Regina Sánchez Flores (A01634038)

Citizenship and Democracy

31 March 2020
Reconstructing the Collective Memory of Mexico’s Dirty War
Ideologization, Clandestine Detention, and Torture
byJorge Mendoza Garcia

The reconstruction of the events from the dirty war made by Jorge Mendoza García , in his work,
Reconstructing the Collective Memory of Mexico’s Dirty War (2016), utilizes a different approach
than the individual to revisit the past, but to remember in the cultural framework, this is called
collective memory.

In the sixties and seventies, various guerrilla groups arose in different parts of the country;
both in rural areas, such as Guerrero, and in large cities, such as Monterrey, Guadalajara and
Mexico City. Urban and rural, there were about 30 such groups. The most representative of the
rural guerrillas from this period were Lucio Cabañas and his Partido de los Pobres, and Genaro
Vázquez and his Asociación Cívica Nacional Revolucionaria. Among the urban guerrillas was the
Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre. The Mexican State decided to confront these armed groups; not
with the law, but with violence, which went beyond even the legal frameworks instituted in our
country. This terrifying way of confronting the guerrillas is known as the dirty war. In this dirty war
that the government implemented, multiple practices were deployed, such as illegal imprisonment,
clandestine detention, enforced disappearance, the incarceration of family members of guerrillas,
and torture. Hence, the so-called dirty war owed its name to the fact that it rejected the very law it
claimed to defend.

In this context, the guerrillas are not recognized as such; they are denied the right to join
the ranks of the social movement; they are deposited by the official discourse in the field of crime
and terrorism. They are not social fighters, they do not seek change; the national press echoes that
voice, and they are ideologized, sending them, from that moment, to the zone of oblivion. Those
who fought the guerrillas of the 1960s and 1970s adopted this approach to justify the
disappearance and murder of hundreds of people. Guerrilleros were detained, held in clandestine
prisons, be they political police safe houses or military camps. In these places of illegal
confinement, they were tortured and then murdered. Such a strategy undoubtedly existed every
time there was a tactic to annihilate the guerrillas, a strategy that consisted of literally getting rid of
the guerrillas. Mendoza (2016) explains that these detentions were kept clandestine so that the
alleged guerrillas and those accused of supporting them could not be charged.

As previously mentioned, entry into clandestine prisons resulted in inhuman treatment and
torture. Tortures could range from the psychological, to beatings and mutilations, to death. It could
be alone or in front of a relative, to "soften" the person interrogated. Showing others, a family
member, that someone was tortured generated terror, panic. To announce or allow torture to be
heard by those who were detained was also terrifying, overwhelming. It is that practiced terror,
destined to make those who watch or listen be frightened, even before being violated. The message
of torture is addressed to them. In that sense, the torturers' intention was clear: to instill fear, a lot of
fear.

Mastering memory and forgetting, as social practices, is an eminently political process, and
becomes a fundamental element for the control and exercise of government in a society. Seizing
memory and, of course, forgetting is one of the concerns of groups in a position of power. The
relatives of the imprisoned and disappeared remember what happened. Fortunately, there have
been groups that have insisted that this episode of Mexican life must not be buried in oblivion. They
 Regina Sánchez Flores (A01634038)
Citizenship and Democracy
31 March 2020
have insisted on its discussion and clarification.

References

Mendoza García, J. (2016). Reconstructing the Collective Memory of Mexico’s Dirty War. Latin
American Perspectives, 43(6), 124-140. doi: 10.1177/0094582x16669137