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CLARIN

Artist Turns CIA Papers Into "Mosaic" Of U.S. Role In Latin America

Inside Buenos Aires's museum.
Inside Buenos Aires's museum.
Ivanna Soto

BUENOS AIRES — When Voluspa Jarpa got her hands on piles of court papers and declassified CIA documents linked to Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, she saw an opportunity to make art.

The Chilean artist decided she'd use the material to create a vast, albeit austere, visual display that doubles as a discrete historical indictment of a time when the United States meddled shamelessly in Latin American domestic affairs.

Visually, the exhibition Round Here In Our Little Region, which opened at the Latin American Art Museum in Buenos Aires, is consciously minimalist. It's in homage to the artistic movement in vogue at the time of the events concerned. Its installations, like the "curtain" of papers hanging over a doorway, consist of simple components like papers or plain pictures pertaining to dozens of regional politicians whose deaths under the various military regimes in many cases remain unresolved.

Art can, of course, give emotional power to otherwise humdrum objects like judicial reports. One paper shows the words "Get me out of here immediately, please," scrawled by the former Chilean President Eduardo Frei Montalva to his daughter, before he died in hospital in 1982. The Christian Democrat had by then become a critic of the military regime he initially supported, and investigations suggest he might have been murdered or at least "negligently" killed during treatment.

Jarpa uses documents from several countries because she wants viewers to use many documents to piece together the "bigger picture" or recurring regional patterns, like the leitmotivs that recur in minimalist art and music. And the simple visuals contrast with the complexity, or perhaps ambiguity, of their contents, which may not necessarily tell a clear story.

What does a written instruction, an inconclusive report or a cryptic embassy note really tell its reader about the region's history? Especially if it is in English?

The show closes with the installation "Translation Lessons", wherein five screens show Jarpa learning English so she could read CIA papers, and suggesting how the fates of nations were being decided elsewhere. In this context, English becomes an "alien" code Latin Americans must access to understand their own history.

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Society

Murder Of Giulia Cecchetin: Why Italy Is Finally Saying 'Basta' To Violence Against Women

Cecchettin was allegedly stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend in northern Italy, a murder case that has quickly turned into a political movement. The supposed motive is chilling in what it says about the current state of male-dominated society.

 Girls seen screaming during the protest under the rain.

November 25, Messina, Italy: The feminist movement Non Una di Meno (Not One Less) gathered in Messina in the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Valeria Ferraro/ZUMA
Annalisa Camilli

Updated Nov. 27, 2023 at 3:40 p.m.

-Analysis-

ROME — On November 11, Giulia Cecchettin and her ex-boyfriend Filippo Turetta went missing after meeting for dinner. For a week, Italians followed the case in hopes that the story would end with two lovers returning home after going on an adventure — but women knew better.

As the days went by, more details of their relationship started to come to light. Filippo had been a jealous, possessive boyfriend, he had not dealt with Giulia's decision to break up very well, and he constantly hounded her to get back together.

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When Giulia's body was found at the bottom of a lake in the northern region of Veneto, with 20 stab wounds, Italians were not surprised, but they were fed up. Vigils, demonstrations and protests spread throughout the country: Giulia Cecchettin's death, Italy's 105th case of femicide for the year 2023, finally opened a breach of pain and anger into public opinion. But why this case, why now?

It was Elena Cecchettin, Giulia's sister, who played a vital role. At the end of a torchlight procession, the 24-year-old university student took the floor and did something people weren't expecting: she turned private grief into a political movement. Elena distanced herself from the role of the victim and took on the responsibility for a future change.

"Filippo is not a monster; a monster is an exception, someone external to society, someone society should not take responsibility for. But here that responsibility exists," she said confidently, leaving everyone breathless.

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