HIST 269 - Topics in United States, Latin American or Canadian History

FDR: HU
Credits: 3
A course offered from time to time, depending on student interest and staff availability, on a selected topic or problem in United States, Latin American or Canadian history. May be repeated for degree credit with permission and if the topics are different.

Topic for Winter 2011

HIST 269: Political Murder in Modern Latin America (3). Latin American societies are notorious for their traditions of political murder. This course explores how messengers of change (popular political leaders, labor organizers, human rights activists, journalists, revolutionaries, etc.) have been systematically assassinated whenever their efforts to alter the status quo have shown signs of success. The course also examines how this practice expanded to full-blown dirty war in the second half of the 20th century, when governmental and extra-governmental elites strove to exterminate the followers, as well as the leaders, of popular movements. Justified as struggles against “subversion” and “internal enemies,” these covert “wars” featured the disappearance, torture, and extrajudicial murder of hundreds of thousands of people deemed threats to the status quo. (HU) Green.