Cautiva, a 2003 film directed by Gaston Biraben, is about a young girl named Christina who lived an ordinary life until she was sent to see a judge who altered her life entirely by revealing the truth about her real parents and identity. She embarks on a journey in pursuit of the truth in which those who she believed were her parents and her family by blood decide not to reveal. Although this film isn’t based on a factual story, it is based on real cases that have occurred to many individuals in Argentina due to the “dirty war”. It addresses different points in history, such as the disappearance of numerous activists under the rule of the military during the 1970’s and how the military would take the babies of those disappeared and hand them …show more content…
In John Charles Chasteen’s book, “Born in Blood & Fire: A Concise History of Latin America”, he states that throughout the rule of the military, specifically in Argentina, it was a “scene of a “dirty war” fought by the armed forces against urban guerrillas.” These guerrillas were mostly from three different groups known as Peronists, leftists, and the adolescences. In order to eradicate the threat of revolution in Argentina, armed forces arrested all who went against them and eventually disappeared them by using the method called namelessness which would be seen on records as “N.N.”, that is if any records could be found on the person who went missing. Children of those who were disappeared were placed in illegal adoptions by the military and as a result, were victims of the war and its aftermath. As we see in the film, the protagonist, Christina, depicts the children who were taken away from their real parents and put into these illegal adoptions. Through the eyes of Christina, we can understand what these children must have gone through while facing this terrible …show more content…
During their conversation, Susana talks about how the military would kill people with bombs, including priests due to being communists and Christina makes a remark saying that they have disappeared instead. The term “disappeared” is explored throughout the movie and as we learn later in the movie, many of these people were placed in concentration camps and tortured terribly until they died or were lucky enough to leave. The article, “The Shifting Meanings of Childhood and “N.N.”” by Donna J. Guy goes into great depth on the disappearance of individuals that occurred during the Dirty War. It is specified that “more than 44 percent of those detained consisted of youths under the age of 25, mostly college students, activists with the poor, and workers. Woman made up 30 percent, 10 percent of whom were pregnant.” When Christina is placed into a new school and finds Angelica, she mentions that her real parents have disappeared and asks her about what her parents did to get arrested. Angelica then goes on to tell her that her parents worked in a metallurgy factory and that the only thing they did was speak out against the dictatorship. To the military, even the slightest acts were considered a crime as they saw any act that went against them was an opportunity for an uprising. Woman who were pregnant and imprisoned weren’t excluded from the torment
“The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage.” In America, Americans are blessed to have the right to freedom. Unlike other unfortunate countries, their freedom is limited. In many Latin American countries, the government’s leader has all power of the Country. Citizens have no rights to freedom, they are trapped in a cruel country where innocent people are killed each day. Civilians fear to speak out to the regime of leader; However, there were a few courageous citizens enough to speak out against the government. For example, “The Censors” by Luisa Valenzuela and the historical fictionalized account, “In The Time Of The Butterflies” by Julia Alvarez reveal individual 's role in overcoming oppression.
La Operacion is a documentary film that talks about the massive sterilization campaign that occur in Puerto Rico and left one-third of the Puerto Ricans woman population sterilize. The documentary is complete in a sense that it shows maps, data, people speaking of their personal experience, but the most important aspect of it that it shows footage of the surgery. The repetition of the surgery scene gives an idea that this surgery was a common practice of everyday life in Puerto Rico.
The 1985 Argentine film La Historia Oficial, directed by Luis Puenzo, is truly deserving of its academy award. The film is set in Argentina in the 1980s, during the last years of a military dictatorship that killed and tortured thousands of its own people who did not agree with their radical polices. The film has many underlying themes especially regarding government-sponsored terrorism, classroom politics and the authority of certain texts. However, one theme is represented again and again throughout the film. The theme that “machismo” will reign supreme in the relationship between males and females, and males in political aspect in the country of Argentina. Men had to hold all the authority in the household and all aspects of life, including
Additionally, the detail with which the writer describes Christina’s visions and physical illnesses during her trials left room for critical analysis of what were likely undiagnosed medical conditions (31-33). Even still, the manuscript does not overtly paint her as more than a very religious woman. In fact, no one is free of the writer’s criticism of their behavior, not even Christina, whose dialogue is at times quite
Heroic priest Bartolomeo Las Casas, a fighter for the rights of Indians in real life is afraid, constantly looking around to the disorder in Cochabamba. Yes, and the whole film crew, so enthusiastically create a movie instantly is ready to quit, fearing riots taking place in the city. A petty producer Costa, who boasts that for 2 bucks, employs a large crowd, suddenly imbued with sympathy for the woman whose child has suffered in the riots, and spitting on the danger of going into the inferno to save the girl. Everyone is different. We may be bad, but we can and show themselves as heroes.
Desert Blood, a book by Alicia Gaspar De Alba, is considered to be a mystery novel that covers a seventeen year crime wave. Specifically, the author has focused on the Juarez femicides issue whereby femicide is defined as the murder of females just because they are women. However, in this case, the Juarez victims are the poor and young Mexican females that were murdered because they were poor. The protagonist of this story is Ivon Villa, a professor that focuses on women studies while the antagonists are Silvia Pasquel, Natalia Stregnard and Zabaleta. This paper will therefore focus on the plot summary and analysis of the novelwhile pinpointing the main parts of the story.
History usually forces itself into the present in Juan Jose Campanella’s film “El Secreto De Sus Ojos” (The Secret in Their Eyes). Although it was filmed in 2009, the story is an attempted memorization of the violent reality in 1970-1980s Argentina, an era in which the country was rapidly sinking into military rule-ship. Campanella offers flashbacks into Argentina’s dark days, a period where violence homicide, rape and injustices ruled. Through memory, the film narrate a era in which it was impossible to be an innocent person as the innocents were falsely accused, tortured and even murdered for crimes they never committed, all these for the whims of those in power. Even though, the film is set in the 1970s, it does not call immediate attention to the animosity, the hopeless feeling and the constant struggle between the desire to forget vs. the attempts to remember the chaos and confusion of these years. However, through the use of memory Campanella allow the views to portray an almost perfect picture of what happened in Argentina.
Because “Camila” was released shortly after the end of the Argentine Proceso, it was clearly a timely criticism of dictatorship in Argentina. The real story of Camila occurred in a time following a brief bout with democracy. This film could be seen as a cautionary tale in terms of warning against ever returning to that form of government. If this, indeed, was Bemberg’s intentions, she was a brave, courageous woman that would have made a great character in one of her own films.
The lost children of Francoism were the children abducted from Republican parents, who either were in jail or had been assassinated by Francoist troops, during the Spanish Civil War and Francoist Spain. The number of abducted children expected to be up to 300,000. The children were kidnap victims of child trafficking and illegal adoption. The military organization led by Francisco Franco had an ideology with racist apparatuses. The soldiers who took part in the revolution considered themselves to be of a superior race the National Day in Francoist Spain was called Día de la Raza (Day of the Race). They believed that their superiority established them the right of defeat over other inferior races, which included the Republicans and all others who opposed the military revolution. The inventor of this ideology was the military psychiatrist Antonio Vallejo-Nájera who directed the Psychiatric Services of the Military (los Servicios Psiquiátricos del Ejército). Vallejo-Nájera trained in Germany, where he studied and greatly admired the Nazi ideology. His analysis of race, however, had more political, cultural, and psychological workings than ethnic ones, though it did maintain anti-semitic beliefs. Vallejo-Najerán's theories were compiled in his books, such as Eugenesia de la Hispanidad y regeneración de la raza (Eugenics of Hispanicity and the regeneration of race), where he redefined race as spirit. "Race is spirit, Spain is spirit, and Hispanicity is spirit. For this, we must immerse ourselves in Hispanicity to understand our racial principles and differentiate our race from others. It was assumed that racial inferiority could be modified at an early age. Therefore, infants were taken from th...
Due to the nature of military dictatorship, in 1960, social discontent began to give way to left wing militants made up of the Mayan indigenous people and rural peasantry. This is the match that lit Guatemala’s Civil War, street battles between the two groups tore the country and pressured the autocratic ruler General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes to fight harder against the civilian insurrection. Similar to the government abductions that took place in Argentina, the military regime began to do the same.... ... middle of paper ... ...
Taylor, Diana. "Trapped in Bad Scripts: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo". Disappearing Acts. Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's "Dirty War." Duke Univ. Press: 1997. 183-222.
Between the years of 1976 to 1983, the period known as the ‘Dirty War’ was in full force in Argentina. During this period, thousands of people mysteriously went missing, and are referred to now as the ‘Disappeared’. It is believed that many of the disappeared were taken by agents of the Argentine government, and perhaps tortured and killed before their bodies were disposed of in unmarked graves or rural areas. Whenever the female captives were pregnant, their children were stolen away right after giving birth, while they themselves remained detained. It is estimated that 500 young children and infants were given to families with close ties to the military to be raised. Within this essay I would like to touch on the brief history of the Dirty war and why the military felt it was necessary to take and kill thousands of Argentina’s, and also the devastating affects the disappeared, and stolen children are having on living relatives of those taken or killed. It is hard to imagine something like this happening in North America relatively recently. To wakeup and have members of your family missing, with no explanation, or to one day be told your parents are not biologically related is something Argentina’s had to deal with, and are continuing to face even today.
The emotional letter that Juan left for his mother might be one of the most emotional scenes in the documentary. The pure emotions that the letter was written by Juan to her mother leaves the audience with the bonds and emotions felt between the kids and families. Juan Carlos’s father abandoned the family years ago and left to New York, consequently Juan believe it is his responsibility to provide for his family. He also wants to find his father in New York and confronts him about why he has forgotten about them. The story of Juan is not just about migration of children, but also the issue of family separation. The documentary does not dehumanize but rather bring the humane and sensitive lens to the story of Juan where the human drama that these young immigrants and their families live. Juan Carlos is not the first of Esmeralda’s sons to leave for the United states, his nine-year-old brother Francisco was smuggled into California one month earlier. Francisco now lives with Gloria, his grandmother, who paid a smuggler $3,500 to bring him to Los Angeles, California. Once Juan Carlos is in the shelter for child migrants his mother eagerly awaits him outside. After she sees him she signs a paper that says if Juan Carlos tries to travel again, he will be sent to a foster home.
Alarmed by economic turmoil and political unrest, many prominent Argentines urged the military to assume command of the government and applauded military rule when it arrived. The middle class hoped that the military would put a lid on things and allow them to go on with there daily lives but when the military implemented National Reorganization Process, the middle class found themselves in the crosshairs and many in this class also disappeared under military rule. Julia came from a pretty modest background and had very little connection with politics but her and her husband were still disappeared by the military, proving that many innocent Argentines were suspected of being
Antiparallel consequences of occupational memory in La Historia Oficial In response to the 30,000 "disappearances" of young revolutionaries in Argentina, mothers of missing children combated the structural violence of oppressive military dictatorship by protesting in the Plaza de Mayor in Buenos Aires. Moved by these demonstrations, Luis Puenzo wrote and directed La historia oficial in Argentina during the "Dirty War" (1874-1983), which pitted the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance against the left-wing guerillas. Instead of discussing the ramifications of the war directly, Puenzo centers his film around the fragile marriage of Alicia, a bourgeoisie history teacher, and her husband, Roberto, a wealthy businessman.