1) What is State Terror?

• As an outcome after reading and viewing our selected sources we define state terror as a group of people, in most cases the military and government, causing utmost terror to its citizens. State terror has been seen and endured both in the past and up to todays date. Many Latin American countries had to deal with their government attacking them with violence in order for their type of ruling to be followed and not challenged (Intelligence 2). State terror is not just something that happened in our past, but is an issue that is still occurring to this day. It might not be as severe, violent, or inhumane as it was in the past but we like to think that is the result of it not being fully uncovered or exposed to the public as compared to the operations from the past (Estrada).

2) A Better Understanding

• The threat of state terror took place in Argentina, which showed that state terror was used by the governments throughout Latin America evident in both Central and South America. Argentina is a prime example of the variations of state terror that took place throughout Latin America which differed from Guatemala’s politically and socially. The violence that persisted in Argentina took place in 1955 after the result of an overthrow of an elected Peronist government. The military’s rejection of Peronism would cause a movement of Argentines to engage in attempts to resist this rejection. This would include kidnappings and assassinations by political guerilla group the Montoneros along with a militant workforce. The divide between the left-wing and right-wing of Peronism would cause internal conflict that would result in eradication of the Peronist party in government (Levy & Ross, 1986).

3) A Break Down

• In 1981, years before the ending of a twelve-year civil war, one of the worst massacres occurred in a small town known as El Mozote, where innocent civilians were killed. A leader known as Marcos Diaz was rumored to have been in contact with the military stating residents from the village who stayed in their homes would be assassinated. “Everyone from the surrounding countryside congregated in El Llano (The Plain), the center of El Mozote, in the hopes that their lives would be saved when the upcoming military operation searched the region for FMLN guerrillas” (Medina & Binford, 2014). Residents were ambushed at night by military officials, entering homes and killing men, women, and children. Some families were raped before being shot by officials and later dismembered—those affected by these attacks were the ones who had remained in their homes days before the rumors. However, the military was not targeting civilians by their religion or politics but rather by the suspicion that some civilians were associating with others the military did not approve of. Salvadorans were attacked overnight by the government for just having suspension over others rather than having a better reasonable cause to commit innocent murders.

4) Chile's State Terror

• Many countries in Latin America were being affected by state terror due to their dictators. The countries all suffered different types of horrific outcomes. In specific there were many occurrences in Chile that changed and damaged the country. The working class was attacked by the council's dictatorship to revert the people back to authoritarian control. They wanted the working class to be taken over again in order to regain power. The government did not hold back on anyone. They targeted people of all ages in any situations they were in, at work, school, on a random occasion. They were trying to make a staple. The people were trying to retaliate by starting social movements since they didn’t have many other options. In 1981 and 1982 the free market economy collapsed which led the people to start up new social movements. After that, the dictator regime lost their authority (Petras 321-322).

Works Cited

De Reufels, Delia González. “AFTERLIVES OF THE DISAPPEARED - VIDAS POSTERIORES DE LOS DESAPARECIDOS:SCHOLARSHIP ON

STATE TERROR AND THE ‘DESAPARECIDOS.’” Iberoamericana (2001-), vol. 18, no. 67, 2018, pp. 247–54.

JSTOR,https://www.jstor.org/stable/26893103?sid=primo&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents . Accessed 30 Oct. 2022.

Fernández, Belén. “Remembering US-Backed State Terror in El Salvador.” Human Rights | Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, 11 Dec. 2021, www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/12/11/remembering-us-backed-state-terror-in-el-salvador.

“Home: National Security Archive.” Home | National Security Archive, https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/5817671/National-Security-Archive-Doc-10-CIA.pdf.

Levy, Jim. Ross, Peter. The State of Violence: Terror in Latin America. The Australian Quarterly. Vol. 58, No. 3 (Spring, 1986), pp. 269-277. Australian Institute of Policy and Science. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20635382. Accessed 31 Oct. 2022.

Medina, Rafael Alarcón, and Leigh Binford. “Revisiting the El Mozote Massacre: Memory and Politics in Postwar El Salvador.” Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 16, no. 4, Dec. 2014, pp. 513–33. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.hmlproxy.lib.csufresno.edu/10.1080/14623528.2014.975953.

Petras, James. “The Anatomy of State Terror: Chile, El Salvador and Brazil.” Science & Society, vol. 51, no. 3, 1987, pp. 314–38. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40402812. Accessed 21 Nov. 2022.

“Veracruz: Fixing Mexico's State of Terror.” Crisis Group, 7 Mar. 2017, https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/mexico/61-veracruz-fixing-mexicos-state-terror.

“Watch Armed to the Teeth.” Netflix, 15 Nov. 2019,https://www.netflix.com/watch/81123826?trackId=14277281&tctx=-97%2C-97%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C.