A literary tour de force, Alicia Partnoy's memoir, The Little School, is more than a memoir. This is an act of public and permanent revenge not only against the individuals who imprisoned, tortured and humiliated her, but against all the perpetrators of Argentina's dirty war. Although the book cannot deliver justice in a conventional manner, in which the perpetrators would be charged, tried, convicted, sentenced and rightly imprisoned for their crimes, its publication ensures that the victims will not be forgotten. It also immortalizes the widespread injustice and brutality of the Dirty War. This essay will provide a brief historical context for Partnoy's book and describe the literary techniques by which Partnoy captures and shares as many details as she can. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay During the Dirty War, the governments of several Latin American countries, including Argentina, faced an insurrectionary threat constant from Marxist and similar radical guerrillas who have engaged in terrorist activities. “Urban guerrillas lived and fought in large cities, where they could threaten the government, strike army headquarters, or kidnap and ransom an industrialist to finance their operations. » [i] The goal was not to inflict chaos or widespread terror on Argentina. population as a whole, but the attacks were by no means limited to military targets. The People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), an insurgent group dedicated to the violent overthrow of the Argentine government in favor of a new Marxist government, took credit for robbing 166 banks and kidnapped more than 185 people, holding them against ransom to raise funds. .[ii]To quell an increasingly violent rebellion, the Argentine government and military began systematically eliminating terrorists and those linked to them, doing whatever it took to stop them and sometimes using the insurgents' own strategies of kidnapping, torture and violence. murder against them. In doing so, they went too far. It did not take long for the number of people arrested, kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by the government and military to exceed those recorded by the ERP by an order of magnitude. More than 30,000 people, including at least 400 children who were kidnapped with their parents or born in captivity, have been "missing" in secret detention and torture centers such as the one described by Alicia Partnoy.[iii] Many never came back. La Petite École is a partially “fictionalized” story in which Partnoy describes his experience in captivity. There are several aspects of the book that clearly do not constitute an attempt to accurately and impartially describe what happened. She describes herself in the third person, creating an emotional distance between herself and what is happening to her. It presents poetic descriptions of the events that occurred during his captivity. She includes one of his poems about a diverted stream, which was taken by his captors as an allegorical reference to a guerrilla leader of some kind. She also changes the details of some of her fellow captives who survived, in order to ensure their own safety. She acknowledges him several times, and her acknowledgment gives her plenty of space to expand on some details, recreate others, and conveniently ignore anything she wishes to ignore, such as the identities of her fellow survivors. La Petite École has clear protagonists. and antagonists. AliciaPartnoy immediately establishes that she and the other captives are the protagonists. She describes herself as a student engaged in voluntary social work, helping others with literacy programs and other initiatives aimed at improving the lives of the poor. She had a somewhat left-wing outlook, in part because of her work among the poor and their fond memories of the Péron-era changes that benefited the unions. Later, after the 1976 coup d'état, it "clandestinely reproduced and distributed information on the economic situation, workers' strikes and repression." »[iv] She presents herself, her husband and other community activists as positive, hardworking people with no ties to the Montoneros. or ERP. The arrest of “good” people, regardless of the circumstances, by definition places their captors in an antagonistic role. In Partnoy's novel, the distinction is very clear. None of the prisoners Partnoy describes have questionable connections that could blur the very dramatic distinction between unjustly persecuted prisoners and their captors. In reality, even if Partnoy and her husband were not involved in terrorist activities, it is plausible that at least some of their associates were. Partnoy's portrayal of all prisoners as innocent victims could potentially be part of the "fictionalization" or blurring of the truth that she describes. The contrast between protagonists and antagonists may have been artificially heightened by Partnoy's lack of emphasis on any criminal activity. her prisoners may have committed acts, but she does not need to exaggerate her description of her captors' behavior to demonstrate systematic human rights violations. She describes her arrest without a warrant, her imprisonment for more than two years without any criminal charges or opportunity to defend herself, and the manner in which she was treated during her imprisonment. She was forced to constantly wear a blindfold, deprived of food for eighteen hours a day, deprived of exercise, and frequently beaten. She describes a scene of sexual humiliation where she was forced to stand naked and how one of her fellow inmates, nicknamed Benja, was hung upside down and beaten. None of these activities, often intended for “fun” according to the jailers, was linked to the search for information on the Montoneros or on the ERP. Even if this were the case, these are concrete examples of common human rights violations. To this day, Partnoy does not know who ordered his arrest. She also does not know the perpetrators of the crimes she suffered during her imprisonment. The brief glimpses she had while peeking through a slit in her blindfold, as well as the names and personality details she was able to gather from the guards, were not enough to identify any conclusively anyone. The question of exactly who used the goad on Graciela, or when exactly Partnoy witnessed her husband's torture, cannot be answered precisely simply because Partnoy's captors took so much pains to keep their identity secret. She includes, in the book's appendix, as much information as she can remember, trying to paint as vivid a picture as possible of each person involved. The details she provides are not enough to warrant an arrest or secure a conviction. Most dates and times are not precise because of the way one day fades into the next. To protect the identities of his fellow victims, Partnoy uses pseudonyms and nicknames. But perhaps one of his jailers will come across Partnoy's story and. 13