“The battle we are waging has no moral or natural limits, it takes place beyond good and evil.” (288)
I must start by acknowledging that I have been so preoccupied with the literature review I just finished that, at this point, I can only comment on Rodolfo Walsh’s reading.I found this letter to be very interesting. It was written in a concise manner which seems to be shaped by his profession as a journalist, in particular due to his ability to compile evidence out of the monstrous-come-monotonous occurrences of late 70s Argentina and tie the strings of information and ghastly numbers into visions of a systematic nightmare. In its goal of public denunciation and the courage it took to write, the reading reminded me of Olympe De Gouges’ letter. The fact that Walsh’s letter comes from a modern period, and describes the crimes of a state much closer to what we see around the world today than the one De Gouges was writing against, made Walsh’s readings much more relatable.
As I have mentioned, I am fresh from finishing my literature review, for which I researched about human rights violations attributed to the Colombian state. As could be expected, there are some aspects in common with Walsh’s reading. First of all, the mere title of walsh’s letter reminds me of the question which led me to choose my literature review topic: Who do you go to for protection when it is your own government you need protection from? This question, of course, remains unanswered.
His highlighting of the fallacy of a discourse of ‘national spirit’ (285) piqued my inner cynic, which tends to think that most overtly national discourses mask projects that usually adversely affect a significant chunk of that nation’s population.
The discussion of the repression suffered by labor definitely reminded me of my literature review and the astronomical numbers of assassinated labor union organizers and members in Colombia. This made it seem as though labor repression usually comes hand-in-hand with political repression. In so-called ‘peaceful’, ‘free’ societies such as ours, sometimes it is easy to forget that, just like the Feminist sisters asserted that ‘the personal is political’, work is also always inherently political. This makes me fear the current international climate of labor movement erosion.
The talk about habeas corpus was central to this reading, as well as to last week’s and to the whole enterprise of citizens trying to achieve some justice, or at least accountability, from their government. It made me think of the Bush administration’s suspension of said legal right. This connection to that particular administration was brought up again in Walsh’s discussion of the use of torture (285-286), which reminded me of Leigh Gilmore’s essay “How We Confess Now: Reading the Abu Ghraib Archive.”
I found that, as with my literature review (and the class readings for last few weeks) the numbers of victims are so outrageous that they start to loose their shock value by virtue of going over anything one should be able to imagine. Finally, I really enjoyed the way Walsh wrapped up his letter by listing the basic implementation of ‘Chicago Boy’ economic policies as worst than and the root of all the horrendous crimes committed against Argentina (288). This, along with his description of a deteriorating geography (288), made me feel that what the Junta was doing was not governing a nation, but rather implementing an economic plan by any means necessary. An economic plan that was obviously not for the benefit of the population.
PS: Did his discussion about the stock exchange and privatization of banks remind anyone of what is going on with our neighbors south of the 49th?
Peace.
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