Abstract, The Uses of Culture in the Last Argentine Dictatorship (1976–1983): From Studies of Repression to Analyses of the Construction of Consensus

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The Uses of Culture in the Last Argentine Dictatorship (1976–1983): From Studies of Repression to Analyses of the Construction of Consensus 

by Laura Schenquer

Democratic governments are not the only ones that formulate political strategies to generate consensus. The last Argentine dictatorship (1976–1983) also developed cultural, educational, and communication policies to maintain and increase its support and to curb the opposition. However, these policies have not been studied in the postdictatorship, largely because of the prevalence of the image of the apagón cultural (cultural blackout)—the notion that the dictatorship’s project was simply repression and censorship. Examination of recently discovered official documents reveals the productive and creative character of the dictatorship’s cultural projects, which were used to increase social control and impose a certain “order.”

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Political Report # 1361 Repression Intensifies in Argentina After President Empowers the Military

by Liz Mason-Deese, Truthout

Weeks after Argentina signed a deal for a new $50 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and only days after hosting G20 leaders in Buenos Aires, Argentine President Mauricio Macri issued a decree July 23 that would allow the country’s armed forces to intervene in questions of domestic security. The decree violates laws passed after the country’s last military dictatorship - an authoritarian military junta that took power in a coup in 1976 and used force and repression to silence all opposition - ended in 1983, which limited the role of the armed forces, and points to a disturbing trend of militarization and repression under the right-wing government. The decision sparked immediate outrage from human rights organizations and social movements who have since organized massive protests around the country. In his statement, President Macri referred to issues of “national security,” drug-trafficking and protecting the national border to justify giving the military expanded powers. He also stated a more general need for the armed forces to “modernize” in response to 21st century threats, including “internal threats.” These statements have worried many human rights organizations who fear a return to the type of repression experienced under the dictatorship - when armed forces were likewise allowed to intervene in domestic issues. According to the Center for Legal and Social Studies, the decree is in violation of the Defense and Security Laws, a series of laws that separate national defense from domestic security, considered fundamental to Argentina’s democracy and necessary to prevent a return to the state terrorism of the dictatorship. During that period, the state and the armed forces were responsible for the “disappearance” of 30,000 people from 1976 to 1983: kidnapping, torturing and murdering them using similar rhetoric about “internal enemies.” In a statement against the decree, the Center argues that, “This new paradigm builds the idea of internal enemies and increases violence. Involving Armed Forces in interior security puts at risk the civilian government and human rights.”

Political Report # 1315 Defending Hope and Freedom against Fear and Repression in Honduras

By  David A. Sylvester Tikkum

TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS - You may have seen the photographs of the violent protests here in the capital of Honduras when the right-wing candidate Juan Orlando Hernández installed himself as president two weeks ago after manipulating the November election in his favor.  For hours, the opposition demonstrators appeared like dark forms in the grey haze of tear gas as they faced off against three types of police and soldier. But you probably never saw a more important event the next night: an interfaith vigil and demonstration calling for national dialogue and a peaceful return to a constitutional government. In spite of the confrontations of previous day, more than 500 Hondurans streamed onto the Avenida La Paz directly in front of the bunker of a U.S. Embassy and freely shouted in defiance to those in the building, with an appeal to the lines of police and soldiers guarding it and, perhaps equally important, to strengthen hope in each other. Speaker after speaker railed against the stolen presidential election, the crisis of militarization in Honduras, and the disaster of this slow social strangulation supported by the United States. In the street, Hondurans sang and danced and cried with grief for the wounded and dead at the hands of the military.  For a moment, even surrounded by the machinery of repression, the gathering became a cathartic fiesta of freedom.

Abstract, Slavery in Today’s Brazil: Law and Public Policy

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Slavery in Today’s Brazil: Law and Public Policy
by Ricardo Rezoned Figueira and Neide Esterci


The abolition of slavery in 1888 failed to eliminate the repressive and compulsory use of labor in Brazil. When pressure to reduce slave trafficking made African labor scarce, coffee producers in São Paulo recruited European migrants to replace it. Through indebtedness and compulsory work, migrants became captive to the landowners who hired them. As the occupation of the Amazon frontier became state policy in the 1960s, debt bondage was used against the thousands of migrant workers hired to clear the areas for agribusiness projects. Slavery had been prohibited since 1940, and in 1965 the Congress entered into two international agreements on slavery that included debt bondage. With the end of the military government in 1985, the category “slave labor” was incorporated into the regulatory framework for employment practices, and since then it has been broadened to include labor forced by violence, debt bondage, exhausting labor, and degrading working conditions. Tensions around the definition remain, however, and prosecutions under the law and guilty verdicts have so far been few.

Abstract, Slavery in Today’s Brazil: Law and Public Policy

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

Slavery in Today’s Brazil: Law and Public Policy
by Ricardo Rezoned Figueira and Neide Esterci


The abolition of slavery in 1888 failed to eliminate the repressive and compulsory use of labor in Brazil. When pressure to reduce slave trafficking made African labor scarce, coffee producers in São Paulo recruited European migrants to replace it. Through indebtedness and compulsory work, migrants became captive to the landowners who hired them. As the occupation of the Amazon frontier became state policy in the 1960s, debt bondage was used against the thousands of migrant workers hired to clear the areas for agribusiness projects. Slavery had been prohibited since 1940, and in 1965 the Congress entered into two international agreements on slavery that included debt bondage. With the end of the military government in 1985, the category “slave labor” was incorporated into the regulatory framework for employment practices, and since then it has been broadened to include labor forced by violence, debt bondage, exhausting labor, and degrading working conditions. Tensions around the definition remain, however, and prosecutions under the law and guilty verdicts have so far been few.

Introduction, Democracy, Repression, and the Defense of Human Rights

:::::: Intro ::::::

Democracy, Repression, and the Defense of Human Rights
by William Avilés and Leila Celis                                    


In the 1990s Barry Gills, Joel Rocamora, and Richard Wilson (1993) directly challenged the democratic-transitions literature through critical assessments of the relatively young democracies in Latin America and the developing world. They introduced the model of “low-intensity democracy” as a more precise classification of the limits of democratic change in the developing world after the cold war. A low-intensity democracy is a largely procedural democracy that allows political opposition, greater individual freedoms, a reduced institutional role for the armed forces, and a more permeable environment for the investments of transnational capital. Greatly expanding on this idea, William Robinson (1996) posited that, given the instability that authoritarian regimes of the past had engendered in the populace, these elite democracies were essential to the global integration of these economies. Democratization movements seeking radical change beyond formal electoral competition were pushed aside by the more conservative leaders of antiauthoritarian movements. These leaders were financed and advised by U.S. foreign policy makers, who presented them as paragons of democracy in an emerging global capitalist age. They represented economic and political factions pursuing the integration of their respective economies into capitalist globalization and fully prepared to turn to state and para-state repression of groups that challenged the state outside of the formal democratic institutions.

Abstract, "The Legacy of Liberation Theology in Colombia: The Defense of Life and Territory" by Leila Celis

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The Legacy of Liberation Theology in Colombia: The Defense of Life and Territory 
by Leila Celis

Liberation theology was very important in Latin America between 1970 and 1980. While it is less significant today, it has not disappeared. If we look at Colombia, we can see the pastoral and political commitment of the religious and the laity in various regions as they accompany marginalized communities, victims of government and parastatal violence, in conformity with their preferential option for the poor. Motivated by the crucified Christ, the heirs of liberation theology have developed a theology of life or of human rights. As human rights advocates, they identify among the causes of violence the policies of capitalist development, denounced as imperialist and responsible for the poverty of the majority of the population. This development has its origin in the parallel dynamics of social and international relations and the associated adaptation of the social movement.

Abstract, "The Legacy of Liberation Theology in Colombia: The Defense of Life and Territory" by Leila Celis

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

The Legacy of Liberation Theology in Colombia: The Defense of Life and Territory 
by Leila Celis

Liberation theology was very important in Latin America between 1970 and 1980. While it is less significant today, it has not disappeared. If we look at Colombia, we can see the pastoral and political commitment of the religious and the laity in various regions as they accompany marginalized communities, victims of government and parastatal violence, in conformity with their preferential option for the poor. Motivated by the crucified Christ, the heirs of liberation theology have developed a theology of life or of human rights. As human rights advocates, they identify among the causes of violence the policies of capitalist development, denounced as imperialist and responsible for the poverty of the majority of the population. This development has its origin in the parallel dynamics of social and international relations and the associated adaptation of the social movement.

Abstract, "The Legacy of Liberation Theology in Colombia: The Defense of Life and Territory" by Leila Celis

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

The Legacy of Liberation Theology in Colombia: The Defense of Life and Territory 
by Leila Celis

Liberation theology was very important in Latin America between 1970 and 1980. While it is less significant today, it has not disappeared. If we look at Colombia, we can see the pastoral and political commitment of the religious and the laity in various regions as they accompany marginalized communities, victims of government and parastatal violence, in conformity with their preferential option for the poor. Motivated by the crucified Christ, the heirs of liberation theology have developed a theology of life or of human rights. As human rights advocates, they identify among the causes of violence the policies of capitalist development, denounced as imperialist and responsible for the poverty of the majority of the population. This development has its origin in the parallel dynamics of social and international relations and the associated adaptation of the social movement.

Political Report # 1108 Beatriz Sarlo, Paredón y Después By Roberto Mero, Latinoamerica Piensa

El régimen macrista despliega su red para asestar un golpe fatal: un autogolpe contra lo que aún quede de institucionalidad en el país luego del cierre del Congreso. El laberinto conspirativo de las mordazas ya fue pactado con los principales patrones del periodismo mucho antes de las elecciones. Pero la movilización inesperada del pueblo le está haciendo zancadillas. Perla de un viejo collar depreciado, la intervención de Beatriz Sarlo en TN entrevistada por Van der Kooy y Blanck está agitando las rancias desesperaciones del macrismo militante. Ante el desesperado silencio de sus entrevistadores, la Sarlo despachó su artillería de señora gorda, desairada por "un gobierno de gerentes", por un Macri "mortal" en su aburrimiento, por sus comparaciones entre "ojitos azules" y Rajoy, la incompetencia macrista para interesarla, y los desplantes hacia los aliados radicales por los DNU a paso de carga. Limitó los gargajos paquetes, elegantes en su desprecio y oportunistas en el fondo y la forma. Criticando esta foto del macrismo que atrasa cuarenta años, Sarlo busca su lugar en este tira y afloja donde las condenas no tardarán en llegar, con su cortejo de pases de facturas entre "gente como uno". Blandiendo un alfonsinismo democratoide de base, Sarlo no dejó de atraerse los furores de sus propios pares gorilas. Los mismos que otrora agitaron las remeras con el "Barone, a mi no", y que ahora penan en hallar los mínimos aliados de la decadencia. Jugando al Ernesto Sábato que luego de apoyar la Fusiladora se dio la libertad rancia de escribir "La otra cara del Peronismo", Betty Sarlo habló con un oído puesto en TN y el otro en la magnífica payasada indefendible que sus amigos del selecto barrio parisino de Saint Germain dès Près le estarán tirando como croissant podrida por su antikirchnerismo atrasado. Declaraciones en suma que no pueden ocultar ese iceberg de desprecio que la "gente como uno" (que la Sarlo cifro en un millón de personas) dirige hacia un gobierno que "por fin" se desenmascara como la atrocidad derechista sin siquiera la anecdótica referencia a la pizza y el champán en estos arrabales del planeta.