Military Dictatorship Research Articles

‘Los Duros’: The Neo-Fascist Opposition to Chile’s 1980 Constitution, and its Francoist Connections

The article explores the activity of Chile’s unique neo-fascist movement from the early 1970s until 1990. Whereas Jaime Guzmán and his ideological group (the gremialistas) believed that the military dictatorship should conclude with the creation of a protected parliamentary democracy, the so-called hardliners thought that the dictatorship’s mission was to institute a fascist-corporatist regime in Chile. First, the article shows that while Guzmán became the regime’s chief ideologue, the hardliners operated as outsiders and harshly opposed both the regime’s neoliberal model and the 1980 Constitution. Second, it examines the hardliners’ campaigns against the constitutional process, and delves into their links with Spanish neofascist elements. It argues that, ironically, these campaigns helped Guzmán propagate the 1980 Constitution as a moderate position between two statist ideological extremes. On the other hand, their intransigence hindered the efforts to unify Chile’s right-wing sectors into a single electoral front ahead of the 1988 constitutional referendum and 1989 elections, thus going against their intentions to control the constitutional process after 1988.

International Criticism and the Legitimation of Chile’s Authoritarian Democracy

This article examines how the Chilean military dictatorship utilized its constitutional process to defend itself against international criticism of its very legitimacy and stark human rights violations. By bringing to the fore the discussions held at highest echelons of the regime, the article indicates how the Constitution of 1980 was mobilized by the regime at different times as part of an effort to neutralize threats of international isolation and economic embargo. Moving chronologically, my analysis focuses on the distinctive strategies applied by Augusto Pinochet’s regime, evolving from denying human rights violations entirely to tactically admitting “excesses,” and then gradually turning the constitutional process—which was to secure Chile’s return to being a normative parliamentary democracy—into the centerpiece of Chile’s diplomatic strategy. Furthermore, the article clarifies that despite the ratification of the constitution in a national plebiscite in 1980, international campaigns against the regime did not stop. Thus, against the background of Chile’s economic crisis in 1982, Chile saw a renewed effort to propagate on the international scene its so-called process of “institutionalization” abroad.

Introduction: How Augusto Pinochet’s Constitution Came into Existence and How it Endured until 2022

For the past forty-two years Chile has been governed according to the infamous 1980 Constitution. Bequeathed to the country by its military dictator Augusto Pinochet, this text was originally designed to sustain an infinite de facto dictatorship in Chile. While this did not happen, and despite having been repeatedly amended since 1989, the 1980 Constitution is still considered an illegitimate text by most Chileans, as the 2020 Chilean national plebiscite has illustrated. The introduction provides a genealogy of the 1980 Constitution, explains the right-wing ideology underpinning it, and explores the scholarly debates over its supposed merits and the feasibility of its replacement with a new constitution.

Public administration under the Chilean civil military dictatorship (1973−1990)

The purpose of this article is to analyze the functioning of the public administration of the Chilean dictatorial State between 1973 and 1990. Specifically, based on a methodology based on a series of testimonies of civilian and military officials of the de facto government, the aim is to reconstruct the bureaucracy of the period, especially that of the first lines of command of ministries, undersecretaries and service chiefs. It is proposed that the classic Weberian bureaucratic model that had marked the public administration of the Chilean State had to be related to a new form of public management, coming from the private sphere. Thus, in order to neoliberalize the State, the authorities had to be able to reorient their classic strategic objectives towards the fulfillment of goals by results. Therefore, the new public official that emerged under the dictatorship was a technopolitician who, as a civilian, contributed his organizational culture based on expert knowledge learned in his business and/or academic spheres, as well as the military who, under his authoritarian hierarchical culture, reinforced the traditional way of exercising power within the state institutionality. Both organizational cultures were necessary in order to instrumentalize, through reason and force, the legitimizing principles underpinning neoliberalism.

CIESPAL and the development of education and research in communication in Latin America

As a regional international organization focused on education and research, the Centro Internacional de Estudios Superiores de Comunicación para América Latina (CIESPAL) played a key role in institutionalizing the field of communication studies in the so-called “Third World” countries. Founded in 1959, in Ecuador, it is an initiative of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) with the objective of implementing a set of strategies to improve the training of journalists and academics in the area. Referring to the Cold War context, its development was linked to other international organizations and political-cultural entities, which ended up stimulating the formation of an environment marked by relations of cooperation and cooptation, but also by resistance. By reconstructing the 60-year trajectory of this Latin American center, the aim is to show how its role has been dynamic and is related to the political and social changes that have taken place in the region, notably the rise and fall of military dictatorships in South America.

Contributions from popular education in health to structural competency training: An experience from Chile

ABSTRACT Structural competency is used to train health professionals on how social, political, and economic dynamics create conditions that negatively impact a population’s health. In the Global South, this approach has historical roots in social movements, popular education, social medicine, and human rights. In 1982, during a time of extreme poverty, inequality, and violence under the Chilean military dictatorship, Educación Popular en Salud (EPES), developed a programme for training community health promoters to address common illnesses and analyse the underlying causes of poor health. In 2010, EPES began using the same model to train international and Chilean health professionals. The approach advanced four competencies. Evaluations show that training contributes to transforming health professionals’ mindsets and leads them to question their practices. However, educating practitioners does not change the underlying structures that generate poor health. This article examines the intersection between EPES’ competencies and the structural competency framework, highlighting two major contributions of EPES to structural competency: a methodology that narrows the gap between a theoretical analysis of social determinants of health and implementing action plans; and organic long-term links with social movements that strengthen collective action in poor neighbourhoods to advance social justice.

Contemporary female perspectives on authoritarianism in the military dictatorship: time and space in Liniane Brum, Luciana Hidalgo, and Maria Valéria Rezende

Resumo O presente artigo teve como objetivo analisar a contribuição de escritas femininas na contemporaneidade para o escopo da literatura sobre a ditadura militar no Brasil. Por meio de uma breve análise de Antes do passado: o silêncio que vem do Araguaia (2012), de Liniane Haag Brum, Rio-Paris-Rio (2016), de Luciana Hidalgo, e Outros cantos (2016), de Maria Valéria Rezende, diferentes vertentes da contemporaneidade literária brasileira são discutidas em suas distintas formas de representar o período ditatorial. Apesar de tal diversidade de estilos, apontamos para os deslocamentos espaçotemporais na composição narrativa como ponto de convergência entre as três publicações, sua relação com a perspectiva narrativa (feminina) e sua compreensão do contexto histórico e social em questão.

Violated Frames: Armando Bó and Isabel Sarli’s Sexploits by Victoria Ruétalo

Reviewed by: Violated Frames: Armando Bó and Isabel Sarli’s Sexploits by Victoria Ruétalo Carlos G. Halaburda Keywords Victoria Ruétalo, Carlos G. Halaburda, Armando Bó, Isabel Sarli, Exploitation Cinema, Adult Cinema, Film History, Cultural Politics, Argentina, Censorship ruétalo, victoria. Violated Frames: Armando Bó and Isabel Sarli’s Sexploits. U of California P, 2022, 264 pp. Victoria Ruétalo has written an exceptional work of Latin American sexploitation film history in Violated Frames: Armando Bó and Isabel Sarli’s Sexploits. Carefully researched, theoretically bold, and elegantly written, the book is a page-turner, a captivating history of Latin American adult cinema. Violated Frames focuses on the legendary film couple, director Armando Bó and actress Isabel Sarli. Ruétalo engages with a torn film archive fragmented by decades of state censorship, military dictatorships, and preservation mismanagement to examine “remnants of relocated materials to debate questions of performance, authorship, stardom, sexuality, and circulation in the Sarli–Bó films” (3). Violated Frames constitutes a vital contribution to exploitation cinema, a much-undervalued subfield in Latin American film scholarship. The considerable significance of this book stems from the scarcity of critical literature and primary documentation of the state’s responses to the Sarli–Bó films in a context of political turmoil, proscription, censorship, and [End Page 147] militarism in Argentina (1955–1984). Jorge Abel Martín’s Los films de Armando Bó con Isabel Sarli (1981), Octavio Getino’s Cine argentino: modernidad y vanguardias (1998) and Cine argentino: entre lo posible y lo deseable (2005) are key scholarly precedents. However, Violated Frames is the first exhaustive analysis of how Sarli–Bó’s experimental cinema dared to reinvent social realism through a camp aesthetic and naïve erotica that conquered local and international publics. The book explores multiple angles concerning the Sarli–Bó cooperation, from the birth of Bó’s authorial signature of fast and low-cost productions, spontaneous realism, and new “clumsy montage” (8) to the role of censorship in delaying film production as much as creating anticipation. The story of an archival loss that recorded the censorship of all films screened in Argentina during an age of strict control is a salient concern of the book. The disappearance of a large number of documents concerning the Sarli–Bó legacy makes it difficult to investigate the cultural politics of screen sexuality in 1960s and 1970s Argentina. And yet Ruétalo puts together an extensive collection of press clippings, surviving film versions, press releases, official laws, and surviving secondary literature to write a provocative work that will fascinate scholars in fields where marginal cinema, political science, and gender and sexuality studies intersect. Part I organizes the first two chapters under the subtitle “Bodies and Archives.” It begins with an investigation of the political context under which the Sarli–Bó partnership operated, and closes with a discussion of the challenging conditions of undertaking film research in Argentina due to the unfortunate circumstances of its audiovisual archives. Chapter one discusses the period between 1955 and 1973, the years of Juan Domingo Perón’s political proscription and exile, military governments, and institutional instability, all sociopolitical aspects that impacted the production of twenty-three of the twenty-seven Sarli–Bó films. Bó’s filmmaking practices, the birth of youth movements, the films’ popular audience, and the aesthetics of “belonging and excess” configure one of the key theoretical proposals in the book: Peronism’s “affective mode” (30). Through a history of a popular spectatorship of “working-class males” (36), the chapter traces an affective commonality between Perón’s movement and the male audience subscribed to Sarli–Bó films. The political place of female nudity on the screen and the social attitudes toward marginal cinema constitute a significant debate about popular culture and taste formation. Chapter two tells a riveting story of the “disappearance” [End Page 148] of the files contained in the Ente de Calificación Cinematográfica [Film Classification Board], the body from which censorship was exercised through various mechanisms that included partial cuts and prohibitions under Law 18,019 of 1969. The archive’s vanishing act happened during the late 1990s and evidences an act of technological mismanagement and negligence that ended in the...

Keeping the sky in place: the Yanomami case and the accusations against the military dictatorship in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

Resumo: Com base no institucionalismo histórico, o artigo avalia as interações entre Estado brasileiro, Comissão Interamericana de Direitos Humanos e organizações peticionárias pró-indígenas durante a tramitação da denúncia do caso Yanomami entre 1980 e 1985. Metodologicamente, a análise de fontes primárias do Ministério das Relações Exteriores permitiu reconstruir interesses, estratégias e o alcance das ações desses atores. Conclui-se que, apesar das pressões do Brasil contra o caso, a discricionariedade da Comissão e as clivagens entre seus membros se combinaram com o contexto político externo, o qual havia permitido um fortalecimento institucional da Comissão e projetado uma rede transnacional indigenista. Tais fatores resultaram em uma decisão da Comissão que instou o Estado a garantir a demarcação das terras indígenas Yanomami.

Ethical critique in political discourse

In recent years, we have witnessed a drastic wave of totalitarian regimes, as noted by Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) in the book entitled How Democracies Die. The authors provide historical examples of democratic rupture in the last one hundred years: from Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s to the current populist wave of right-wing extremism in Europe, preceded by the military dictatorships of Latin America in the1970s. The dizzying growth of Brazil’s new right wing, particularly the democratic far right, which is spearheaded by current president Jair Bolsonaro as the “honest politician” who stands in opposition to the corrupt political class. Regarding the present context of abuse of power, denial, and fake news, I decided to reflect upon the issue of ethics, more specifically of ethical critique in political discourse.

Dictatorship, Trauma, and Scriptotherapy in Remi Raji’s A Harvest of Laughters

ABSTRACT: This article examines how Remi Raji, a third-generation Nigerian poet, reenacts the social pains and “dis-eases” of the military dictatorship era in Nigeria in A Harvest of Laughters as traumatogenic, as well as how the poet writes himself out of the trauma. While the article espouses the extant critical notion that the poet offers laughter to the victims of structural violence, social pains, and “dis-eases” of the military rule era in the country as a balm, it complicates the view by arguing that the poet’s versification in the volume and, more importantly, his infatuated exploration of laughter is readable as scriptotherapy. The poems titled “Introit,” “I rise now,” “Gift,” “Black Laughter,” “Silence,” “Silence II,” “Orphan Cry”, and “Harvest I–VI” are used to demonstrate this. The analysis draws anchor from Laura Brown’s and Stef Craps’s conceptions of trauma and Geri Chavis’s and some other psychological therapists’ insights on writing and therapy.

"Communication from Afar": The Role of Subversive Mail Art During the Argentine Dirty War, 1976-1983

This paper analyzes the role of mail art by Argentine mail artists Edgardo Antonio Vigo and Graciela Gutiérrez Marx in subverting Argentine fascism and censorship during the Argentine Dirty War from 1976 to 1983. La Guerra Sucia, or “the Dirty War,” was a seven-year period of right-wing military dictatorship in Argentina, following a coup on 24 March 1976, against the government of President Isabel Perón. The U.S. coordinated with the junta and the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, or Triple A, and the dictatorship “disappeared” and tortured thousands of so-called enemies of the state. Meanwhile, American and Argentine artists maintained fluid communications, empowering resistance to the regime. Vigo and Marx created the boldest work of Argentine mail art with wide distribution in the form of an “artistamp”, helping spread awareness of the disappearance of Vigo’s son, Abel Luis. By using the postal system as a means of communication with the outside world, Marx and Vigo informed other civilians about the disappeared peoples of Argentina and spread anti-nationalist and anti-government ideology. By taking a closer look at Vigo and Marx’s mail art correspondence with Ohio mail artist Harley Francis, this paper investigates mail art as an understudied aspect of lower-level international political resistance against the Argentine military regime.

Dictatorship, Trauma, and Scriptotherapy in Remi Raji’s A Harvest of Laughters

ABSTRACT: This article examines how Remi Raji, a third-generation Nigerian poet, reenacts the social pains and “dis-eases” of the military dictatorship era in Nigeria in A Harvest of Laughters as traumatogenic, as well as how the poet writes himself out of the trauma. While the article espouses the extant critical notion that the poet offers laughter to the victims of structural violence, social pains, and “dis-eases” of the military rule era in the country as a balm, it complicates the view by arguing that the poet’s versification in the volume and, more importantly, his infatuated exploration of laughter is readable as scriptotherapy. The poems titled “Introit,” “I rise now,” “Gift,” “Black Laughter,” “Silence,” “Silence II,” “Orphan Cry”, and “Harvest I–VI” are used to demonstrate this. The analysis draws anchor from Laura Brown’s and Stef Craps’s conceptions of trauma and Geri Chavis’s and some other psychological therapists’ insights on writing and therapy.

O Projeto Porto Maravilha e os 450 anos da cidade do Rio: sobre realces e silenciamentos

Abstract This paper discusses certain political uses that the Administration of Eduardo Paes has undertaken concerning the Rio de Janeiro past during his two consecutive terms in charge of the city hall (2009-2016). To this end, anchored in the problematization of different places of memory and their relationship with what is made and taught by historians in their historiographic operations, it focuses on the Porto Maravilha Project that emerged within the celebrations of the city's 450th anniversary, celebrated in 2015. This event contributed both to erasing dimensions and public works related to the military dictatorship and the emergence of other (hi)stories for the city and its people.

O INCONSCIENTE É A POLÍTICA: SOBRE AS DISTOPIAS NA SOCIEDADE BRASILEIRA CONTEMPORÂNEA

ABSTRACT. This essay intends to circumscribe in the recent Brazilian social tradition the problem of far right-wing populism, in a resumption and repetition of what happened in the nefarious times of the military dictatorship. For this, we analyzed the debt established by Brazilian society towards the dead, insofar as the crimes committed by the dictatorship were not judged. In addition, this debt refers to other existing debts in Brazilian society, referring to the slavery tradition, as well as gender related patriarchal relations.

La política turística sobre la playa en un destino maduro. Mar del Plata (Argentina), 1976-1983

The aim of this article is to analyse municipal tourism policy regarding the beach resource in Mar del Plata, during the last Argentinian military dictatorship (1976‑1983). To do so, a qualitative methodological approach has been carried out. Municipal and provincial legislation, official reports, and local and national press are used as sources. The transfer of the beaches from the province to the municipality in 1976 led to a change in the scope and form of their management in that they became an economic resource for the local government. In the context of the formulated tourism policy, organisational and regulatory instruments, plans and projects around the beach resource were designed and implemented. In particular, the aim was to generate a “distinctive” and “exclusive” seaside offer in the southern coastal strip with a market strategy that privileged economic interests over social ones and the private sphere over the State.

Erica Dantas Brasil (1969–2022)

Erica Dantas Brasil (1969–2022) Adam Sharman Language students have very particular expectations of teachers who are from the country whose language they’re studying. As far as students are concerned, such teachers don’t just teach the country’s language; they represent the country. They are ambassadors. In Erica’s case, she didn’t represent a bit of the country; she was the entire country. It was official, it was her name. She was Erica Dantas Brasil. And what a job she did being Brazil in Nottingham for more than twenty years, first under the umbrella of the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies (SPLAS), and latterly under that of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures. Erica was born in the Brazilian Atlantic port city of Fortaleza in 1969, that is, at the height of the military dictatorship. Her family then moved from the northeast to the south of Brazil in the early 1970s as part of that wave of mass migration to the cities. She was educated principally in São Paulo, where she obtained a BSc in Psychology at the Catholic University, in 1992. In 1994, she completed an MA in Psychology at the State University of São Paulo. Then, in 1998, she won an award from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to do an MA in Social Work in the School of Law and Social Sciences here at the University of Nottingham, which she completed in 1999. A year later, she won a scholarship to do a PhD in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies (i.e. SPLAS) in Nottingham. The thesis, which was on Foster Care, was awarded in 2010. The dates tell a story. It was the practice in SPLAS in those days to give PhD students a fees waiver in return for some teaching. Erica was thus a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Portuguese Studies for the first four years of her PhD, before becoming the full-time co-ordinator of the Portuguese language programme in 2004. In other words, she held down a full-time teaching position while doing her thesis. As Coordinator of Portuguese Language, she built a formidable team, training and mentoring colleagues; she developed on-line language exchanges between Nottingham students and students in Brazil; and she dedicated herself to undergraduates with passion and patience. In 2021, her dedication and talent [End Page v] were recognized with a Lord Dearing Award for Excellence in Teaching. She set up internships for our students with a Translation and Interpreting company in São Paulo, and helped establish placements in two British Council partner international language schools in Brazil. In Argentina, she negotiated training for students in the area of advocacy with RELAF, an International NGO dedicated to children’s rights on whose Consultative Committee she sat. Erica was an active researcher. She presented her work in the field of Children’s Rights in Latin America at international conferences. She published articles, book chapters and translations. And she became co-researcher on a project in the History Department of the Federal University Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, funded by the Brazilian Funding Agency, a project that entailed interviewing women who had been involved in armed struggle during the Brazilian dictatorship of the 1960s and ’70s. Beyond SPLAS and the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, Erica served the University on high-level delegations to Latin America. She was a member of the University’s Latin American Regional Advisory Network, with responsibility for fostering collaborations with Brazilian institutions. And in recognition of her outstanding contribution, Erica was promoted to Assistant Professor in Portuguese in 2018. But even without all the achievements outlined above, which include ongoing active participation in Nottingham’s vibrant Brazilian community, it would be enough to single out Erica’s role at the heart of Lusophone Studies in the University. For more than two decades, she helped inculcate in countless undergraduate students a profound love for all things Portuguese and Brazilian. She more than lived up to her name. Erica Dantas Brasil passed away in July 2022, and is much missed by friends, family and colleagues in the UK, Brazil and beyond. [End Page vi] Adam Sharman Professor...

Abolishing Military and Cultivating Pacifism in Costa Rica: Reflective but Limited Peace?

Existing literature on peace, security and civil-military relations in Latin America only recently recognises the historical institutional sources of Costa Rican exceptionalism. While the Cold War's security predicament and the military dictatorship are common antecedents for most Central American states, Costa Rican demilitarisation and pacifism origins are unique and incomparable. Rather than treating post-1948 civil war development as exceptionalism, this paper seeks to normalise their success. The paper examines the political development of Costa Ricans in the 1950s and whether José María Hipólito Figueres Ferrer's historic decision to permanently abolish the military after the war helped to explain the institutionalisation process of organic civilian peace. While Costa Rican decisions to abandon its defence rights are always romanticised as "progressive" and an anomaly during the Cold War. The reality of relations between military abolishment, pacifism and democratic peace is multidimensional and complex. To perpetuate illogical pacificism reflections from Costa Rica in the 1950s and prescribes into present arguments for global democratic peace is somewhat imprecise. Drawing from years of research on Security in Latin America, this article reinvigorates Costa Rican exceptionalism. It analyses the cultivation of pacificism of those that have made the right choices in the face of adverse circumstances. Considering the historical institutional approach in researching local peace history, the paper illustrates a critical juncture that set peculiar peace formation, the path-dependent that ends the war, and the eventual decision to abolish the military in Costa Rica. The path dependence on national progress in education, health, and productivity only confirmed the unique political trajectory of Costa Rica, wherein they cannot be easily replicated or comparable. Understanding this distinctiveness should serve as a reminder of any renewed debate of Costa Rican exceptionalism in Central American security or democratic peace theory in liberal peacebuilding.

Dialogue and Self-Confrontation: A Study of Ahn Byung-Mu’s Minjung Theology of Religions

In the 1970s and 80s, Korean Minjung theology and theology of religions(Inculturation theology) were in a tense relationship due to differences in their theological priorities. However, there was also a complementary relationship between the two theological movements in the Korean situation where the theological domination of the Western church and the political oppression of the military dictatorship were inseparably combined. Especially, Minjung theology, which included the minjung religious traditions of Korea as a theological paradigm, attempted a comparison and dialogue between religions from the beginning. Ahn Byung-mu, one of the founders of Minjung theology, was born and raised in a Confucian culture, and while studying abroad in Germany, he received a doctorate degree with a dissertation that compared the ren of Confucius with agape of Jesus. Also, he was interested in Buddhism and often wrote articles comparing Buddhism with Christianity. Throughout his theological journey, Ahn tried to overcome the subject-object dualism and personified understanding of God in Western theology through theological dialogue with Easter thought. More importantly, in his later years, Ahn applied the Eastern qi philosophy to understand the Holy Spirit. Though Ahn did not systematically theorize a theology of religions, he freely utilized the ideas of other faiths in constructing his theology in general and Minjung theology in particular. In addition, Ahn’s interreligious dialogue was conducted not only externally in his relationship with the religious other but also internally within his faith and theology. Therefore, in this article, I would like to explore the possibility of a Minjung theology of religions which is necessary for today’s religious pluralistic society by examining Ahn’s open, existential, and liberative understandings of other faiths.

Ethnonationalism and Cultural Heritage Law in Myanmar

This article highlights the legal and technical challenges of contemporary heritage conservation in the context of a weak democracy, ethnic unrest, and military rule. Burma was a military dictatorship from 1962 to 2010, followed by the operation of the civil government between 2011 and 2021, which was then overthrown by the military in 2021. These ten years of civil government were characterized by a reopening of the borders to the international community, initiatives towards democracy. In terms of cultural heritage, Myanmar appeared to have made progress in modernizing its legislation when the country ratified and implemented international conventions protecting tangible cultural heritage such as the World Heritage Convention, the 1970 UNESCO Convention, and the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention. In 2015, the elected parliament drafted new legislation protecting cultural heritage: the Law Protecting Ancient Objectsand theLaw on the Preservation and Protection of Ancient Buildings. How has the ratification of international conventions and new laws impacted domestic conservation practices in Myanmar? The democratic turn entailed a visible modernization of laws, policies, and conservation techniques. However, this time was also characterized by peaks of violence between the Burman government, the Rohingya people, and other ethnic minorities. Ultimately, this article reveals that the protection of heritage became closely linked to ethnonationalist ideologies that have survived the numerous changes of political regime. This is particularly true in the Burmese context. Foreign technical assistance must be aware of the country’s complexity and learn from lessons of the past.