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A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture

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What really struck me about this book was how well Maruerite Feitlowitz captured the subtleties of the effects terror and repression had on the Argentine population. For example, she discusses how a popular women's magazine, Para Ti, incorporated pro-Proceso rhetoric and even military-inspired fashion into its message during the war. The book is based extensively on first-person testimonials, many of which come from interviews conducted by Feitlowitz herself. Two chapters I found especially revealing dealt with the failure of Jewish leadership to defend its people during the crisis, and with the crippling effect of repression on one rural agrarian league. Two minor complaints: There was little discussion of the systematic repression of union leaders, which intended to (and succeeded in) severely weakening labor's role in Argentina. Also, at least in the paperback version, the print was tiny! If your eyes are getting weak, reading glasses are a must!

This is an incredibly researched work. Marguerite Feitlowitz has interviewed and probed into Argentina's past with an ear toward the language used and its effect upon the victims of the Dirty War. As a person who has studied and written about this time, I was fascinated to read her approach. The language used by the torturers of Argentina was sinister and telling; she has solved the puzzle of their words and let the world understand their aims and goals. It is a brilliant book, and important for anyone who is interested in 1) Human rights; 2) Latin American history; 3) Human nature; 4) The politics of a nation's memory.

This is a compelling and relentless book that jumps off from the starting point that subtle Orwellian language manipulation is an essential component of political repression, by showing how the adjustment and subversion of words, the theft of meaning, enabled the Argentine Generals to torture, loot, and murder tens of thousands of quite innocent civilians (and unwanted military or anyone else in the way). In a literate society the body parts can remain hidden, and the words will do the work of subduing dissent.

By exploring the personal stories and interviews with survivors, families of the 'disappeared,' willfully ignorant or complicit 'bystanders,' vain or conscience-stricken perpetrators, and so on, the book moves far beyond a linguistic or philosophical analysis. It is personal, angry, and tragic.

What froze me to the bone is recognizing little linguistic echoes and hints from our own government as it moves the war on terror increasingly to a domestic front. One thing the author underplays, I think, is the extent to which a large proportion of the Argentine society actually was fine with the degree of brutality and repression, as long as they didn't have to actually see and 'know about' the mutilated carcasses of their neighbors' kids. They were convinced by words and the climate of paranoia that there was (indeed) an invisible war against terrorists going on all around them. 'Torture... is the secret weapon in the war without rules.'

Not a stunningly brilliant work like Scarry's 'The Body in Pain,' but 'Lexicon of Terror' has the great advantage that it's very readable and accessible.

In her study of the Argentinan "Dirty War", Feitlowitz does a marvelous job of conveying the true sentiment on the subject from argentines before, during and after the military coup of 1976. The terror, the hopelessness and today's heartwrenching despair. Her book recounts the testimony of families of the "desaparecidos" (disappeared) and victims themselves whom she interviewed during her six year research on the subject, in Argentina. She eloquently conveys to the reader the fear and confusion that have been long ingrained in the minds of Argentina's civilians, as the result of the atrocities committed by the dictatorship. As a teenager growing up in Argentina during this period, I attest to the veracity of the emotions delivered by the author in her writings. A must read on the topic!

I am the editor of Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies DRCLAS NEWS. This review was published in this month's issue.

A LEXICON OF TERROR: ARGENTINA AND THE LEGACIES OF TORTURE

A New Book by Marguerite Feitlowitz (Oxford University Press, New York, 1998)

Review by Ana María Amar Sánchez, Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University.

How can one narrate the unspeakable? The unimaginable, the horror?.....The Argentine military dictatorship that devastated that country between 1976 and 1983 vividly actualizes the difficulties of narrating an understandable tale of horror.

This book by Marguerite Feitlowitz, Preceptor in Expository Writing at Harvard, explores a point that has seldom been examined in the analysis of this period; the way in which, precisely, language and terror were linked, the use of language to further terror and the legacy left by that vocabulary in testimonies and memory, the remnants of a new lexicon that gave different meanings to words and changed them forever.....Feitlowitz studies and analyzes this use of language as a means of making horror more "natural" and as a significant component in the construction of a supposed "normal reality."

The investigation is made up of five chapters; the preface and introduction inform the reader about the way in which Feitlowitz developed her research and provides the historical-political context of the dictatorship. Both the preface and the introduction are valuable to two different types of audiences: Argentine readers, who know the facts, but will find a new focus in this text, and foreign readers who will find basic, but not banal, information with which to orient themselves.

Each of the chapters concentrates on some aspect in which this relationship between terror and language is manifested in this military regimes.....Based on her investigations and on extensive interviews with survivors and family members of the disappeared, the author reconstructs the "lexicon of terror" as expressed in slogans, magazines, propaganda, and daily language.....This work--which provides outstanding documentation--concludes with a chapter about the "Scilingo Effect": the impact of the words of a repentant torturer who in 1995 publicly confessed on television about his participation in death flights.....

Feitlowitz' book is particularly important because it foxcuses on an aspect of the dictatorship that has barely been examined, and it does so with seriousness and rigor. But, moreover, it is important because this aspect--the perverse use of language--allows one to glimpse the daily horror, made banal, in which the Argentine populace lived for almost a decade.....Finally this book which analyzes the power of the word, the perverse force that words acquired in the hands of state terrorism, arrives on the scene to powerfully incorporate its word with all the other discourses that have been struggling in the last years to eliminate the forgetting, the silence, the amnesia, that those in power would yet once again impose on this history of horror, this legacy of death.

Ana María Amar Sánchez is Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. END

This is a shocking and painful book to read. There are other books which document the torture and atrocities of the Argentinian Dirty War in more detail, but none that reveals the horror of it all by providing examples and analysis of the words, phrases and verbal concepts of the perpetrators and their victims. The title, "Lexicon of Terror," could not have been chosen better for seemingly neutural words like "process" and "change" and dozend of others are shown to have been corrupted intellectually so that the physical corruption which followed was almost inevitable.

The book combines three disciplines that are rarely treated in the same volume, much less understood by the same person. But history, lexicography, and journalism are intertwined to such a degree that the blend is complete.

The author, in her low key style, deals with occurances and happenings that for most of us would cry out for justice. But by limiting her treatment to understanding the problem, she is even more effective on motivating the reader to search for soloution.

Most of us are familiar with the phrase that knowledge is power, but this relatively short book is a great example of the power (in this case for evil) of language. The reader will never look at partisan political dialogue in the same way again.

One annoying feature is terribly small type, so those who need reading glasses, do not forget them. The rest of the work is brilliant and terrible in the literal meaning of the word, which is what makes it so wonderful, thoudh disconcerting and depressing as well.

Reading this volume is a must for anyone who loves and respects language, freedom, and human rights for you will learn how intertwined they can be.

The title of this book, The Lexicon of Terror, really only covers one chapter and an occassional reference here and there to how the junta manipulated language to influence the minds of the people. The book mostly covered the context of the Dirty War, the main bad guys, and many stories of victims.

After interviewing the victims, Feitlowitz has no mercy for the military perpatrators of the war. Even when she interviews Balza, the army cheif of staff in 1996 who seemed like one of the more repantant of the military guys, she isn't afraid to ask him tough questions.

She covers the book in both dichronic and synchronic time. She goes through chronology from the coup that put Videla in charge to the recovery of the country that was still going on when she finished her book in 1997. But in addition to that, she covers the stories of the individuals involved in the atrocities. One of the details that struck me the most was when she talked about former desaparecidos running into their former captors on the street. One captor even asked a victim how her family was doing.

Feitlowitz also tells about Scilingo, a former navy officer tortured by his memories of throwing living but drugged "subversives" from a plane on the infamous night flights. His life was ruined by his participation. She even makes an effort to explain that complicity in the army was guaranteed because if a member of the army did not follow orders or expressed concern with what was happening, they would soon disappear themselves. The excuse rings a little hollow, though, because of the brutalness of the torture.

History is frightening. I enjoyed how she talked about the way words were used as propaganda because it is an aspect of all governments. While I don't think our current administration is on par with Videla by any means, they certainly twist words to influence the way we thing about things, that play on our patriotism (the Patriot Act for instance) and our fear of terrorism. I don't think there is a government that doesn't try to influence the vocabulary of its people for their own purposes. Being able to recognize what they are doing allows us to maintain our freedom.

The importance of words and language and how its use can betray an entire country and rob its citizens of their identity and their soul. Read this and beware but respect the power of the written and spoken word. That which created a Nazi Germany still exists and the threat remains and is intensified by the progress of technology.

I have read several books on Argentina's dirty war and this book has brought me closer to the horrific events of those years. It is an inspiring and revealing study that I recommend thoroughly.

What makes this book unreliable is Ms Feitlowitz's exaggeration of the role played by the American Embassy in Buenos Aires in condemning the criminal excesses of the various Juntas. In fact, had this role had been sincere, the Embassy would have been in direct contradiction with Washington's policy of support to the Juntas. We all know Henry Kissinger's 1976 instructions to Argentine Foreign Minister Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti: "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly." This support did not waver until the beginning of the Malvinas-Falklands war: when the war began Alexander Haig was hunting at an Argentine general's estancia. Let's not forget either that Operation Condor (begun in 1975), a campaign of political repression involving assassination and intelligence operations supervised by the US was operating full blast in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. No opposition to (or reference to) this operation was registered at the Embassy. This hypocrisy extended to the US Congress which made some noises about "cutting aid to Argentina" without actually intending to.

Equally unfair and misleading are the criticisms leveled against various organizations (e.g. the Argentine Jewish organization DAIA) for not opposing the dictatorship more forcefully. This is easy to say but ignores the dire consequences that "opposing more forcefully" implied under the military regime.