Cruel Modernity

Cruel Modernity PDF Author: Jean Franco
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 082235456X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
In Cruel Modernity, Jean Franco examines the conditions under which extreme cruelty became the instrument of armies, governments, rebels, and rogue groups in Latin America. She seeks to understand how extreme cruelty came to be practiced in many parts of the continent over the last eighty years and how its causes differ from the conditions that brought about the Holocaust, which is generally the atrocity against which the horror of others is measured. In Latin America, torturers and the perpetrators of atrocity were not only trained in cruelty but often provided their own rationales for engaging in it. When "draining the sea" to eliminate the support for rebel groups gave license to eliminate entire families, the rape, torture, and slaughter of women dramatized festering misogyny and long-standing racial discrimination accounted for high death tolls in Peru and Guatemala. In the drug wars, cruelty has become routine as tortured bodies serve as messages directed to rival gangs. Franco draws on human-rights documents, memoirs, testimonials, novels, and films, as well as photographs and art works, to explore not only cruel acts but the discriminatory thinking that made them possible, their long-term effects, the precariousness of memory, and the pathos of survival.

Cruel Modernity

Cruel Modernity PDF Author: Jean Franco
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 082235456X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
In Cruel Modernity, Jean Franco examines the conditions under which extreme cruelty became the instrument of armies, governments, rebels, and rogue groups in Latin America. She seeks to understand how extreme cruelty came to be practiced in many parts of the continent over the last eighty years and how its causes differ from the conditions that brought about the Holocaust, which is generally the atrocity against which the horror of others is measured. In Latin America, torturers and the perpetrators of atrocity were not only trained in cruelty but often provided their own rationales for engaging in it. When "draining the sea" to eliminate the support for rebel groups gave license to eliminate entire families, the rape, torture, and slaughter of women dramatized festering misogyny and long-standing racial discrimination accounted for high death tolls in Peru and Guatemala. In the drug wars, cruelty has become routine as tortured bodies serve as messages directed to rival gangs. Franco draws on human-rights documents, memoirs, testimonials, novels, and films, as well as photographs and art works, to explore not only cruel acts but the discriminatory thinking that made them possible, their long-term effects, the precariousness of memory, and the pathos of survival.

Memoria Del Silencio

Memoria Del Silencio PDF Author: Uva de Aragón
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780982786048
Category : Cuba
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Fiction. Latino/Latina Studies. Women's Studies. Translated from the Spanish by Jeffrey C. Barnett. Edited by Paula Sanmartin and Maria di Franscesco. Second place winner, 2016 International Latino Book Award for Best Novel, Historical Fiction—Bilingual or Spanish. A metaphor of a nation and its Diaspora, this bilingual edition of THE MEMORY OF SILENCE/MEMORIA DEL SILENCIO transcends the Cuban reality and becomes a story of universal breadth, a triumph of love and family over distance and politics. In 1959, at the age of 18, the twin sisters Lauri and Menchu share a common past, but their lives abruptly take on seemingly irreconcilable differences as Lauri leaves with her groom for Miami and Menchu remains in Havana. The text, then, becomes a series of interpolated chronicles, as each alternating chapter recounts one sister's life and then the other until finally in the present, now reunited, the sisters must confront the pain of the past and as well as the promise of the future. The novel's theme of reconciliation presents a refreshing message, and a timely one.

Reconciliation, Nations and Churches in Latin America

Reconciliation, Nations and Churches in Latin America PDF Author: Iain S. Maclean
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131707047X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This book examines the recent phenomenon in Latin America of national Truth and Reconciliation commissions. Few studies have examined the role of Churches or religion in political processes that proclaim valued theological terms as their agenda - truth, forgiveness, and reconciliation. This book questions the role of religion, specifically of established Churches. The impact of such reconciliation commissions on Indigenous Native Americans is also examined, as is the role of women and how both commissions and Churches or religions were challenged by their experiences. The contributors offer differing perspectives on one or more national truth and reconciliation processes and thus offer a collection that serves as valuable source for the disciplines of Religious Studies, Ethics, Theology, Political Science, Social Sciences and Women's Studies.

Blessed Are the Activists

Blessed Are the Activists PDF Author: Michael J. Cangemi
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 081736126X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Documents the history of Catholic activism to mitigate human rights abuses in Guatemala and the failed US policies in the country and region during the 1970s and 1980s Blessed Are the Activists examines US Catholic activists' influence on US-Guatemalan relations during the Guatemalan civil war's most violent years in the 1970s and 1980s. Cangemi argues that Catholic activists' definition of human rights, advocacy methods, and structure caused them to act as a transnational human rights NGO that engaged Guatemalan and US government officials on human rights issues, reported on Guatemala's human rights violations, and criticized US foreign policy decisions as a contributing factor in Guatemala's inequality, poverty, and violence. His work foregrounds how Catholic activists emphasized dignity for Guatemala's poorest citizens and the connections they made between justice, solidarity, and peace and brought Guatemala's violence, poverty, and inequality to greater global attention, often at great personal risk. Cangemi pays considerable attention to multiple facets of the strained US-Guatemala diplomatic relationship, including how and why Guatemala's military dictatorship exposed the internal flaws within the Carter administration's decision to link military aid to human rights and how internal foreign policy debates in the Carter and Reagan administrations helped to intensify Guatemala's bloody civil war. He also includes interviews conducted with Guatemalan genocide survivors and refugees to provide firsthand accounts of the consequences of those policymaking decisions. Finally, he offers readers an in-depth examination of the US Catholic press's sharp rebukes of US policies on Guatemala and all of Central America when the broader Roman Catholic Church began to move farther toward the ideological right under John Paul II. Blessed Are the Activists offers rich, original research and a gripping narrative. With Guatemala and other countries in Latin America still experiencing human rights abuses, this book will continue to provide context. It will appeal to a broad swath of readers, from scholars to the general public and students.

State Violence and Genocide in Latin America

State Violence and Genocide in Latin America PDF Author: Marcia Esparza
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135244952
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
This edited volume explores political violence and genocide in Latin America during the Cold War, examining this in light of the United States’ hegemonic position on the continent. Using case studies based on the regimes of Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Peru and Uruguay, this book shows how U.S foreign policy – far from promoting long term political stability and democratic institutions – has actually undermined them. The first part of the book is an inquiry into the larger historical context in which the development of an unequal power relationship between the United States and Latin American and Caribbean nations evolved after the proliferation of the Monroe Doctrine. The region came to be seen as a contested terrain in the East-West conflict of the Cold War, and a new US-inspired ideology, the ‘National Security Doctrine’, was used to justify military operations and the hunting down of individuals and groups labelled as ‘communists’. Following on from this historical context, the book then provides an analysis of the mechanisms of state and genocidal violence is offered, demonstrating how in order to get to know the internal enemy, national armies relied on US intelligence training and economic aid to carry out their surveillance campaigns. This book will be of interest to students of Latin American politics, US foreign policy, human rights and terrorism and political violence in general. Marcia Esparza is an Assistant Professor in Criminal Justice Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Henry R. Huttenbach is the Founder and Chairman of the International Academy for Genocide Prevention and Professor Emeritus of City College of the City University of New York. Daniel Feierstein is the Director of the Center for Genocide Studies at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Argentina, and is a Professor in the Faculty of Genocide at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

On Our Own Terms

On Our Own Terms PDF Author: Sarah Foss
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469670348
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
During the Cold War, U.S. intervention in Latin American politics, economics, and society grew in scope and complexity, with diplomatic legacies evident in today's hemispheric policies. Development became a key form of intervention as government officials and experts from the United States and Latin America believed that development could foster hemispheric solidarity and security. In parts of Latin America, its implementation was especially intricate because recipients of these programs were diverse Indigenous peoples with their own politics, economics, and cultures. Contrary to project planners' expectations, Indigenous beneficiaries were not passive recipients but actively engaged with development interventions and, in the process, redefined racialized ideas about Indigeneity. Sarah Foss illustrates how this process transpired in Cold War Guatemala, spanning democratic revolution, military coups, and genocidal civil war. Drawing on previously unused sources such as oral histories, anthropologists' field notes, military records, municipal and personal archives, and a private photograph collection, Foss analyzes the uses and consequences of development and its relationship to ideas about race from multiple perspectives, emphasizing its historical significance as a form of intervention during the Cold War.

¿CUAL GUERRA?

¿CUAL GUERRA? PDF Author: Laurie E. Levinger
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1620320797
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
En ÀCu‡l Guerra? Testimonios de Sobrevivientes Maya, algunos j—venes que fueron v'ctimas de la violencia relatan sus historias. En sus propias palabras, nos cuentan c—mo sus vidas fueron devastadas por el trauma, el terror y la muerte. La violencia es colocada en contexto hist—rico con cap'tulos espec'ficos que enfocan en el exilio forzado, las experiencias œnicas sobrellevadas por mujeres y ni–os, el empacto en la vida familiar, la lucha por mantener la identidad maya y el efecto de los Acuerdos de Paz. La realidad es que se necesita de un profundo coraje para romper el silencio y hablar de esta dolorosa historia personal. Estos sobrevivientes est‡n comprometidos a decir la verdad de sus propias experiencias. Aqu' lidian con el futuro, rehacen sus vidas y tienen el compromiso de crear una nueva Guatemala.

The Role of Courts in Transitional Justice

The Role of Courts in Transitional Justice PDF Author: Jessica Almqvist
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136579257
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Bringing together a group of outstanding judges, scholars and experts with first-hand experience in the field of transitional justice in Latin America and Spain, this book offers an insider’s perspective on the enhanced role of courts in prosecuting serious human rights violations and grave crimes, such as genocide and war crimes, committed in the context of a prior repressive regime or current conflict. The book also draws attention to the ways in which regional and international courts have come to contribute to the initiation of national judicial processes. All the contributions evince that the duty to investigate and prosecute grave crimes can no longer simply be brushed to the side in societies undergoing transitions. The Role of Courts in Transitional Justice is essential reading for practitioners, policy-makers and scholars engaged in the transitional justice processes or interested in judicial and legal perspectives on the role of courts, obstacles faced, and how they may be overcome. It is unique in its ambition to offer a comprehensive and systematic account of the Latin American and Spanish experience and in bringing the insights of renowned judges and experts in the field to the forefront of the discussion.

Paper Cadavers

Paper Cadavers PDF Author: Kirsten Weld
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 082237658X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
In Paper Cadavers, an inside account of the astonishing discovery and rescue of Guatemala's secret police archives, Kirsten Weld probes the politics of memory, the wages of the Cold War, and the stakes of historical knowledge production. After Guatemala's bloody thirty-six years of civil war (1960–1996), silence and impunity reigned. That is, until 2005, when human rights investigators stumbled on the archives of the country's National Police, which, at 75 million pages, proved to be the largest trove of secret state records ever found in Latin America. The unearthing of the archives renewed fierce debates about history, memory, and justice. In Paper Cadavers, Weld explores Guatemala's struggles to manage this avalanche of evidence of past war crimes, providing a firsthand look at how postwar justice activists worked to reconfigure terror archives into implements of social change. Tracing the history of the police files as they were transformed from weapons of counterinsurgency into tools for post-conflict reckoning, Weld sheds light on the country's fraught transition from war to an uneasy peace, reflecting on how societies forget and remember political violence.

Guatemala, the Question of Genocide

Guatemala, the Question of Genocide PDF Author: Elizabeth A. Oglesby
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351401327
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
In Guatemala, it was called the "trial of the century": the 2013 prosecution of former de facto head of state (1982-1983) General José Efraín Ríos Montt and his intelligence chief, General José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against the Maya-Ixil people. Ríos Montt's seventeen-month reign was one of the bloodiest periods in Guatemala's history, with "scorched earth" massacres, the destruction of hundreds of Maya communities, and militarized resettlement of Mayas into "model villages." Ríos Montt was convicted on all charges. Ten days later, a higher court vacated the verdict on dubious procedural grounds. Nevertheless, Guatemala's genocide trial, held in the domestic courts in the country where the crimes were committed, was precedent-setting. In this volume, Guatemalan and international scholars rigorously explore the complexities of the Guatemala experience and reflect upon the case's implications for understanding and prosecuting the category of genocide more broadly. Topics include: the nexus of racism and counterinsurgency in explaining Guatemala's genocide; the politics of Maya collective memory; the intersections of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity in genocide; the decades-long interconnections of national and transnational justice processes that brought the case to trial; and the limits and contributions of tribunal justice. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research.