Dirty War Project (Guerra Sucia), Fall 2023 (AP Spanish, Monnerat): Home

When you search library databases, don't search in complete sentences.  Databases are not like Google.  

• Use a couple of keywords, combined with the word AND:
  • Argentina and desaparecidos
• Don't put more than three keywords together in the same search 
• If you want to search a phrase, put quotation marks around it:
  • "Dirty War"
     

Suggested library databases (found on on the left hand side of the library website) 
To access to the databases from home, sign into a database with your Visitation Microsoft credentials, then you should be able to access all the databases
 

EBSCO Discovery Search: (Yellow box on the main library webpage)
Searches almost all of our library databases at once. This may retrieve an overwhelming amount of results, so if you're can't find useful information using EBSCO Discovery Search, try searching a single database instead of all at once
 

EBSCO Ebooks Academic edition (ebooks)  
Start by searching for your specific topic
Here's a list of some books from the Ebsco Ebooks Academic edition database that provide an overview of the Dirty War or your topics. To view the ebook, after clicking on the link: 

• Click on the Access Now (ebook) button below the title to view the book
• When viewing the book, use the search option in the top right hand corner to search for keywords in the full text
  

• The chapter "The Art of Disappearance: Remembering Political Violence in Argentina and Chile" (Chapter 3) from Cinema of the Dark Side: Atrocity and the Ethics of Film Spectatorship
• The chapters "The Dirty War in Argentina" (Chapter 4) and "Argentina: The Sinuous Path of Transitional Justice" (Chapter 5) from State Terrorism in Latin America : Chile, Argentina, and International Human Rights
• The chapter "Disappeared, Argentina" (Chapter 7), from the book Missing: Persons and Politics 
• The chapter "Messianicity beyond Militant Messianism: Apostrophe and Survival in Juan Gelman’s Poetry"  (Chapter 1) from the book Witnessing Beyond the Human: Addressing the Alterity of the Other in Post-coup Chile and Argentina
• The book Argentina's Missing Bones: Revisiting the History of the Dirty War
• The book Guerrillas and Generals: The 'Dirty War' in Argentina
• The book A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture (revised and updated)
• The book The Official History of the Falklands Campaign: Volume 1: The Origins of the Falklands War
• The book The Official History of the Falklands Campaign: Volume 2 : War and Diplomacy
• The book Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America   
• The book Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza De Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina  
   

JSTOR (scholarly journal articles)

Academic Search Ultimate (magazine, newspapers, and some scholarly journal articles)
 

Gale eBooks (reference books in electronic format)
 

The ABC-Clio History databases (search all 6 at once)

• For better results, put quotation marks around phrases when searching
• ABC-Clio is the publisher name; each of the databases have their own name. The information in these databases are original content to the database, and not published in print​

You may want to look at some of the following websites to find information on your topics.  This is not a complete list of every available resource on your chosen topic, so you will have to do additional research on your own.

General websites that cover multiple topics
 

National Security Archive website: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/, specifically these pages within the National Security Archive:

• "State Department Opens Files on Argentina's Dirty War: National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 73 - Part I" -- contains 15 documents related to the Dirty War
• "Argentine Military Believed U.S. Gave Go-Ahead for Dirty War: National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 73 - Part II" -- contains 13 documents related to the Dirty War
• "Inside Argentina’s Killing Machine: U.S. Intelligence Documents Record Gruesome Human Rights Crimes of 1976-1983" -- contains documents related to the Dirty War
• "New Declassified Details on Repression and U.S. Support for Military Dictatorship" -- 14 documents on the Dirty War, broken into 3 sections: 1) The U.S., the Argentine Military and the Coup; 2) Operation Condor: The Machinery of the Dirty War; and 3) Casualties of Repression: Accounting for the Dead and Disappeared
• "Obama Brings 'Declassified Diplomacy' To Argentina: Briefing Book #545" -- 16 documents relating to the Dirty War. You might also want to look at the related links on the left hand side of the page for additional resources
• "Obama Declassification Holds Promise of Uncovering New Evidence on Argentina's Dirty War: Briefing Book #546" -- 5 documents relating to the Dirty War
• "Reagan on the Falkland/Malvinas... -- this page has "...a series of memoranda of conversation, intelligence reports, and cables revealing the secret communications between the United States and Britain, and the United States and Argentina during the ... [Falkland War]"
• "Rendition in the Southern Cone: Operation Condor documents revealed from Paraguayan 'Archive of Terror'" -- contains documents related to Operation Condor
• "Stolen Babies: Argentina Convicts Two Military Dictators" -- contains information about the convictions of "...two former military leaders for their roles in the kidnapping and theft of dozens of babies of executed and disappeared political prisoners during the dictatorship"
• "Timerman Case Threatened Argentine Military Regime" -- documents related to Jacobo Timerman
• "US Declassified Documents: Argentine Junta Security Forces Killed, Disappeared Activists, Mothers and Nuns" -- contains 16 documents on the Dirty War, including brief information on the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and the disappearance of the French Nuns (Leonie Duquet and Alice Domon)
   

National Archives: The National Declassification Center Releases Records Relating to Human Rights Abuses in Argentina -- lists the declassified United States documents/ records relating to human rights abuses committed in Argentina between January 1, 1975, and December 31, 1984. Records are listed in Case ID number order, but you can search the list by keyword
 

"Argentina Declassification Project: The "Dirty War" (1976-83)," which is part of the Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room webpage of the CIA's website -- contains 40 pages of various documents related to the Dirty War that have been declassified. It includes documents about:

• Operation Condor (use the search box at the top of the document page to search for that keyword)
• Jacobo Timerman (sometimes listed as Timmerman), on page 1 of the results for the link above, as well as page 41

The New York Times -- search for newspaper articles relating to the Dirty War or your specific topic (for instance, Juan Gelman's obituary was published in the The New York Times).

• To read multiple articles and/or articles from the archives, you will need an account with The New York Times, and you will need to make sure you have activated your pass (directions)

Individual websites that cover a specific topic or person

Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo: the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo's website

• This website also contains information on Macarena Gelman, Juan Gelman's granddaughter

"Aida Bortnik" -- an article from the The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

"Argentina Belatedly Celebrates a Journalist Hero" -- an article in Time written by Uki Goñi about Robert Cox

"Argentine Playwright Griselda Gámbaro Reading from Her Work" from the Library of Congress's website -- a 13 minute audio recording of Griselda Gámbaro reading "...from her book Ganarse la muerte, and a Homage to a Clarice Lispector which she delivered at Ottawa University in 1977" (LOC)

"Children of the Dirty War" -- an article from the March 2012 issue of The New Yorker

Cry for Me, Argentina: The Performance of Trauma in the Short Narratives of Aída Bortnik, Griselda Gambaro, and Tununa Mercado, by Annette Levine -- an ebook copy of the print book, hosted on the Internet Archive's website. You can borrow the book for an hour at a time (for free, but you need to register for a free Internet Archive account)

• Chapter 2: "Aida Bortnik's 'Tales from the Crypt': the Disappeared Stories" (p. 29-73).
• Chapter 3: "'Empathic Unsettlement' in Griselda Gambaro's Lo mejor que se tine" (p. 75-109)

The Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos [Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR)] held court on a case called Gelman v. Uruguay (Juan Gelman). They posted the judgments on their website

• CASE GELMAN v. URUGUAY: Judgment of February 24, 2011 (Merits and Reparations) 
• CASE OF GELMAN v. URUGUAY: Monitoring Compliance with Judgment (2013) 

"Disappeared Children in Argentina: Rita Arditti’s Interviews with the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo," from the Digital Collections of Joseph P. Healey Library, UMass Boston

"Jewish Mothers of the Plaza del Mayo" -- an article from the The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

María Elena Walsh, from the Internet Archive -- songs and stories by the author (some recordings, some ebooks) hosted on the website. You can borrow the ebooks for an hour at a time (for free, but you need to register for a free Internet Archive account)

"Messenger on a White Horse: Standing Up to Authoritarianism" is a recording of a discussion moderated by Anatol Steck of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, with guests Robert Cox, Uki Goñi, and others. The discussion was "...about Argentina’s state-sponsored terrorism, its ties to Nazi ideology, and a man who took a stance to bring worldwide attention to these atrocities..." (USHMM). It premiered on March 24, 2021, and was posted on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's website.
 

"The Mothers of the Disappeared: Challenging the Junta in Argentina (1977-1983)" by Lester Kurtz, posted on the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict's website
 

Nunca Más (Never Again): Report of CONADEP (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons), translated from the Spanish

• Also contains brief mentions of Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet, Jacobo Timmerman, 

When doing research, we strongly recommend that you start with authoritative sources and library resources (print books from our library and/or information from library databases)

1)  Brainstorm keywords to help find resources

• Consider synonyms, similar terms, or related terms, all which provide different ways to search
• Think of broader terms, or in some cases, more specific terms
• Sometimes it helps to search for the keyword in Spanish (and/or English, if it's a Spanish word)

2)  Start your research with authoritative sources

• Books from our library (search Destiny Discover, our online book catalog)
• Library databases on the left side of the library website (see suggested library databases in the left column of this page)
• Recommended websites (see suggested websites at the bottom of the left column)
   

3) Please do not begin your research with Google!

• Always start with authoritative sources
• If you have searched the library book catalog and the library databases, and looked at the recommended websites, but you can't find information, think about the keywords you are using
• If you know you're using the correct keywords, but still can't find information, you can ask Ms. Jewell or Ms. Burke for recommendations and/or assistance
• After doing all of the above, if you need additional information, and you use a website that isn't on the recommended list below, do not include it in your research unless you have accurately evaluated the website, and are able to give specific evidence why the website is reliable and authoritative 

If you need to do a general Google search, you can limit your searches to specific websites by using the search limiter: site:

For instance, if you only wanted to search for the term Dirty War on The New York Times website, you could type into Google:
Dirty War site:www.nytimes.com

You can also use site: to limit your results to websites that either end in .gov or .edu

• Dirty war site:.gov  (don't put a space between the site: and .gov)
• Dirty war site:.edu

This can sometimes be helpful to your research because .gov and .edu sites tend to be more authoritative.  For sites that end in .edu, you still have to evaluate the site to make sure it's not a student paper published on a university website, or a blog entry on a university website, but it's a nice starting point

You always need to cite the sources you used in your research.

• The MLA page on our library website has more information on citing sources, including works cited sample sheets, as well as a link to citation help from Purdue's Online Writing Lab (OWL).
   
• You can also use the Rules for Written Assignments and Guide to MLA Style to help you with your citations.
   
• You might find it helpful to complete a MLA Template to create a citation for each source you used for this project. 
   
• We know that some library databases give sample citations at the bottom of the page.  Sometimes that information is incomplete or incorrect (for example, the citations provided by some of the EBSCO databases are incorrect).  Use the information from the sample citation to help create your own version of the citation for the source. Don't copy and paste the citation provided from the database without verifying it's correct and isn't missing information. 

If you are citing a source in a library database, almost all of the databases have information that was originally in print. 

• All the original information about the original print source is placed in the first section of the MLA Template (book, reference source, scholarly journal, magazine, image). 
• The information about the library database you used is in the 2nd half of the template (where all the information in the first part of the template is repeated)**
  • **Two exceptions are Britannica Academic and all of the databases published by ABC-Clio.  Content from those databases was never in print, so all the information would be in Container 1

If you found an article in an library database, the additional information you need to include after you cite all the information about the print source is:

• the title of the container (title of database)
• the publisher of the source (database publisher)
• the date of the database
• the URL of the database (if required by your teacher).  Use a short version of the URL (typically up to the .com, .org, etc.).  Do not include http:// in the URL
   

You can create a works cited list using the information from the MLA Templates. Type out each MLA Template entry in the exact order as written on the template, complete with punctuation at the end of each line.  Format the works cited list by making sure it has the following:

• The entire works cited list is double spaced, with one inch margins on each side
• The heading Works Cited is centered at the top of the works cited list
• The entries in the works cited list are in alphabetical order
• The first line of each citation is flush to the left, then each subsequent line of the citation is indented

You can download a copy of the MLA Template to your computer using the link above this block

Below are four examples of a MLA Template and the labeled pages so you can see an example of sources cited using the MLA Template.