[*] The author wishes to thank Mark Denham, Kent Ono and Ariel Faigon for their
constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article.
[1] See for example: Organization of American States, Report on the Situation of
Human Rights in El Salvador, (Washington D.C.: Organization of American States,
1978); Organization of American States, Report on the Situation of Human Rights
in Nicaragua (Washington D.C.: Organization of American States, 1978); Report
of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (1993);
Organization of American States, Report on the Situation of Human Rights in
Argentina (1980); The Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared,
Nunca Mas (New York: Farrar, Strauss Giroux 1986); Amnesty International
Reports; Human Rights Watch Reports; Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights Reports.
[2] Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," in Language, Counter-Memory,
Practice (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977).
[3] Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," in Illuminations
ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), 255
[4] In the last two decades the interpretive character of all historical writing has been
examined within the disciplines of philosophy, history, literary theory and anthropology.
See for example: Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method trans. Joel Weinsheimer
and Donald G. Marshall (New York, Continuum, 1989); Hayden White, The Content
of the Form (Baltimore, 1987); James Clifford and G.E. Marcus, eds., Writing
Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Jacques Derrida, "White
Mythology," in Margins of Philosophy trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982); Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978).
[5] Hayden White, "Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth," in Saul Friedlander
ed., Probing the Limits of Representation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1992) 37.
[6] Martin Jay, "Of Plots, Witnesses and Judgments," in Friedlander note 5 above, 99.
[7] Recall the mockery that many in the United States, from comedians to military strategists
to advertising copy writers, inflicted on the Iraqis for describing the war as the "mother of
all battles," a phrase that is deeply rooted in Iraqi history and culture.
[8] Said, Orientalism. See Jean Baudrillard's The Gulf War Did Not Take Place
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995) for an interesting analysis of the war as
media event, albeit one that reproduces anti-Islamic, Orientalist discourse.
[9] Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1993); Barbara
Harlow, Resistance Literature (New York: Methuen, 1987); Paul Gilroy, The Black
Atlantic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
The Post-colonial Critic (New York: Routledge, 1990); Homi Bhabha, The Location
of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1990).
[10] For analyses of the types of victims see David Pion-Berlin and George Lopez. "Of
Victims and Executioners: Argentine State Terror, 1975-1979," International Studies
Quarterly 35 (1991): 63-86 and Thomas B. Jabine and Richard P. Claude eds., Human
Rights and Statistics (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1992).
[11] Alison Brysk, "The Politics of Measurement: The Contested Count of the
Disappeared in Argentina," Human Rights Quarterly 16 (1994): 676-692 and
John P. King, "Comparative Analysis of Human Rights Violations Under Military
Rule in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay," Statistical Abstract on Latin
America 27 (1989): 1049-50.
[12] Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Report on the Situation of
Human Rights in Argentina. Washington: General Secretariat of the Organization
of American States, 1980.
[13] Amnesty International, Report of an Amnesty International Mission to
Argentina 6-15 November 1976; "Human Rights in the World: Argentina,"
International Commission of Jurists Review 31; Lawyer's Committee
for International Human Rights, Violations of Human Rights in Argentina,
1979; Americas Watch Reports, Report on the Situation of Human Rights
in Argentina, November 1980-February 1982; Center for Legal and Social
Studies, C.E.L.S., Buenos Aires, October 1982. See also The Vanished
Gallery, a site on the World Wide Web containing a list of accused perpetrators
of human rights abuses that had been expurgated from the official report published
by the Argentine government (http://www.yendor.com/vanished/).
[14] See Brysk for an analysis of the controversy over the thoroughness of investigation.
[15] Jose Comblin, The Church and the National Security State (New York:
Orbis Books, 1979); George Lopez, "The National Security Ideology as an Impetus
to State Terror," in Government Violence and Repression, eds. Michael Stohl and
George Lopez (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1986); Emilio Mignone, Witness to
the Truth trans. Phillip Berryman (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1988); David Pion-Berlin,
"The National Security Doctrine, Military Threat Perception and the Dirty War in
Argentina," Comparative Political Studies 21 (1988):382-407. For a dissenting
analysis see Carina Perelli, "From Counterrevolutionary Warfare to Political
Awakening: The Uruguayan and Argentine Armed Forces in the 1970s," Armed
Forces and Society 20.1 (1993): 25-49. Perelli argues that indigenous political
transformations, not United States national security doctrine, led to the armed
forces' policies of repression. Perelli is correct in pointing out the importance of
local conditions, but overstates the amount of influence attributed to the U.S. by
the above analysts.
[16] Genaro Arriagada Herrera, "National Security Doctrine in Latin America,"
trans. Howard Richards Peace and Change 6 (1980): 49.
[17] Jose Comblin, The Church and the National Security State, (New York:
Orbis Books, 1979) 65; Michael T. Klare and Cynthia Aronson. Supplying
Repression: U.S. Support for Authoritarian Regimes Abroad (Washington:
Institute for Policy Studies, 1981). For a dissenting analysis see Alain Rouquié,
The Military and the State in Latin America trans. Paul E. Sigmund (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1987). Rouquié argues that the Argentine armed
forces hardly needed foreigners to teach them how to wage anti-guerrilla warfare
or to practice political repression, as they had gained ample experience in both
during their genocidal campaigns against the indigenous cultures. In a snide
reference to the term used in the discipline of comparative politics to describe
the military regimes of the seventies (bureaucratic-authoritarian state), Rouquié
refers to Argentina as the bourreau-cratic state, the executioners' state.
[18] John Child, "Geopolitical Thinking in Latin America," Latin American Research
Review 14.2 (1979): 89.
[19] During the medieval period the king's body was considered to be representative
of the state he ruled, thus an affront against the state was viewed also as crime against
the king's own body and vice versa. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish trans.
Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1977) and Enrst Kantorowicz, The King's Two
Bodies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).
[20] Comblin, The National Security State, note 16 above, 83.
[21] Comblin, The National Security State, note 17 above, 93.
[22] Lopez, "The National Security Ideology," note 15 above, 87.
[23] George Pope Atkins and Larry V. Thompson, "German Military Influence in
Argentina, 1921-1940," Journal of Latin American Studies 4.2 (1972): 257-274;
Warren Schiff, "The Influence of the German Armed Forces and War Industry on
Argentina, 1880-1915." Hispanic American Historical Review 52.3 (1972):
437-455; Frederick Nunn, Yesterday's Soldiers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1983).
[24] David Pion-Berlin, "The National Security Doctrine, Military Threat Perception
and the "Dirty War" in Argentina," Comparative Political Studies 21.3 (1988): 388.
[25] Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency,
trans. Daniel Lee (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964).
[26] Trinquier, Modern Warfare, note 23 above, 6. Emphasis in original.
[27] Trinquier, Modern Warfare, note 24 above, 21.
[28] Trinquier, Modern Warfare, note 24 above, 28
[29] See Pion-Berlin; Klare & Aronson; R. Thomson's Defeating Communist
Insurgency (New York: Praeger, 1966); and Lt. Col. T.N. Greene ed. The Guerrilla
- and How to Fight Him (New York: Praeger, 1966).
[30] Perelli "From Counterrevolutionary Warfare to Political Awakening," note 15 above, 30.
[31] Perelli, "From Counterrevolutionary Warfare to Political Awakening," note 15 above, 29
[32] Mark Osiel, "The Making of Human Rights Policy in Argentina: the Impact of
Ideas and Interests on Legal Conflict," Journal of Latin American Studies, 18
(May 1986): 172.
[33] See Ricardo Zinn, Argentina: A Nation at the Crossroads of Myth and Reality
(New York: Robert Speller & Sons, Inc., 1979) 71-73. For Zinn, the war consisted
not only in armed attacks, but also rock and roll protest music, posters of Che Geuvara,
and guerrilla-styled fashion.
[34] Alejandro M. Garro and Henry Dahl, "Legal Accountability for Human Rights
Violations in Argentina: One Step Forward and Two Steps Backward," Human
Rights Law Journal 8.2-4 (1987): 325; Osiel, "The Making of Human Rights Policy
in Argentina," note 29 above, 172. The real number of armed terrorists was considerably
smaller, although estimates vary. More importantly, the miltary suppressed armed
resistance within a year of coming to power, but the disappearance of unarmed civilians
continued long afterwards.
[35] All citations will be from two speeches translated and reprinted by Brian Loveman
and Thomas M. Davies Jr.: "The Armed Forces' Decision to Assume the Direction of the
State," and "A Time for Fundamental Reorganization of the Nation," in The Politics of
Antipolitics: The Military in Latin America, ed. Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies
Jr. (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 196-198.
[36] Due to the subordination of the judiciary to the goals of the Proceso, it was the
junta and not the courts who determined guilt. The courts shamefully acquiesced to
the suspension of civil rights and ignored numerous petitions of habeas corpus filed
by family and friends of the disappeared.
[37] The junta's inaugural speech is markedly similar to Heidegger's rectoral address.
Both refer to the distress of their people, spiritual leadership, cyclical history, the
need for sacrifice and the assumption of battle positions. Heidegger even cites
Clausewitz. I would argue that this similarity reflects the long history of the influence
of German military doctrine and Prussian ideology in Argentine military schools. See
Martin Heidegger, "The Self-Assertion of the German University," Review of
Metaphysics 38.3 (1985): 470-480.
[38] Loveman and Davies, note 32 above, 199.
[39] See Nancy Leys Stepan "The Hour of Eugenics": Race, Gender and Nation
in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).
[40] See for example Ricardo Zinn, Argentina: A Nation at the Crossroads of Myth
and Reality (New York: Robert Speller & Sons, Inc., 1979) Chapter 1.
[41] See Herbert C. Kelman's "Violence Without Moral Restraint: Reflections on the
Dehumanization of Victims and Victimizers," Journal of Social Issues 9.4 (1973): 25-61.
[42] See David Rock, Authoritarian Argentina (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993) for a history of the conservative Catholic Nationalist movement and its
influence on the Argentine military.
[43] Cited in Frank Graziano, Divine Violence: Spectacle, Psychosexuality and
Radical Christianity in the Argentine "Dirty War" (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), 123.
[44] Marcial Castro Castillo's handbook of military ethics Fuerzas Armada: Etica
y represion (Buenos Aires: Editorial Nuevo Ordern, 1979), 120. Cited in Graziano, 120.
[45] Nunca Mas, note 1 above, 333. The student was subsequently murdered and
became one of the symbols used by the international campaign against the junta.
[46] New York Times, Aug. 6, 1976. The General in charge of the university purge
stated, "Until we can cleanse the teaching area, and professors are all of Christian
thought and ideology, we will not achieve the triumph we seek in our struggle against
the revolutionary left."
[47] Washington Post, November 21, 1977. See also John Simpson and Jana Bennett,
The Disappeared (London: Robson Books Ltd., 1986), Chapters 12 and 13.
[48] Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number trans.
Tony Talbot (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), 34-35. See also Alicia Partnoy,
The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival in Argentina trans.
Alicia Partnoy with Lois Athey and Sandra Braunstein (Pittsburgh: CLEIS Press, 1986).
[49] Nunca Mas, 29.
[50] Nunca Mas, 32.
[51] Hernan Vidal, "The Politics of the Body: The Chilean Junta and the
Anti-fascist Struggle," Social Text (Summer 1979).
[52] Vidal, "The Politics of the Body," note 52 above, 106.
[53] Alicia Partnoy, The Little School trans. Alicia Partnoy with Lois Athey and
Sandra Braunstein (San Francisco: CLEIS Press, 1986), 84-85.
[54] Garro and Dahl, "Legal Accountability," note 30 above, 301.
[55] Garro and Dahl, "Legal Accountability," note 30 above, 303.
[56] For details of the defence see Garro and Dahl, "Legal Accountability," note
30 above, 325; Osiel, "The Making of Human Rights Policy in Argentina," note 30
above; Kathryn Lee Crawford, "Due Obedience and the Rights of the Victims:
Argentina's Transition to Democracy," Human Rights Quarterly 12.1 (1990): 17-52.
[57] Garro and Dahl "Legal Accountability," note 30 above, 325. In point of fact,
the Geneva Convention on Laws of a Non-International Nature does apply to
counter-insurgency warfare.
[58] Garro and Dahl, "Legal Accountability," note 30 above, 311, n. 115
[59] Crawford, "Due Obedience," note 53 above, 24; Garro and Dahl, "Legal
Accountability," note 30 above, 316
[60] Garro and Dahl, "Legal Accountability," note 30 above, 338
[61] Crawford, "Due Obedience," note 49 above, 17
[62] Crawford," Due Obedience," note 49 above, 27. The law exempted rape,
theft, and the kidnapping of children. The law deemed torturers and murders innocent.
[63] Crawford, "Due Obedience," note 49 above, 31
[64] Nunca Mas, note 1 above, 38.
[65] For an account of the trials see Amnesty International, Argentina: The
Military Junta and Human Rights: Report of the Trial of the Former Junta
Members (New York: Amnesty International Publications, 1987); David
Pion-Berlin, "To Prosecute or Pardon? Human Rights Decisions in the Latin
American Southern Cone," Human Rights Quarterly 15 (1993):105-130.
[66] Crawford, "Due Obedience," note 49 above, 35
[67] Page duBois, Torture and Truth (New York: Routledge, 1991).
