Semester Summary

I've come out of this class thinking far more critically about the idea of rights. I now recognize the difference between the idea of a human rights discourse, rather than inherent, "inalienable" human rights.

The discussion we had about speech acts really began to clarify this idea for me, that although many declarations described rights as something inherent to humanity (or to man), it was only through these declarations that these rights were actualized and made manifest. Did the rights exist before the declarations? Do rights exist in some concrete way, or are they simply ideas - mutable elements of a political or economic discourse? Hmmm...it seems that this course has brought up more questions about human rights than answers.

I'm reading this book in my children's literature class which has includes a saying from a fictional philosopher: "Love those who seek the truth; fear those who find it" (McNaughton 177). I appreciate that in this class we've opened up more questions about what human rights are, rather than tried to define them. Recongizing the mutable nature of the rights discourse allows us to see the political ideologies at work behind it, to seek a deeper truth about the nature of human rights instead of clinging to a superficial one.

I don't think that the mutable nature of the human rights discourse is necessarily bad. We've been looking at the question in class, "what's the use of rights?", which I think has allowed us to let go of our desire to prove their inalienable truth and focus more on their purpose and their usefullness. Looking at the rights discourse in this way, I've been really interested in its effect on two things, the way it creates a framework for us to quantify the "wrongness" of human rights violations. It provides a language for us to talk about people or governments doing bad things on a large scale - something that in the time of Las Casas, or even before the end of WWII, I'm not sure that we were discursively equipped to deal with. I also think, perhaps idealisitically, that this discourse allows us to hold governments accountable for their actions. It may not seem like we can hold the US government accountable for its violations, but I feel that the human rights discourse is a mechanism which could at least develop into a means for holding even the most powerful nations accountable for their actions.

I was at a Thinking about Law forum on Thursday night, and one of the speakers brought up the example of the illegally held prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp. The US government said that they did not have to fulfill habeas corpus laws, because these prisoners were somehow outside of the rule of law. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that the US government still had to follow the rule of law - that law was stronger than their power. It was a small concession, but I felt inspired by how rights can be used to protect the marginalized and the weak from the powerful.

So, that's my summary for this semester. Also, I have to say that you guys rock. I've really enjoyed being in this class with all of you. :)

Work Cited

McNaughton, Janet. The Raintree Rebellion. Toronto: Harper, 2006.

tag: last301

Guatemalan Genocide: Draft of Case Study paper

Genocide in Guatemala

How can the human rights discourse aid the cessation and prosecution of human rights violations in sovereign nations? Taking the period of armed confrontation in Guatemala as a case study for the use of human rights, the human rights discourse emerges as an important tool in ending repressive violence, both for the international community and for victims of abuse. The human rights discourse provides a framework with which to quantify the immorality and criminality of human rights violations and to shame repressive regimes. In Guatemala, it allowed the international community to define the violence against the indigenous Mayan population as genocide and to shame the Guatemalan military regime and the governments that supported it.

The Period of the Armed Confrontation: 1962 - 1996

In its report, Guatemala: Memory of Silence, the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) analyzes the violence in Guatemala from 1962 to 1996 and defines these 34 years as the period of armed confrontation, although conflict between the indigenous Maya and the ladinos has a deeper historical context. The armed confrontation was prefaced by the 1954 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-organized coup, which overthrew the democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz. The period of internal conflict amongst Guatemalans began legitimately in 1962 with the initiation of military activity by the insurgent group MR-13 (Revolutionary Movement November 13), student movement protests against the government, and the formation of the military cabinet.

In The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation, Greg Grandin argues that the State’s counter-insurgency campaign “was experienced in racial terms” (222). His book explores Guatemalan race relations from the 18^th century to the present day, and how the combination of post-World War II factors led to the changing power relationships in the Guatemalan social system, the insurgency of indigenous Mayans, and their violent repression. Although he doubts that, “had the western highlands been populated with Ladino insurgents instead of Mayan rebels, the scorched earth campaign would have been any less vicious or inhumane,” he concedes that the “Indians experienced the repression as Indians” (222). In other words, the indigenous Mayan population experienced the repression within the context of a history of colonial violence and oppression. The CEH notes that, from 1963-1967, the military acquired “intelligence apparatus and mechanisms of social control for the rural area” and extended the “[o]perating area of the Ambulatory Military Police . . . to include rural areas” (Appendix A). These actions brought the indigenous Mayan population under increasing military surveillance and scrutiny, and in 1965 the “first massacre of civilians” occurred in the eastern region of Guatemala (Appendix A). Simply put, the violence in Guatemala began as a continuation of the colonial repression of the indigenous Mayans, not just as a counter-insurgency initiative against communist guerrillas.

According to the CEH, the repression in Guatemala resulted in the death or disappearance of approximately 200,000 people, and “state forces and related paramilitary groups were responsible for 93% of the violations” (Conclusions 2, 15). Guerrilla groups who opposed Guatemala’s military government – most specifically, the MR-13 (Revolutionary Movement November 13), the FAR (Rebel Armed Forces), the EGP (Guerrilla Army of the Poor), and the PGT (Guatemala Workers Party) – initially bore the brunt of the State’s counter-insurgency operations; however, “the Army’s perception of Mayan communities as natural allies of the guerrillas contributed to increasing and aggravating the human rights violations perpetrated against them,” leading to their “extermination en masse” (Conclusions 85). The abhorrent methods of repression and violence the army used suggest that they intended to exterminate the Mayan people, not simply control political insurgency. The CEH registered 626 “massacres and so-called scorched earth operations . . . [which] resulted in the complete extermination of many Mayan communities” (Conclusions 86). These massacres “were committed with particular cruelty” and the CEH recorded horrific atrocities, such as:

“the killing of defenceless children, often by beating them against walls or throwing them alive into pits where the corpses of adults were later thrown; the amputation of limbs; the impaling of victims; the killing of persons by covering them in petrol and burning them alive; the extraction, in the presence of others, of the viscera of victims who were still alive; the confinement of people who had been mortally tortured, in agony for days; the opening of the wombs of pregnant women, and other similarly atrocious acts.” (Conclusions 87)

The CEH regards the period from 1978-1985 as “the most violent and bloody part of the entire armed confrontation” (Conclusions 26). After the 1976 earthquake, the formation of reconstruction groups gave rise to “considerable organisational growth in rural and urban areas,” but the intensification of social mobilisation from 1976 -1980 resulted in increased state violence and repression (Appendix C). This violence began in 1978 when the army massacred the Q’eqchi’ peasants of Panzós, Alto Verapaz, “who were making claims to land rights” (Appendix C). From 1978 to 1980 the State selectively assassinated community leaders in rural areas and disappeared leaders of the social movement and opposition political parties, and in 1980 the army massacred twenty-seven protestors and ten hostages at the Spanish Embassy. From 1981-82, “military operations aimed at dismantling insurgent structures in the capital and massive repression against civilians . . . destroy[ed] the social base of the guerrillas in rural areas” (Appendix C). Although peasants had always made up the majority of victims, during this period the victims were “principally Mayan” (Conclusions 27).

From 1983-1985, the military established model villages and development poles “to relocate and control displaced members of the population” (Appendix E). From 1986 – 1990 the government began to promote “a negotiated solution to the confrontation,” but the continuation of massacres – Santiago, Atitlán on December 2, 1990 – reveals the prolongation of the violent period. In 1994, peace negotiations with a United Nations monitor continued and the Government signed both the Global Accord on Human Rights and the accord on the establishment of the Historical Clarification Commission. Nevertheless, in 1995 the military massacred a community of Guatemalan returnees in Xamán. On December 29, 1996, the Accord for Firm and Lasting Peace was signed, ending the official period of armed confrontation and establishing, contrary to its title, a tenuous peace (Appendix F, G).

The CEH analyzed and documented the human rights violations of the armed conflict period. In “Truth Commissions in Guatemala and Peru: Perpetual Impunity and Transitional Justice Compared,” Joanna Crandall argues that the CEH “was highly restricted in what it could do, as it did not possess subpoena powers, it had no right to grant amnesty and could not name individual perpetrators” (5). Crandall recognizes that the CEH had an effectively “weak mandate,” but also concedes that this powerlessness “was not a mistake” and was at times an asset, allowing the report “to emphasize different types of violence, thereby providing a broader perspective and analysis” (7). Instead of holding accountable individual perpetrators, which its mandate did not support, the CEH “looked to the causes of the armed conflict and denounced an entire system” – namely, the historically colonialist and racist oligarchy, which held power in Guatemala ever since the 1871 founding of the liberal state. After publishing the final report in 1999, many of the mostly international CEH staff members left Guatemala out of fear of the “possible repercussions for their participation in the Commission” (8). Crandall suggests that this exodus signalled “that the pervasive power of the military was in still intact” (8): although the report came out after the end of the armed conflict, the threat to human rights in Guatemala was still palpable at the time it was published. Under these conditions, the report employed the discourse of human rights to articulate the specific violations and immorality of the Guatemalan State and sought to expose the State’s criminality to the international community.

Theory: Creating a Framework and Instilling Shame

The human rights discourse offered Guatemalans and the international community two distinct means of overcoming the violence in Guatemala. First, it provided a framework with which to express and measure the horror of the situation. Second, it articulated the importance of testimony and memory in overcoming impunity and bringing shame to violators of human rights. The CEH uses the first element, the framework of the human rights discourse, to condemn the State’s actions and to compare the Guatemalan situation to other incidents of mass violence against a racialized and marginalized group. The CEH specifically cites the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which

“defines the crime of genocide and its requirements in the following terms: ‘... genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

a) Killing members of the group;

b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.’” (Conclusions 109)

This framework allows the commission to define both the immorality and criminality of Guatemalan state’s actions. The immensity and horror of the Guatemalan situation, and other similar cases of genocide and human rights violations, often defy quantification. The framework provided by the Geneva Convention offers a system of measurement in these cases of overwhelming abuse, affording the victims of violence and genocide, and the international community horrified by this violence, a method of quantifying the previously un-quantifiable. Simply put, human rights provide a discursive yardstick with which to measure, and prosecute, systemic violence. Without this yardstick, the Guatemalan State could have denied the genocidal nature of their campaigns.

In “War, Peace, and the Politics of Memory in Guatemala,” Rachel Sieder argues that defining the violence in Guatemala as genocide allowed the CEH to charge the Guatemala state with “crimes against humanity” (190). She notes how the CEH report countered the Law of National Reconciliation passed in 1996, which protected perpetrators from prosecution of “a political crime or a politically motivated common crime related to the armed conflict” (190). Sieder explains that this “amnesty was explicitly ruled out for the internationally proscribed crimes of torture, genocide, and forced disappearance” (190). The human rights discourse provided the framework for articulating the actions of the Guatemalan State as more than political crimes, and allowed the CEH to move beyond its restrictive mandate by validating human rights groups’ claims that military impunity represented an aberration of justice.

In contrast to the human rights discourse the CEH used, the Guatemalan state used the counter-insurgency discourse of the Cold War fight against communist guerrillas to justify their actions and legitimize their motives for aggression. This battle of discourses represents the second application of the human rights discourse in Guatemala, the use of memory and testimony to bring shame to repressive regimes. In the case of Guatemala, the question arises, to whom was the military regime justifying and legitimizing its actions under an anti-communist rhetoric? The U.S. government, among other countries (France, Israel, and South Africa), offered military support and training to the Guatemalan regime (Grandin, Last 13). With the support of these countries, one could assume that Guatemala need not have worried about its international reputation. Seemingly, in light of the 1980 massacre at the Spanish embassy, Guatemala was contemptuous of international opinion. Yet, the international community ultimately brought about the end of the confrontation by articulating the State policy of repression in Guatemala as a violation of human rights. If Guatemala had the support of the governments of the U.S., France, Israel, and South Africa among others, it did not necessarily have the same support from the electoral body of these democracies. These governments depend on the strength of their reputation with the voting public. If enough people in the U.S. begin interpreting the violence in Guatemala as genocide or a violation of human rights rather than as the necessary control of communist insurgent groups, public opinion will limit and perhaps reverse the U.S. government’s support of Guatemala. In fact, Sieder notes that the CEH report set an “important precedent” in inciting international accountability. In 1999, Bill Clinton expressed “regret at U.S. involvement in human rights violations in Guatemala” (194), a small concession but an important indicator of the role international reputation plays.

The pioneering work of Rigoberta Menchú compelled the Guatemalan military to attempt to justify and legitimize its aggression to the international community. In her book, I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, Menchú shares her experiences of the human rights abuses in Guatemala. Although some scholars, most notably David Stoll, have challenged the accuracy of her narrative, Menchú’s account of her life in Guatemala, both before and during the dictatorship, expresses her personal perception of the day-to-day reality for Mayan Guatemalans. Additionally, her personal history exposed the human rights abuses of the Guatemalan regime to the international community, using the form of testimony. Whether the events she describes are all historically accurate in the Western positivistic sense remains unimportant because her descriptions represent her subjective perception of her experiences. Rather than articulating the definitions of human rights abuses and measuring her experience against that framework in a quantifiable way, Menchú narrates her subjective experiences to her audience. This technique allows the reader to engage with Menchú and sympathize with her plight, and the plight of “all poor Guatemalans” (2). Using this style of narrative – a conversational biography – Menchú becomes personalized and individual rather than an abstract statistic. Particularly in the Guatemalan case, where ethnic barriers between the indigenous Mayans and the “white” developed world have led to the international communities ease in ignoring human rights abuses against indigenous peoples, Menchú connected with her readership, incited public outcry, and ultimately won the Nobel Peace Prize. As is obvious from Guatemala’s history, this public outcry and the shame it placed on Guatemala’s counter-insurgency policies took time to show affect. Menchú’s book was published in 1983, but it took another thirteen years to see the end of the armed confrontation. Since the conflict in Guatemalan was never wholly internal – international actors, particularly the U.S. government, had always played key roles in instigating, organizing, and supporting the violence and repression – Menchú’s personal testimony of the human rights violations in Guatemala influenced primarily the international community who had the power to support or impede Guatemala’s military policies.

The human rights discourse provided a vital means of framing the violence in Guatemala, and allowed the CEH, with a specific mandate against prosecution, to condemn the Guatemalan regime and articulate the criminality of its actions. As well, the international community, which often plays a role in condoning or supporting human rights violations, has the power to shame abusive governments by framing their actions as immoral in the context of human rights. Testimony and memory play a key role in the human rights discourse because they help bring the violations to light and create awareness in the international community, and they empower the victims by allowing them to express their experiences and break the legacy of silence.

Works Cited

Burgoes-Debray, Elisabeth, ed. I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Trans. Ann Wright. New York: Verso, 1984.

Commission for Historical Clarification. Guatemala: Memory of Silence. 1999. American Association for the Advancement of Science: n. pag. 18 Nov. 2006. <>.

Crandall, Joanna. “Truth Commissions in Guatemala and Peru: Perpetual Impunity and Transitional Justice Compared.” Peace, Conflict and Development 4 (2004): 1-19. 18 Nov. 2006 <http://www.peacestudiesjournal.org.uk/docs/perpetualimpunity.PDF>.

Grandin, Greg. The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation. Durham: Duke UP, 2000.

Grandin, Greg. The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Sieder, Rachel. “War, Peace, and the Politics of Memory in Guatemala.” Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice after Civil Conflict. Ed. Nigel Biggar. Washington: Georgetown UP, 2001. 185-206.

tag: last301

Who Has the Right to Live?

What struck me in our reading about Guatemala this week was the different ways the military government used to dehumanize the Mayans. In Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy, Victor Perera includes as an epigraph to chapter four, a quotation from a Pastor with the Church of the Word which says, “The army does not kill Indians, it kills devils; because the Indians are bedeviled, they are communists” (61). The obvious idea here is that the Indians are not human. If they are devils, the army, even the church, doesn’t see them as humans, so they are denied any human rights. But even beyond that, they are called evil, inhuman monsters, which the army (Christians, God, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) must destroy. The less obvious construction of this statement comes in the ordering of the second part. The Indians are not communists because they are bedevilled, rather, they begin as bedevilled creatures, and their communism springs from that. The phrasing suggests that Indians are inherently bedevilled; a characteristic that made them predisposed to become communists. This way of imagining the Indians relieves the Church from its responsibility to save lost souls. The Indians weren’t seduced by the communists to hold false beliefs; they were inherently evil and found evil beliefs to their liking.

The right to human rights comes up again in a quotation on the following page. Perera quotes a poster which proclaims “Only he who fights has the right to win / Only he who wins has the right to live” (62). This proclamation directly subverts the idea of basic or inherent human rights. According to this statement, all people are not born equal, and not everyone has the basic right to not be killed. Only those with the power to win a fight have the right to survive, all those with lesser power can be justifiably killed because they lack what we have been considering a basic human right. Statements like these can justify and legitimize disappearances, assassinations, torture, and massacres because they challenge and reframe the idea human rights. In the first, the quotation legitimizes killing “Indians” because they are not human. In the second, the statement legitimizes killing anyone who hasn’t earned the right to live by killing their opponent first.

Works Cited

Perera, Victor. Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy. Berkely: University of California Press, 1993.

tag: last301

Thanks for the comments

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who posted comments on my “Response to Monday’s class” posting. What I had been mostly frustrated with in our class discussion was the lack of discussion that happened. I felt that we quickly glossed over the importance or need for some kind of accountability “because that would never happen,” and failed to imagine how it could happen. I feel like my posting last week elicited more discussion and ideas about how accountability, responsibility, and reparations could happen. I get frustrated when we close off our imaginations and creativity because we believe nothing can change.

Despite our belief that the U.S. would never pay reparations, Erika’s comment shows that there is some historical precedent for governments to pay reparations to victims of crimes against humanity. Of course, there are also some problems of implementation. I think that all our ideas for how governments like the U.S. could be prosecuted or forced to pay reparations, and the possible problems with these ideas, and possible solutions to those problems, should be expressed. Let’s talk about what could happen before what we decide what will happen.

Anyway, that’s what I wanted, and that’s what I got, so I’m happy. Thanks guys.
tag: last301

Water on the Mind

With the recent boil water advisory affecting Vancouver, many of us have water on the mind. I've suddenly become more aware of the basic health services we take for granted in Canada - not just "free" health care, but the clean, potable, running water with which we wash our dishes, flush our toilets, brush our teeth, and, oh ya, drink.

In "Kids Pay Dearly for Lack of Clean Water," Diego Cevallos that the lack of access to potable water presents a serious health risk to children in Latin America. Here in Canada, we often think about the idea of "not being able to drink the water" as an annoying element of travelling in countries like Mexico, but fail to recognize the health risks to children who live in developing countries. Cevallos argues that a a lack of access to clean drinking water causes the death of "1.8 million children per year" worldwide, and diarrhoea-based illnesses are the second leading cause of death for children in Latin America. According to Cevallos, these illnesses disproportionately target indigenous children and children of African descent.

Clean water doesn't just affect health, it also has repercussions on education and poverty. Cavallos quotes Liliana Carvajal who argues that a child without access to water and sanitation will "have constant cases of diarrhoea, which will affect the immune system. The child will have anemia, which will affect school, and the child will learn less." In Ecuador this summer, I saw the difference between children suffering from malnutrition as a result of lack of access to clean drinking water and healthy children with access to water and sanitation. The difference in attention and liveliness was palpable. If a child doesn't receive proper nutrition in her first three years (or loses the nutrition she does receive due to diarrhoea) she will not properly develop mentally or physically. It is difficult to break the cycle of poverty when you begin your life at such a disadvantage.

Cavallos also notes the health care costs that are associated with diarrhoea-based illnesses, saying that access to clean water and sanitation could reduce health costs by 1.6 billion dollars annually. That's a substantial amount of money that could be put to use increasing nutrition, offering family planning alternatives, or dealing with other basic health issues that affect people surviving in developing nations.

Clean water is a basic human right, but many people in developed nations take for granted to clean running water we have - or used to have - running through our taps every day.

Work Cited
Cavallos, Diego. "Kids Pay Dearly for Lack of Clean Water." IPS. Nov 16 2006. Inter Press Service News Agency. 19 Nov. 2006. <http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35504>.

tag: last301

Response to Monday's Class

After Monday's class and our short final discussion about punishment and responsibility, I felt the need to voice my opinion. As Jon pointed out, there was a lot of disagreement in the class, we couldn't easily reach a point of consensus about the issue. However, numerous times throughout the discussion people commented on the infeasibility of punishing certain actors in human rights abuses - in the case of our example, the U.S government, President Eisenhower, and/or the CIA. I found this trend both interesting and frustrating. My understanding of the questions was "Who's to blame for the Guatemala coup? Who should take responsibilty?" I didn't hear Jon ask us, who will take responsibility, but that was the questions many people were more inclined to answer. While I agree that it would be extremely difficult to hold the U.S. government responsible for the Guatemalan coup and the ensuing 30 years of conflict and genocide that resulted, I do not feel as reluctant as the rest of the class to express my belief that they are responsible, and in the context of the question, the "right" thing to do would be for the international community to hold them responsible.

In our small group I suggested that a reasonable punishment would be for the U.S. to pay reparations to Guatemala - perhaps allowing the Guatemalan people to decide how they would like to receive these reparations (as some people suggested, using the idea of community-based justice). My group thought that money doesn't necessarily help anything, but I think that many people in Guatemala scratching out a subsistence living would disagree. The money could be put directly into the communities most devasted by violence and poverty. The U.S. could build hospitals and provide infrastructure for health. They could set up food programs to aid malnourished children. I think these reparations could work well and feasibly, if the U.S. and international community recognized the responsiblity the U.S. government holds in Guatemala's current condition. Additionally, it would symbolically show that the U.S. understands its responsibility in Guatemala's situation and suffering, and feels like it (the U.S. government) needs to make amends for its actions.

Hopefully, demanding this type of accountability would make governments prioritize human rights because it would establish a reasonable punishment to deter future initiatives similar to the Guatemala coup. The demand that the U.S. take responsibility for the long-term affects of its actions would have repercussions throughout the whole field of human rights. Even if they weren't successful, the very fact that people demanded justice and accountability in this case would change the perception of what the human rights discourse can legitimately demand. The first time people suggest that the U.S. should take responsibility for its actions, people think they're crazy - "Yeah, like that'll ever happen" - the next time, a little less crazy, and a little less, until finally things change.

People thought it was crazy to let women vote. People thought it was crazy to let black people go to the same universities as white people. People thought it was crazy to let two men marry each other. The majority doesn't think so any more.

Maybe we can't force the U.S. to take responsibility for the Guatemalan coup and the ensuing damage it caused, but that doesn't mean that it's wrong to say that they should.

tag: last301

Big Brother's Getting Us to Watch Each Other

I couldn't help but be reminded of 1984 when I read about the live Internet broadcasts of the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas that allows "the public" to do their part in patrolling the border against illegal immigrants. It has been a while since I read the book, but I vaguely remember something about about parent's being encouraged to report the potentially subversive behaviour of their children, about the protagonist's next-door neighbour spying on him, and about how the whole regime functioned by creating a system of fear and distrust. With this new system of public watchdogs, the government is effectively using the public's fear and mistrust of the villified "other" (in this case, illegal Mexican immigrants, but the formula works for the numerous enemy "others") to maintain national integrity.

The CNN.com article concedes that the eight web cams set up along the Texas border could "instill fear in border communities" and lead to "racial profilling." I think that this is the most probable outcome of such activity. I am currently reading The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker, who argues that violence does not occur out of the blue, but rather can often be predicted based on certain predeterminate factors. In this case, feeding the already existing racial tensions of border communities by justifying vigilante behaviour and giving a random sampling of the public the power of law/justice represents a risk factor for racial violence in border communities. We can assume that someone with little emotional investment in border politics and illegal immigration will not waste their time online. On the contrary, only those people who feel strongly about keeping illegal immigrants out of the country will spend time (possibly obsessively) virtually patrolling the border. Giving these specific group of people the power to control police actions could be extremely dangerous - leading to delusions of their power outside of the virtual world. When racial violence continues in these communities - the virtual patrollers assuming that all hispanic people are illegal and acting out agains them - the police should not act surprised or claim that no one could have predicted the violence. Because, from where I'm standing, it's pretty obvious that with this latest initiative, Homeland Security is making the homeland far less secure.

Works Cited

de Becker, Gavin. The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence. New York: Little, Brown and Co. : 1997.

"Texas Deploys Virtual Border Patrol." Associated Press Network. 3 Nov. 2006. CNN.com. 4 Nov. 2006 .


tag: last301

The Ineffectiveness of Human Rights

In this class, we're supposed to be exploring and questioning the use of human rights, or the human rights discourse, particularly in Latin America. After reading the backstory on Guatemala, I really wonder how a focus on human rights could have altered this history - what use would human rights have been?

At the time, the U.S. had managed to vilify the idea of communism, justifying any actions they took against anyone or anything endowed with that label (justifiably or not). But this anti-communist policy didn't seem to affect their reputation as a "standard bearer" for human rights, as Stephen Schelsinger and Stephen Kinzer quote Guatemalan Foreign Minister Toriello as saying in Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (183). The U.S. had the human rights discourse on their side, despite the abuses they committed in the Guatemala case. What use are rights, in this case, when Guatemala is faced with an enemy with reputation of having "enlightened government" and a "cultured nation" and the power to brand any opponent as "communist" (qtd. 183)? If the rights discourse is only a discourse, the CIA seems to have had it working quite efficiently for its purposes.

Rights appear to be all about reputation: in Argentina the military junta counteracted rights activists with slogans such as "Los Argentinos, somos derechos y humanos," and by appropriating the rhetoric to support their goals and policies (36,44); in Guatemala, the CIA used the idea of communism being a threat to human rights to justify the presence of the "Liberator" and create public support for this hero.

A rights discourse does allow the international community to challenge U.S. actions in Guatemala, but to what effect? David Atlee Phillips, the mastermind behind the CIA-run "Voice of the Liberation" radio station bluntly asks, "what right the United States had to overthrow an elected foreign President" (167). The answer is none, but that doesn't stop Operation Success. In the face of international law, the U.S. carries out the presidential coup, so what use are rights, or international law for that matter? The CIA and U.S. government actors in this Operation were adamant that the matter not be taken to the U.N., but dealt with within the OAS because , since the "United States had the votes to control any proceeding of the OAS, this would allow them to defy international law and rights treaties. If the effectiveness of the U.N. can be so efficiently undermined by a powerful world actor (and we've seen this happen since the Guatemala affair), what use is it?

Works Cited

Feitowitz, Margarite. A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.

Schlesinger, Stephen and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1983.

tag: last301

Reading the News: Oaxaca and the U.S.-Mexico Border Conflict

I came across a lot of articles about Fox’s order to send federal troops into Oaxaca this week. A looked over a few of them and noticed some appearances of the writer’s bias toward Mexico, “leftist” politics, and protesters, but nothing really worthy of a full blog. Sure, dead New York reporter was the only one worthy of a name (unlike the two dead Mexicans), Oaxaca was always a “picturesque” town that the protesters have destroyed, and the explanation of unmet demands and poverty was consistently lacking. But I didn’t find anything really newsworthy until I read the comments after one of these articles. There is a forum on these web-based articles for anyone to post their thoughts. Here are a few examples:

"I think that we really ought to get the wall built along the border asap...the sooner the better
because that country is going to hell in a handbag...and is going to be taken over by the drug lords...." (Shadow Guy, Indianapolis)

"Mexico has more billionaires than any country in the world, exports its social deficiencies to the U.S. The wall is the least of thier problems. Get That Wall Up Now !!!" (Ray, U.S.)

"Their economy is really going to suffer as tourists from the USA will certainly not want to visit and spend their money in such a strife ridden place." (Mr. SeeMore, Vinta, OK)

"but now that we basically have an unstable lawless drug infested country right next door to us that might ever deterioriate [sic] into something like we created in Iraq[.]" (Shadow Guy, Indianapolis)

So, despite how I might read this news article – feeling concern that so many people have been living with daily violence for months now, worrying how this violence might escalate with the arrival of federal troops – a number of other readers (who feel compelled to comment) are worrying about this “lawless drug infested country” infecting the United States. Any concern for the Oaxacan people is secondary and purely economic – how will this affect tourism? The main concern appears to be protecting the perceived integrity of the U.S. “The wall” takes precedence in discussing violence and political disputes in an area over 2300 kilometres away from the U.S. border. Although border politics do come into play, as is evidenced by the following discussion about the difficulty with and importance of financing “the wall”:

"Believe me, I hope they do find a way to finance it too. I just hope it's not another false promise. Take it from someone that used to live close to the border, it's not a pretty sight. South Texas is an ugly place to live in that's why I moved north of Texas. Things are better here, at least where I live." (Ely, Plano, TX)

"it makes you wonder why Bush has been dragging his feet here....I suppose he is catering to people who want cheap a labor pool[. ]He would rather let in cheap labor and basically let his own state of texas go to hell in a hand basket[.] I think they ought to put electricity in that fence too. I have heard south Texas is pretty rough[.]" (Shadow Guy, Indianapolis)

This discussion reveals some racial/ethnic tension between “white” Texans and Mexican Texans. The suggestion that life further from the border implies both that Mexicans dirty the purity of Texas, making things ugly – “not a pretty sight” – and that the border culture of southern Texas is representative of Mexico as a whole. The barbarity of the suggestion of electrifying “the wall” reveals the undercurrent of racism present in U.S. society, which only needs the slightest prodding from the media. The source article need not present its biases too bluntly because the readers have them ready at hand.

Works Cited

Comments on "Mexican President Sends Police to Oaxaca." The Associated Press. Topix.net. 29 Oct. 2006. .

Romero, Rebeca. "Mexican President Sends Police to Oaxaca." The Associated Press. 2006. Topix. net. 28 Oct. 2006. 29 Oct. 2006 .

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Framing the Argument: What's the Use of Rights?

Last week in class we discussed using the rights discourse as a way of framing or articulating the "wrongness" of abuses - specifically torture. In his "Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Junta," Roldolfo Walsh attempts to articulate the Junta's "wrongness" without (the benefit of?) the rights discourse. He cites numerous figures of deaths and missing people, and compares them to the losses the military suffered in the same so-called battles (286). He also attempts to reveal the lies inherent in the militaries communiques in an attempt to prove their duplicitousness: "The execution of guerrillas wounded or captured in real battles is demonstrated by the army's own communiques, which spoke of 600 deaths in one year but only 10 or 15 injured, a proportion unheard of in the bloodiest of conflicts" (286). This attempt to draw attention to the Junta's lies seems designed to rationally undermine the government's position and claim of righteousness. If Walsh can prove they are lying, he can challenge their authority.

He goes on to challenge the Junta's ability to govern effectively by outlining the abhorrent conditions under which the poor of Buenos Aires are living. Comparing infant mortality rates, Walsh reveals that Buenos Aires is "on the same level as Rhodesia, Dahomey or the Guyanas" (289). Without directly framing his argument in terms of human rights, Walsh exposes the Junta's failure to govern properly and challenges the claims of the official rhetoric. With the government particularly hostile to anyone invoking the idea of human rights (Feitowitz, 29), Walsh frames his argument with the Junta rhetoric, showing how they have failed in all the ways they claim to be succeeding: "Taking all these facts into account you have to ask yourself who are the real traitors of the official communiques, where are the mercenaries at the service of foreign interests and what is the ideology which threatens our national identity" (290).

Works Cited

Feitowitz, Margarite. A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.

Walsh, Rodolfo. "Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Junta." True Crimes: Rodolfo Walsh, The Life and Times of a Radical Intellectual. Michael McCaughan. London: Latin American Bureau, 2002. 284-90.

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Latin America: A Leader in Democracy?

In "Latin America Declares Independence," Noam Chomsky argues that Latin American countries, "from Venezuela to Argentina" are overcoming the "legacy of external domination of the past centuries and the cruel and destructive social forms that they have helped to establish." He recognizes that many Latin American countries are moving towards more meaningful democracies, and that previously marginalized indigenous populations are becoming more politically active and influential. Chomsky suggests that, although there was a "new wave of democratization" after the dictatorships in the 1970s and 80s, this was accompanied by externally influenced economic reforms that effectively undermined national sovereignty.

As an example of this move toward democracy, Chomsky contrasts the 2004 U.S. presidential election with the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia last December. He shows how the U.S. citizenry was offered a choice between two similar candidates: "men born to wealth and privilege, who attended the same elite university, joined the same secret society where young men are trained to join the ruling class and were able to run in the election because they were supported by pretty much the same conglomerations of private power." In contrast, the Bolivian people chose a representative from their "own ranks, not a representative of narrow sectors of privilege," and the political agenda addressed concerns of basic human rights.

It's exciting to hear good news for a change about Latin America and its potential for democracy, perhaps even its potential to reinvent democracy - or to create for the first time a meaningful democracy. Because of its history of social and economic elitism, particularly in government, this lastest shift in Latin American politics has thoroughly rejected elitism. This may be a passing phase, and it may not be able to withstand U.S. intervention, but perhaps Latin America will be able to reinvent itself, and other "democracies" as well.

Work Cited

Chomsky, Noam. "Latin America Declares Independence." Prensa Latina.com. 22 Oct. 2006 .

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Indifference and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo

In "The Madwomen at the Plaza de Mayo," indifference to others' pain and suffering plays an important role in the rights discourse. Hebe de Bonafini and Matilde Sanchez articulate the initial indifference or avoidance the mothers of the disappeared initially had for each other. They looked at each other with "shy, sideways glances," reluctant to fully acknowledge the shared experience of loss and grief common among all the women (430). This indifference keeps them acting together, keeps them from forming the cohesive group that will eventually stand up to the military junta. When the two women finally share their stories, they find a "tremendous sense of solitary" with each others' pain (431).

Later, as they form into a organized group - The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo - this solidarity empowers them in tackeling the indifference of the world around them. This indifference manifests in their interactions with the the police, the government, and others connected to those in power, people who pretend to care but really do nothing to help. But these are not the only ones indifferent to the women's pain: the civilian masses, the rest of the population are all "completely indifferent" to the women's protests (433). These are the people the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo are really trying to reach, not the military junta or those in power, but the average Joe who fails to acknowledge the atrocities, and to be outraged by them.

The women explain their frustration at those who fail to comprehend the idea behind the term disappeared, "The term is explicit: only someone who didn't want to understand could fail to understand" (436). They suggest that many people are, consciously or not, avoiding the reality that the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo represent, a reality which is not difficult or complicated to understand.

When the World Cup begins, it doesn't represent to the Mothers an opportunity for a party, but the manifestation of "the indifference of others, of all those Argentines who didn't want to know anything about death but preferred to celbrate to the end the mad fiesta power had offered them" (437). For the Mothers, on the other hand, this world televised event presents an opportunity to break through the silence and indifference of the masses. The women recount how the journalists "listened to [them] wide-eyed, some became indignant, and all considered [them] news. [They] had made it" (437). Their goal was not to directly topple the military juntas, but to awaken "from their worker-ant life some complacent passerby lost in his flood of dollars, soccer goals, and trips abroad" (438).

This indifference lies at the root of the human rights abuses that occured in Argentina, and offers an explanation for the importance of protest, art, literature, and memory in overcoming and healing from human rights abuses.

Work Cited

De Bonafini, Hebe, and Matilde Sanchez. "The Madwomen at the Plaza de Mayo" The Argentina Reader: History, Culture, Politics . Nouzeilles, Gabriela, and Garciela Montaldo, eds. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2002. 429-39.

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Justice and Impunity: Politics of the International Community

In “School of the Americas Watch” published in the March 2000 issue of Peace Review, Sharon Erickson Nepstad explores the role of the School of the Americas Watch in bringing about transitional justice in Latin America. Nepstad, who received her PhD from the University of Colorado, is currently an associate professor at the University of Southern Maine, where she teaches in the Department of Sociology. In her article, she challenges the idea that “a radical approach to human rights abuses” when transitioning from a dictatorship to democratic rule “may lead to authoritarianism” (67). Instead, she argues that democracy and civilian rule depend on the implementation of justice during the transitional period. In addition, she argues that international human rights organizations play an important role in facilitating this transition because international governments played a role in maintaining and supporting the military dictatorships. Despite a few stylistic weaknesses, her article makes an effective claim for the importance of transitional justice in the establishment of democracies, and presents interesting questions about the role of national activism in cases of international human rights abuses.

Nepstad begins her article with a vivid example of the atrocious human rights violations that the School of the Americas (SOA) both instructed and applauded. The School of the Americas is an international training facility based out of Fort Benning, Georgia, which changed its name in 2001 to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Nepstad leaves her discussion of the SOA to introduce the concept of impunity, a guarantee which literally means “freedom from punishment”, but which she goes on to define as freedom or protection from “judgement or accountability” (67). Nepstad argues that if citizens had the power to decide, after overthrowing the old government, the newly established democracy would bring human rights perpetrators to justice. She includes in this argument a discussion of transitional justice, specifically how “new civilian governments . . . should handle those guilty of perpetrating state terror and repression, without jeopardizing their [the new state’s] democratic gains and dreams” (67), and articulates the importance of the victim’s opinion in granting amnesty. In this section, Nepstad presents a concise definition of both transitional justice and impunity, and deftly explains the importance of maintaining justice, despite arguments that granting impunity encourages stability. She cites statistical evidence to support her argument that, after the fall of military dictatorships, civilian populations do not support granting impunity to human rights abusers. Nepstad effectively undermines the opposing argument that granting impunity helps new governments avoid authoritarianism by proving that ignoring the citizens’ desire for justice and granting impunity represents a type of authoritarianism and undermines democracy.

In the second section, Nepstad returns to her discussion of the SOA, and uses the SOA Watch – a group of U.S. activist protesting the SOA – as an example of an international group facilitating “the consolidation of civilian regimes while still addressing the concerns of ‘transitional justice’” (69). Nepstad demonstrates, by introducing the history of the SOA, by linking the SOA curriculum to human rights abuses, and by citing examples of the atrocities SOA graduates have committed, that the SOA contributed to “escalating violence” in Latin America (69). Her argument links the actions of the SOA Watch in criticizing the SOA’s human rights record and protesting taxpayer’s support of this institution to the consolidation of democratic regimes in Latin America. Nepstad argues that by attempting to shut down the SOA, the SOA Watch helps removes the “influence [and] intervention of the United States” and supports Latin Americans to “decide their own future with regard to impunity or indictments” (70). Her argument suggests that acts of national activism and protest have international influence.

Although she fails to develop the idea in her article, Nepstad opens up questions about the importance of affecting change on a local/national level, rather than an international level. She suggests that activism on the national level can have international repercussions, and that international awareness can incite national protest, while arguing for the importance of allowing foreign nations to maintain their sovereignty. In the case of Latin America, the U.S. government helped foster military dictatorships and helped train them to commit human rights abuses. Within this context, Nepstad shows that U.S. citizen’s acting on a national level can support international justice. In her final section, Nepstad presents the ways that this activism, exemplified specifically by the SOA Watch, “contributes to the consolidation of democracy in Latin American countries wrestling with the problems of transitional government” (71). This contribution occurs, first, because the SOA Watch calls for “military institutions to be accountable to civilian authorities”; second, because the SOA Watch “contributes to demilitarization” by demanding that the military “focus on national defense”; third, “by fostering a greater consciousness about human rights”; and finally, because the SOA Watch’s attempt to “close down one of the primary institutions” involved in the support of national security states undermines “support for military regimes” (71).

Although certain elements of Nepstad’s rhetorical style demonstrate effective political writing, the article’s organization undermines the persuasiveness of her argument. In its entirety, Nepstad’s article focuses on the School of the Americas Watch and how international groups like this one can aid Latin American countries faced with the challenge of transitional justice, but she is slow to arrive at this area of focus. Although her article opens with a focus on the SOA and the human rights abuses its graduates have committed, Nepstad abandons this discussion to explore the concept of impunity in transitional justice. Her first main argument discusses transitional justice, democracy, and impunity, and she only includes the SOA Watch in her second argument, almost halfway through the article. This organizational approach lacks focus, which in turn undermines the effectiveness of her argument. The thesis she articulates in her introduction seems to focus on the challenges of implementing transitional justice, but by the end of the article this thesis has shifted to an argument for the importance of international organizations in consolidating democracy in Latin American countries transitioning from military dictatorships to democratic rule. While the connection is evident between the introduction’s narrative example of the atrocities SOA graduates have committed and the importance of the SOA Watch, her failure to articulate this connection leaves her thesis nebulous. Similarly, her analysis of impunity in Latin America in her first argument foregrounds the importance of the SOA Watch and would connect well with the rest of her argument if she made the connection between impunity in Latin America and U.S. impunity in the form of the SOA. Her failure to make this connection results in a lack of cohesiveness.

Among the positive elements of her writing style is her incorporation of narrative paragraphs to support her theoretical position. She offers a powerful description of injustice through the story of Sister Diana Ortiz and her General Hector Gramanjo. Similarly, her narrative example of Tomás Borges’s (the Sandinista National Liberation Front founder) ability to forgive effectively demonstrates the importance of the victims’ input in granting amnesty. However, throughout the article, and particularly in her discussion on impunity, Nepstad often expresses her suggestions with the passive voice. This verbal mood detracts from, or omits, the responsibility of the agent in the sentence, an effect that Nepstad argues against in the political realm. In her discussion of impunity, she uses the passive voice to state specific changes that governments or societies need to make in order to embrace democracy. For example, she claims that to consolidate democracy “militaries must be ousted . . . an impartial system of justice and rule of law must be established, [and] a political culture of respect for human dignity and human rights must be fostered” (68). The use of the passive voice in these suggestions highlights the action but removes all sense of agency. Nepstad leaves open the question, who will oust the military, establish justice, and foster respect for human rights? Is this the responsibility of the newly implemented state, of the civilian population, or of the intelligentsia? If she fails to specify how these actions will occur and who must take responsibility for them, she leaves the dream of transitional justice in the realm of ideals. When arguing for the importance of responsibility and accountability (in many ways the opposites of impunity), Nepstad must use language that brings these same principles into the forefront.

Despite a few stylistic concerns, Nepstad presents an important discussion because she calls into question U.S. responsibility in Latin American human rights violations. She challenges international complicity in the suffering endured by Latin Americans as a result of U.S. intervention in the democratic process and argues for the importance of national activism when faced with international issues. While she argues that Latin Americans must have the freedom to “decide for themselves how they will proceed with transitional justice and the question of impunity”, she emphasizes the role “those in the West” play in ensuring that human rights violations “never occur again” (71).

Works Cited

Nepstad, Sharon Erickson. “School of the Americas Watch.” Peace Review 12 (2000): 67-72.

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