Marguerite Feitlowitz

“Argentina is supremely enigmatic, even, perhaps especially, to Argentines, who routinely describe it as "schizophrenic" and "surreal".

Argentina has been consistently self-destructive - economically, politically, socially.

Argentine history is marked by recurring cycles of bloody rule.

For all its sophistication, the deep structures of Argentine society are feudal. The traditional triangle consists of the landowning "oligarchy", the Catholic Church and the military.

Argentina has shown discomfort with the essential untidiness of democracy.

It cannot be said that the last repression was imposed on Argentina by outside forces. Foreign interests came together with a long history of entrenched conservatism, a tradition of the strong exploiting the weak and quick recourse to violence. The regime was eventually brought down, but not because of its record on human rights. Rather, it crumbled under the weight of its own corruption, economic mismanagement and military incompetence.

Where Hitler's definitions of Otherness were clear and specific, those of the Argentine tyrants were comparatively fluid and ambiguous. The Argentine junta was obsesses with the "hidden enemy".

Terror does ghastly things to the human mind and heart. The country as a whole was largely silent during the Dirty War. Since torture and death were castigations for thoughts, people tried to stop thinking. "We knew but we didn't know" would later become a refrain.

How the regime - whose essential creation was a hidden world - manipulated public space. Buses and trains, streets and neighborhoods - and the ways in which we inhabit them - have much to do with our sense of reality.”
― Marguerite Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, Revised and Updated with a New Epilogue