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Thomas Freeman
Global Topics: Global Violence
Professor Joyce Apsel
12 May 2014
Gonzalo’s Miracle: Necessary Violence and Whitewashing History in the 2004 Chilean film Machuca
The passive young son of a well-to-do Chilean family enters his luxurious new home in a Santiago suburb. His opulently dressed mother greets him at the door, kisses him on the cheek and asks if he is happy in the family’s new home. The boy remains silent. This final scene of Chilean director Andrés Wood’s 2004 film Machuca appears to be one of gleaming optimism - of an educated, aristocratic family relishing the benefits of the first leg of Chile’s modern ‘economic miracle.’ However, the characteristically bright eyes of the cherub-faced boy, Gonzalo, are darkened by the gruesome events he had just witnessed in the midst of his nation’s 1973 military coup d’état. Present during a bloody military raid on one of the capital’s sprawling shantytowns, Gonzalo had just watched his indigent best friend, Machuca, being rounded up and sent to a military death camp (Machuca). His family’s newfound wealth was consequent of Chile’s successful and widely-praised neoliberal economic model, which was implemented by way of the brutal suppression of it challenger - the politically-powerful, socialist-aligned lower class. In his intimately told film, director Andrés Wood addresses a country that extols its prosperity while speaking in hushed tones of the atrocities committed against its proletariat. Wood demands that his audience look beyond the façade of Gonzalo’s lavish new home and recognize that his wealth - and indeed the nation’s wealth - was made possible only by bloodshed.
The audience, through Gonzalo’s brief friendship with Machuca, catches a glimpse of the ‘disa...
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... New York:
Metropolitan/Henry Holt, 2007. Print.
Klein, throughout various accounts of U.S. involvement overseas, explains that the U.S. commonly engages in a practice of ‘shock therapy.’ The U.S. brings bloodshed and warfare to foreign nations in order to restructure their economies and governments to serve U.S. interests. In the case of Chile, Klein argues that the U.S., in the midst of Cold War paranoia, wanted to maintain its political and economic hegemony in South America. Washington accordingly whipped the Chilean army into an anti-Allende, anti-communist frenzy, bringing about the bloodshed of ‘the Caravan of Death’ as well as the years of tyrannical military dictatorship. Also significant was the fact that the neoliberal economics implemented in Chile were taught to Chilean economists of the junta by Americans at the University of Chicago.
Works Cited
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Rabe Stephen. The Killing Zone The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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An old English proverb states that the eyes are the window to the soul. In the film The Secret in Their Eyes (2009), directed by Juan José Campanella, this premise holds some truth. Set in the late 1970’s in Argentina, the crime thriller treats the start and end of the rape and murder case of Liliana Coloto, a 23-year-old schoolteacher. It simultaneously portrays the romance between a retired justice agent, Benjamín Espósito, and a new judge hailing from Cornell, Irene Menéndez-Hastings. In trying to write his first novel, Benjamín helps bring the case to a close after 25 years. The symbolic use of Benjamín’s rival, Romano, the color red, and doors enable character enhancement and further development of the plot.
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This work is a very influential and educates people on the social and political battles within South America and the world’s issues. It is interpreted solely by the choreographer Christopher Bruce who incorporated meaningful and powerful movement to portray the intended story. It is a magnificent work dedicated to the Chilean Human Rights Committee, may they all rest in peace.
Third world countries became the perfect battleground for cold war proxy battles during the early 1940’s to late 1990’s. United States wanted to flex its political muscle and try to curtail the spread of Soviet Communism in the developing nations. Most of the nations in developed world had already made their political and socio-economic stand regarding the form of governance and leadership pursued. Underdeveloped nations in Asia, Latin America and Africa were still vulnerable and easily influenced in terms of ideologies and political direction. Most nations in Latin America like Chile were recovering from colonialism and thus logistic, economic and political aid from powerful nations to propel their economies which made it easy for Americans and Russians to act as their “saviors’”. The quest for global dominance had intensified between United States and USSR and the shift was focused to developing nations like Chile. Both Americans and Russians used different mechanisms to enhance their propaganda and support the regimes which were friendly to them and used any means necessary to topple hostile regimes. CIA used covert operations in Chile and most of the Latin nations to plant their puppet leaders in order to safeguard their foreign policy interests and maintain dominance. Military coups and social unrests were planned, orchestrated and executed with the assistance of CIA. The research paper tries to critical analyze the impact of the cold war on Chile and influence of United States.