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The Disappeared and the Mothers of the Plaza: The Story of the 11,000 Argentinians Who Vanished
The military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 until the restoration of democracy in 1983 preferred not to jail "subversives" but to exterminate them, maintain the authors. Hence the infamous "disappearances," a subterfuge in which Gen. Jorge Videla's security forces seized, tortured and apparently murdered thousands. Simpson and Bennett covered the regime's end and the commencement of Raul Alfonsin's presidency for BBC television. They offer here a comprehensive, well-written account of the "Dirty War," its many innocent victims and the repressive effort to impose a regime of which violence was a part. Along with accounts of "disappeared" people of all classes, the authors show how relatives (the protesting "mothers" of Buenos Aires), journalists and others helped to expose the reign of terror.
- GenresHistory
416 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1985
About the author
John Cody Fidler-Simpson
23 books54 followersJohn Cody Fidler-Simpson CBE is an English foreign correspondent. He is world affairs editor of BBC News, the world's biggest broadcast news service. One of the most travelled reporters ever, he has spent all his working life at the corporation. He has reported from more than 120 countries, including thirty war zones, and has interviewed numerous world leaders.
Simpson was born in Cleveleys, Lancashire; his family later moved to Dunwich, Suffolk. His great grandfather was Samuel Franklin Cowdery (later known as Samuel Franklin Cody), an American showman in the style of Buffalo Bill Cody, who became a British citizen and was an early pioneer of manned flight in the UK. Simpson reveals in his autobiography that his father was an anarchist. That didn't prevent him from getting a top-notch education: he was sent to Dulwich College Preparatory School and St Paul's, and read English at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was editor of Granta magazine. In 1965 he was a member of the Magdalene University Challenge team. A year later Simpson started as a trainee sub-editor at BBC radio news.
Simpson became a BBC reporter in 1970. He describes in his autobiography how on his very first day the then prime minister Harold Wilson, angered by the sudden and impudent, as he saw it, appearance of the novice's microphone, punched him in the stomach.
Simpson was the BBC's political editor from 1980 till 1981. He presented the Nine O'Clock News from 1981 till 1982 and became diplomatic editor in 1982. He had also served as a correspondent in South Africa, Brussels and Dublin. He became BBC world affairs editor in 1988.
Simpson was born in Cleveleys, Lancashire; his family later moved to Dunwich, Suffolk. His great grandfather was Samuel Franklin Cowdery (later known as Samuel Franklin Cody), an American showman in the style of Buffalo Bill Cody, who became a British citizen and was an early pioneer of manned flight in the UK. Simpson reveals in his autobiography that his father was an anarchist. That didn't prevent him from getting a top-notch education: he was sent to Dulwich College Preparatory School and St Paul's, and read English at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was editor of Granta magazine. In 1965 he was a member of the Magdalene University Challenge team. A year later Simpson started as a trainee sub-editor at BBC radio news.
Simpson became a BBC reporter in 1970. He describes in his autobiography how on his very first day the then prime minister Harold Wilson, angered by the sudden and impudent, as he saw it, appearance of the novice's microphone, punched him in the stomach.
Simpson was the BBC's political editor from 1980 till 1981. He presented the Nine O'Clock News from 1981 till 1982 and became diplomatic editor in 1982. He had also served as a correspondent in South Africa, Brussels and Dublin. He became BBC world affairs editor in 1988.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 5, 2020
4 stars to the first half and 2 stars to the second.
Well.... reading about the torture and abuses endured by the surviving "disappeared" of Argentina's military junta is grueling and horrifying. The first half of this book is like stepping into a nightmare.
The second half of the book, I was really not feeling. There was a lot of skimming. Because this book was published so soon after the junta fell, there was an overdose of detail about corruption scandals and political divides that I personally wasn't very interested in reading. I also wasn't very interested in the blow-by-blow account of the Falklands war.
Things I learned/recalled about the Dirty War that really shocked me:
- Argentina hosted.... and WON....a World Cup right in the middle of the dictatorship?? Wow, this really puts me in a bad mood with FIFA, and I was already in a pretty terrible mood with them for being a bunch of dirty crooks.
- Simpson theorizes that many of the torturers derived sexual pleasure from their job. I can believe it (it also made me think about the parts of "Mindhunter" that talk about how people who have sex, killing, torture, and pleasure all twisted up in their brains move among us in everyday life and we'll never know it).
- I have done a LOT of work and writing in my career about terrible things happening in Latin America, but there's something about the airplane killings of the Dirty War—people being stripped, drugged, herded onto trucks, herded onto planes, then pushed out into the ocean—that gives me a particularly bad case of the Homo Sappy blues. Simpson cites a military officer who testified that they started drugging people bc they fought back too much, and "had to be beaten over the head or kicked through the open doorway. All around the doors were the marks of people's fingers, made as they tried to hold on and prevent themselves from falling." In a book filled with sentences about terrible things, this, for me, was the single most terrible one.
- I had forgotten that it's part of the lexicon to refer to the prison camps for the junta's disappeared as "concentration camps." Do you walk around every day thinking, Wow, at one point, there were concentration camps in Latin America? Well, now you can.
- My final observation is that I had the really strange experience of reading the chapter about the work of "Tex" Harris, and then the next day (Monday) I woke up to news that he'd passed away. This just seems like an incredibly chilling coincidence to me—what does it mean?!
Well.... reading about the torture and abuses endured by the surviving "disappeared" of Argentina's military junta is grueling and horrifying. The first half of this book is like stepping into a nightmare.
The second half of the book, I was really not feeling. There was a lot of skimming. Because this book was published so soon after the junta fell, there was an overdose of detail about corruption scandals and political divides that I personally wasn't very interested in reading. I also wasn't very interested in the blow-by-blow account of the Falklands war.
Things I learned/recalled about the Dirty War that really shocked me:
- Argentina hosted.... and WON....a World Cup right in the middle of the dictatorship?? Wow, this really puts me in a bad mood with FIFA, and I was already in a pretty terrible mood with them for being a bunch of dirty crooks.
- Simpson theorizes that many of the torturers derived sexual pleasure from their job. I can believe it (it also made me think about the parts of "Mindhunter" that talk about how people who have sex, killing, torture, and pleasure all twisted up in their brains move among us in everyday life and we'll never know it).
- I have done a LOT of work and writing in my career about terrible things happening in Latin America, but there's something about the airplane killings of the Dirty War—people being stripped, drugged, herded onto trucks, herded onto planes, then pushed out into the ocean—that gives me a particularly bad case of the Homo Sappy blues. Simpson cites a military officer who testified that they started drugging people bc they fought back too much, and "had to be beaten over the head or kicked through the open doorway. All around the doors were the marks of people's fingers, made as they tried to hold on and prevent themselves from falling." In a book filled with sentences about terrible things, this, for me, was the single most terrible one.
- I had forgotten that it's part of the lexicon to refer to the prison camps for the junta's disappeared as "concentration camps." Do you walk around every day thinking, Wow, at one point, there were concentration camps in Latin America? Well, now you can.
- My final observation is that I had the really strange experience of reading the chapter about the work of "Tex" Harris, and then the next day (Monday) I woke up to news that he'd passed away. This just seems like an incredibly chilling coincidence to me—what does it mean?!
October 14, 2015
Unfortunately the violation of the Human Rights is really common all around the world. Is heartbreaking reading all the stories this book brings to us, but it also is at least for me, an obligation to know what these people went through having in consideration that these stories aren't the only ones and that there are so many to discover and uncover.
Genocides, state terror, "leaders", power, conflict of interest, lack of freedom of speech is something that has been there since the colonization times and is really scary that society isn't learning anything about it.
I hope this amazing book helps some to see that it could happen to anybody and that state terror should end.
Genocides, state terror, "leaders", power, conflict of interest, lack of freedom of speech is something that has been there since the colonization times and is really scary that society isn't learning anything about it.
I hope this amazing book helps some to see that it could happen to anybody and that state terror should end.
April 30, 2017
This was an eye-opener for me. Chilling.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews