Rita Arditti's Searching For Life

The readings for today consisted of the first three chapters of Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina by Rita Arditti and the article “Female Combatants and the Perpetration of Violence: Wartime Rape in the Sierra Leone Civil War” by Dara Kay Cohen. Both readings deal with atrocities of war, although from very different perspectives. In Searching for Life, we are introduced to the results of the instillation of a rightist regime in Argentina (Arditti, 1999). Arditti mentions the anti-Semitic feelings that many in the military carried, and how these feelings translated into particularly heinous acts against individuals who were Jewish. This brings to question the knowledge the U.S. had of

I learned that during the latter half of the 20th century, the United States was very involved with fighting communism, not only throughout the world, but in the Western Hemisphere as well, where it was deemed a threat to the American way of life. Rightist regimes were installed in various countries with aid from the U.S. government in order to remove this threat. Although Arditti states that the military coup and rightist regime are due to the succession of Juan Peron by his second wife, Isabell, the possibility for U.S. involvement should not be dismissed (Arditti, 1999). Furthermore, the anti-Semitism described by Arditti in these instances is present in the United States as well. Arditti mentions that many Nazis moved to Argentina after WWII, due to the large German community present there (Arditti, 1999). Something similar occurred in the United States, were Nazi war criminals settled down to new lives. Although we may not know exactly where they settled, to deny that they are present is to permit the perpetuation of harmful false