservative-leaning American Foreign Policy Council, it is also no surprise that the book lacks a Leftist critique of the Kennedy brothers’ collective approaches to foreign policy. For instance, missing from the book's coverage of the Peace Corps and other forms of aid that demanded “nothing of foreign governments in return” (99) are African and Marxist critiques that emphasize the role of such programs in fostering neocolonialism that exerted implicit economic and cultural control over dependent nations. And though the book's subtitle acknowledges the presence of an American “Empire,” its analysis lacks a sophisticated critical approach towards the post-World War II liberal-conservative consensus that embraced American imperialism as a global positive. More inclusion of African, Asian, and Latin American critics of American imperialism would certainly alter the book's laudatory conclusions.Nevertheless, written in fast-paced, attention-grabbing prose characteristic of a seasoned journalist, this is an absorbing narrative, complemented with an ample assortment of photographs, and is ideal for a general audience. However, despite promises to tell an “untold story about Jack, Bobby, and Ted” (xvii), the vast majority of the book's anecdotes have long been part of the historic record. The bulk of its footnotes contain oft-cited memoirs, oral histories, and newspaper accounts that are already well-covered in the secondary literature. Thus, while the final section convincingly re-centers Ted Kennedy as a late-twentieth-century diplomatic powerbroker, most foreign policy scholars and historians of post-World War II America will not find many new revelations here, and those on the Left may be off-put by a lack of engagement with serious critiques of American imperialism.

Crisis de las democracias liberales: ¿un futuro sin derechos? Elementos para una perspectiva internacional del proyecto de la extrema derecha

This article aims to point out elements for the understanding of the present crisis of liberal democracies, especially of rights as its fundamental component. It seeks to recover history in its political sense of building the predominant model in the West and to highlight some explanations of the crisis as being the crisis of the “liberal” component, that is, the guarantee of rights. This “model” was never presented as complete materiality for vast portions of the world population and even of the central states. The violation of rights by the States has always been a permanence in capitalist modernity. Several states in the "center" and "periphery" have gone through periods in which such violations are specifically recognized, such as European fascisms and Latin American dictatorships. At the moment when anti-liberal political forces ascend, uncommitted to the rights formally guaranteed in state and international orders, it is worth reflecting on the relationship they establish with this past of massive rights violations, pointing out that the fragility of the promises embodied in rights, including due to the incompleteness of the processes of overcoming the serious violations of the past, it is at the basis of the crisis of contemporary liberal democracy.

Antimonuments: Between Memory and Resistance

The essay presents a reflection upon the “antimonuments” phenomena that emerged at the end of the twentieth century as a way of dealing through art with State violence, as in the case of Nazism and the Latin American dictatorships. The text begins with an explanation of the mnemotechnics, that is, the old “art of memory”, that had Simonides of Ceos as its mythic father. It goes on presenting the contemporary “art of memory” under the sign of “antimonuments”. The article proposes to think of a “new art of memory” based on the gesture of anti-monuments. The study shows and discusses the works of, among other artists, Jochen Gerz, Horst Hoheisel, Andreas Knitz, Marcelo Brodsky and Fulvia Molina.

Estado, audiovisual e políticas de memória. As ditaduras latino-americanas nos documentários do canal argentino Encuentro (2016)

Resumo: O objetivo deste artigo é investigar a produção audiovisual dedicada às ditaduras latino-americanas por meio dos curtas-metragens veiculados pelo canal de TV pública argentina Encuentro. Em 2016, o canal lançou na TV, no site e na plataforma youtube, oito curtas-metragens, de caráter documental, sobre as ditaduras latino-americanas no século XX. Os curtas-metragens de caráter educativo podem ser compreendidos como parte da construção de Histórias públicas marcadas pela adoção de uma política de memória na Argentina dentro do quadro de Justiça de Transição empreendido pelo país, após o final da sua última ditadura (1976-1983).
 Palavras-chave: políticas de memória, documentários, ditaduras latino-americanas

Estados Unidos en la novela latinoamericana desde la postdictadura

Este artículo analiza la presencia de los Estados Unidos en las dictaduras latinoamericanas en tres novelas del subgénero de la postdictadura. En especial, la configuración de personajes que tienen en común el adiestramiento en escuelas militares estadounidenses establecidas en América Latina. El corpus comprende: Margarita está linda la mar, donde se menciona la Escuela de las Américas; La Fiesta del Chivo, donde el tirano está configurado como marine, y Nocturno de Chile, donde se representa a Pinochet y a la policía secreta que tenía nexos con los EE.UU.

Exílio da ditadura na ficção brasileira da geração pós-memorial: a perspectiva e a estética dos filhos

Resumo A partir do conceito de pós-memória, de Marianne Hirsch, este artigo pretende analisar a maneira pela qual artistas brasileiros, pertencentes à geração de filhos dos exilados políticos das ditaduras latino-americanas, representaram suas vivências, suas memórias e as narrativas dos pais. Para tanto, selecionamos A chave de casa, de Tatiana Salem Levy (2007); Mar azul, de Paloma Vidal (2012); A resistência, de Julián Fuks (2015); Rio-Paris-Rio, de Luciana Hidalgo (2016); e o filme Deslembro, de Flávia Castro (2018). Num primeiro momento, serão abordadas as conexões entre intriga ficcional e memória familiar para, em seguida, analisar as estratégias narrativas de representação, muitas vezes indireta, dessa memória, buscando delinear o que seria uma estética pós-memorial brasileira. Finalmente, será tratada a representação do exílio, tanto como elemento transgeracional como cenário de uma perspectiva descentrada.

Literary aesthetics of the Latin American dictatorships of the 20th century: analysis theory

El artículo plantea una interpretación estética de las narrativas latinoamericanas del siglo XX para analizar las dictaduras desde la literatura. El planteamiento de análisis de la estética literaria revela la profundidad que la narrativa latinoamericana adquirió ante las dinámicas contra la libertad por parte de los procesos históricos y políticos de la región. El planteamiento teórico recurre a obras emblemáticas de la llamada novela de dictador para ejemplificar la estética del compromiso, para dar paso al análisis de obras que no mencionan directamente a dictadores y tiranías, pero que su estética se corresponde con la represión política y la anulación de las libertades civiles.

Um ato de tecer e destecer a memória. Os quipus de Cecilia Vicuña dentro da arte atual

The following article aims to delve into the role of memory within the history of art through the work Red Thread (2017)1 by Cecilia Vicuña. The work puts into play a principle of symbolic persistence in the use of Andean elements that enact a decolonizing position and a form of protest against westernizing art and against processes of historical rupture such as the hispanic conquest and Latin American dictatorships. The article analyzes the art of knitting as a mnemonic and ancestral activity that tries to rescue feminine voices and wisdoms by interpreting two recent works by Vicuña, the performance Quipu Mapocho (2016) and the installation Quipu Womb (2017). Our interpretation seeks to contextualize the effects of memory within history and the meaning of the “red thread” for this artist.

Infant psychopathology during the first year of life and its return during adolescence and adulthood

ABSTRACTThis is a presentation of different clinical cases having in common severe infantile traumatic events during the first year of life. From the disappearance of mother and father during Latin-American dictatorships, to another patient who hallucinates that bats fly out of his cheeks, this paper tries to bring light into the difficult times of these patients and how the analysts worked with infantile parts of the self which were inside the adult patients.

Permission to Torture

9/11 introduced a new phase in us foreign policy launching the war on terror. Integral to this new us global counterinsurgency was the use of torture as technique deployed to save us lives threatened by international terrorism. President George Bush’s declaration in 2001, ‘Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists’ expresses the logic of counterinsurgency strategy to divide the world into friends and enemies. The division of the world into friends and enemies is based on asymmetrical counterconcepts based on the negation of the ‘Other’. This article argues that the legitimation of torture in the Cold War and Post 9/11 eras arises from imperial/global politics based on a counterinsurgency, terror and torture nexus. Through an analysis of the role of torture in Cold War us counterinsurgency policy in Latin America it argues that torture was a technique of governance to produce victims and forge new political subjectivities. In the Latin American dictatorships abduction, detention and secrecy created legal voids that allowed torture. Post 9/11 global counterinsurgency practices are differentiated between geographical zones identified as the zone of integration and zone of intervention. It is in the zone of intervention that torture has been deployed as a technique in which the distinction between civilian and terrorist has become blurred. It argues that Obama’s failure to close Guantánamo Bay prison as promised reveals that global counterinsurgency continues and that the issue of the us military or intelligence resort to torture remains live despite legal and political attempts to stop it.

EROS VOLÚSIA Performance, poéticas criativas e afirmação identitária

A partir dos anos 1940, o Rio de Janeiro, a Capital Federal, centro de poder, começa a produzir e projetar para o Brasil uma imagem do "carioca" que agrega tanto a ideia de ser integrante do rol das nações civilizadas pretendida pelas elites, como também portadora de uma malemolência, musicalidade e humor peculiares, trazidos pelo movimento cultural popular e negro. Já sob a influência da Segunda Guerra Mundial, estreitam-se relações entre os governos americano e ditaduras latino-americanas, a chamada política de boa vizinhança. Neste contexto cultural, Eros Volúsia desponta em performance exuberante como bailarina, professora e criadora da Dança Brasileira, uma realidade múltipla e contraditória entre a tradição e o popular. Mais que uma garota propaganda Eros explode a cena com uma poética criativa, sendo mais e além.

Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes. Edited by Tom Ginsburg and Alberto Simpser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 278 pp. $95.00 cloth, $34.99 paper.

Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes. Edited by Tom Ginsburg and Alberto Simpser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 278 pp. $95.00 cloth, $34.99 paper.What shape constitutions take in authoritarian regimes, when governmental power is not limited? Can even sham constitutions generate state legitimacy? If so, how? These related questions guide Ginsburg and Simpser's edited volume, Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes. This book begins with a concise introduction in which the editors explain why constitutions matter and they for authoritarian rulers. Specifically, constitutions solve problems of (p. 3) by creating incentives for different political actors to what authoritarian rulers wish them to do (p. 2). These documents can also help to set up governing institutions and build public trust. The political functions of authoritarian constitutions include coordinating competing oligarchs and subjects, establishing focal points, and even imprinting on rulers and citizens a set of common values, such as the boundaries of permissible and impermissible discourse (Ibid.).The remaining ten chapters are divided into four parts that showcase either theoretical frameworks or empirical cases. Two chapters focus on authoritarian constitutionalism, three on constitutional design, two on the contents of authoritarian constitutions, and three on the consequences of authoritarian constitutions. Generally, the overarching themes relate to the pathologies of authoritarian rule, why authoritarian constitutions exist, and how they might serve or harm democratic transition.Five of the chapters expose the democratic potential of authoritarian constitutions. Tushnet (Chapter 3) looks to Singapore to show how rules found in authoritarian constitutions commit even autocrats to particular courses of action, which may encourage stability and predictability. Using the Polish communist constitution of 1952, Przeworski (Chapter 2) shows how, even if autocrats are not good at following rules, constitutions set out structures for how a government operates and the relationship its constituent parts. Similarly, Hale (Chapter 10) turns to Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Ukraine to argue that democratic transition may come about even in highly paternalistic regimes in which rules are not always followed. Drawing on dozens of presidential elections in authoritarian regimes 1946 and 2008, Gandhi (Chapter 9) shows how constitutions may drive democratic transition by bringing about multiparty elections. Related quantitative research by Elkins, Ginsburg, and Melton (Chapter 7) suggests that authoritarian and democratic constitutions are converging in form, particularly through their provisions of rights and judicial independence, which also suggests new ways to understand democratic transition.Authoritarian constitutions have insidious and darker sides, too. Law and Versteeg (Chapter 8) reveal that, with limited exceptions, authoritarian governments are likely to use constitutional rights provisions as shams or window-dressing, which creates a gap between a country promises ...and how it ... behaves (p. 187). Drawing on the role of constitutions as operating manuals, Albertus's and Menaldo's quantitative analysis (Chapter 4) of the effect of constitutions on regime survival in Latin America 1950 and 2002 reveals that constitutions actually help[ed] dictators consolidate power, increase investment, and boost economic development - all while generating a steady flow of rents for themselves...without empowering challengers (p. 53). In that way, governments can use constitutions to create autocratic coalitions that keep dictators in power (p. 79). Similarly, Negretto (Chapter 5) draws on Latin American dictatorships from 1900 to 2008 to argue that constitutions are critical for military rulers seeking major social transformation. And Stilt's analysis (Chapter 6) of Egypt's 1971 constitution and its 1980, 2005, and 2007 amendments illustrates how the governing document helped to cultivate images of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak as just and pious presidents who believed in the rule of law and the protection of private property-contrasting to Nasser's earlier excesses and helping to preempt opposition (p. …

The Permanent People’s Tribunals and indigenous people’s struggles in Mexico: between coloniality and epistemic justice?

AbstractOn 21 October 2011, hundreds of Mexican civil society organizations formally submitted a petition to the Lelio e Lisli Basso Foundation in Rome to justify the opening of a Mexican Chapter of the Permanent People’s Tribunals (PPT). The PPT was established in 1979 as the successor to the Russell Tribunals on Vietnam (1966–1967) and on the Latin American Dictatorships (1974–1976). The PPT is considered an ethical non-governmental tribunal and their sessions are described as a mechanism for raising awareness of national and international public opinion on rights violations. This article investigates the potential of the PPT for contributing to epistemic justice in Mexico, by focusing on indigenous people communities’ long-term struggle for legal pluralism and autonomy. In so doing, it offers an analysis about the coloniality of international human rights law operating in non-governmental mechanisms of popular litigation such as the PPT; a perspective that has remained absent in critical international and global studies. In particular, the article argues that the PPT in Mexico is imbricated with Eurocentric modes of legal production but that it nonetheless has the potential to contribute, in a relevant but fragile way, to epistemic justice. On the one hand, it is observed that PPT key documents and statements explaining different forms of violence in Mexico emphasize causal relationships based on the all-encompassing power or logic of capitalism. This perspective, it is argued, has the effect of epistemic erasure: notions and practices of justice that exceed this logic are silenced in the process of legal translation for the construction of “model cases”. On the other hand, the article highlights the coexistence of different notions of justice in one of the PPT thematic hearings on Violence against Corn, food sovereignty and autonomy hold in Oaxaca, Mexico, to argue for a re-thinking of the monocultural state-centric legal frames that ground PPT legal qualification. As the PPT classify social grievances in legal terms through the lens/gaze of international law, this legal qualification works as an activity of “translation”, in some cases of incommensurable notions of justice or absence of justice, violence or well-being. The article concludes with an emphasis on the potential contributions of the PPT to epistemic justice as the political visibility of the many ways in which justice is understood and experienced despite the many forms of violence and oppression in contemporary Mexico.

“... Defenderei os princípios e afronto as consequências...”: os informes presidenciais de Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, o inimigo interno e a repressão, 1964-1970

Starting from the notion that 1964 saw the transition of Mexico from that of an authoritarian state to one of counterinsurgency, we propose in this paper the analysis of presidential reports issued annually on September 1st to the Congress of the Union, composed of deputies and senators, by the presidency of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1964-1970). From these reports, we attempt to highlight items that demonstrate the assimilation of the Security Doctrine of the United States, focusing on policy and highlighting three aspects: first, revolutionary nationalism, which according to our hypothesis, enabled the adoption of the American ideology which was not explicit, generating repressive dynamics (qualitative, not quantitative) similar to those experienced in Latin American dictatorships. Nevertheless, Mexico has been historically regarded as an exemplary civil democracy, disconnected from the 'dirty' wars that resulted from both the radicalization of leftist organizations and the escalation of state violence, and of course, from the coups that shook the continent in the second half of twentieth century; second, the characteristics of the domestic enemy; and finally, the ways in which the expression and use of repression to contain the Mexican social and armed movement was legitimized.

La Guerra de Malvinas: solidaridad desde México

During the Latin American dictatorships in the seventies and early eighties, Mexico was home to a set of solidarity networks. The Malvinas War constituted a critical moment that shed light on some of these networks woven by Mexican and South American exiles. This article examines the role of these solidarity networks through documentation created by the different political trends of the Argentinean exile, as well as from articles, chronicles and editorials published in Mexican newspapers and magazines. The Malvinas War unleashed strong controversies on various issues of leftist thought and action: the character of the antidictatorial fight, the legitimacy of territorial sovereignty claims, imperialism, nationalism, and popular democracy. This article portrays these discussions; highlights the reach and scope of condemnations made against the State terrorism enforced by the Argentinean Armed Forces; and displays the impact of the Malvinas War in the Mexican public opinion.

Brazil’s Immigrant Song

Brazil’s Immigrant Song