Unit 3: The Repressed and the Repressors

Focus: history, human rights, literature, politics, testimonials

Student Activities

Lesson 1: Century of the Wind – vignettes by Eduardo Galeano

Lesson 2: A Visit with the Organization of American States

Lesson 3: El Eternauta – a graphic novel

Extra Resources

Music and Videos

Desaparecidos: Listen, Look, and Create

Related Student Activity

Eduardo Galeano: despedida “Nos estamos viendo”

Las Guerras Mienten – Eduardo Galeano

Palabras: Un documental argentino que presenta el testimonio en el juicio a los genocidas

The Official Story/La historia oficial: Oscar winner 1984 for Best Foreign Film

This is an emotionally gripping, fictional look at a couple torn apart by the infamous Argentine campaign of killings and torture that sent thousands of accused terrorists to unmarked graves in the mid-and-late-’70s.

Rotten Tomatoes

Watch on FandagoNOW

Readings

Children of the Dirty War by Francisco Goldman

Quotes

“I was with a group of friends at a hotel’s restaurant in a small town up in the northern mountains in Argentina. My friends noticed someone at a nearby table and kept looking in that direction. It was a man about 10 years older than us, and a woman. The two seemed affected by the attention, got up, and left the restaurant without a word. My friends told me that the man was Aldo Rico, a “carapintada,” the leader of a military group that revolted against the democratic government that was trying to bring to justice those involved in crimes during the Dirty War. The next morning we came for breakfast at the restaurant. Rico and the woman were already there. He promptly got up and left. She approached our table alone. She said we had to forget the past. It was time to move on. And she left.”

Luis Arata, Professor, Quinnipiac University (2000)

“History never really says goodbye. History says, see you later.”

Eduardo Galeano

“First we will kill all of the subversives; then… we will kill all of their sympathizers; then… those who remain undecided, and finally we will kill the indifferent ones.”

General Iberico Saint-Jean, May 26, 1977