Week 12: The Strength of Mothers

In one of my courses, we talked about war, and how women’s bodies are always the site of battle. In history, women’s bodies have always been a location for violence. To systematically ruin and destroy an entire nation, it’s enemies will go after its women — the daughters, the wives, the nieces and sisters and aunties of the nation. They will seek to murder, assault, kidnap, and rape women because women are the foundation to any society. In this week’s readings with the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo it was clear the power women have, it was clear that they were and are the center of the community. There’s this strange illusion we have of mothers being harmless, kind and helpless, but in Argentina we saw the real and true power of women. Just by rallying, sitting together in groups and asking for their children back, they arguably were the dominant force in collapsing an entire authoritarian regime. The state perpetrating crimes against members of Madres de La Plaza de Mayo revealed just how much power they did have, enough of a rallying force and presence that the Argentine government was afraid. If you don’t think that’s incredible, I don’t know what is. The strength and power of women, more specifically mothers, to continue to fight and persevere against an oppressive regime even though they were at risk of dying is nothing to underestimate.

Not only that, the actions of those mothers produced a global phenomenon, they transformed motherhood (which has always been associated as an act in the private and domestic sphere) into a public issue. Women are always used as catalysts and objects for war, but they are indiscriminately and conclusively the most affected by war and consistently targeted. We talked about the dirty wars last week, but we never really went through who it affected, the families and lives it took hold of, and this chapter really shed light on that. However, I do agree with Dawson that shedding light on these issues does not always fix the problem, and more often than not it normalizes violence against women, eventually desensitizing us to the issue but we have to begin somewhere.

Week 11: Writing About War Is Weird

I put off writing this blog post for a while because I didn’t really know how to write about this. Reading about the atrocities that occurred on both sides and just listing them down seems so arbitrary and clinical. I think the meaning is lost and the importance of the wars is ignored when you’re just writing down bulletpoints. But it’s hard to conceptualize the atrocities and when you do conceptualize them, how do you explain them without belittling the meaning? There’s a strange and unique tension when you’re reading or writing about war, because unless you live something personally, you will never be able to give a worthy analysis on whatever it is you’re writing about — at least that’s what I believe. So then the question must be asked, how do we write about war? And as I went through Dawson’s accounts of the dirty wars taking place in Peru and Argentina I don’t think I’ve found an answer and I’m not so sure there will ever be one.

Reading the documents made me really uncomfortable; I didn’t know if what I was doing — reading about these gruesome acts would provide any service to anyone or if I was just fascinated by the death and gore and participating in a sort of voyeuristic violence. It was a hard line to tread. With that being said, the document that stuck out the most to me was Mario Vargas Llosa’s piece on the killings of the eight journalists in Peru. I know what that sounds like… however, it wasn’t because of the violence that drew me to it, but his departing words in the piece.

Llosa said the story of their deaths revealed the fissures of democracy in Latin America. It’s difficult for people who don’t gain anything from democracy (i.e. free press) to defend it. The Uchuraccayans didn’t understand the press, they were constantly bullied and degraded by the press, their circumstances didn’t allow them to benefit from democracy because of the inherent flaws of democracy. These events, although brutal and horrifying and should never have occurred disclosed to the public how vulnerable democracy was/is in Latin America. Democracy fails the lower classes because of constant class warfare and privileges given to one class over the other.

Llosa’s words reminded me of the absolute failure of modernity in Latin America; modernity has  always been viewed as the final point a nation should reach, the end goal for everyone. But in every step to “modernize,” Latin America has suffered immensely. The western notion of modernity is not applicable to other nations, it makes development seem like a straight forward line, but it’s never that easy. I think nations should be allowed to progress in their own timeframe within their own circumstances, pushing that idea of modernity forward has never worked, I mean look at any African nation who tried to modernize using the west’s methods. And Llosa voiced an idea I had been thinking about for a long time, but didn’t know how to phrase: guerilla movements and communist revolutions are almost always spurred on by the elite intellectual class, the privileged in society. It’s always heralded as a peasant, a proletariat revolution but that’s never the case. Especially with the Sendero’s, university students comprised the largest of the group, and I kept thinking how ironic it was that they were fighting against the bourgeoisie class when they were literally the bourgeoisie class…    

Week 3: The Totally Unbelievable Events of Catalina de Erauso

In week three, we discussed quite a bit about Casta Paintings and Catalina de Erauso’s autobiography, “Lieutenant Nun.” I’ll start off with the Casta paintings since they’re the most prominent in my memory.

When I was looking at the Casta paintings I could almost feel the frustration of the artists trying to place people into racial categories. There were too many mixes of people, too much difference in class and gender and race, etc.… and the more divisive lines the artists tried to create, the more they were blurred. The very form of a Casta painting (a grid) attempts to put everyone into boxes, but the more lines they tried to create, the more blurred the boxes became. It was a futile task, casta paintings simply could not provide a permanent place for everyone.

And in almost complete contradistinction, Catalina de Erauso’s autobiography seemed way too unreal. Honestly, it seemed like they were taken from a 99 cent action adventure novel, rather than real events of someone’s life. Erauso was always coincidentally in the right spot at the right time. She was always being taken in by aunts and uncles who didn’t know her, or coming dangerously close to discovery by her father. Also don’t get me started on the fact that she killed her brother… how does that happen?? But I could’ve let that slide… although uncommon, those things happen. However, the main reason why I felt that Erauso’s story was fabricated was because she wasn’t executed for her actions. Disguising herself as a man, living the life of a soldier, running away from her convent… these are all actions punishable by death in the 1600’s. I mean women have been killed for a lot less… And the Pope, especially the actual, literal Pope, pardoning her? There’s just no way. Erauso essentially ran away from God and her duties to the Church, and the Catholic Church allowed that type of disobedience? From the stories we’ve read about the Church, they really aren’t as forgiving as they say they are, so I just can’t believe she got off easy. And I just remembered that Erauso took part in a lot of lesbian activity so now it just seems even more unbelievable.

Nevertheless, disregarding the truthfulness (or lack thereof) of Catalina de Erauso’s life… her story and the Casta paintings served multiple purposes rather than just entertainment for me. They were narratives that showed the tensions in the new and old world. Tensions of representation and belonging. Both demonstrated the always evident racial and gender distinctions in Latin America as well as class warfare. They revealed the cracks beneath the surface, disproving the notion that there is one Latin America as so many believe, which is something we’ve been discussing since the start of class. It forces us to question what our notions of Latin America are and what/who Latin America is comprised of.