Abstract: Enrique Mendieta and the Ghosts of Leftism Past: The Aftereffects of Mexico’s Dirty War in Élmer Mendoza’s Detective Fiction

 

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Enrique Mendieta and the Ghosts of Leftism Past: The Aftereffects of Mexico’s Dirty War in Élmer Mendoza’s Detective Fiction

 

by  Michael K. Walonen

The continuance of the revolutionary strife of Mexico’s dirty war into the present day, both as a legacy and in the form of its survivors, resonates strongly in the work of the novelist Élmer Mendoza. Mendoza’s early novel Janis Joplin’s Lover uses its protagonist to portray a 1970s Mexico torn between a revolutionary path of collective social amelioration and the corrupt, mercenary self-interest embodied by Mexican narco-traffickers, with the country pushed toward the latter through the repression of student activists by the Mexican state. Mendoza’s five subsequent novels that center on the exploits of detective Lefty Mendieta focus on the fallout from this period of repression, using the figure of Lefty’s brother Enrique, a former leftist guerrilla, to represent a lost (but not totally lost) egalitarian and socially just alternative to the neoliberal political economy that has ravaged the living conditions of most Mexicans for almost four decades.

CONTINUE READING FULL ARTICLE HERE

Abstract, Reconstructing the Collective Memory of Mexico’s Dirty War: Ideologization, Clandestine Detention, and Torture

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Reconstructing the Collective Memory of Mexico’s Dirty War: Ideologization, Clandestine Detention, and Torture
Jorge Mendoza García                                                                 


A silenced and forgotten period of the Mexican past is that of the dirty war unleashed by the state against social movements in the second half of the twentieth century, especially the guerrillas and suspected guerrillas of the 1960s and 1970s. The dirty war is an unresolved issue in terms of memory, acknowledgment, and justice for those who suffered violence at the hands of those in power. An account of part of this period that reconstructs the ideologization, clandestine detention, and torture suffered by victims of this dirty war from the perspective of collective memory contributes to filling the gap in knowledge about this period.

Political Report # 1205 Does Henry Kissinger Have a Conscience?

By Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker

Last March, when President Obama travelled to Argentina to meet with the country's new President, Mauricio Macri, his public appearances were dogged by protesters who noisily demanded explanations, and apologies, for U.S. policies, past and present. There are few countries in the West where anti-Americanism is as vociferously expressed as in Argentina, where a highly politicized culture of grievance has evolved in which many of the country's problems are blamed on the United States. On the left, especially, there is lingering resentment over the support extended by the U.S. government to Argentina's right-wing military, which seized power in March of 1976 and launched a "Dirty War" against leftists that took thousands of lives over the following seven years. Obama's visit coincided with the fortieth anniversary of the coup. He pointedly paid homage to the Dirty War's victims by visiting a shrine built in their honor on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. In an address he gave at the shrine, Obama acknowledged what he characterized as American sins of omission, but he stopped short of issuing an outright apology. "Democracies have to have the courage to acknowledge when we don't live up to the ideals that we stand for," he said. "And we've been slow to speak out for human rights, and that was the case here."

Abstract, Reconstructing the Collective Memory of Mexico’s Dirty War: Ideologization, Clandestine Detention, and Torture

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Reconstructing the Collective Memory of Mexico’s Dirty War: Ideologization, Clandestine Detention, and Torture
Jorge Mendoza García                                                                 


A silenced and forgotten period of the Mexican past is that of the dirty war unleashed by the state against social movements in the second half of the twentieth century, especially the guerrillas and suspected guerrillas of the 1960s and 1970s. The dirty war is an unresolved issue in terms of memory, acknowledgment, and justice for those who suffered violence at the hands of those in power. An account of part of this period that reconstructs the ideologization, clandestine detention, and torture suffered by victims of this dirty war from the perspective of collective memory contributes to filling the gap in knowledge about this period.

Abstract, Reconstructing the Collective Memory of Mexico’s Dirty War: Ideologization, Clandestine Detention, and Torture

:::::: Abstract ::::::

Reconstructing the Collective Memory of Mexico’s Dirty War: Ideologization, Clandestine Detention, and Torture
Jorge Mendoza García                                                                 


A silenced and forgotten period of the Mexican past is that of the dirty war unleashed by the state against social movements in the second half of the twentieth century, especially the guerrillas and suspected guerrillas of the 1960s and 1970s. The dirty war is an unresolved issue in terms of memory, acknowledgment, and justice for those who suffered violence at the hands of those in power. An account of part of this period that reconstructs the ideologization, clandestine detention, and torture suffered by victims of this dirty war from the perspective of collective memory contributes to filling the gap in knowledge about this period.