Characterized by state
terrorism
How threatening was the Revolutionary Period?
Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification
The guerillas were responsible for
The army and other agencies of the state were responsible
for
The report made the point that
Most people define terrorism ethnocentrically:
As political relations change, so can these determinations
Freedom fighters can become terrorists
And terrorists can become freedom fighters
We
hear a lot about antistate terrorism but very little, if any, about state
terrorism because
Antistate terrorism seeks to change the status quo
State
terrorism seeks to maintain the
status quo
Nature of anti-state and state terrorism
Anti-state terrorism
State terrorism
Normally people who
commit a crime out of desperation is considered not as culpable as
people
plan and calculate a crime
Anti-state terrorism is always terrorism
State terrorism is often legitimized as
self-defense
Consider this:
Results of anti-state
and state terrorism
Anti-state, individual, and small group
terrorism
State Terrorism
Conclusion
Elites and major media define what terrorism is
Three varieties of State Terrorism
1)
State
terrorism against an enemy in war
Iraq 2003
Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance
Like nuclear bomb
Break will to resist
Other
forms of terrorism against an enemy
Disease and starvation
Economic sanctions
Wars fought against civilians
2)
False
Commit acts of terrorism against
own people or ally or allow to happen
Nero burning
Hitler burning Reichstag
Peral
Harbor
Operation
Northwoods
Operation
Gladio
Commit
acts of terrorism and blame on communists
Long
history and continuing today
How
to tell them apart?
Qui
Bono
Rudolph Rummel has revealed
that in 1st 80 years of 20th century:
170,00,000 killed by own
government
38,000,000 battlefield deaths
Could be as high as 360,000,000
Does not include recent genocide
Greater chance of being killed by state terrorism
Difference
between repression and state terrorism
Repression
State terrorism
Massive growth of terrorism since 1945
Amnesty International in 1996 out of 150 countries in world
Torture Abolition and Survivors
Support Coalition
Torture
Disappearances
Death squads
Deniability
Anyone who
Labeled
Any activity or idea
People
It
is relied upon
1)
2)
Reinhold
Neibuhr
Each
person forced to choose between
1)
2)
Most people will
Doctrine of National Security
The
ideology that legitimized the imposition of state terrorism
US and French invention force-fed to
Justifies and cloaks
National Security Ideology
Reifies the nation-state
Military responsible
Elites define nation-state
Contrary ideas considered
foreign
subversive
a threat
target
State an organism threatened by disease of
subversion
People who want change
Threats included
Individual rights
Military argued
Open ended definition of the enemy
Most killed were innocent
Counter-insurgency
Strategy to deal with this threat
Warfare
Included:
Enemy is the people
Military
took power in four major LA countries
Each of these regimes set out to accomplish two things:
1)
2)
Military
regimes controlled the countries of
We are going to examine
Guatemala and El Salvador
400 armed guerillas
2500 organized leftist
Military seized power on
The seizure of power by the military was welcomed by almost
everyone
Most
people accepted the explanation
Defending Western, Christian Civilization
Fight
was for Western, Christian civilization
The Dirty War
In just eight months
1000 shot
20,000 missing
300,000 exiled
Guerillas decimated
Detention Centers
Military
set up 341 detention centers
desaparecidos
Everyone was tortured
Terror must be arbitrary
Disappearances
"Night and Fog"
All LA countries used disappearances as a way of combating
subversion
Word
"desaparecido" --"to disappear someone"
Favorite and extremely effective tactic in LA:
1)
2)
3)
Particularly gruesome tortures
Torture
rarely occurs where it does not have the sanction and blessing of the
authorities
Who were the Victims?
General
Videla
"A terrorist is not just someone with a gun or a
bomb, but also
"As many people as necessary must die in
General
Iberico Saint-Jean put it this way
Jacobo Timerman, Argentina's most prominent journalist
was sucked up,
tortured and held for two years. He wrote a book
entitled Prisoner
Without
a Name, Cell Without a Number
Testimony
of the actor Sergio Buschmann, presented by Americas Watch Committee
Testimony of José
Moya, presented by Americas Watch Committee
Tito Tricot
Innocent Victims
Being in address book
A year had passed before one victim found out why he had been picked up:
Two
French nuns, Alice Domon and Sister Léonie Duquet, the President of the
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo along with 10 others were
kidnapped and killed for
Navy Captain Alfredo Astiz
It was
dangerous even to look around
Children
Hundreds of
boys and girls between the ages of thirteen and 18 disappeared
Matia
Carega
Marguerite
Feitlowitz in her book A Lexicon of Terror
60 youths from the Manuel Belgrano high school were
kidnapped for
having
been members of the student council.
There is
testimony of the cattle prod being used
Navy
Captain Alfredo Astiz also shot 16 year old Swedish citizen Dagmar Hagelin in
the back
Astiz's victims
An
estimated 500 babies disappeared, 200 children were born in captivity.
Estela Barnes de Carlotto, president of
Grandmothers said
Military intended
The Night of the Pencils (La Noche de las lápices)
The number of dead or disappeared
The military regime was brought to an end
not because
nor because
nor because of any pressure from the
Ended because
Economics
Published a report entitled Nunca
Mas translated "Never Again"
Said that the military dictatorship
Claimed that the original purpose of the dirty war was to:
But
this original purpose would be superseded by an even more repellant purpose:
The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo
The only people who had the courage to openly resist the
military
The group started with just 14
Pictures
of their disappeared children
March around the Plaza
The military disappeared the fist President of the Mothers
The organization grew into the thousands and became effective
Mothers learned from their children
Still persecuted
Death, torture, and terror was ten times greater in
El Salvador
1932 Matanza
Army slaughtered 30,000
peasants
Their
response to the revolutionary period was similar
1000 people a month
75,000 killed in all
UN
Truth Commission
Killing was done in a way to terrorize the people into
silence and impotence
In
1988 two human rights women
As late as 1990 things like the following were still happening:
Father
Santiago has written that
No one was safe:
Oscar Romero
Named as the Archbishop of
He
wrote a letter President Carter
He ordered the soldiers not to obey their commanders
Killed in process of giving Mass
Robert D’Aubuisson, who founded ARENA, the
political party of the elites and
who also began the death squads in
Others:
Three American nuns and a Christian lay worker
1989 killed six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper
and her daughter murdered by
the notorious US trained Atlacalt Battalion
The Massacre at Mazote
700 to 1000 men, women, and children killed by the
What was the purpose of such a massacre?
The commander of the Atlacalt Battalion was Colonel Monterrosa
Radio Venceremous
200,000
killed
626
massacres
84%
of those killed were Indians
In
the 1960's the state killed 10,000 people in an effort to wipe out just 500
guerillas
1967
one of Guatemala’s most famous poets, Otto René Castillo
Miss
Guatemala of 1968
Urban areas—all reform and moderate people were assassination
targets
Clyde
Snow, a forensic anthropologist
One of the death squads,
Mano Blanca (White Hand), sent a
death warning to a
student leader.
Former American Maryknoll priest Blase Bonpane said:
Sandoval
Alarcón
Most
of the killing was directed toward the Mayan Indians
1) Draining the sea
2) Permanent workers
Army implemented a system of Civil Defense Patrols to
consolidate their control over the Indians
Robert
M. Carmack Harvest of
Violence:
Destroying the seed
Conclusion to Reaction