Veil of Silence

Autor: Jerry W. Knudson
Rok vydání: 1997
Předmět:
Zdroj: Latin American Perspectives. 24:93-112
ISSN: 1552-678X
0094-582X
DOI: 10.1177/0094582x9702400605
Popis: Violence in Latin America seems endemic in the popular mind, but the stereotype became harsh reality in Argentina during the dirty war waged by the military regime against "subversives" between 1976 and 1983. Partly in reprisal against terrorist attacks by urban guerrillas of preceding years, the ruling military itself coined the phrase "dirty war," making clear that they deemed any means justified in combating threats-real or perceived-to Argentina's oligarchical social structure. This resulted in the most severe onslaught against the press by any government in hemispheric history, with 84 journalists among the 8,960 persons originally documented as killed or missing in 1983 after the military left power (CONADEP, 1984: 372-374). The true dimensions of this miniature holocaust, however, may never be known. Emilio F. Mignone, president of the Center for Legal and Social Studies in Buenos Aires, the most reliable source for human rights statistics in Argentina, believes that the number of the disappeared will reach 20,000 when all of the evidence is sifted and those in remote corners of the country-hitherto afraid to speak out-come forward (interview, July 25, 1990). When Adolfo Francisco Scilingo, a former lieutenant commander in the Argentine navy, admitted in 1995 that 1,500 to 2,000 live and drugged bodies of victims had been jettisoned into the Atlantic from planes, the Los Angeles Times (March 13, 1995) and other newspapers revived earlier speculation that the final toll would go as high as 30,000 persons.1
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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