A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture

by Marguerite Feitlowitz

Overview

"We were all out in la charca, and there they were, coming over the ridge, a battalion ready for war, against a schoolhut full of children." Tanks roaring over farmlands, pregnant mothers tortured, their babies stolen and sold on the black market, homes raided in the dead of night, ordinary citizens kidnapped and never seen again--such were the horrors of Argentina's Dirty War. Now, in A Lexicon of Terror, Marguerite Feitlowitz fully exposes the nightmare of sadism, paranoia, and deception the military dictatorship unleashed on the Argentine people, a nightmare that would claim over 30,000 civilians from 1976 to 1983 and whose leaders were recently issued warrants by a Spanish court for the crime of genocide. Feitlowitz explores the perversion of language under state terrorism, both as it's used to conceal and confuse ("The Parliament must be disbanded to rejuvenate democracy") and to domesticate torture and murder. Thus, citizens kidnapped and held in secret concentration camps were "disappeared"; torture was referred to as "intensive therapy"; prisoners thrown alive from airplanes over the ocean were called "fish food." Based on six years of research and moving interviews with peasants, intellectuals, activists, and bystanders, A Lexicon of Terror examines the full impact of this catastrophic period from its inception to the present, in which former torturers, having been pardoned and released from prison, live side by side with those they tortured. Passionately written and impossible to put down, Feitlowitz shows us both the horror of the war and the heroism of those who resisted and survived--their courage, their endurance, their eloquent refusal to be dehumanized in the face of torments even Dante could not have imagined.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199840373
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/07/1999
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	692,333
File size:	19 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Marguerite Feitlowitz taught writing and literary translation at Harvard University from 1993-1999. Her many awards include two Fulbright Fellowships to Argentina and a Mary Ingram Bunting Fellowship in Nonfiction. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS
Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xv
Introduction The Gentlemen's Coup	3
Chapter One A Lexicon of Terror	19
Chapter Two Night and Fog	63
Chapter Three "Life Here Is Normal"	89
Chapter Four The Land Mourneth	110
Chapter Five The House of the Blind	149
Chapter Six "The Scilingo Effect" The Past Is a Predator	193
Notes	257
Selected Bibliography	288
Index	294

What People are Saying About This

Harold Pinter

Lucid, authoritative, and appalling. No ghastly stone is left unturned....Quite heartbreaking.

--Harold Pinter

Editorial Reviews

During the past few years, many volumes have been written about the difficult period in Argentina's recent history called the "Dirty War." During that period of military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983, thousands of Argentineans were arrested, imprisoned, and declared missing or desaparecidos ("the disappeared"). Feitlowitz (writing, Harvard Univ.) approaches the subject in a unique and fascinating way by examining how language was used and changed because of what people experienced. The author interviewed hundreds of participants and tells her story through personal descriptions and examining language transformations. Consequently, the book provides an emotional and vivid description of events, uses new approaches, and suggests conclusions not found in other volumes on this period of Argentine history. An important book for college and academic Latin America collections.

--Mark L. Grover, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT

Library Journal

A well-researched, intimate and perceptive portrait of an Argentina still struggling with the crimes of the "dirty war" that ended nearly 20 years ago.

--Tina Rosenberg, The New York Times Book Review

Tina Rosenberg

A Lexicon of Terror is a searing account of the Argentine Dirty War which claimed over 30,000 lives between 1976 and 1983. The author, who teaches writing and literary translation at Harvard, spent six years of harrowing research among those who survived unspeakable mental and physical torment in the military dictatorship's torture chambers. She spoke with many parents who had seen their children disappear into the "night and fog" of the Argentine terror.... Feitlowitz also shows how, against the odds, persistent and heroic efforts of many Argentinians eventually forced light on a horrifying secret record....Her remarkable book bears painful witness to a tragedy that must not be forgotten.

--Kenneth Maxwell, The New York Review of Books

Kenneth Maxwell