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When doing the dances i found it difficult to follow the footsteps to be able to complete the dance. To ensure that i over come this problem i payed attention to the movements more than anything else due to not being able to crack the footsteps. I still need to work on the footsteps but it’s getting better by focusing on the movements more carefully.

When doing the dances we found it difficult to do due to not everyone being in for this lesson so we couldn’t fully know where we would be placed until everyone was in to learn them. Although we went over the dances still it was difficult to find where we all had to go because our Lecturer wants us to be in specific places and it’s hard to place us when not everyone is here due to there might not be enough space or enough people to do the dance. For example when doing the festival dance it was hard to do due to not everyone being in and the dance being a group dance towards the end of the dance and having to get into pairs which not everyone could do due to people being off so we aren’t sure who is with who when we have to dance as a duo for a little while.

Due to us not having long left to do our play and feel confident in it , we can’t keep going over the dances as it will make us loose time at rehearsing everything else so having to go over the dances multiple times for the people who haven’t been in is cutting us short at being able to learn other scenes.

When finding these problems we came up with a solution for example, with me personally not being confident in the footstep dances I asked one of my teachers to help me go over the footsteps which was helpful to be able to know which foot to put first and at what time i would need to do this. When we needed to go into pairs there was an odd number so Emily S, who plays Baptista didn’t have anyone to dance with due to Ernesto, who is played by Max wasn’t able to come in due to Covid, our teacher, Emma decided to step in and be Emily’s partner to allow her to still be able to learn the dance and for us all to learn the dance even if it isn’t with the person we are supposed to dance with we still know the dance which was helpful due to being able to focus on something different in our next rehearsal.

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The challenges I have overcome so far in this rehearsal process are learning how to do different styles of dancing, changing my emotions, and showing my relationship with each character individually.

When doing the dances, my first initial thought was I wouldn't be able to do the different styles of dancing due to not being a keen dancer. This became easier for me to do due to going over it a few times in lesson time which allowed me to become more familiar with the dances and feel more confident.

The different emotions that I need to change throughout each scene come close together and emotions need to change rapidly in one scene, for example, in scene 2 there are many different emotions my character is feeling and they need to change quickly into the different emotions. In the beginning, I didn't think I would be able to change them so fast due to not having to do it in the past, but when rehearsing this scene it was easier to do after going through it many times to make myself aware of the different emotions and when I needed to change them.

Another challenge I have overcome so far is being able to change my character's personality around different characters due to being closer to other characters and not being keen on other characters. For example, I found it important to show the different relationships I have with different characters which are important to see within the play because Francisca is known to be the one that is mature but also has her head screwed on knowing that other people are only being friendly with her family just to know the gossip. In the beginning, I found this hard to show due to not knowing who I had more of a connection with and who I didn't but after reading through the script and realizing who she has a closer bond with and who she dislikes which is the gossip, this is shown when she says to her mother, Constantia "They are terrible gossips, Madre"

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Throughout the rehearsal process I felt like scene 2 needed the most improved from me personally, this is because the scene shows high tension and needs to be perfect to represent the idea of what is needed for this scene. I feel like I need to focus more on the emotion rather than the script and the lines I need to say.

At the beginning of the scene I feel like this is the best part of the scene all together because there isn't much tension and I feel like I can easily show my emotions through coming back to visit the family. Although I still need to work on coming on earlier so it's not like I am shouting my line from across the stage as it won't make sense.

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The props we need to start working with as soon as possible for the second scene are chairs, a table, and cutlery. This is because we need to ensure that we are on time on setting the table as well as talking. This is an important part of the scene due to it shows that Constantia is still in hope of her husband's return.

It's important due to my character coming on stage and talking about how her mother has been since she has been away, they talk about her still laying a plate for their father at dinner, and my character, Francisca insists that we no longer lay his place tonight. For this to happen we are going to need to make sure that we have plates and cutlery to show that we are not laying their father's place tonight.

The whole point of these props is to show the tension that they cause in the scene due to there being extra props that were not necessary. This is to show the relationships between the family members and initiate the thoughts they have on their father going missing and show the different emotions going on in the family.

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I have planned to have my makeup done for me due to not knowing how to apply makeup due to not wearing makeup. To do this I messaged production arts students and asked if any of them would be free on the 26th of May to do my makeup for me. Bea from production arts agreed to do my makeup with me which is another thing I don't need to worry about and that I have planned ahead. The thing I still need to do is let Bea know the layout of my makeup which I think will just be natural makeup due to the performance being a naturalistic performance so our makeup will be natural.

I plan to speak with Bea again this easter break to go over the important information about the makeup needing to be done and the times that I will be needing my makeup done due to one of our performances being at 7:30 pm and I need to make sure they will be free to stay until 7:30 to reapply my makeup or even before so that it is done the exact same way as the first show.

I will also make sure with my lecturer that the makeup I am showing production arts is something that she will be okay with me having this specific makeup done or even ask for some support in giving them ideas on what to do for my face.

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My plan for this half term is to learn my lines for each scene on set days. This will help to then be able to focus on a scene each time and be able to really put my all into the scenes selected. I will go over each scene for 20 minutes a day. This will help me memorize my lines by spending specific days on each scene and then sending the weekend going over the script writing down all my lines on word/notes and seeing which I need to work on before going back to college. I will also be videoing myself going over each line as proof and uploading it to my practical column as evidence.

Week 1

Monday-

Monday I plan on focusing on the first scene to ensure that I remember the lines I am going to mumble. This helped to ensure that when I go back I can go over the scene without having my script and being able to put my all into this scene and show my physicality throughout the whole scene.

Tuesday-

Tuesday I am going to go over the first and second scenes. I will focus more on the Absence and Loss scene which is the first proper scene I am in as my character Francisca. I want to ensure I have all my lines learned for this scene because there are tensions rising in the scene and I want to be able to focus on the body language and facial expressions that best fit this scene especially when there's an argument between Francisca and Constantia, I don't want to have my script when doing this scene because I want to be able to show my physicality early on so I can improve it along the way.

Wednesday-

Wednesday I will be going over the second and fifth scenes, but prioritizing the fifth scene due to not actually going over it yet. The scene "The picnic in the hills" demonstrates this back to being in the past so I want to make sure that I show different character development due to Francisca not being as old as she is now, so to do this I want to be able to learn the lines and work on my physicality for this scene.

Thursday-

Thursday I want to go over the festival scene, this is to show happier times so I want to make sure I follow the stage directions as well as work on my lines. This is an important scene due to so many things going on but it's also a scene that involves all the cast being happy and enjoying their time with others. If I remember my lines for this scene for when we go back then I can focus on learning the dances and ensuring I show that I am having a good time at the festival.

Friday-

I will be spending Friday going over "the news" scene which is scene 12. This is because it's a very important scene to make sure I give my all into due to my character having different characterizations when talking with the gossip which shows that Francisca is careful with how her family approaches them due to them being "terrible gossip" I want to make sure have these lines learned so that I can work on my vocal skills to ensure I give of the tension to the audience of not liking the gossips.

This week I managed to look through the whole script and go over my lines but didn’t manage to record all of them due to my house being too loud at the time. Overall, I am happy with how well I stuck to the plan for this week. I managed to memorize many of my lines which I am happy with as this will allow me to focus more on improving my physical character development instead of worrying about which line comes next. The scene I am most happy about is learning the lines for the second scene which is an important scene to see the different beliefs about the whereabouts of Ramon and it shows the different characters in the family and how they approach the situation. I still need to focus some of my time this weekend ongoing through the festival scene as I didn't spend as much time on this scene as I would've hoped to and doing this will help me stay on track for next week's achievements.

Week 2

Monday-

Next Monday I will be focusing on the thirteenth scene which is "The search/ The prison" this is because again this is another important scene to ensure I give my all due to it helping us get closer to the whereabouts of Baptista. I want to learn these lines to be able to work on my physicality without having to use my script in rehearsals as I feel like I will bring the character out better without my script.

Tuesday-

Next Tuesday I will still focus on the thirteenth scene due to it being one of the last scenes before dancing so it is important to give my all to help the audience understand the ending of the play. I find it important to learn these lines to be able to show my excitement when I tell my mother, Constantia, that I am expecting. To do this I want to be able to be off-script to show my dedication wanting to play the part of Francisca.

Wednesday-

Next Wednesday I will be going through the first few scenes and making sure I have learned all the lines, to make sure I do this I will have my script next to me but say my lines for each scene and then look back at my script to make sure I haven't missed any lines.

Thursday-

Next Thursday I will be doing the same as yesterday but with different scenes. I feel like this is important to see what I still need to work on and the things I have accomplished over the last two weeks.

Friday-

Next Friday I will be videoing myself saying all my lines without the script to see what I can remember and what I still need to work on. This will be beneficial for me due to being able to see what still needs work and the lines I have learned throughout the past week.

This week I didn't do everything I planned to do due to not being well and couldn't film myself. I focused on all the scenes I said I would but my aim was to spend more time going over the official's scene which is scene 13 because I haven't been over that scene and I am in it so I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing and to get an understanding of what I was going to be saying. After going through it a few times I started to memorize the line for this scene, although I missed out on a few words or a line I feel like I did really well in learning this which is what I have put on practical to show my understanding of this specific scene. If I had the chance to focus on a few scenes a day I would make sure I spent the same time on each scene so I could be more familiar with each scene as much as I am with what I have memorized already.

Overall, throughout the two weeks, I feel like I have spent my time wisely looking into each scene and felt like it was a good thing to do over the w=two weeks off as it's allowed me to be familiar with what I am going to say for each scene I am in now. I am happy with the scenes I have learned as I don't think I could've learned them without a structured plan.

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Today I have done a mood board on the photos I personally think my character would wear. After doing this I messaged my lecturer to find out the kind of costume my character would be wearing. The reason I chose these for my character is that when looking into the costumes that women wore in the '70s in South America, skirts like this came up and I thought this would be a great choice for my character to wear due to being told previously that this is something we would all be wearing, it's just trying to find the right costume for my character's personality.

The reason I chose floral skirts is that they're long and help when dancing which is something we need to consider for our costumes because the women use the bottom of our skirts to dance. This is why I focused on the costumes I have put into the mood board because it allows you to move in them as well as a dance which is important.

I don't think I would personally wear something plain due to my character having different emotions which will be represented by the choice of costume I wear. Wearing something colorful helps give my character more of a personality. The reason I haven't added in tops yet is that I want to make sure I figure out the bottom half to then figure out what top would go with my skirt and then my sandals which I have chosen to wear as it'll be easier to move around, especially when dancing.

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Today we started the audition process, I auditioned for Francisca because I liked her character and felt like I would do an excellent job at portraying this character. In the lesson, we had 20 minutes to go over a scene of our choice. But first, we had to get into groups for me I had to get into a group with people who also wanted to audition for one of the daughters and mother. After getting into the group, we all chose a scene to audition for, the scene we chose was “absence and loss” we chose this scene because it had all the daughters and the mother in. We started by reading through the lines to make ourselves aware of the scene and how we needed to communicate with each other. After doing this I started to look at the stage directions because I personally felt like it was important to follow the stage directions to ensure we made the audition the best audition. After going over the directions we started to add in some characters, although there wasn’t much background information on my character, I went by the way she spoke in the scene to help give me suggestions on how I should approach the character.

We then started to go through the scene making sure to give as much character as possible and ensuring we followed the stage directions; I did this by entering on my line which worked perfectly as the reaction from the mother that I was there showed that shouldn’t already be there. The more I went over the lines for Francisca the more I was getting into character. I felt I improved my character's personality the more I was going over it.

Throughout the rehearsal process, I felt like I was including various movements and personal traits such as changing the way I would normally act to try and find different ways to play the character, this was a learning strategy I use to be able to ensure that I bring out the best in the character, Francisca. I also felt like I was contributing towards ideas on how to perform this scene well, for example, I thought of the idea of using the stage directions and rotating due to their being a couple of the same roles people wanted to audition for. I came up with the idea of rehearsing with one playing the character for who they wanted to audition and the other person playing the character of Baptista as nobody in my group wanted to audition for Baptista, so we rotated each time to give one another a chance at practicing as the role they were auditioning for which for me personally turned out well.

When going to audition I felt like I did my best at showing that I would be good at playing the character Francisca, I have done this by adding facial expressions and body language. I followed the stage directions throughout the whole scene, for example, when Maria talks about how she is feeling the stage directions say that Francisca is comforting her which I carried on doing throughout the rest of the scene to ensure that I followed and took on the important notes of what was happening in the scene.

If I was able to redo my audition, I would make sure that I showed more emotion in my character and react to each line that is being said, especially the one where Constantia asks if I am pregnant yet, personally I felt I could’ve had more of a reaction. If I was to get this role, I would make sure that I take on each bit of the feedback given to me to ensure that I carried out the same level of personality that I did in this scene as well as throughout the performance.

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In today’s lesson, we started to block the performance. We started to learn the entrance dance, but before we did that, we did a warmup where we had to get into movements that made us look uncomfortable and dead. We started by stretching our bodies in various places but making sure we did not look ‘pretty’ this was to add it to the entrance of the dance. To make sure we focus on the importance of the first ghost dance we started to add facial expressions and body language this was to ensure that the first scene was effective. The three ghosts enter the stage first before the rest of us enter which is known as “the dead” it’s important that the ghosts aren’t being acknowledged by anyone on
stage since they’re meant to be invisible to us but not to the Dream Mother. After the ghosts do their scene, we enter doing a dance that we learned today, the movements we do is to represent the dead this is important that we maintain the image of being dead because the scene is called ‘The Ghosts’ which is like the land of the dead and the Dream Mother is having a dream about the dead so it’s important that we maintain that image to make it clear to the audience who we are to be.

In this specific scene, we spent a lesson learning different movements that we would possibly use within the dance, this was useful to be able to get different ideas from other people on what to do when we are swaying whilst the scene is going on, for example, the stage directions say that after the voices speak which will be the dead, “with agonized cries they form postures of death and freeze in them” this was an important stage direction not only for the actors on the stage to show they’re dead but to let the audience understands that this scene is Constantia dreaming. Personally, I feel like I have done well in the rehearsal process of learning these movements by ensuring I gave it my all to make the set of this scene look realistic. In this specific rehearsal, we went over the first dance of the opening scene and had to move to different spots across the stage and stand in a position that wasn’t the same as anybody else, I decided to face forward the whole time up until we do the movement of us looking dead and then turning around to look at Ramone who is a part of the dead, we had to make sure our faces stayed neutral throughout the whole scene which personally I felt I did a good job at. It was important that I kept my posture and facial expressions neutral when the Dream Mother was walking through us due to her looking closely at us all so to make me look as dead as possible, I had to make sure I wasn’t smiling.

In the lesson we started to block the second scene which I was in, I felt like it went really well and I took on board all the feedback given to me the first time going through it, to ensure I remembered all the movements and positions I was put in I decided to annotate my script with all the new stage directions to help me remember where I need to be. Once going through it a few times I started to get better at my physicality, for example, when I talk to my siblings, I’m showing the importance of listening to Maria when she talks about having a hard time with the situation that is going on, I do this by comforting her by hugging her to show my sympathy towards her. I’m happy with the part between Constantia, who is my mother, and my character Francisca erupts in an argument about her father. The conversation starts as being worried for her mother to them both getting angry at one another, this is shown through the way Constantia moves closer to the table and reaches over towards me and when my voice gets louder when I say the lines “Mother he will not come through that door, he will never come through that door” and “Father is dead. He is not coming back” this shows the frustration in Francisca’s character not because her mother is annoying her but it’s out of love and she just wants her mother to accept the fact her husband is dead.

When receiving feedback, I was told to get angrier as the conversation goes on and towards the end when the conversation gets heated to be harsher. I felt like I took the feedback straight away and developed the personality of my character. To make sure the improvements I was given were made I noted down in my script the things I needed to add more of to make sure that when I do this scene again all the improvements given have been added. Next time I will make sure that I add in the improvements so that I can develop my character more and receive more improvements elsewhere and not have to worry about having to work on more than one scene at a time, this will then allow me to focus my time on improvements for each scene if I carry on taking on board the feedback given in the lesson.

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In today’s lesson, we went over the first dance again which is our entrance dance for the whole play. I found it useful due to us already going through this dance so my memory of this was still there, I just needed to improve my footwork. We also got given lines to whisper as we are walking to our starting positions after the dance. The line I am whispering is “We are the dead” the reason we got given different lines to whisper is to convey to the audience that we are the dead and that this is the land of the dead. We also worked on the actors saying “We are the dead” one after another but in a way that makes it sound like an echo. We also worked on our agonized cry sounds and being able to make us look more deadly.

When going over this scene we focused more on the movements after the dance which were the lines, we all had to whisper after finishing the dance and going to our space. Lines were passed out and some chose lines, for example, I chose to say the line “We are the dead” under my breath because in previous rehearsals that were the line that was said the least. I felt like I did a good job at following the movements and memorizing the dance which helped me to only focus on saying the lines in a different tone as to what I would’ve said for my character Francisca.

Another thing we focused on was saying the line “We are the dead” one after another, this is to show to the audience as well as the Dream Mother that this is the land of the dead that she is in and the more deadly we make it sound the more she will start to believe it. The reason we focused on this specific part was that it didn’t sound realistic when saying it at different times as some were saying it way before others or all together but the whole point of it was to make sure we said it at different times. To enable us to do that, we all got allocated different times to say it and when to start saying it. After the first person says, “We are the dead” the second person follows on from the “We” and so on. The time I say it is on the second “We” which makes me the third person to say it. This worked better because although we know when we are going to speak it, it makes it sound more realistic, which is our aim for the play.

The last thing we looked over was our agonized cries. This needed a lot of work putting into it, mainly the sounds we make whilst getting into our position. To better our understanding of what to do we spent a few minutes going over different sounds to make. The sound I start to make whilst getting into my position is “Ahhhh.” We also worked on our posture to ensure that our deadly spirits looked believable. To ensure I was doing my correct, I asked for some help in making it look more naturalistic as possible.

I believe I did a good job at memorizing my lines for the first scene which I seem to forget, I put my all into this rehearsal to ensure that I am improving on everything I do. I think I have done well at going on time when saying the line “We are the dead” one after another, which helped it flow nicely. Another thing I thought I did well in was taking on feedback and giving it my all when trying to find the correct agonizing cries and posture. I found it difficult at first but after listening and asking for help I managed to work out what I needed to get rid of and what could’ve stayed. The last thing that I was entirely impressed with was how well I remembered all the improvements when going through the scene after changing things, this is because I usually go over things a few times to be able to remember what to do in this rehearsal, I managed to remember it all.

I still need to work on my cry at the beginning of the scene to make it believable to the audience that I am dead and that I am in pain. To do this I will go over the cry a few times in my spare time to make sure for the next rehearsal that I have done it and will be able to go over it without having to waste time going over it again. The other thing I need to work on is making sure that when I do my movement, I am making myself as uncomfortable as possible without hurting myself which will make it more believable to the audience.

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Today we started learning the dances of the festival scene. I found this lesson useful to me because I am in it myself so being able to be there to learn this dance was beneficial as it allowed me to go away and rehearse it more to ensure that I play my part in learning it in my own time. We used things such as costumes to help get into the character better. Personally, this really helped me to get into character and use costumes as props, for example, skirts, dresses, and shawls are being used when dancing such as one of the movements where we go on our tiptoes and turn around this made it look more feminine for women back in the 70s. In this lesson, we spent time on each dance which was useful to be able to get the hang of the movements we made.

The first dance that we started to learn today was a success towards the end, this was because I started to add facial expressions which are needed for this dance as it’s supposed to show the audience all the cast having fun together which was important to maintain throughout the dance, I have done this by always smiling throughout the dance this really helped me develop my character due to her being a content character and although she has struggled throughout the performance with her Father being missing she still shows to the village that she isn’t going to dwell on what’s happening around her so for me I believe it’s important to make sure that I show not only to the audience but also everyone else on stage that I’m enjoying myself. Before the dance starts, we got told to enter at separate times, so I decided to take this opportunity to show the audience that I am trying my best to lift my Mother, Constantia’s mood and to make her enjoy herself as she makes it aware before the festival scene that she is worried about her mother and how she is coping with her Father, Constantia’s husband still being missing. I also added in dialogue before the dance starts to ensure that people come on at separate times, myself, and Mia both enter the dance floor first calling Maria and Isabel over to join us. This fits well because it shows the relationship shared between the characters.

I think I have done an excellent job at learning this dance as I focused on the lesson to be able to ensure that I get each footwork correctly. Going over the dance a few times helped me to become more familiar with the dance moves as it personally gave me more of a chance at allowing me to focus on making sure various parts of the dance were to the best of my ability. The dance moves are simple and easy to remember. I am really impressed with knowing the footwork for the dances and making sure that I am using the correct foot to move, this is important for me because I am seen fully on stage, and I want to make sure the audience sees the effort put into the dance and how I’ve really developed my character into these dances. The way I represent myself on stage for these dances can say a lot to the audience about each character and make sure I maintain joyful and happy whilst dancing so the audience can see the fun and happy Francisca instead of having to be sensible and mature in front of her siblings is an important part for me to make sure I keep that energy up.

Overall, I think the first dance rehearsal for the festival scene went well, recording the dance helped me personally as I worked out the movements I have done good in and can keep the same with more energy and being able to figure out what I needed to work on and where it was I was going wrong and being able to watch other people who done it correctly and being able to take this video and rehearse it whenever I like and being able to make sure I remember each movement from beginning to end which will allow me to work closely with different movements, It’s also important to maintain that positive body image as it shows who I am as my character, I noticed that I stopped showing facial expression when I was concentrating on making sure I was doing the correct movements. Once I’ve become more confident with the dancing, I can then work closely with my body language and facial expressions to ensure that I’m not only giving but showing that I am doing my best to connect with the dance movements and make it look as if I’m aware of the movements that I am doing. I am happy with how dedicated I was to giving my all to these dance movements.

For the second dance again, we added some dialogue because Ernesto starts the dance doing a solo, and then the crowd which is the rest of the cast must cheer him on to do a solo, after inviting Baptista to join him we then must go on one by one and join in on the line, we started with everyone on one line doing the movement of putting one foot in front of the other and moving sidewards linking arms. We then changed it to perform two lines with Ernesto, Baptista, Maria, and Isabel in one line and the rest of the cast in the line behind, this is because it looks more effective from the audience's perspective of Ernesto and Baptista's sisters all getting along. This is important to view because Ernesto and Baptista are becoming very close so personally for Baptista, it is important that we all get along. Although it was a dance rehearsal lesson today, we also went over the dialogue before and after the dance to be able to see where we would be placed before doing the dance so we could ensure that we rehearsed this scene with as much detail as possible to make sure that we understood where we were coming on for the dance part.

I think I have done a fantastic job at learning this dance because I participated well and took on the movements given to us all as quickly as possible. For example, I think I have done well in learning the added movements at the end of the dance and making sure that I used the correct arm when linking arms with the rest of the cast, this insinuates that we are all enjoying our time and getting to know each other. I also felt like I have done well in being able to follow the sequence of the dance without having time to rehearse it and just going straight into it. I gave it my all by ensuring I had a smile on my face throughout the whole dance, this is to make sure that it was clear to the audience that I’m enjoying my time and forgetting all the problems going on for a small amount of time.

Overall, this lesson has been helpful for me because it’s allowed me to get a better understanding of the festival scene and what will happen in between the dialogue. It also helped to have a piece of costume on to get a feel for the costumes we will be wearing on the day of the performance. I think the whole lesson was a success because I gave my all to my character and the dances that were created. Next time I will make sure that my footwork has improved so I can work in another area to improve to ensure that the dance is to the best of my ability and will focus on making sure that I spend time improving my character’s personality whilst at the festival scene as the emotions of my character changes throughout the performance.

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In this evaluation I go into detail about the rehearsal process that I have done today, this helps me to then remember everything and include the important things that happened in the lesson.

In this video, I talk about the emotional change my character goes through compared to how she acts in other scenes, for example when walking on with Constantia I talk about the big change that is shown for my character and Constantia because the last the audience sees was that they were in a heated argument so I found it important to talk about the change in their relationship and how that would make my character feel.

I also talk about the relationship-building of Inez and Francisca and how we have included dialogue for Maria, and how this links back to how Inez seems more of a family friend as she gets on with her siblings as well. I also talk about the reassurance Francisca wants from her Mother before going over to Inez to show that she is still caring for her Mother.

Making this video helped me to reflect on the things that I need to work on for upcoming rehearsals and to understand the things that I feel I am doing well at and focus on the things that I feel I need to work harder on and take on the feedback given to me after this rehearsal which I will show in the upcoming rehearsal.

https://youtu.be/jrbYIfEy738

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Today we read through the script of 'A Mother's Voice' I participated by volunteering to read the character of Dream Mother. I liked the sound of this character due to her sounding determined and confident. I like the idea of this character being from the past and showing the relationship between Dream Mother and the Father before he went missing.

I chose to read her lines because she is someone I decided I wanted to audition for. Although we weren't auditioning today it helped me to understand her character more. I've learned that Dream Mother is a caring character that cares deeply about her husband and children. She likes to ensure that her family is wealthy and safe.

We then started reading a line each, personally, this was beneficial for me because it allowed me to have a feel of each character and helped me decide who I want to audition for. Once going over the script I then went away and looked at who I wanted to audition for. After reading the script in the lesson and when I got home I really liked the characters Francisca and Dream Mother so I focused my time on looking into both of those characters.

This gave me the chance to understand both characters and to look further into what it was like being a mother in South America and a daughter. I started to look through the scenes that had each character in and I really liked the second scene for Francisca called 'Absence and Loss' because it really showed the character and how she would react.

The scene I liked of the Dream Mother was the 'Picnic in the hills' this was because it shows the relationship the family had and how strong they were before things started to get bad for them. It was a nice scene that I wanted to do my audition for Dream Mother because I felt like it had so much potential at being able to show my acting skills.

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The first person I auditioned for was Francisca. I want to play the role of Francisca because I like her character. I feel like I would do really well in playing an older sister due to being an older sister myself which helps with how they act towards people.

When auditioning I wanted to use the part with the siblings and mother called "Absence and Loss" this was to help understand the relationships between the family and get to know more about my character and how she reacts around her family.

When auditioning we started off by getting into different groups with whoever else is auditioning for the same scene. After doing this we then had 20 minutes to go through it ensuring that we were showing a lot of emotion in our characters and following the same stage directions. When rehearsing I personally thought I spent the rehearsal process effectively to ensure that I gave it my best when auditioning as it was the character I wanted the most. Because there were two different Franciscas in my group we took turns doing the scene so I also covered the part as Baptista. Throughout the rehearsal, I started to add in the stage directions that were on the script to ensure I gave it my best. For example, it says that Maria goes to hug Francisca I made sure I showed empathy towards Maria, this was a success due to me placing my hand on Maria to show that I'm understanding the scene and the stage directions.

When it was time to perform, I felt confident due to following the scene and the stage directions, I walked on being able to show that I have looked into the character and understood the way Francisca portrays herself. I felt like I did a good job at acting like the older sibling with the way I spoke. I made sure I comforted Maria when it tells me to, this helped me due to show I have been working independently at making sure I followed all the directions given to me on the script.

Although I was happy with the way I played Francisca I believe that I could have done a better job at showing I wanted this character. I would've added in more movement instead of standing still, this is to help show the character development that I had in mind but failed to show. If I was able to audition for this character again I would make sure I add facial expressions and body language to give myself more of a chance and to better my audition.

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Today we had to all audition for the ghosts. For this to work we had to get into groups of three, I went with Emily S and Mia V. We had 20 minutes to rehearse, which consisted of finding a scene we wanted to do and naming ourselves ghosts 1 to 3. We gave ourselves a head start by choosing the number ghost we wanted to be so all we had to do was work on the scene.

The scene we chose to do was “The river of death” this was because it allowed us to really show our talent in being Ghosts. I chose to be ghost 2, the way we started to do this scene was by practicing how to stay connected throughout the whole scene and making sure that we still stayed connected in different ways. For example, instead of staying connected by the feet the whole time we decided to change it up by touching different parts of each other's bodies. This was successful due to adding in movements for each line we said. When saying the line “Over the rocks and through the rapids” we decided to make a movement with our heads where we brought our heads to one side and went over to the other side, this was because we decided to show the representation of the word ‘Rock.’ Each movement we made related back to the lines we were saying. When I said the line “battered and broken” we decided to go back to show the effect of it being broken. The ending of the scene was effective due to the way we responded to the last line “her husband” we rested on one another's shoulders and looked deadly in front of the audience to give the audience that tension of who we were talking about.

When rehearsing I found that it was a success, this was because we had already chosen the ghost we wanted to audition for and the scene which left us with 20 minutes of rehearsing. The movements we chose all related back and we also stayed connected throughout the audition, which was important to do. We were the only group to audition for a different scene, which made it more effective to see different scenes being played by the ghost and everything we chose showed that it came from our dedicated hard work at ensuring that we related the movements back to the lines we were speaking.

When auditioning, I found that we had done a good job at making sure we showed no facial expressions due to the ghosts being the deadly spirits, so it is important that there were no facial expressions and just natural. I felt like we have done a good job at always staying connected with the movements we chose to do, for example, we decided to show our flexibility by leaning forward and backward still staying always connected. I was impressed at how we managed to memorize some of the lines which helped us to be able to focus more on staying connected.

If I was able to do this again, I would make sure I didn’t giggle when leaning backward as it was difficult to say the line, I was supposed to say being backward, so I would’ve changed the movement so that we didn’t break character. Another thing I would’ve changed is ensuring that I was slower when speaking due to having to make sure that it was clear we were ghosts and ghosts don’t speak fast, so next time I will make sure I rehearse my lines more speaking as a ghost would.

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Today we had to audition for the fishwives, and I chose to be Dolores, this is because I liked her sense of humor and nobody else decided to play this character who was in my group, so I decided to do it. We didn’t have time to rehearse this, so I was unsure of how this was going to turn out. When thinking about fishwives I thought about how they would react and knowing that they were gossiping to one another I knew they’d be formal and when talking they would be giggling and laughing.

Dolores is known to be a moody character. Although she is moody there are some lines such as “Better six feet under than flopping on top” where she comes across as funny, she tries to show that she is a funny and witty character by trying to make the other fishwives laugh. Although, she does become very serious when talking about Constantia and Ramon which shows when she says “That is easier said than done, Catalina. How can she mourn her husband without a body. At least you know that Roberto is in his grave. All she knows is that Ramon went out one day and has not returned.”

When auditioning for Dolores, I felt like I portrayed her character well due to her being calm and moody throughout the whole scene. This helped to understand the different characters that there are, and it became clear that Dolores isn’t the type of character to have much sarcasm. I felt like I did a good job with the body language as it shows that she is a clumsy and stubborn character due to the way I was standing, I also felt like I did a good job at portraying the line “I can’t complain. My backaches. My knees are swollen, and my neck is stiff but apart from that and being married to Jose- I am fine.” When speaking this line, I feel like the body language used for this showed that she is struggling with her body and that she is achy.

I could’ve worked harder at making myself sound moodier and more sympathetic towards Constantia. For example, when saying “He was a good man her Ramon. He always spoke his mind. He stood for what is right. But he should have been more careful. Now his family is left without a father and Constantia is without a husband.” I wished I had used an empathetic tone when explaining to the rest of the fishwives my opinion on the situation with the family.

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Today we all had to audition for gossip, we then had to get into different groups and think of a scenario and tell it with only movements to see how we would be when auditioning for gossip. After thinking about it for a while we then performed it and then changed groups and went into different groups and did the same thing whilst trying to go along with each other's scenarios. We did different things such as miming, talking, and, and body language. This helped to show our understanding of each other’s situations we are trying to tell.

The gossip is known to be terrible for people who find a way to gossip about everything going on in the village. When doing different scenarios in this audition process, I have done a scenario of a girl who was going on a late-night walk and got stabbed along the way. This helped to allow my group to elaborate on this by saying things such as who it was, that they have also seen the same thing happen and it carried out a massive gossip with one another and then the situation changed every time and flowed nicely.

I felt like I had done a good job at making up fake scenarios in my head and delivering them clear enough for my group members to react to it. When doing mine, I felt I showed how to be a gossip well with the facial expressions I was given after each person spoke. Although we didn’t have much time to rehearse it helped us to be able to understand what gossips are and how they portray their character. I also felt like I had done a good job at acting out different movements with a lot of emotion which is what was asked of us in the audition process.

I feel like I could’ve done better at being more dramatic in the movements I performed for my group, this is because we got told to overdo it and I feel like I could’ve given more effort to be able to show my full potential. Although this isn’t compulsory, I wanted to make sure I gave it my all to show the talent I have. I feel like I could’ve also given more body language when reacting to the gossip being passed around, I could have shown more tension when things were being said. Next time I will make sure I show the character I played to be more involved and react to things bigger.

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Today we started by warming up and having to get into different positions that made us look uncomfortable. We were unsure why we needed to do this and when we did it sometimes people’s movements would look too pretty so, we had to keep trying until we could do it perfectly. After doing it we were then told that we were doing this warm-up due to having to add it into our dance at the start of the play. After we started to get the hang of it, we then decided to go through the first scene with dialogue.

When going through the first scene we had already learned the dance for the opening, so we recapped that by going through the dance and adding in more movements to get us to the place we needed to be. When doing this it was helpful that we went through the dance before starting to block the play, as it gave us more time to work on the beginning scene. The movements that we then added were going on our tiptoes with our heads tilted to the side and allowing the weight of our body to split into different places. To get to where I needed to be we had to then carry on the dance but with smaller movements. Personally, I think we all did a good job at the beginning and allowed ourselves to spend more time on making improvements to the scene.

We started to go through the scene where Dream Mother is walking through the land of the dead but is in denial that she is there. To make sure the scene was more effective we decided to mumble words that the voices say as Dream Mother is entering which I have chosen to say “we are the dead” I mumble this until she starts her first line and then we stop and just hover around looking dead. To make it look more naturalistic we were told to stand in different directions, and I chose to face forward due to there being nobody else facing forward.

Further along in the scene, when Dream Mother starts to look for Ramon and he says Constantia we thought it would be more effective if we repeated it one after another but quietly to give the impression that he is in the land of the dead, implying that he is dead. We also add in the agonizing cries, which is what we were working on at the start of the lesson, but we all do different movements to represent the dead.

Towards the end of the scene, we walk over to Ramon and whisper “Mother. Mother. Mother” and put our arms over him to bring him with us and further away from the Dream Mother. Although it seems easy to do, we did have extra work put into pulling Ramon back with us due to the whole point of him coming with us is to insinuate to the Dream Mother that he will not return, and this is how life is now and there’s nothing she can do to prevent that from happening.

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In today’s lesson, we went over the beginning scene again so we could work on perfecting the dance movements. We also went over the dialogue for the beginning scene because of the character ‘Voice’ which is something we needed to work on who was saying what line. We focused on perfecting our agonizing cries and sounding different to our original characters.

When going over the first scene, I personally feel like this scene is the one I struggle the most with because of not knowing what I am doing which really helped to spend the lesson going through different sections at a time so we could become more comfortable with the opening scene as it is the most important scene as it is the scene that starts off the whole play so it’s important that the audience understand what is happening on stage. We focused a little of our time on the movement which is our entrance cue to enter the stage as we must make ourselves appear dead which is difficult to do especially not having experience with this before. After going through this for a while the dance became easier to remember which benefited me because I struggle to show emotion when I am learning new things.

We then got told to choose lines we wanted to say whilst finishing the entrance dance to get into our positions for the scene to start. I chose to whisper “We are the dead” because I personally feel like that line is easy to remember due to the atmosphere of the scene and the scene being based around the land of the dead. After doing this we then got given allocated times to say “We are the dead” as Dream Mother approaches and is in denial that she is in the land of the dead.  I am the third person to say this line straight after the second person, which is Ellie to say “We.” This was decided because when we all just randomly say it, it doesn’t sound as convincing. The reason we say it at different times is to convey to the audience that we are in the land of the dead and so it has that echo sound to it which shows more tension towards the Dream Mother as she is looking in despair at everyone saying it so it’s like it’s an ongoing thing that she is hearing.

We also spent part of the lesson going over our agonizing cries and making them look realistic. This is something all the cast are struggling with due to not knowing what to do to make us look and sound dead. When being told, we were going to work on these, I personally felt relief because I was struggling at being able to let out an agonizing cry which is important in the scene to do because it reveals not only to Dream Mother but to the audience that we are the dead and showing body language to justify this is important because it makes it more effective at the beginning of the play. We took turns to show our agonizing movement and cry so that we could have a one-to-one at being able to improve it. The only thing that I need to improve on is making my cry sound believable and making myself sound like I am in pain, which is difficult to do due to the movement I make doesn’t allow me to project my voice loud enough. After going through it a few times I found a cry that sounded realistic and easy to project so that people in the audience would be able to hear it alongside everyone else.

I feel like I have done well at showing emotion within this rehearsal, for example, when entering the stage, I feel like I have shown no emotion which is intentional due to being dead and the dead having no emotion which is shown throughout the scene. I kept my facial expression neutral, however silly I made myself feel when doing the agonizing cries. I also feel like I have done well at saying “We are the dead” when I was supposed to. I felt like I had done a good job at memorizing the lines I am saying throughout the beginning scene which allowed me to focus my time on approaching my character in a different way from the way I would if I was playing Francisca. I feel like we have done a good job at portraying to Dream Mother that this is the land of the dead as she shows that she is in denial that Ramon is dead. I also feel like I took on feedback well within the lesson and applied it when we have done run-throughs of the scene which shows that I am on board with what is being said to me. I feel like I also showed better posture for the agonized cry after going through it many times before the run-through.

When thinking back to this rehearsal lesson I feel like I still need to work on my agonizing cry so that it matches the movement I am doing. To do this I will go over different sounds in the position which will help me to find the correct sound for me to use. I also want to be able to feel more confident in the dance and to do this I will go through the dance in my own time by rewatching the video and doing it at home or in my spare time at college.

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In today’s lesson, we started blocking the festival scene. Within this lesson, I was able to build my character and add some emotion as to how my character would be reacting within this specific scene. We also spent some time going over the stage directions and changing a few things to make it more understanding. We also added extra dialogue into the festival scene to make it more understanding.

When blocking the beginning of the festival scene I found it helpful to look at the stage directions to help show when I need to enter although directions were changed in the blocking of the scene but entering as we should’ve shown that I was prepared and looked into this scene even though we haven’t blocked it before. I started by adding facial expressions at the beginning of the scene especially when I say “There are many people here tonight. It is good to see such happiness” this is to show the atmosphere that is circling the room from the beginning of the festival scene. This is important because the festival is meant to be a scene where everyone is happy and cheerful before the sudden outburst of Ramon’s body being found in the river.

Another important part of this scene that was added was showing the relationship between Inez and Francisca when Inez shouts me over, I decided to react as if I haven’t seen her in a while and show my excitement by being eager to go over and see her but waiting for her mother’s approval first as it shows that she still has respect for her mother even after everything that has happened. We added in dialogue where Maria shouts “Inez!” and runs over to her to show that she is more of a family friend and gives Maria a reason to go over to Inez.

This is also a chance to show the audience the contrast between the relationship between Francisca and Constantia compared to what they saw in scene 2 which was more heated. It was important to make it look like we were close to showing that they’re a close family and that they’re just dealing with difficult situations. The relationship is shown through Francisca caring about how her mother feels when she asks her the question of “and you mother” showing that she does care and that she is supportive of her mother which is important to show for the upcoming scenes. The development between the characters is shown through them coming on together almost cheerfully and then entering the dance floor together calling others over to join them and smiling at one another in the dance.

Considering this was my first run-through of the festival scene I took all the feedback given whilst blocking the scene well and when looking back at what I have achieved within this rehearsal I felt I showed my physicality well through communicating with Constantia. I feel like I showed my relationship with Inez well, by miming, it as if we are talking and having a catch-up.

When looking back I feel like I need to work on coming in on time for the dance, this is because the dance is timed well with the music, so I need to make sure I clap on time when doing this as it’s myself and Constantia that start off the festival dance and I feel like I personally need to be more enthusiastic when getting the cast to join in on the dance. I also need to make sure that I am working on the dance so I can work on my footwork which is important throughout the play.

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Today we got given the spotify playlist that we will be using throughout the play. This was sent to us so we could recap the songs for the dance. The reason for this specific playlist is so that we can be familiar with the songs and can listen to them back and go over the dances in our own time.

The music helps me personally to be able to remember and practice the dances and work on the footwork in time with the beat. This also helps to go over each section that includes music so it's more effective.

https://open.spotify.com/track/5R4OT4k0S0jT1XsSWu3xLO?si=d9pZtOPUS3GN-aoodnIe7w&utm_source=copy-link

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Today we started the festival dances and we have done this by learning the festival dances which are a main part of the performance to show to the audience although we have all suffered in different situations to show that we are all having a well-deserved break. When choreographing this the first thing we got told was to make sure we looked as if we were enjoying ourselves. To make ourselves more involved we decided to get a shawl or swishy skirt to wear whilst going over this to be able to understand what we need to wear costume-wise and it being something that you can move around and include in the dances.

For the dance that we do at the beginning of the scene, Francisca and Constantia enters first cheering for Maria and Isabel to come and join us which gave reasons for entering at different times as it shows the different kinds of relationships that are being formed at the festival dances. This also helps us understand where we will be after the dance so we could do the dialogue that is in this scene. After doing this it made it easier for us to be able to block the dialogue part of the festival scene so that I could move toward Baptista so we could speak.

After doing the dialogue we then started learning the second part of the dance which is where Ernesto starts the dance with everyone at the festival pushing for him to start it off for us all to then join in after. We decided to have the family on the front row and the rest of the cast behind to show the audience all of us as a family connecting and having a fun time with one another before Constantia finds out that Ernesto and Baptista are seeing one another. We redid it and started to add emotion to the dance by smiling and laughing along with everyone.

I feel like I have done a good job at showing I was having a good time. This is shown when getting feedback that the first row showed a lot of excitement and joy within the dance. I feel like I have also improved on my footwork in this rehearsal by giving feedback and redoing the dances on the same day to be able to include the improvements. I also feel like in the lesson I did well at following the steps of the dance movements.

I feel like I could’ve improved more on my footwork, which is something that is very important to do in the dances because it focuses on the foot dances that happen. I feel like I could be more joyful although I am already joyful, I could improve it more. I also want to focus on being on time with the music. For example, at the beginning of the first festival dance, we need to come on in time and clap along with the music which is something I keep messing up but the more I go over it the more comfortable I'll feel about it.

https://bedfordcollege-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/r/personal/eboultonroe_bedford_ac_uk/Documents/Microsoft%20Teams%20Chat%20Files/20220331_112702.mp4?csf=1&web=1

https://bedfordcollege-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/hmillier_bedford_ac_uk/EWcC62yelZtLhTQqoGEvBHwBXNb39k6u69BfTHTh4yFl-A

https://bedfordcollege-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/hmillier_bedford_ac_uk/EQmfiVyJjN9PkEb3tIx1kMcBf4V3BLcmZBAwa2LzwRuLZw

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This emotion graph was created to show the different emotions my character feels throughout the play. In this, I talk about the emotions my character goes through from start to end. This helped me to develop my character due to being able to properly think about the emotions I would be needing to do whilst playing the character of Francisca.

I have chosen these specific emotions for the start of the play for my character due to her being calm when she first enters and as the scene goes on she starts to become more frustrated with the situation of the whereabouts of her father. I believe the only reason she is getting annoyed is that she cares deeply for her family and doesn't want them to get their hopes up that Ramon will return as it has been more than two months since he disappeared and that's unusual for him to stay away that long without being in contact.

The reason I chose the emotions for the middle part of the script is that there are different emotions she would be feeling due to there being scenes from past events with her father meaning she would be younger and happier as she is enjoying the times with her father. Another point I wanted to add in is to show that even though at the beginning with Francisca and her mother she still shows caring emotions towards her mother and she wants to make sure her mother is doing okay despite their differences.

The reason I chose to focus on the different emotions towards the end of the play is that towards the end is when you start to see the emotions Francisca is facing, for example, finding her father's body, and Baptista going missing, these show feelings she hasn't properly let out yet. It also has a mix-up as towards the end she talks about being pregnant meaning that she is full of joy and is happy which is something I feel like my character deserves.

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Scene 1- "The worry of Ramon"

One unseen scene I have decided to do is focus on what the Family felt the moment they realized something wasn't right when their father/husband never returned home. I chose to do this because it would be something I would have wanted to have seen myself so being able to create this unseen scene in a way that I would imagine each character reacting is something that I would imply due to their personality that I have gained from seeing the way they've played this character and their maturity throughout the whole play.

The reason I chose to do the unseen like this is based on how other characters react when talking about the disappearance of Ramon. The reason I gave Maria a paragraph is because she is sensitive and just likes everyone being happy and her knowing the sign of her Father has been nowhere to be seen so she is starting to understand her Father might not be coming home. Whereas Francisca and Baptista are more brutal due to them being the oldest and knowing this is out of character for their Father, which gives them the impression he isn't coming home and something has happened to him. With Isabel, I have decided to show her lack of maturity and childish mindset by thinking of the positive side of the situation even when she knows it's unlike Ramon to disappear. This is also shown through the emotions she feels throughout the scene. When writing Constantia's lines I thought it would be interesting if I showed her having doubts about the whereabouts of Ramon as in the script she never has doubts so it'll be a change to her constantly disagreeing with the girls. Although I do show her still trying to hold the family up with hope it has become a mixture of hope and despair.

Scene 2- "Introducing Basilio"

For this unseen scene, I decided to include all the family members but focus more on Francisca, Basilio, Constantia, and Ramon. This is because it is always important for your parents to meet your partner and I felt having it just the four of them for a bit before the girls entered was the best way for them to be able to talk to Basilio before the girls started interrupting. I decided to focus one of my chosen unseen scenes on the family meeting Basilio because I feel like he is a big part of Francisca's life so it would be important for the family to meet him and this would help me have a clearer understanding of the person my character is dating.

The reason I started this scene like this is to show the personality of Basilio, which I felt I showed really well by showing that he was nervous to meet the family. I made this clear by using the stage directions of 'Pacing up and down' this indicates that he is showing some kind of nerves which is completely normal when you are meeting your partner's parents. The reason I decided to have Ramon and Constantia enter together is to give off less tension when you meet the family for the first time, I didn't want Basilio to feel overwhelmed with the whole family coming at once so I separated the family to have time to get to know each other individually. The reason I made Ramon hardly say a thing in the script is that throughout the script he hardly talks so I wanted to carry that on to show that his personality is the same. Although Constantia shows to have interest and likes Basilio this is when she offers him to join the picnic which I wanted to show that, that is a big step as she doesn't let just anyone join in on their family day outs. The reason for only having Maria and Isabel run onto the stage in excitement and not Baptista is because they are shown to b the youngest meaning they are childlike and will show to have more excitement in them than Baptista would. This is why I chose to have Baptista enter more calmly and approach Basilio in a calm manner because the other girls wouldn't be as content as Baptista.

Scene 3- "Meeting the newest addition"

I chose to do an unseen scene for this specific moment because I had so many ideas that would relate back to the last scene that ended the play completely. The reason why I chose to go about this scene this way is to show the relationship between Constantia and Francisca. I chose to focus on this scene because it would be a nice unseen scene to write about and be able to think of the different reactions to the newest addition to the family.

The reason I chose to do this is that I wanted to create some sort of reincarnation of Ramon and be able to show that Ramon is still thought about and that they wanted to remember him and the only way to do that is by naming Francisca's baby after him. The reason I laid it out with it being the Mother and Francisca is to show their relationship in a closer format due to there not being much of that shown throughout the play. I wanted to catch a nice moment for Constantia and Francisca to share before the rest of the family came in to meet Ramon. I decided to allow Constantia to name the baby due to knowing it would have a good meaning behind it. When the girls enter and comment on the looks and how he looks like Padre, I thought it would have a cute meaning if Constantia told everyone the name of the baby as you would be able to see through her tone and body language how much it meant for her to have a grandchild that is named after their beloved Father/Husband.

This word document covers the unseen scenes I have written up and all the stage directions that help to understand the scene more. I chose to do these scenes because I find that it's important to be able to show the understanding I have got from the script myself in terms of how the different characters are and being able to think about the scenes that might have happened before and after some important parts in this play. I decided to focus on four different elements of the play to be able to write up different scenes that aren't relevant to each other and be able to go into detail about each scene due to my understanding of what happened before and after.

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https://youtube.com/shorts/LvBUczTQsVI?feature=share

Today I went over the first scene which I felt I did really good at memorizing. I spent around 15 minutes on this scene instead of 20 due to it being a short amount of things I’m saying in it. Although there are a lot of movements that I will be doing in it I now feel confident with this first scene by knowing the lines I am saying which gives me more time to focus on making the movements perfect.

When rehearsing the first 5 minutes I spent going through the lines as if I was acting them out. This helped to memorize the lines as it gives me the ideas of how I will be performing them and makes me remember the lines through the body language that is used for this scene. For example, knowing when to say 'Constantia' as an echo is important due to the audience realizing this is an echo on purpose to show the intention of this scene is based on the dead.

If I was going to record myself doing this again I would make sure that I spoke in character instead of just speaking the lines. The reason I only spoke the lines was to make sure I didn't forget anything which then allows me to work on speaking in character, which is hard to do without the rest of the cast and the little space in my house to do the movements.

https://youtu.be/k0B1HlFpozY

When going through this scene I spent the whole 20 minutes having many lines to learn with different emotions when speaking them I felt like I needed more time to rehearse and learn these but I decided to stick with the 20-minute rule so it allowed me to have a break before doing some more. When going over it I felt good about this scene as I already knew some of the lines already by reading through it in lessons when going over different scenes.

I felt like the beginning of the scene was good which was the part I already knew as it allowed me to add more character instead of spending my time going over the lines, I was able to add some physicality into my character when talking with the sisters in this scene which I will carry on when doing this scene in the lesson to show I have gone home and rehearsed this scene myself. Another thing I felt I did a good job at was the heated argument although it was more difficult not having Constantia chucking words back to me I still raised my voice the way we rehearsed it.

I still need to work on the argument scene due to me having to keep going back to my script to remember the lines. In my spare time over the weekend, I will be going over this scene with more emotion after learning about the heated argument which will show the tension that is intended.

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KEYWORD* meaning I missed out on a line that I still need to work on or I've missed out on a word for the line I need to say.

Because I have been unwell this week I was unable to record myself going over the lines I said I was going to go over I decided to write them down and see what I could remember and what I still needed to work on. When putting * next to each scene this meant I either missed out a word or I was unsure on how to say it or unsure on the line altogether.

Today I went over scene 13, I felt like this was beneficial for me because I haven't spent time on this scene in lessons so I haven't looked into this as much as the rest of the scenes. I spent 20 minutes on this section to be able to give myself more of a chance at understanding the scene. I went over the lines as to how I think my character will speak them. For example, due to there being so many emotions going on before this scene I personally feel like my character didn't want to waste any time and just wanted to know the truth and what has happened to her sister, Baptista.

I feel like I did really well at going over these lines without a script and knowing them by focusing on different sections at a time and going over them multiple times this helped as I had the lines in my head fresh from going over them before which helped me to be able to know along the lines of what I needed to say. I was happy with what I learned today because it allowed me to become more familiar with these lines when we get to this scene so I can start adding in character emotion throughout the scene.

Although I felt I did well in learning this there were minor things that I missed out such as a line that went into a sentence which is important to make sure I get all the words correct for my lines to make sense. I also missed out on a line which is important to make sure I include so the people in my scene don't get confused and miss out on a line. To make sure I improve if I was going to do this again is to read through the scenes I am in from the beginning and start going over the lines to make it easier for myself.

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The super-objective of my character's aim within the play is to find out what happened to her father, Ramon. This is more to help support her family due to her being the peacemaker in the family and being the responsible one so she feels as if she has to have all the answers to keep her family together.

I also feel like her aim in the play towards the end is ti=o support her mother by going with her to the police and trying to find Baptista even though she talks about them being terrible but she feels responsible to help her mother and be that bigger person and put all her worries to a side and show the support as it's clear her mother needs it right now and she tries to stand up for her mother through getting angry and frustrated when she is going to different officials.

Another thing I feel like my character's aim throughout the play is to make sure all her family are happy by doing this it then allows Francisca to feel as if she is being the responsible one and that she knows her family are safe and cared for due to Ramon being missing and then finding out he is dead and then Constantia losing control makes Francisca feel as if it's her duty to support everyone else in

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1. What she does for a living- Although it doesn't say what my character does in the play, looking at the script and seeing how my character reacts and who she has a relationship with, shows that she is the character to build people back up and helps them to overcome their struggles and feelings. This is shown when she comforts Maria, who is her younger sister, and her Mother, Constantia. Although she doesn't comfort her mother as much as she does her siblings it shows throughout the play that her thoughts are always with her mother and she wants to ensure that her mother is doing okay because she is the eldest daughter she feels as if this is her responsibility as her father has now gone missing so she feels as if she needs to step up and help her mother out which is why she has returned back to the village.

2. Where she stays- When Francisca was younger she used to live with her parents and siblings in South America in a small village, I feel like she still lives close to her home town but I know she lives with her husband Basilio. This is shown when she enters at the beginning of the play and her family is surprised to see her which shows she does not live at home anymore and shows she's come back to visit which is what she says "I thought I would come visiting"

3. Thoughts for the future- I feel like the thoughts for Francisca's future are to better her child's life and to make sure her child doesn't suffer the way she did and to make sure it is brought up in a better environment where she feels safe for her kid to grow up in. She will also be growing her family this is shown when she tells her mother that she is pregnant at the end of the play and she will be excited to be able to extend her family and become a mother. I also feel like she would be wanting to find her sister, Baptista, although she is dead the family is unaware of that right now so their aim would be to bring her home before the same thing happens to Baptista that happened to their beloved father, Ramon.

4. Aims for what she does- The aim of Francisca is to be able to make sure her family is okay. She always thinks about her family and how her family is and if any of her family needs any support she will always be there to give that. Her aim will also be to find out why her father was killed and to find the whereabouts of her sister. It's clear to see that Francisca's aim in the play is to be a role model for her siblings and to show her family that she is mature and that she is there for them. Her aim is to also help her mother find out where her father is and then find out where Baptista is held.

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A mother's voice tells a story of one woman's journey (Constantia) with four daughters of the missing husband Ramone. The mother has always liked to stay busy after her husband left to remain strong for her children. Constantia is in hope that the reality of her husband going missing will bring him back. She begins to immerse herself in the domestic duties as reality starts to hit her.

The play was originally written for a performance piece for the BTEC diploma for performing arts and was then developed over three weeks. They workshopped ideas together, they thought of physical theatre, character creations, and movement exercise. A mother's voice was originally set in South America.

The play begins with the three ghosts to allow the dead to find their way to 'the next life'. Constantia visits the land of the dead but decided to deny the messages that the ghost tries to give her which is that her husband Ramone is dead. After receiving this message she cries out to Ramone urging him to come home, she draws attention to her daughter as she is unaware that she is crying out her husband's name out loud. Baptista becomes concerned for her mother.

They then decided to no longer lay the table for their missing father, the mother (Constantia) dismisses their thoughts about no longer laying a plate for their husband and demands a plate for her husband, this is in hope that he will return. After she lays a plate for Ramone she does a prayer before eating. Constantia is in denial and dismisses everyone's words that her husband is dead and lights a candle again in hope that he will return.

The factory girls gossip about the latest rumors going around the town. One main focus is on the boy Ernesto who is a politically committed supervisor. They decide to complain about the factory working conditions and start to flirt with him although he has his eyes on Constantia's daughter Baptista, it's known that she feels the same way about Ernesto, he then asks Baptista to go with him to a political meeting and she says yes to him. Whilst this is going on Constantia has flashbacks of when her family was all together, she has another dream whilst the reality of everything going on starts to hit her as she lights another candle the past starts to shake her. Ernesto then asks Baptista out on another date which is seen to be more of a romantic one she starts to torment and teases him before finally saying yes to another date.

The ghosts from the presence start to haunt them preparing them for the darkness ahead. Baptista and Ernesto become the gossip of the town and her mother Constantia fails to see the danger of her daughter seeing Ernesto will bring for her daughter.

There is a festival happening where Ernesto wants approval from Constantia regarding the relationship with her daughter but she is nowhere to be seen. A dance starts where everyone but Constantia gets involved, after the dance ends there is gossip going around where one of the gossips call out for Constantia telling her she must follow as Ramone's body has been found. Ramone's body is then laid at Constantia's feet, this then makes Constantia face the reality of the truth that her beloved husband is dead.

Her husband is then released into the hands of the ghosts. Constantia then lights a candle in memory of her husband and curses her own ignorance and self-deceit. Ernesto can no longer hold his excitement and asked Baptista to marry him but she then hesitates, two men then approach them and shout at Ernesto and gun him down with no hesitation and then assault Baptista and talk about the 'fun' they're going to have with her whilst carrying her off stage. Everyone then hears about the death of Ernesto and the kidnapping of Baptista and shows the concern of the whereabouts she is.

Constantia cannot stand the thought of standing around she hears that her daughter is held a demand at a detention center so she sets off to this detention center with her eldest daughter. Constantia doesn't get the help she hoped to get as she kept getting pushed from office to office with no information on her daughter Baptistia who is being tortured. Whilst this is happening the gossip around the town is about why Ernesto was murdered they ask questions such as 'Was it due to drugs?'. As her mother searches for her missing child, Baptista, she is taken and her body is handed to the ghosts.

This play ends with Constantia trying to find the truth about what happened, as this is going on the mother is still strong about finding out what happened to her daughter she joins other mothers and wives and they dance alone in protest of what is happening around them. In the final moments of this play, she is then joined by her dead husband and daughter Ramone, Baptista, and Ernesto with candles, as the candles are lit it's shown that the search for the truth will still go on.

http://www.chrisowenonline.co.uk/newfile16.html

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In the second week we began to shape and form the play still further whilst rehearsing scenes we had now written out. About half way through this second week we had a full script - all that was left was to rehearse and perfect this for performance!

In the third week we presented four performances of what had now become "A Mother's Voice".Working in this intense fashion produced a remarkably powerful performance that moved and affected all who saw it. Many left the theatre in tears.

It was a remarkable experience for all concerned. The process of rehearsal produced a real sense of engagement and involvement from the students and many found a depth to their performances that they had not tapped before. It was a great way for them to finish their course.

Of all my plays, A Mother's Voice , is the one that I am most pleased with to date. It does, however, require more than a simple translation of the script from page to stage in order to make it work. As a final performance piece I had to ensure there were opportunities for students to explore their "specialisms". Therefore, aswell as characters to develop, there are many opportunities for movement, music and dance along the way. On the page the script can look a little stark - it is only through performance that the full richness of it can be discovered. The expression is poetic at times and the action moves from the realistic to the surreal. The characters are emblematic rather than fully rounded - though the performance of the central characters requires considerable commitment and understanding if the emotional core of the piece is to be exposed.

There are some terrific theatrical moments in the piece - such as the bringing in a the father's body held high above the heads of the crowd; Constantia's dreams of the land of the dead; Baptista and Ernesto discovering each other as the washing lines lift to become the flags at the festival and the search of the mother for her missing daughter mirrored by scenes of what her daughter is enduring. And yes - even in all this - there is still room for comedy in the gossiping of the villagers and the taunting of the local heart throb by the more knowing factory girls!

A Mother's Voice can be set anywhere in the world but was originally written against a quasi central/south American background. The breathy Andean pipe music certainly added to the haunting quality of the piece.

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A Mother's Voice - a dramatic ensemble play about the disappeared

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In the second week we began to shape and form the play still further whilst rehearsing scenes we had now written out. About half way through this second week we had a full script - all that was left was to rehearse and perfect this for performance!

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Katie Mitchell is a British theatre director whose style is known as uncompromising methods that have divided both critics and audiences. Her creations have also been innovative and groundbreaking. She is also known as one of the UK's famous contemporary performances. She was born in Berkshire in 1946, she grew up in a small village called Hermitage. She read English at the college of Magdalen, Oxford. She started her theatre career in 1986 by having a job at King's Head Theatre as a production assistant.

She then became an assistant director at Paines Plough a year later. She then took the same post at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. In 1990, she then created her own company called Classics on a shoestring, where she guided many pioneers and celebrated productions including The House of Bernada Alba and Women of Troy. Mitchell worked as an associate director at the Royal Court Theatre, she was responsible for programming at the black box space, The Other Place, and her own creation of The Phoenician Women which made her win the Evening Standard Award for being the best director.

Katie Mitchell's work has pushed her to develop her techniques and has also driven her to develop her creative mediums. She has directed work for film and television such as The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd and, The Turn of the Screw. In 2011 Mitchell created an immersive video installation with Leo Warner who is a video maker, which was called Five Truths which was made for the Victoria and Albert Museum, which focused on the nature of truth in a theatrical production. She also started to explore her talent by assimilating video into live theatre. Mitchell has used her works over the last decade by exploring, allowing performers to use and manipulate cameras to project images onto screens.

Recently she worked on these techniques in her production she started in 2013 which is called Miss Julie for Berlin’s Schaubühne which is a theatre known for its great critical acclaim. It's known that she has given few opportunities for people to see her work, she has decided to dedicate directly what has known to be some of her aspiring productions in Continental Europe. Mitchell has worked on many projects mainly based in France and Germany, she has attended an opera based on Neil Gaiman's story Coraline.

Mitchell is known in the industry to be a highly skillful auteur whose diligent hard work, attention, and dedication to take big risks have made her develop her work to become some of the most beautiful and exclusive productions. Mitchell is known to have impacted and taught many people the importance of contemporary art.

http://www.theheroinecollective.com/katie-mitchell/

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Katie Mitchell is a British theatre director whose unique style and uncompromising methods have divided both critics and audiences. Though sometimes causing controversy, her productions have been innovative and groundbreaking, and have established her as one of the UK's leading names in contemporary performance.

She was born in Berkshire in 1964, grew up in the small village of Hermitage and read English at Magdalen College, Oxford. She began her theatre career in 1986 with a job at the King's Head Theatre as a production assistant. She became an assistant director at Paines Plough a year later, and then took the same post at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. In 1990, she founded her own company, Classics on a Shoestring, where she directed a number of pioneering and highly acclaimed productions including the House of Bernada Alba and Women of Troy.

In the decades with followed, Mitchell worked as an associate director with the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Whilst at the RSC, she was responsible for programming at the now defunct black box space, The Other Place, and her production of The Phoenician Women earned her the Evening Standard Award for Best Director.

Her numerous theatre credits include 2071 and Night Songs for the Royal Court, The Cherry Orchard for the Young Vic, The Trial of Ubu for Hampstead Theatre, Henry VI Part III (to date her only Shakespeare production) for the RSC and A Woman Killed with Kindness and The Seagull at the National Theatre. She has also directed opera, working with the Royal Opera House and English National Opera. An exponent of Stanislavski techniques and naturalism, her style was strongly influenced by the time she spent working in Eastern Europe early in her career. Her work is characterised by the creation on stage of a highly distinctive environment, the intensity of the emotions portrayed and by the realism of the acting.

Mitchell's work has pushed boundaries and explored technique and, not just confined to the stage, has also taken her into other creative mediums. She has directed for film and television with work including The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd and The Turn of the Screw. In 2011, together with video maker, Leo Warner, Mitchell devised an immersive video installation called Five Truths for the Victoria and Albert Museum which explored the nature of truth in theatrical production.

She has also experimented with incorporating video into live theatre. Over the past decade Mitchell has created works in which performers use and manipulate cameras to project images onto screens. Her first foray into multi-media work such as this was Waves, a stage version of Virginia Woolf's novel for the National Theatre, in 2006. More recently she employed these techniques in her 2013 production of Miss Julie for Berlin's Schaubühne Theatre to great critical acclaim.

In recent years Mitchell has offered British audiences little opportunity to see her work. Instead she has concentrated on directing what have been described as some of her most ambitious productions in Continental Europe. She has worked on a variety of projects, mostly in Germany and France, including an opera based on Neil Gaiman's story Coraline, a stage version of two novels by Romanian Nobel laureate, Herta Müller, and a feminist retelling of Hamlet.

Is her recent distancing from British theatre a result of the vehement reactions her work has provoked here? Possibly not. But she has often attracted harsh criticism not only for the work itself but also for the methods she employs, chiefly the way in which she takes total artistic control over every single aspect of the production. This control also extends to the script and the approach has left Mitchell facing accusations of having a disregard for the text.

However, it is also precisely this individuality, this intense and visionary directorial style, which inspires such admiration and praise for her art. Mitchell is seen in many quarters of the industry as a highly skilful auteur whose painstaking hard work, attention to minute detail and willingness to take huge risks has created some incredibly beautiful and unique productions. She has even been described by her champions as Britain's greatest living theatre director and in 2009, she was awarded an OBE for her services to drama.

Whether critic or devotee, no one can deny the tremendous influence and impact Mitchell has had on contemporary theatre. "I don't believe in art for art's sake," she says. "That leads to vanity. The fundamental question one should ask oneself is 'What is my place of responsibility in the world community?'"

©The Heroine Collective 2015 - Present, All Rights Reserved.

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BIOGRAPHY: Katie Mitchell - Theatre Director - The Heroine Collective

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Katie Mitchell is a British theatre director whose unique style and uncompromising methods have divided both critics and audiences. Though sometimes causing controversy, her productions have been innovative and groundbreaking, and have established her as one of the UK's leading names in contemporary performance.

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South America is the fourth largest world continent. The continent is known to be a triangular shape that is boarded in the north and constricting to a point in the south. It is the southern resultant of the landmass generally referred to as the New World, which is known as Western Hemisphere or just known as the Americas.

South America has a total of about 6,878,000 square miles or easily known as the one-eighth land surface of Earth. The name America obtains from the navigator Amerigo Vespucci who is one of the earliest European explorers of the New World.

There are twelve countries in South America which are as following Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In extension to these sovereign states, there are also 3 dependent territories, which are known to be the Falkland Islands (UK), French Guiana (France), and the South Sandwich Island (UK).

All the original relatives have no contact with modern civilization. Some of these original tribes have had little to no contact with one another. People believe there are some tribes that are hiding far to not be caught having contact with each other. This is known to be one of the best facts about South America.

It's also known that South America has more than 300 languages that are spoken throughout the continent. The main languages spoken are English, Spanish, and Portuguese. These are known to be more common languages. There are still some languages that are highly spoken in South America such as Quechua which is spoken by 8,9 million people, Guarani spoken by 4,9 million people, and Aymara which is spoken by 2,8 million.

In South America, the Amazon Rainforest is known to be the world's most biodiverse place. The Amazon rainforest is the largest tropical rainforest in the world. It covers 5.5 million square kilometers of the area, which is known to be bigger than India, which is one of the largest countries in the world. The Amazon rainforest is home to millions of animals and plants and it plays one of the most important roles in Earth's ecosystem. 20% of the world's oxygen is produced in the Amazon rainforest. It's known to be the 'lungs of the Earth'. Without the Amazon rainforest, many animals and people would be hugely affected by this.

La Paz is the highest capital in the world which is based in South America. The Bolivian capital has an advance of 3,640 meters which is 11,942 feet tall making it one of the highest cities in the whole world and the highest capital in the world. People who fly to La Paz will need a few days to understand and adjust the height of the elevation.

Brazil is known to be the biggest country in South America, it covers 47.3% of the continent and is the largest country in both population and land area. Brazil is home to more than 210 million people, it's also known to be one of the biggest countries in the world.

It's known that Suriname is the smallest country in South America, Suriname is not known to be popular in South America, it's the least crowded country in the world. Suriname has 568,000 locals and a land area of 162,821 km2.

Angel falls in Venezuela is the tallest waterfall in the world which is in South America which has a height of 979 meters.

The main religion in South America is Christianity. It's known that 90% of the South American population consider themselves as Christians and just over 80% consider themselves as Roman Catholics, making Christianity the main religion in South America.

5 fun facts about South America-
*Brazilians are the most used internet users on the continent
*It was named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci
*South Americans are famous for their beauty
*Maria and Gabriel are the most common names for boys and girls in South America
*The guinea pig is a delicacy in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru

General facts about South America-
*Total population: 428 million people live here
*Largest city: Sao Paulo in Brazil
*Life expectancy: 72 males and 79 females
*Highest mountain: Aconcagua which is 6962 meters above the sea
*Land area: The land is 17,840,000 square kilometers
*Largest Lake: The largest lake is called Lake Titicaca
*Longest River: The longest river is the Amazon River
*Religion: The religion most spoken is Christianity which is spoken by 90% of the population of people living in South America

https://www.britannica.com/place/South-America

https://www.swedishnomad.com/facts-about-south-america/

https://www.swedishnomad.com/amazon-rainforest-facts/

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Héctor Fernando Avila | See All Contributors | View Edit History

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South America | Facts, Land, People, & Economy

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South America, fourth largest continent in the world, the southern portion of the landmass generally referred to as the New World, the Western Hemisphere, or simply the Americas. The continent is compact and roughly triangular in shape. Learn more about South America.

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The story behind Madres De Plaza De Mayo, on the 24th March it's noted that it is a national holiday which is known as El Dia De la Memoria, which is a day of Memory. Anyone over the age of 30 can remember the reasons for this holiday.  This happened in Argentina, and this is there story behind what happened.

Juan Peron came back to Argentina in 1973 for his third period as president, but he only survived one year, he then left his second wife, Isabel Peron in charge as the President of the nation after death. She was known as the vice president alongside him. The military used a secret police force, called the AAA also known as Triple-A, this was to hunt, kidnap, torture, and kill the people seen as "subversives." social activists, student organizations, and workers. The military became irritated by her government, the society was attacked more and more. Guerilla groups such as ERP and the Montoneros fight back against the armed forces, the kidnapping, and multinational executives for large ransoms that were then used to give out food, clothing, educational materials, and medical equipment for the less fortunate families.

On March 24th, 1976 the three armed forces, known as the air force, navy, and army took the government by force. The guerilla groups seemed to be the main excuse to be able to declare military dictatorship against war and terrorism. And to be able to kidnap, torture, and execute anyone they felt that was opposed to their agenda. They created secret detention centers where the disruptive citizens were taken after being abducted, where they were then tortured badly and some were also often killed. The Desaparecidos is known as the "disappeared" they estimated it to be around 30,000 people, not including the ones found dead. The ones who survived the torture were then released later on. Family members of those killed, tortured, and kidnapped spent weeks, months, and even years trying to find out information about where their loved ones have disappeared to and the government didn't help them.

They also had strict rules for both Men and Women. This being that Women couldn't wear miniskirts or women's pants, and men couldn't have long hair they all had to have short hair. The right to meet in public was also banned. The mothers looking for their children, or missing loved ones all decided after running into each other many times to meet and demand information from the government about their abducted children. Having more than 2 people in public was seen as a meeting which is illegal the mothers decided to meet on Thursdays and March in a group of 2 around the Plaza de Mayo, they were all holding photos and signs about their missing children. They then became the famous Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. They were the only group of women who stood up out of desperation, fear, and love and demanded information from the brutal dictatorship about where their missing children are. Many mothers also disappeared after joining the marches, including three founding mothers who were tricked into a secret military ambush by the priest at a church that claimed to help them find their missing children.

More than 30 years later, thousands of victims remain disappeared. Although there are investigators to find out the truth of what happened to the missing people most of the 30,000 disappeared still remain that way. Some have been found and some bodies identified, but the majority remain missing.

https://vamospanish.com/discover/madres-plaza-mayo-mothers-argentina/

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The Argentina Story Behind the Date - March 24

Thursday, March 24, don't expect to go to work, to class, or shopping- it's a national holiday, and a big one at that. Known as el Día de la Memoria, the Day of Memory, it's not your run-of-the-mill recognition of some old battle. In fact, pretty much anyone over the age of 30 can remember the reasons all too well.

Juan Domingo Peron

After Juan Perón came back to Argentina in 1973 for his third term as president, he only survived one year of his term, leaving his second wife, Isabel Perón, in charge as the President of the nation after his death (she had run with him as his vice president). During her presidency, the military used a secret police force, called the AAA or Triple A, to hunt down, kidnap, torture and kill those who were seen as "subversives:" social activists, student organizations and workers' unions, progressive academics, etc. As the military became more unsatisfied with her government, the progressive sector of society was attacked more and more. Guerilla groups like the ERP and the Montoneros fought back against the armed forces, kidnapping multinational executives for large ransoms that were used to distribute food, clothing, educational materials, and medical supplies to slums and poor families.

On March 24, 1976, the three branches of the armed forces (air force, navy and army) took the government by force. The guerilla groups were the perfect excuse for the military dictatorship to declare a "war against terrorism" and to kidnap, torture, and execute anyone they felt opposed to their agenda. They established secret detention centers where "subversive" citizens were taken after being abducted where they were tortured extensively and often killed. These people, the desaparecidos, the "disappeared," are estimated to be around 30,000 people, not including those confirmed dead and those who survived the torture and were later released. Family members spent weeks, months, and years trying in vain to get any kind of information about their disappeared loved ones from the government.

Among strict laws including mandated dress codes (no miniskirts or women in pants), hairstyles (men had to have short hair), appropriate reading materials and political parties (the Communist Party as well as student and worker unions and organizations were declared subversive and illegal), the right to organize or meet in public was also totally prohibited. After running into each other over and over in government offices while trying to locate their children, some mothers decided to get together to demand information about their kidnapped children. Since more than 2 people speaking in public was declared a meeting and therefore illegal, the mothers began marching on Thursdays, walking in groups of just two people, around the Plaza de Mayo, holding photos and signs about their missing children: they became the famous Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. These women were essentially the only group who, out of desperation, fear and love, stood up to this brutal dictatorship to demand information about their missing children. Several of the mothers themselves were disappeared after joining the marches, including two of the three founding mothers, tricked into a secret military ambush by the priest at a church that claimed to be helping them.

Even now, more than 30 years after it began, tens of thousands of victims remain disappeared. Despite investigative truth commissions, exposure and investigation of secret detention centers, and trials of the leaders of the military junta, most of the 30,000 disappeared remain that way. Mass graves have been found and some bodies identified, but the majority remains missing.

Over 100 children born to disappeared pregnant women have been recovered from military families who "adopted" them after birth, thanks to the Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo. This group is made up of women who were part of the Madres, but whose children were pregnant or when disappeared. These women demanded to know what happened to their grandchildren. Since the dictatorship ended, it has come to light that pregnant women were systemically kept alive till giving birth and then murdered, and then their babies were given to families of military personnel or those who were friendly with the dictatorship. The Abuelas, along with the support of the Kirchner presidents, created a national DNA database of those looking for grandchildren and those who feel they may have been adopted, and have successfully found 100 of these stolen children. Some of them, now in their thirties, have taken their adoptive parents to court, while others stay in contact with them after being reunited with their real families.

Others have fought hard against this truth coming out, the most famous being the children of Ernestina de Noble, the millionaire media mogul and owner of the Clarín Group, who acquired several of her lucrative businesses through cozy contacts with the dictatorship, as well as, likely, her children. The government's strong support and pursuit of this high profile case, as well their investigations of the means through which the Clarín Group acquired their assets (in particular, Papel Prensa), explains why the Clarín newspapers, TV channels, radio stations and more have engaged so furiously in a public feud with the Kirchners, active supporters of human rights who maintain conflicting business interests with Clarín. If you are supplementing your Spanish learning by reading local newspapers, you're likely to have come across some of this. Recently, the courts ruled that the children must submit DNA samples to be compared with the national database to determine if it matches a searching grandmother.

The march on Thursday, March 24 will bring together people from all factions of life, all ages, and all parts of the country. All kinds of social organizations, political groups, human rights supporters and friends and families of those who were disappeared come together to remember the atrocities that took place and to fight for justice, human rights, and the truth. However, it's not a solemn, depressing event: It is both an event in honor of the victims and a celebration of them, of life, memory, human rights, and the truth. You'll see lots of families, artists, political groups, students, workers' unions, and more marching, celebrating, making music, chanting, and waving flags and banners of all sorts. It is an incredible opportunity to immerse yourself in the history of this country. There are endless signs and banners to decipher and many people are willing and eager to speak to you about their personal reasons for attending the march. If nothing else, it's a spectacular site to see some many people coming together with such passion, and one you're sure to always remember.

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The Story Behind Madres de Plaza de Mayo

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Thursday, March 24, don't expect to go to work, to class, or shopping- it's a national holiday, and a big one at that. Known as el Día de la Memoria, the Day of Memory, it's not your run-of-the-mill recognition of some old battle.

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Ghost Dance is two district cults in a complex of late 19th Century religious movements that represented an attempt of Native Americans. The first ghost dance was created in 1869 around the Wodziwob who then died in 1872. It was then sold out or was reallocated into different cults. Nevada is the state that announced the 'imminent' return of the dead which is why it's called Ghost Dance.

It was known to be hastened by the dances and songs revealed to the mystic in their vision visits to the spiritual world. Many dancers studied and received new songs relating back to the dead. They met in illusions or were healed by the Ghost Dance habits.

The Ghost Dance traveled as far as the Missouri River, which is a Canadian border, Sierra Nevada, and Northern Texas. As early as 1890 it then reached the Sioux and happened with the rise of the Sioux outbreak of the late 1890s for which the cult was then wrongly blamed.

The second Ghost Dance became unusable, even though it did continue into the 20th Century in compressing form among a few tribes. Both cultures helped to reshape traditional Shamanism. Which is known to be a belief system based around the healing and psychic transformation powers of the shaman, and medicine men.

Ghost Dance was made purely for the company called Ballet Rambert. They first performed on 3rd July 1981 at the Bristol Theatre Royal which was also known as the old Vic. It remained in the company for a solid 4 seasons and when then looked further into by Rambert on 24th June 1999 at the Theatre Royal, Norwich. It was then nominated for the Society of West End Theatre Awards as the Outstanding Achievement of the Year in Ballet in 1982. It has then been performed by different theatre groups such as Nederlands Dans Theater, Australian Dance Theatre, and many more.

Ghost Dance is a one-act dance which is performed by three men who show the memories of these men before passing on. This is to recreate the journey each ghost has which allows them to reminisce on the memories they had and the journey they've been on.

The Ghost Dancers are also referred to as the 'White Ghosts'. they are known to have the appearance of tree skeleton-like men with skull masks and flushed hair. They are immediately on stage from the moment the curtains open and that carries on throughout the performance right until the end, this is because it's made to believe they are awaiting the next person to be dead.

Ghost Dance was made for the innocent people of South America.

The characters are as followed The Ghost Dancers and The Dead which are five women and three men who throughout the work contrast forms of death. The Dead enter as a group upstage left not long after the music begins and they all remain on stage during the work. They then all exit together downstage right at the end. The relationships between the characters are open to individual interpretations by the audience. The costumes were worn by The Dead to suggest a variety of social backgrounds.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ghost-Dance

https://www.rambert.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Ghost-Dances-Study-Notes-1.pdf

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Table of Contents

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Ghost Dance, either of two distinct cults in a complex of late 19th-century religious movements that represented an attempt of Native Americans in the western United States to rehabilitate their traditional cultures. Both cults arose from Northern Paiute (Paviotso) prophet-dreamers in western Nevada who announced the imminent return of the dead (hence "ghost"), the ousting of the whites, and the restoration of Native American lands, food supplies, and way of life. These ends, it was believed, would be hastened by the dances and songs revealed to the prophets in their vision visits to the spirit world and also by strict observance of a moral code that resembled Christian teaching and forbade war against Native Americans or whites. Many dancers fell into trances and received new songs from the dead they met in visions or were healed by Ghost Dance rituals.

The first Ghost Dance developed in 1869 around the dreamer Wodziwob (died c. 1872) and in 1871-73 spread to California and Oregon tribes; it soon died out or was transformed into other cults. The second derived from Wovoka (c. 1856-1932), whose father, Tavibo, had assisted Wodziwob. Wovoka had been influenced by Presbyterians on whose ranch he worked, by Mormons, and by the Indian Shaker Church. During a solar eclipse in January 1889, he had a vision of dying, speaking with God in heaven, and being commissioned to teach the new dance and millennial message. Native Americans from many tribes traveled to learn from Wovoka, whose self-inflicted stigmata on hands and feet encouraged belief in him as a new messiah, or Jesus Christ, come to the Native Americans.

Thus, the Ghost Dance spread as far as the Missouri River, the Canadian border, the Sierra Nevada, and northern Texas. Early in 1890 it reached the Sioux and coincided with the rise of the Sioux outbreak of late 1890, for which the cult was wrongly blamed. This outbreak culminated in the Massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where the "ghost shirts" failed to protect the wearers, as promised by Wovoka.

As conditions changed, the second Ghost Dance became obsolete, though it continued into the 20th century in attenuated form among a few tribes. Both cults helped to reshape traditional shamanism (a belief system based on the healing and psychic transformation powers of the shaman, or medicine man) and prepared for further Christianization and accommodation to white culture.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Brian Duignan.

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Ghost Dance | Definition, Significance, Wounded Knee, & Facts

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Ghost Dance, either of two distinct cults in a complex of late 19th-century religious movements that represented an attempt of Native Americans in the western United States to rehabilitate their traditional cultures.

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Christopher Bruce was born on the 3rd of October 1945 in England, he started to study dance when he was 11 years old, he began with tap and ballet.

Christopher studied at the Rambert School. After finishing his studies here he then joined Ramber Ballet in 1963, where he became the leading male dancer. Bruce then appeared in works such as Don Quixote in 1964 and Coppelia in 1966. The company began to experiment with ballet and modern, they then combined them together to form the technique of Martha Graham. It's known that Martha created 181 ballet and dance techniques, Many dancers have studied the Martha Graham techniques in their choreography. Bruce danced the role of Pierrot Lunaire, he interpreted his own skills and they were then noticed. People knew Bruce as "dominating everything- practically living the part". Bruce, later on, started to work with Glen Tetley, he then discovered that "the motive for the movements come from the center of the body from this base we use classical ballet as an extension to give wider range and variety of movement" In 1994 he then became an artistic director for RDC. He also adds some classical ballet and modern dance. He often set negatively against well-known music by artists like Bob Dylan and Rolling Stones. His music contains 'Cruel Garden' in 1977, 'Ghost Dances' in 1981, 'Swansong' in 1987, and 'Rooster' in 1991.

Influences:

Bruce's aim is to always make a dance first. Social and Political themes come naturally as a reflection of his own concern. His aim is to always create a dance rather than thinking about making a statement. Bruce doesn't see any harm in creating exciting movements whilst also tackling difficult issues. Bruce believes there is beauty in things like Ghost Dances and similar works. Bruce is known for experimenting with themes that focus mainly on political and personal issues. He has created intellectual pieces but even these pieces have a strong undercurrent of emotion. Bruce uses things such as poetry, literature, music, newspaper articles, and world events as a starting point. Swansong is one of his most touching and emotional pieces that tackle the important issue of torture.

Throughout Christopher's career, he has been a strong believer in Amnesty International's ideas and choreography he has voiced his concerns for society, the persecuted, and victims of human rights abuses. He has returned to these themes like his recent work "grinning in your face." The dance can be seen as the most human of the Arts as it is based on the body. There's also an image of a tortured prisoner from "swansong" or the imprisonment of Reuben Carter.

In 1970 Bruce focuses on South America and Pinochet's bloody coup. He deeply moved on to the meeting of Joan Jara, who was in fact tortured and murdered by Pinochet's forces. After the meeting, it leads him to come up with the choreography of Ghost Dances. He took the theme of the day of the dead, which was simple symbolism and indigenous dance movements this is to convey the innocence of the people of South America.

Ghost Dances:

Ghost Dances was created in 1981 and was influenced by the politics in Chile. The style of dance was contemporary ballet blended with South American dances. The setting for the ghost dances where a rocky Andean location which suggested the mouth of a cave. The colors of the backdrop (blue, green, and grey) were effective at the time which represented the costumes and movements but added an eerie atmosphere. The stage was lit by a dim white light. The dead wore everyday clothing, which started to show disintegrate. The ghost dancers appear on stage as skeleton figures in skull masks. The dance was followed by panpipes, guitars, and flutes. The tune of the music is infectious and "tuneful." It differs from the actual use of the word "dead" they are very off-balanced and angular.

Thinking of the movements it was shown that the heads of the ghost dancers were the main key to making it look as threatening as it is. The ghost dancers move very quickly and sharply which creates a menacing effect. On the other hand, the "Dead" are very different and move free-flowing and gracefully. The posture of the dead is open chested and balletic with neat footwork. This is impactful due to the reasoning behind the "Ghost Dance" as it shows real-life issues.

Swansong:

Swansong was created in 1987 and was influenced by the fate of political prisoners, the style is contemporary ballet and the movements were created on the idea of a swan. It's based on the fate of political prisoners and their need to escape. swansong is an intentional disturbing dance showing a victim being tortured by a variety of means, although there is no deliberate violence on the stage. The dance shows aggression, interrogation, how brainwashing can lead to humiliation, and how it can play with your emotions. The three ghost dancers are costumed representatives and resembled the set. The prisoners were in a plain t-shirt and jeans and the two guards were wearing vaguely militaristic khaki trousers and short-sleeved shirts which could be seen as policemen, soldiers, or guards. There are known to be 7 sections in a swansong dance and each section has a different theme and style.

Section 1- (questions and answers) The dance suggests interrogators and victims. The dance changes from trios to duets and solos.  The duet dance shows them following the same movements one after another and following their next victims.

Section 2- (tea for two) This section is where the interrogator walks around his seated victim but the victim taps out 'answers' but in a defiant mood. They change tactics.

Section 3- (first solo) This section is for the victim alone, it's more lyrical including the music and movement, unlike the other sections. It links back to the torture that is shown, this shows more emotion such as a cry of frustration and anger due to the victim's situation as well as the urge for freedom.

Section 4- (slow trio) The victim shows immediate tension and flinches as the first interrogator reaches for him, but then relaxes when he is not harmed, nothing is asked from the victim. The chair that the victim sits on is removed from his reach which becomes a repetitive movement, the chair is pulled away from the victim or out of reach. The victim is pushed around but the effect of all this is in slow motion to allow the audience to see the effect it has. The victim curls up on the floor and the torture continues.

Section 5- (second solo without accompaniment) This section repeats movements from the first solo such as the jumps and arabesques suggestive of flight, it is more formal. The victim lifts his chair on his back to get across that he is carrying a lot of weight on his shoulders, this is a metaphor to show that although the audience can't physically see the pain in the victim's body the chair is too symbolize that there is pain there. The victim then stares towards the audience through the bars in the chair and starts to crumble in frustration and the solo ends with the victim on the floor with their ankles wrapped around the chair.

Section 6- (cane dance) This section of the piece shows a round-up of abuse and humility. This is until the prisoner does another solo dance which is known as the 'swansong'

Rooster:

Rooster was created in 1992 this dance is built on the theme and context around the music. The set is a clear stage with natural lighting and a spotlight preferably white. The women wear black skirts, tops, and tights and the men wear black trousers and a skirt. A red dress is worn for one purpose only and that is 'Ruby Tuesday.' The whole piece is danced to rolling stone music. It is changed from upbeat fast music to slow and relaxing music. The rooster dances each reflect the person dancing it. The faster tracks are modern and contemporary whilst the slower ones are more balletic. This piece shows to engage in no emotion to the audience because it is created for the purpose of the theme and context of the music.

https://www.writework.com/essay/biography-christopher-bruce

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Biography of Christopher Bruce

Christopher Bruce was born on the 3rd of October 1945 in England, he started studying dancing at 11 years old, and he began with tap and ballet.

After studying at the Rambert School Christopher Bruce joined Rambert Ballet in 1963, where he quickly became the leading male dancer. Bruce appeared in works such as Don Quixote in 1964 and Coppelia in 1966. Then the company began to experiment with ballet and modern, combining them to form, specifically the Martha Graham technique. (Martha Graham created 181 ballets and a dance technique that has been compared to ballet in its scope and magnitude. Many of the great modern and ballet choreographers have studied the Martha Graham Technique or have been members of her company.) When Bruce danced the role of Pierrot Lunaire, his own interpretive skills were noticed. Bruce was "dominating everything- practically living the part". Bruce then worked with Glen Tetley, he discovered that "the motive for the movement comes from the centre of the body...

from this base we use classical ballet as an extension to give wider range and variety of movement" In 1977 he was appointed associate director of the company and was its associate choreographer from 1979-87, he created over twenty works for the company. Between 1986-91 he acted as associate choreographer also for London Festival Ballet, later ENB, and resident choreographer for Houston Ballet in 1989. In 1994 he became artistic director for RDC. Often political in his work, he integrates classical ballet and modern dance, often set against popular music by artists like Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones. His productions include 'Cruel Garden', 1977, 'Ghost Dances', 1981, 'Swansong', 1987, and 'Rooster', 1991.

Influences

Social and political themes emerge as naturally as a reflection of his own concerns, although his aim is always firstly to create a piece of dance, rather than to make a statement. Nevertheless, he does not see a conflict between creating interesting movement and tackling difficult issues. He believes that there is much beauty in Ghost Dances and similar works.

Bruce is typically known for using themes that focus on personal or political issues. He has created abstract pieces but even these have a strong undercurrent of emotion. Bruce uses a wide range of starting points, particularly poetry, literature, music, newspaper articles and world events. For example '...for those who die in cattle' reflects his views and concerns of war, 'rooster' is his idea of relationships, 'swansong' is probably one of his most moving and emotional pieces and tackles the very serious issue of torture. His views on the general human condition are portrayed in 'waiting'.

Throughout his career, Christopher has been a strong supporter of Amnesty International's ideas and through his choreography he has voiced his concerns for society, the persecuted and victims of a wide range of human rights abuses. Time and again he has returned to these themes and in his most recent work "grinning in your face", these concerns are articulated as powerfully as ever. The Arts have an important role to play in exploring social issues and dance can be seen as the most human of the Arts as it is based on the body. The image of the tortured prisoner from "swansong" or the unjust imprisonment of Reuben Carter, in "Hurricane" are far more powerful than mere words can ever be. Video extracts of Christopher's work have been used to reinforce talks about human rights abuse.

In the 1970's the focus for Bruce was South America and Pinochet's bloody coup against the elected Allende government in Chile. He was deeply moved on the meeting of Joan Jara, who was tortured and murdered by Pinochets forces. This meeting lead him to choreograph, Ghost Dances. He took the theme of the day of the dead, simple symbolism and indigenous dance movements as a basis to convey the plight of the innocent people of South American down the ages and their courage in the face of adversity. Certainly, Ghost Dances has a tremendous impact and audiences in many countries have delighted in its distinctive, rhythmic movement performed to haunting American tunes. However, it is the representation of the oppression of ordinary people, symbolised by the sinister ghost figures, which give the work much of its resonance. On the evidence of ghost dances, swansong, and cruel garden (about the death of Lorca at the hands of the fascists in Spain), human rights themes have provided him with a strong source of inspiration. He remains a passionate advocate for the role of dance and the arts in society and believes that seeing good work and the chance to perform, either as an amateur or a professional, an not only enrich lives, but can also be civilising influence.

Ghost dances

It was created in 1981, and was influenced by the political oppression in Chile. The style was contemporary ballet blended with South American folk dance. The setting of Ghost Dances is a rocky Andean location suggesting the mouth of a cave. The colours (blue's, greens and greys) of the backdrop were very effective and complimented the costumes and movement by adding to the eerie atmosphere. The whole stage was lit by a dim white light. The 'dead' wear everyday clothes, which are beginning to disintegrate. The Ghost Dancers appear as skeletal figures in striking skull masks. The piece is accompanied by Andiean folk music, with panpipes, guitars, and flutes. The tune is infectious, rhythmic and tuneful. The style of the choreography is sinuous and graceful, incorporating folk-dance influences. The Ghost dancers style of dance differs to the style of the 'dead'. The Ghost dancers use very off balanced and angular

Movements, there heads are the main key I think to making their dancing look as threatening as it does, they move them very quickly and sharply in unison and it creates a very menacing effect. The 'dead', on the other hand are very free flowing and graceful, their posture is very open chested and balletic with very neat but complex footwork. I loved this piece and the skills used to perform it. The fluid motion alongside traditional Chilean folkdance was original and inspiring to watch, it was a very moving piece and had a big impact on me because of the real life issues behind it.

Swansong

This piece was created in 1987 and was influenced by the fate of political prisoners, the style was contemporary ballet and the prisoner's movements were based on the idea of a swan. The piece is generally based around the fate of political prisoners and their need to break free. Swansong is a deliberately disturbing dance showing a victim being tortured by a variety of means, although there is no actual violence on stage. It shows both the aggressive and sadistic element of interrogation, and how brainwashing, humiliation and playing with emotions can all be part of a long, nerve- racking game. In combining vaudevillian humour, balletic virtuosity, and contempory dance expressionism with such a serious theme, he seeks to create work that can be appreciated at a number of levels by a broad audience. The three dancers are costumed archetypally and very much resembled the set, it was all very simplistic, with the prisoner in just a plain t-shirt and jeans and the two guards are wearing vaguely militaristic khaki trousers and short- sleeved shirts could be viewed as policemen, soldiers, or guards. Programme notes have tended neither to give names to the characters nor to specify roles - choosing instead to simply list the cast and allow audiences to make their own interpretation. The prisoner uses a very graceful and flowing style of dance whilst in contrast the two guards dance in a modern, camp manner, highlighting even more the separation and difference between the guards and prisoner. The simplicity of the staging and ambiguity of the characters lends weight to its universality. The action could be taking place anywhere in the world. The stage is dark and bare with the exception of a single wooden chair lit starkly from above, indicating perhaps a single bulb-hanging overhead in an otherwise empty room. There are seven sections in swansong; each has a different theme and style.

Ã‚Â·Section 1, questions and answers. Throughout the first section the dance suggests the interrogators and victim playing a game of cat and mouse, the dance changing from trios to brief duets and solo's. in the duets the interrogators dance in unison, performing the same material one after the other or slightly varying the steps to attack their victim.

Ã‚Â·Section 2, tea for two. The section section begins with another interrogation session during which the second interrogator walks round his seated victim, and this time the victim taps out 'answers' but in a defiant mood. The interrogators change tatics.

Ã‚Â·Section 3, first solo. The third section is a solo for the victim alone on the stage and it is more lyrical both in music and movement than the proceding sections. It contrasts with the torture previously shown, appearing to be a cry of frustration and anger at the victim's situation as well as evoking his urge for freedom.

Ã‚Â·Section 4, slow trio. The victim immediately tenses and flinches as the first interrogator reaches towards him, and then relaxes when he is not harmed. No questions are asked. Again the opening sequence is performed twice but at the end of the chair is moved so that the victim cannot return to it. This becomes a recurring theme of this dance; the victims chair is repeatedly pulled away from under him or placed just beyond his reach. He is pushed and thrown around, the effect of the violence is in slow motion. The victim curls defensively on the floor and is uncurled by the second interrogator and the torture continues.

Ã‚Â·Section 5, second solo without accompaniment. Although this section repeats dance motifs from the first solo such as the jumps and arabesques suggestive of flight, it is generally more mimetic. The victim lifts the chair onto his back to make it appear he is carrying a huge weight on his shoulders. He then stands facing the audience staring through the bars of the chair, then he appears to crumble in frustration and the solo ends with his ankles trapped in the bars of the chair as if fetted.

Ã‚Â·Section 6, cane dance.

The progression of the piece shows a build up of abuse and humility of the prisoner till the final section where the prisoner performs his last solo, his 'swansong'.

Rooster

This piece was created in 1992 and in contrast to my other two chosen pieces is influenced by the Rolling stones; the dance is based on the theme and context of the music. It is danced in a contemporary ballet style blended with modern dance to match the music. The set is a clear stage with naturalistic lighting and a white spotlight. The women wear black skirts, tops and tights and the men wear black trousers and a skirt, a red dress is worn only in one number and that is 'ruby Tuesday'. The whole piece is danced to rolling stones music ranging from upbeat fast and rocky numbers to slower more relaxed music. The theme of each song in 'rooster' reflects the character that is dancing it, none of the dances are linked, and each section occurs simply because of the different songs that are used, this helps to create an episodic structure. The tempo of the music dictates the style of dance; the faster tracks are modern and contemporary whilst the slower ones are more balletic. This piece does not present a great deal of emotional involvment with the audience; it is simply based on the theme and context of the music. You can see this by the fact that the dancers, the style of dance and the music purely dictate the song.

A Time line of dance works which have been choreographed and produced by Christopher Bruce

Ã‚Â·1969 George Frederic

Ã‚Â·1972 '...for those who die as cattle'

Ã‚Â·1974 Weekend

Ã‚Â·1975 Ancient voices of children

Ã‚Â·1976 Black Angels

Ã‚Â·1976 Promenade

Ã‚Â·1977 Cruel Garden

Ã‚Â·1981 Village Sounds

Ã‚Â·1981 Ghost Dances

Ã‚Â·1984 Sergeant early's dream

Ã‚Â·1984 Intimate Pages

Ã‚Â·1985 Silence is the end of our song

Ã‚Â·1985 Land

Ã‚Â·1987 The dream is over

Ã‚Â·1987 Swansong

Ã‚Â·1989 Symphony in three movements

Ã‚Â·1990 Journey

Ã‚Â·1992 Rooster

Ã‚Â·1995 Meeting point

Section B

Producing our own piece of choreography in the style of Christopher Bruce in groups.

How has the work of the choreographer influenced and inspired my own performance and choreography?

I chose Christopher Bruce because of the influences behind his choreography, the real life human rights issues that through symbolism he has transferred this into dance. He has successfully brought more awareness to serious issues that most people would not be aware of because it is not going on in this country. The fact that this affects Bruce personally is very inspiring, as his pieces have real meaning and thought behind them.

The three works by Christopher Bruce that I have chosen to study are 'ghost dancers' and 'swansong' because of the political human rights issues that influenced them and 'rooster' because it was a contrast to the other two as its influence was the celebration of the Rolling Stones music. I thought these pieces complimented each other well to evaluate as each bears a large variation of accessible motifs, images and sequences of movement that I could re- interpret in my choreography in the style of Christopher Bruce. As it gave me the opportunity to analyse a variety of influences and issues behind the three pieces.

Choreographic notes

We choreographed a piece for a trio in the style of 'rooster'. The set was clear other than three chairs that were used within the dance. We were dressed all in black and wore red scarfs round our necks. The lighting of the set was dark red.

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Biography of Christopher Bruce - WriteWork

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Biography of Christopher BruceChristopher Bruce was born on the 3rd of October 1945 in England, he started studying dancing at 11 years old, and he began with tap and ballet.After studying at the Rambert School Christopher Bruce joined Rambert Ballet i...

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Project Disappeared is an attempt to keep the memory of the disappeared alive and be able to search for justice for the people who have disappeared and find answers. This is done by diverse human rights, organizations, and activists. It's known to be a place to get to know and understand the victims of State terrorism in Latin America and all around the world. It's also a place where you get to know the kidnappers, the torturers, and killers who are held responsible for the thousands of deaths and missing people. Project Disappeared is also a place you go to learn and understand what State terrorism is and practice to fight so that it never happens again. The most important one is to learn and analyze what forced disappearance means.

Project Disappeared is known to belong to nobody, it's a topic everyone is welcome to know and learn about. They try to invite people into learning about Project Disappeared and participate with their own information, pictures, and designs.

Project Disappeared has an impact on Argentina, this specific topic helps to understand what happened in Argentina and the recovering truth along with being able to look back at the memories. 'Dirty War' happened in Argentina and the people of Argentina wanted to raise awareness and get some help in fighting against Impunity.

Presentes-When thinking of the present it is important to remember that although the disappeared people are no longer here that the memories they shared together will always live on and allow them to remember them with happy memories.

Torturers-This is to open up people's minds at learning who the kidnappers are, baby snatchers, killers, and the tortures and it could help people figure out who those people are and if you are aware of any of them which will allow you to show awareness and save people's lives.

Documents-This is to be able to learn in detail what happened and how they could prevent it from happening in the future. This would prevent it by having as many people aware as possible.

Voices-This is to help educate the people learning about the Project Disappeared and to be able to show them the missing people's voices, photographs, stories, and testimonies to be able to give the story of those who disappeared, survived, and witnessed what happened.

http://desaparecidos.org/eng.html

http://desaparecidos.org/arg/eng.html

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Memory, Truth and Justice

Project Disappeared is an attempt by diverse human rights organizations and activists to keep the memory of the disappeared alive and search for justice. It is a place to get to know and to remember the victims of State terrorism in Latin America and the world. And it's a place where to also get to know the kidnappers, the torturers and killers responsible for the disappearances and deaths of thousands of people. Finaly, it is a place where to begin to learn, understand and analyze what State terrorism and the practice of forced disappearances means, and fight so it never happens again.
Project Disappeared does not belong to any one organization or individual, it belongs to all of us. Everyone is invited to participate with information, pictures, design or other things.

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Memory, Truth and Justice Project Disappeared is an attempt by diverse human rights organizations and activists to keep the memory of the disappeared alive and search for justice. It is a place to get to know and to remember the victims of State terrorism in Latin America and the world.

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The Vanished Gallery: The Desaparecidos of Argentina

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The vanished Gallery-

Desaparecidos is known to be the Spanish word for "The Disappeared." This word has become a threat of a long distress nightmare to many Argentine families. On March 24, 1976, a military junta seized power in Argentina and went on a campaign to take out left-wing terrorism with terror which was known to be far worse than the one they were fighting. This all happened in a sudden, violent of power from a government. In the years of 1976 and 1983 under military rule, thousands of people who most were known to be innocent civilians who weren't connected with terrorism were then arrested and were vanished without a trace being left. After democracy was restored in 1983, a national commission was created to investigate the fate of the disappeared. The planned abductions of men, women, and children were around 340 well-organized secret detention centers and the use of torture and murder. Spoken by Carlos Menem, the former president it's known that the records of the horror were shattered by the military, which was followed by Falklands War in 1982. The disappeared have never been heard of to this day. The pages made on this website are to remember and honor those voices of the Desaparecidos and their loved ones to the world. The vanishing of these people was known to be 'swift', bursting into homes at night, a few minutes and they were then gone. There is not enough time to be heard, they believe they owe it to them who have vanished from the world.

Military Junta-
Military Junta is a government led by a committee of military leaders. The meaning of Junta means "meeting" or "committee" which originated in the national and local junta which was organized by the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's invasion of Spain which happened in 1808. Military Junta is martial law, forgo military uniforms in honor of the civilian attire. They make use of political parties and mass organizations.

Left-wing terrorism-
Left-wing terrorism has an antithetical origin in pro-communist, Marxist, anarchist, and libertarian ideologies. The most deadly and dangerous left-wing terrorists are as followed, it's just as dangerous as their right-wing counterparts.

1. Action Directe (France)- This was a libertarian-communist group that joined together with another two groups in 1977. They remained together until 1987. They carried out many assassinations of targets across France until they fell apart when they got arrested for its main actors in the month of February in 1987.

2. Symbionese Liberation Army United States- This was an active terrorist group that operated in the United States from 1973 to 1975. They saw themselves as an inclusive organization of all left-wing movements and the height of its operation. They created their movement from the rhetoric of Communists and the revolutionaries of South America.

3. Popular Forces 25 April Portugal- Portugal was plagued by a terrorist organization calling themselves the Popular Forces 25 April 1980 to 1987. They carried out many bombings and bank robberies during their functioning and were held accountable for the deaths of 18 people. In January 1985, the group then decided to go further and attacked as many as six NATO ships.

4. Black Liberation Army the United States- The Civil Rights movement in the United States gained ground for having leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, who is known to be inspiring to the people in nonviolent protest. Although it didn't stop people from destroying arms as urban guerrillas which happened in the late 1960s and 70s. The Black Liberation Army was a group of anti-capitalists who fought for socialist agenda where "Black people have total and absolute control over their own destiny as people." The group carried out bombings, murders, prison breaks, and robberies from 1970 until 1981.

5. The Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front Turkey- They formed a Marxist ideology in 1978 and it has been linked to the killings of hundreds of police officers and more than 80 civilians since it was created. They developed their business in 2000 which is the earliest, they then invaded Iraq along with Turkey's support. Some of the tactics of Al-Qaeda have conducted various suicide bombings and grenade attacks as recently as January 2015.

Thousands of people-
It is shown that there are 2,000-3,000 more disappearances from the 1976-1983 period which was reported after the commission had completed its work, placed at the ministry of the interior. More cases have been coming in since then which has brought the official number to nearly 12,000 cases. There have also been people who haven't come forward. This is because they either live too far away or they didn't want to make the effort to report it.

Vanished without a trace-
"Vanished without a trace" is known to be something that people use to talk about the people who have disappeared without a trace being left behind. "They were unconscious. We stripped them, and when the flight commander gave the order, we opened the door and threw them out, naked, one by one. That is the story, nobody can deny it." Captain Adolfo Fransico Scilingo, 48, spilled one of the "dirty wars" which was spoken about a lot in his country from the 1970s through to the early 80s. Human-rights workers of at least 9,000 Argentines who "disappeared" have said that the missing were consistently murdered by troops acting on orders from the ruling generals.

National commission-
The National Commission is a company that investigates the people who have disappeared during the junta rule. The commissions were to receive depositions and evidence concerning these events, they also pass the information to the courts. The new president Dr. Raul Alfonsin called the following people to carry out their function independently and ad honorem:

Ricardo Colombres

Rene Favarolo

Hilario Fernandez Long

Carlos T. Gattinoni

Gregorio Klimovsky

Marshall T. Meyer

Jaime F. de Nevares

Eduardo Rabossi

Magdelena Ruiz Guianzu

Ernesto Sabato

Secret detention centers-
340 secret detention centers worked throughout Argentina between 1976 and 1983. They created a separate and unofficial prison system that secretly functioned alongside the legal structure. Their intentions were to put the thousands of people who disappeared in Argentina on the direct orders of the military dictatorship. The military government filled its secret detention centers with dissidents, trade unionists, social reformers, human rights, activists, nuns, priests, pacifists, psychologists, journalists, students, pupils, teachers, lawyers, actors, workers, housewives, spouses, parents, friends, neighbors and tens of thousands of people who allegedly threatened fixedness by conspiring to undermine the "Western Christian way of life."

Allegedly threatened- Many people mainly known as young adults and adolescents, fell into the sinister, ghostly category of the Desaparecidos. The silence was the only reply given to all the habeas corpus writs, an ominous silence that immersed them. It shows that no kidnapper was ever arrested, not even a detention center was located for these dangerous people. There was no news on anyone committing a crime to ever have anything bad happen to them, not even being punished. It was shown that the whole of Argentine society had the feeling of vulnerability, having the thought that anyone no matter how innocent they could be, could still become a victim of the never-ending witch-hunt.

Falklands War-
The Falkland War is a group of islands in the south Atlantic. The main islands, East Falkland and West Falkland are 300 miles east of the Argentina coast. There are around 200 smaller islands which form a total land area of around 4,700 square smiles. The only town in Stanley is the capital.

Chronicle of the Falkland islands-

Circa 1600
The Dutchman Sebald de Weerdt makes the first undisputed sighting of the islands.

1690
John Strong who is the English Captian made the first recorded landing in the Falklands. The British claim the islands for the crown and named the sound for both main islands after Viscount Falkland, a British naval officer. It was then applied to the whole island group later on.

1764
Louis-Antoine de Bougainville found the islands' first permanent settlement, on East Falkland. Bougainville is a French navigator.

1765
The British are the first to settle in West Falkland island.

1767
It's known that the Spanish buy out the French settlement which is known as Port Louis in the East Falkland island. This implies a French recognition of the Spanish rights to the island.

1770
A Spanish flotilla arrives at the islands asking the British to leave. When first asked to leave, the British officer in charge of the garrison. The Spanish revisited with a stronger force, trying to convince the British garrison to leave on the 14th of July 1770.

1771
The British outpost on West Falkland is finally restored after the threat of war.

1774
The British then step away from the island due to economic reasons, but Spain maintains the settlement on East Falkland which is known to be called Soledad Island until 1811, just when it looks like Spain is about to lose control of its colonies in America.

1816
Independent Argentina first appears on the historical scene.

The Victims-

The victims lost all rights from the moment of their abduction. They had been stolen of all communication with the outside world, held abducted in unknown places, subjected to barbaric tortures, kept ignorant of their immediate fate, they were at risk of being thrown into the river and sea, weighted down with blocks of cement, or burned to ashes. They weren't classed as objects, although they were possessed at all human attributes. They could still feel pain, they could remember a mother, child, or spouse, the main factor was they felt sudden shame when being raped in public.

Tortured:

Carlos Hugo Basso

Delia Barrera

Dr. Candeloro

Miguel D'Agostino

Nelson Eduardo Dean

Teresa Celia Meschiati

Terestia Hazurun

Carlos Hugo Basso-

Carlos is one of many victims of being tortured. The journey Carlos went on is spoken from himself such as,

"They opened a door which, from the noise it made, was probably metal. One of those talking me warned me that I was shortly to meet the `Priest', who would be in charge of `taking my confession.' This person they called `Priest' must have been quite big since as soon as I went in he grabbed me by the sides and lifted me in the air. Afterward, they beat with sticks and a hammer which they used to smash my fingers whenever my hands were on the floor. They undressed me and tied my hands and feet to a bed frame they called a `grill.' For what must have been about an hour they applied electric current to the most sensitive parts of my body: genitals, hips, knees, neck, gums. ... For the neck and gums, they used a tiny instrument with several points, directly connected to the mains supply of 220 volts. I could see under my blindfold, that every time a discharge was produced, the light of a small bulb over the `grill' dimmed. During this time I heard one of the torturers being addressed as `Gringo.' Afterwards somebody applied a stethoscope to my chest and they untied me. I found I couldn't walk, but they dragged me 20 or 30 meters to a mattress in a large room, against a wall, where I remained until the following day."

Carlos Hugo Basso tells the memorable journey that he went through as a victim of being tortured which personally makes me feel sympathetic to him with the things he has had to face.

Delia Barrera-

Delia Barrera talks about her experience as being a survivor of torture. She talks about how this made her feel, what she lost and how terrified she was at not having anyone she knew around her, and the trauma she went through. She talks about how she feels even eighteen years later whilst her kidnapper walks around unpunished.

"I was a desaparecida for 92 days. My place was the Club Atletico, where I lost many things: my name and surname, replaced by a number and a letter; the view, hidden by a curtain; my silent pace, by chains around my feet; the ability to communicate, as I wasn't allowed to talk; I lost my husband, a vocal activist; I lived through this and with the fear, with the uncertainty of not knowing, with the impotence of not being and the strength to resist; I lived with hundreds of companions, in similar condition, denied life and condemned to resist; I lived with the repressors, I lived through Julian the Turk and his recordings of Hitler's speeches, his beatings, his shoutings, with all this brutality which I relive once again now, eighteen years later, when I see him, totally unpunished, cynically telling the world of his deeds, with irony, without a trace of repentance and with the unabashed arrogance of saying "I would do it all again". And I ask myself why? What gives him the right to bring terror back into my life; what right has he got to enter my house, to enter everybody's house; what gives him the right to frighten, through a screen, those who did not get to know him personally ... with what right? With all the right given him by the impunity we are experiencing; with the right of the law that leaves him free and today to speak of his crimes; with the right given him by people unable to shout ENOUGH, a right given by a government that allows him to live in freedom among us, his victims, in this society, among a people who declared NEVER AGAIN, a NEVER AGAIN that remains unspoken, and which does not exist.

Dr. Candeloro-

Dr. Candeloro is another survivor of the torture she went through. Again she speaks about her experience and how her husband was tortured and murdered by these people in front of her for simply saying that he loved her and he was sorry they 'brought' her into this.

"The last time I heard my husband's voice was on 28 June. They always took him off first (to the torture chamber) and then me This time they did the opposite. In the middle of my interrogation they brought in my husband, telling him that if he wouldn't talk, they would kill me. They began to apply the electric shocks to me so that he could hear my cries, and he called out to me: 'My love, I love you. I never dreamt they would bring you into this.' These words enraged them. The last phrase was cut short as they were applying the electric prod to him. They untied me and threw me into my cell. They were driven wild by him, his interrogation was unending. All at once, there was a single piercing, heart-rending shriek. It still resounds in my ears. I will never be able to forget it. It was his last cry, and then suddenly there was silence. My husband died on 28 June, a victim of their tortures."

Miguel D'Agostino-

Miguel D'Agostino talks about living through torture even after he got away, this shows the effect it has left on her and how traumatizing it was for people. This also shows the different experiences each person faced.

"If when I was set free someone had asked me: did they torture you a lot? I would have replied: Yes, for the whole of the three months... If I were asked the same question today, I would say that I've now lived through seven years of torture."

Nelson Eduardo Dean-

Nelson goes into detail about the experience he faced, talking from the most painful side to the least, knowing that nothing he could've done would've made a difference. He spoke about the things he did to feel less pain endured him to receive more pain because the people didn't like the fact he was trying to survive.

"Once there, we were put in various rooms. With my wrists handcuffed behind my back, eyes blindfolded, and bleeding profusely, a new wave of blows began. After half an hour I was taken to a room on the top floor. There they stripped off all my clothes, handcuffed my wrists behind my back again, and began to throw buckets of water over me. Next, they put wires around my waist, thorax and ankles. They tied a rope or chain to the handcuffs and pulled my arms up as high as they could without dislocating them. I was in that position, literally hanging at a distance of about 30 centimeters from the floor, for a period of time which is not possible to determine in hours, only in terms of pain. Because of the great suffering induced by this form of torture, one loses all track of formal time.

Later the torturers slackened the rope some 20 centimeters, enough to enable me to touch the ground with some difficulty and rest my arms a little - actually, any notion of rest was illusory, since when I tried to touch the floor and succeeded, I received electric shocks. It's really very difficult to express in words all the agony these shocks produce. I think it's only possible to offer a tragic caricature of what it was like. Two things might be useful as examples and give some idea; some actual physical events and some sensations. As to physical effects, I feel there are two which will show you the extent of the torture:
(a) After torture, the soles of the feet were burnt and layers of hard skin would form, which peeled off later. Obviously, the skin was burnt from the electric shocks.
(b) During the application of electricity, one would lose all control over one's senses, such torture provoking permanent vomiting, almost constant defecation, etc.

As for sensations, electricity begins to rise up in the body. All the parts with wires attached to them feel as though they are being torn from the body. Thus, at first, it's the feet that feel as though they are being torn off, then the legs, testicles, thorax, etc.

These torture sessions went on for a period of five days, increasing in intensity. During the last few days, they repeated all the above methods and, in addition, inserted wires into my anus, testicles, and penis. These practices were carried out in a diabolical setting; the torturers, some drinking, others laughing, hitting and insulting, tried to extract from me the names of Uruguayans living in Argentina who opposed the current regime governing my country.

I noticed that officers of the Uruguayan Army participated directly in these interrogation and torture sessions. Some said they belonged to a group called OCOA (Anti-subversive Operation Coordinating Organization). "

Teresa Celia Meschiati-

Teresa talks about her experience more personally and how this had made her feel and the lengths she went to, to feel no more pain. This is shown through her talking about her trying to kill herself, which failed but made her feel more pain. She talks about her experience and how there were five of the kidnappers who tortured her endlessly.

"Immediately after my arrival at La Perla, I was taken to the torture room or `intense therapy' room. They stripped me and tied my feet and hands with ropes to the bars of a bed so that I was hanging from them. They attached a wire to one of the toes of my right foot. Torture was applied gradually, by means of electric prods of two different intensities; one of 125 volts which caused involuntary muscle movements and pain all over my body. They applied this to my face, eyes, mouth, arms, vagina, and anus; and another of 220 volts called la margarita (the daisy), which left deep ulcerations which I still have and which caused a violent contraction, as if all my limbs were being torn off at once, especially in the kidneys, legs, groin, and sides of the body. They also put a wet rag on my chest to increase the intensity of the shock.

I tried to kill myself by drinking the foul water in the tub which was meant for another kind of torture called submarino, but I did not succeed.

The gradually increasing intensity of the electric prod was matched by the sadism of my torturers. There were five of them, whose names were: Guillermo Barreiro, Luis Manzanelli, Jose Lopez, Jorge Romero, and Fermin de los Santos."

Teresita Hazurun-

Teresita goes into depth on her abduction. She talks about all the important details of who she was before getting kidnapped and when she got kidnapped. She speaks about the abuse she faced and the dates and time it happened. She talks about being buried with no food or drink until people decided they wanted to speak out, once they did that they were then removed from the underground. Other prisoners spoke about their experience and said about their torturer was the captain of the Rural Infantry. They also had an instrument of torture known as the 'telephone.'

Dr. Teresita Hazurun, a lawyer by profession was abducted at 11 am on Saturday 20 November 1976. She was taken by the Chief of Police himself, making no attempt to resist, believing that she was required professionally for a detainee.

Dr. Hazurun was subjected to the usual tortures (beatings and the electric prod) as well as other new procedures which she saw applied to others, such as the 'burial' she described in her account. She was taken to the offices of the State Intelligence Services in Calle Belgrano in the town of Frias, Santiago del Estero province.

On the 22nd (Monday) at 8 pm., two people came and took her to a room behind the offices. They began punching her in the stomach and face. She was interrogated by Musa Assar (whom she recognized by his voice.)

They asked her about her ex-boyfriend Hugo Libaak, what he was doing, whom he met. Unable to get any reply, they laid her down on a bed, where they applied the electric prod to various parts of her body.

When people arrived at the offices they would be taken to pits which had been dug in the ground; they were buried there up to the neck, sometimes for four days or more, until they asked to be taken out, having decided to talk. They were kept without food or water, in the sun and rain. When they were dug out (they were buried naked) they would be infested with sores from insects and bites. From there they would be taken to the torture chamber (next door there was a room where the torturers lived.)

Prisoners there said that the torturer was the captain of the Rural Infantry. They had an instrument of torture known as the `telephone' (an electric prod applied simultaneously to the ears and the teeth.)

Vanished:

Alberto Santiago Burnichon, Villa Rivera Indarte, and Cordoba vanished in March 1976.
Gabriel Braunstein, Rio Cuarto, Cordoba vanished in June 1976.
Hugo Alberto Scutari, Buenos Aires vanished in August 1997.
Juan de Dios Gomez, Tucuman vanished in August 1976.
Luciano Ramon Perez's Brother, Temperley, Buenos Aires vanished in November 1976.
Eduardo "Dito" Priotti. La Plata vanished in November 1976.
Samuel Leonardo Slutzky. La Plata vanished in June 1977

Whole families that vanished-

The Rondoletto Family. San Miguel de Tucuman, November 1976

The Gallina Family. November 1976-February 1977

The Coldman Family. Cordoba, September 1976

Children & Adolescents-

Boys and Girls between thirteen and eighteen

Monica Graciela Santucho - age forteen

Dagmar Hagelin- Swedish teenager

Forced adoptions of victim's babies

Nando, Martin, and the class of 72

Murdered-

50 anonymous persons. By a firing squad. Cordoba 1976

More anonymous persons. Firing squad. Tucuman 1976-1977

The responsible-

The saddest part of all these abductors, murderers, and tortures have been let go lightly. Very few of them have been brought to the court of law and some have even been let go without any punishment. The ones that have been put away have been let out of prison before their time was over, due to military pressure. There are known to be many petty officers who live among them, living like nothing ever happened.

The responsible-

Junta Members, top officers, Ministers-

Alias, Chief of the Intelligence Task Force Navy unit who is responsible, with his colleagues for 5000 kidnap and murder cases, which many of them were thrown out alive into the Atlantic ocean from Navy planes.

The boss of Alfredo Astiz. Acosta is also responsible for giving the orders to kill the Swedish teenage girl Dagmar Hagelin, the French nuns of Church Santa Cruz, Leonie Daquet, and Alice Domon. Acosta was a psychopath. Acosta would go between liking the people he decided to torture by kissing them and the next turning on the electric shock machine and it's known his face was 'contorted with concentration.'

Agosti, Orlando Ramon who is a member of the leading triumvirate seized power in Argentina on March 24th, 1976 after democracy was restored. Agosti was then sentenced to 4 and a half years in jail for his part in the repression era. He was then let go by President Carlos Menem before serving his full sentence due to military pressure.

Anaya, Jorge I. is the commander of the Navy after Lambruschini in the third Junta. She was also the main planner of the Falklands-wae invasion.

Repressors, abductors, and torturers-

Ricardo Colombres
Rene Favarolo
Hilario Fernandez Long
Carlos T. Gattinoni
Gregorio Klimovsky
Marshall T. Meyer
Jaime F. de Nevares
Eduardo Rabossi
Magdelena Ruiz Guinazú
Ernesto Sabato

These were the people who have tortured and abducted many people, within the document on the website there are different things included such as:

A code-name or nickname

A rank

An affiliation or military unit

A position or role

A place where this person was active (usually a military secret detention center)

Numbers of testimony files in which the name was mentioned

Some of the names have been duplicated due to there being cases where militaries or police officers served in different places or in different roles within the repression.

Repressors cited in Italian Court case-

Human rights activists and prosecutors in Italy are trying to attempt to bring 37 Argentine repressors to an Italian court. They are being accused of involvement in the disappearance and torture of Italian citizens in Argentina during the repression years. (1996)

Name
Pedro Alberto Duran Saenz
Mariano Acosta
Samuel Miara
Juan Antonio Del Cerro
Hector Julio Simon
Guillermo Oreste Minicucci
Hector Antonio Febres
Alfredo Ignacio Astiz
Jorge Eduardo Acosta
Jorge Raul Vildoza
11.Salomon Isaac Miranda
12.Hector Acuna
13.Jose Ruben Lo Fiego
Oscar Gomez
Ernesto Guillermo Barreiro
Jose Carlos Gonzales
Jorge Ezequiel Acosta
Luis Manzanelli
Antonio Domingo Bussi
Juan Carlos Gerardi
Hector Omar Maldonado
Roberto Julio Rossin
Alejandro Puertas
Jose Luis Porchetto
Luis Abelardo Patti
Rodolfo Dieguez
Juan Spataro
Carlos Guillermo Suarez Mason
Juan Bautista Sasiain
Reynaldo Benito Antonio Bignone
Rene Antonio Picart
Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri
Luciano Benjamin Menendez
Santiago Omar Riveros
Jorge Rafael Videla
Emilio Eduardo Massera
Orlando Ramon Agosti

Military Uprisings-

The Military political scene has many times been marred by instabilities and violence. In 1930 the first military coup took place by General Jose Uriburu. This took place against the democratically elected government of Hipolito Yrigoyen which is a non-democratic dictatorship that rules the country.

After the dirty war had ended they then decided to bring those guilty and responsible for the tortures to a court of law which then began. But the process didn't get far.

When the legal proceedings were taking place, many military pressures were building upon the democratic government. The real politics brought the Alfonsin government to weigh the benefits of the process.

In December 1986 the highest officers of the military were convicted and sentenced to various terms in prison. Not long after a new law was set out and improved called "El Punto Final" This law was to get out that all those in the military or the police that were not yet charged would be left out of the judiciary process.

The trials and imprisonment of the top military officers hurt the deterioration of army prestige. They all barricaded themselves in the military bases demanding that they stopped the trials that were not included in the Punto Final Law.

Aldo Rico- He was known as a broken-nosed "Dirty War" officer and a Falklands War veteran. Rico leads a series of barrack uprisings of extreme military groups that go against the democratic government. (1987 and 1988)

CONADEP (The National Commission on the Disappeared-

CONADEP was formed after democracy was restored in Argentina in 1983. It was created to investigate the thousands of people who went missing during the junta rule.

The National executive resolved that the commission to be comprised of individuals who enjoyed national and international prestige. They would also represent walks of life.

Human Rights Organizations-

The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo is a group of women who became a symbol of human rights activism and courage. They were dressed in black. They have also been demonstrating for many years at 3:30pm every Thursday. This is a meeting to find out what happened to their loved ones. They used to walk around with imprinted names of sons and daughters that have gone missing to try and spread awareness and help to find them.

It's known that the Mother's are a sign of courage, leading the struggles they face to justice. They then decided to start their demonstrations while the Junta were still in power.

Acknowledgements-

The Vanished Gallery wouldn't of been possible without the help of the thousands of people who did. They contributed by giving information of those missing, photographs, sources, corrections, translations, encouragements, advice, and conveyed messages without net access.

Delia Barrera is one to thank more due to giving the repressors data.

Juan Manuel Suárez for giving all the photographs that actually helped TVG that helped to make it more realistic.

Karen Slawner for her acknowledge and non-virtual visit.

http://www.yendor.com/vanished/

http://www.yendor.com/vanished/victims.html

http://www.yendor.com/vanished/responsible.html

http://www.yendor.com/vanished/conadep.html

http://www.yendor.com/vanished/madres.html

http://www.yendor.com/vanished/announce.html

http://www.yendor.com/vanished/acknowledgments.html

https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-military-junta

https://listverse.com/2016/10/01/10-left-wing-terrorist-organizations-from-around-the-world/

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español italiano

Desaparecidos is the Spanish word for "The Disappeared." For thousands of Argentine families, this word has become a symbol of a long harrowing nightmare.

In a coup on March 24, 1976, a military junta seized power in Argentina and went on a campaign to wipe out left-wing terrorism with terror far worse than the one they were combating. Between 1976 and 1983 - under military rule - thousands of people, most of them dissidents and innocent civilians unconnected with terrorism, were arrested and then vanished without a trace.

In 1983, after democracy was restored, a national commission was appointed to investigate the fate of the disappeared. Its report revealed the systematic abductions of men women and children, the existence of about 340 well organized secret detention centers, and the methodic use of torture and murder. According to former president, Carlos Menem, records of the atrocities were destroyed by the military, following the 1982 Falklands War. The disappeared have not been heard of to this day.

These pages are a humble attempt to bring the voices of the desaparecidos and their loved ones to the world. The vanishing was swift, a burst into a home at night, a few minutes and they were gone - not enough time to be heard. We owe it to them.

[The Victims][The Responsible][CONADEP][Human Rights Org][Info Wanted][Acks][Reading][TOC+Search]

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The Vanished Gallery: The Desaparecidos of Argentina

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español italiano Desaparecidos is the Spanish word for "The Disappeared." For thousands of Argentine families, this word has become a symbol of a long harrowing nightmare. In a coup on March 24, 1976, a military junta seized power in Argentina and went on a campaign to wipe out left-wing terrorism with terror far worse than the one they were combating.

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The music used in the play A Mother's Voice considers the culture it was set in, which was South American background.  The play uses a mixture of music which was essential for the original form of the production. There were different music played throughout the play that best fitted each scene.

The first instrumental music played was called Doina Cestriana which was played at the beginning of the play which was the song to introduce the entrance of the first scene. It is an extensively atmospheric piece that sets the acceptance for the play. This specific music runs nicely with the pace of the entrance of this scene. It also adds to the drama effectively.

The next song Sikuriadas is used for the big festival which starts slowly and progressively increases throughout the time at the festival meaning that the dancing at the festival is slowed down and gradually gets faster. The instrumental sound fits well with this piece due to the noise in the background of this music due to the laughing which gives you that feeling of a festival happening.

The music used here which is called Reunion is for the purpose of bringing in the body of the Father, which instantly changes the mood of the festival. This instrumental music is powerful and gives an atmosphere of tension which is the aim of this scene.

The final major music played was called Dolencias which was for the final dance of the play. This instrumental music is to resemble the woman who dances alone. In this play, it becomes a traditional dance that the woman does, to make the final dance effective.

This piece of music which is called Dawn at Vilcabamba represents the three ghosts and allows them to do their speeches and to be considered as their 'otherworldliness.

http://www.chrisowenonline.co.uk/newfile22.html

http://www.chrisowenonline.co.uk/Doina%20Cestriana.mp3

http://www.chrisowenonline.co.uk/Sikuriadas.mp3

http://www.chrisowenonline.co.uk/Reunion2.mp3

http://www.chrisowenonline.co.uk/Dolencias.mp3

http://www.chrisowenonline.co.uk/Dawn.mp3

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Suggestions for the use of music in A Mother’s Voice including samples and links to sites for purchasing

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In A Mother's Voice, there are different characters to be played. The play was written for a particular group which was a large number of female roles for a GCSE performance which included females within the group, alongside three male roles. The role of the father can be played by both females and males, a female was used in the first-ever performance due to her being lighter.

The sizing of the cast was flexible depending on how many characters are needed to perform. Characters could have been doubled if needed to be. If there weren't enough roles for everyone to play they could've added characters into the crowd to make them part of the performance and to be able to make them seen.

The cast has been split into different sections from relations they have within the performance. Considering there is one main family which are Constantia who is the Mother and the four daughters who are known as Baptista, Francisca, Isabel, Maria. They are known under the section as 'The Family'.

Another section is known as 'The Land Of The Dead' which have the characters of The three Ghosts, The Voices of the Dead (Several), The Dream Mother, and, The Father, throughout the performance it becomes clear that these characters were from the past that is being spoken about or showing flashbacks to when they were apart of the performance.

Another section is 'The Factory' which includes Ernesto and The Factory Girls (there are six factory girls) these are together due to them all being based in the same area in the performance and the factory girls talk to Ernesto about the downfall of the factory.

We also have 'The Village' cast which are as followed Catalina, Juanita, Dolores, Carmen (Fishwives) they're the Mother and Wives that meet in the village to gossip about things that have gone on in the town, which shows that nothing in the village will ever stay a secret and things will also get around due to the Mother's of the village, The Gossips there are ten gossip characters in this performance which keeps all the characters and audience up to date with what's going on each week, Dancers and the Festival crowd there are several of these actors which makes the atmosphere of the thought of 'festival' feel real which allows the festival to come alive due to all the characters dancing and joining the 'party (festival)', The Body of the Father, the father plays the main part to allow the play to make sense it is important the body of the father being there to allow these actors to have something to gossip about, lastly the last section of this play is called 'The State' which have the characters of The Shadows, which is two gun-men who play the role of murdering Ernesto and Baptista.

http://www.chrisowenonline.co.uk/newfile17.html

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Full cast listing for the play A Mother’s Voice

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There are many hints and tips on A Mother’s Voice, this includes advice for the performers and suggestions to be used in the process of the rehearsals.

A Mother's Voice is set in an unspecified place in South America. They decided to keep it as natural as possible as the subject of "disappearances" as it relates back to the whole globe and not just to South America. They wanted each group to set a performance about something they grew strongly attached to and something they could link back to from everyone missing all over the world. It's also a play that companies can change the names of each character if they really wanted to as it will still be able to tell the same story which is important as it tells the story of what many families have been through.

The play is unintentional to bring on South American accents, they talk about the accents being dreadful and an old-fashioned technique. There are regional accents and other languages which is peculiar to a specific region. This is shown to be more effective for the characters to use due to the audience being able to understand. Although the foreign language was not used in the play he still wanted to establish the language used and to be able to do this he wrote the script as "I do not want to do that" rather than "I don't want to do that!"

The speech became effective for the characters and it also made them think harder about their lines to ensure they say them in the correct tone of voice. The cast needed to make sure that they toned their voice to make it as natural as possible without slipping into decreases, it took discipline but it worked. It's meant to be natural and easy with a drop of strangeness.

The festival dance's mark changes from the lights from being bright to dark throughout the play. The darkness of the lights in the play is to overwhelm them. Until the darkness shows the characters' present lives.

The dances can be taken in a different approach by whoever decides to use these dances in their performance. It'll still show the same effect they tried to make and use this in your own way to approach the dance.

The festival dance gives the hint as to what the festival is all about, this is shown through celebrations, community coming together, and romance which is focused on Baptista and Ernesto.

The festival dance is a highlight of the festival-goers. It starts with a single man dancing which is voted to be Ernesto when the crowd cheers him on to start, although he is in denial to start the dance he then gets confident to start the first dance moves and then starts to call people over to join him. The crowd spots his attention and cheers him on whilst going over and joining the dance.

He forms a simple but dramatic dance sequence on time with the beat of the song. The sequence starts with him moving to one side and then reversing and going the other way. This is repeated numerous times and as the song speeds up the movements get faster. The first person he calls over is Baptista and he is aware that the crowd already knows this was going to happen, Baptista goes over with less confidence but as the dance progresses so does her confidence. The crowd leaves Ernesto and Baptista to do the dance first until they start to call other people over and they form a line in front and then start to form a line behind as well.

All the performers are now involved in the festival dance, the music speeds up meaning the sequence is getting harder to follow and they split into a circle holding hands. They circle in one direction and then reverse to the other direction getting quicker and quicker. The circle breaks up into pairs who spin together, they then collapse with excitement and it then switches to Ernesto and Baptista in the middle of the center until the horrific truth about Ramone comes to the festival as his body gets placed at the river and it immediately changes to focus on the actors faces at the news of Ramone's body, which quickly changes the mood of the festival.

http://www.chrisowenonline.co.uk/newfile17.html

http://www.chrisowenonline.co.uk/newfile18.html#The%20Festival%20Dance

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Full cast listing for the play A Mother’s Voice

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A Mother's Voice is shown to have a special power for a child. A Mother's Voice can spread comfort for that child and stability no matter the age it's important to have that connection with your mother so you know you can always rely on that person for help and support. For babies, it's important for the Mother's voice to help them grow and develop over time. Babies can tell the difference between their mother's voice and a stranger's voice.

The mother's voice continues to have an impact throughout the whole childhood of that person. No matter how old you get you will always reply to your mother's voice over everyone else due to your mother having that impactful power over you.

It's also known that a mother's voice can lower stress levels and hormones. This is because the voice of their mother can become settling for most people and can help them focus and feel safer. Mothers play an important part in children's lives which is why it affects the children as much as when anybody else speaks to children, although it can have a huge impact on the children the impact won't be as big as it would coming from the mother's voice.

Although the effect of our mother's voice can be impactful it can also be a negative thing. If children notice the anger and stress in their mother's voice it can have an impact on the children and could potentially impact them to learn those tones of voice and can create a negative outburst to the children.

A Mother's voice can instantly help an infant feel secure and help them create strong emotional ties. It's known that the mother talking about the child helps the child to understand themselves better and gives them the personality due to the information they have heard from their mother about them themselves.

It's known that the voice of the mother has helped light up areas of the brain of the child they're carrying and allowed them to involve their own emotions. It's seen as rewarding too. It's important to have facial recognition between a mother and child due to the child having to match the voice, this is important for each child as it helps them feel more confident and comfortable around their given mother.

https://parentingscience.com/how-do-children-respond-to-a-mothers-voice/#:~:text=A%20mother%E2%80%99s%20voice%20has%20special%20power.%20It%20can,the%20way%20infants%20process%20language%20in%20the%20brain.

https://lifespa.com/the-calming-benefits-of-mothers-voice/

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How do children respond to a mother’s voice?

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© 2021 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved A mother’s voice has special power. It can provide comfort -- and improve outcomes -- for babies

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A Mother's Voice was originally performed 'In the round' meaning the audience was seated on three sides of the theatre. This specific staging area added atmosphere to the piece and allowed the audience to feel involved due to the performers and audience sharing the same space. It also turned out to be the best way to have enough space for the dance sequences.

It's also known that you can perform the play as a promenade piece which is known to be a walk this is to show the pleasure or display in a performance mainly focusing in a public place. Or could also be performed on a traverse stage. The aim is to separate the actors from the audience to allow the audience to observe the performance and allow them to distance themselves from the action.

They wanted to light up the cyclorama from behind to have shapes of the shadows and whisperers outlined which would make it look more effective, they wanted to make sure that it was listening and pressing in on the mother. They failed to do this due to not having the time to make it look as effective as they wanted it to be, which is why they decided to no longer continue to do this. The alternative made was to either have a simple screen of curtaining or painted background.

The washing lines were left on stage throughout the performance at a high level which had pulleys at each end which is something that was used to release the washing line when the washing scenes were happening. The washing lines were well out of the way throughout the performance and were hardly noticed by the audience. To un-released, the ropes the casts who weren't in the scene untied the ropes to the level that they were meant to be for the washing scene.

The washing lines are used to create a festival based scene which went really well with the scene where Ernesto and Baptista enter as it went straight up to show that this scene was in a festival kind of atmosphere which helped to reveal the lovers to one another and it transformed them instantly into the 'bunting festival'. The washing lines show the tension between each scene this is shown through the 'lines' fallen into the performance space when it comes out about Constantia's husband's death. These are to show the symbol of the loss of the innocent mother as she comes to terms with her husband's death. The cast also clears the performance hall of the lines to allow the mother to deal with her loss.

The staging layout of the performance allowed the characters involved to enter from either side of the stage, and allowed them to circulate effectively. When the mother Constantia seeks for her daughter, other actors were placed in different corners of the stage allowing the mother to walk around the back of the audience allowing her to move from one to the next. Whilst this is happening to not draw attention to the mother, a scene was Baptista is placed in a seat blindfolded in the center of the stage. The audience's attention had been drawn to each space due to the tightened focused lighting.

http://www.chrisowenonline.co.uk/newfile19.html

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A Mother's Voice was originally performed as set out below - almost "in the round", with the audience on three sides. With the performers and the audience sharing the same space this certainly added to the atmosphere of the piece and the sense of involvement from everyone. It was also the best way of providing enough space for the dance sequences.

You could perform the play as a promenade piece or on a traverse stage. Although you can use a traditional proscenium arch approach, the greater distance between the performers and the audience will push the audience firmly into the role of observers and distance them from the action

NB. Further comments follow below the diagram so make sure you scroll down!

We had hoped to light the cyclorama from behind and have the shapes of the shadows and whisperers outlined on it, listening and pressing in on the mother. This was abandoned as we simply did not have the time to make it work. I still think it would be a wonderful effect though. Of course if you do not have a cyc or gauze available then you can always have a simple screen of curtaining or even a painted backdrop

The "washing lines" were arranged across the stage at a high level, going through pulleys at each end. These ends went down the walls and were tied off onto cleats - making sure there was sufficient excess rope so they could be let down for the washing scene. Thus for most of the show they were well out of the way and un-noticed by the audience. At the start of the washerwoman scene members of the cast not involved let down the ropes and tied them off at the right level. We found that weighting the centre point of each line came in useful here as the lines lacked sufficient weight in themselves to fall easily.

When Ernesto and Baptista enter the lines were then whisked up at the correct moment, revealing the lovers to each other and transforming themselves instantly into the bunting for the festival. It is a nice moment! At the end of the river of death scene the lines were released collapsing onto the floor of the performance space. These were rapidly cleared by the cast and taken off stage. Again - do this with a sense of style! They are symbolic of the loss of innocence of the mother as she finally comes to terms with her husband's death.

The stage layout allowed actors to enter the performance space from each of the four corners and for the cast to circulate effectively. In the scene where the mother seeks her daughter, the officials were placed in each corner with the mother walking around the back of the audience to move from one to the next. Meanwhile Baptista was placed blindfolded and bound on a chair in the centre of the space. The audience's attention is drawn each space in turn by the use of tightly focused lighting.

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A Mother's Voice was originally performed as set out below - almost "in the round", with the audience on three sides. With the performers and the audience sharing the same space this certainly added to the atmosphere of the piece and the sense of involvement from everyone.

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Day of the dead is a two-day holiday that brings together the living and the dead. Many different families create offerings to remember their beloved family members that have passed. They celebrate with bright yellow marigold flowers, photos of the family member, and their favorite foods and drinks. They do this in hope that the land of the dead will come visiting as they hear their prayers, and smell their favorite foods.

The whole purpose of Day of the Dead is to share a meal with their beloved family member and remember them as if they were alive.

Dia de Los Angelitos which is also known as Day of the little angels, the holiday starts at midnight on November 1st, they believe the children who passed away will reunite for 24 hours and spend their souls with their families. They celebrate this by having the children's favorite food, snacks, toys, and photographs, this is to encourage the children to visit. The names of the children often were written on a sugar skull.

The following day at midnight November 2nd the celebrations continue for the adults that have passed away. The night is known to be filled with laughter and fun memories. The Ofrendas take on a more adult-like theme with tequila, pan de muerto, mezcal, pulque, and jars of Atole. The families would also play games together, remembering their loved ones and dance whilst the village band plays in their town.

Pan De Muerto- Is a sweet role or bread traditionally made to celebrate the Day of the Dead

Mezcal- This is another thing similar to Tequila but tastes differently. It is a sweet flavor, with smoky, earthy overtones.

Pulque- Pulque means a drink of the Gods. It was made in Mexico. It's a milk-colored liquid that produces a light foam.

Atole-This consists of cornflour and water, though spices and milk are also added for taste reasons. It contains cinnamon, vanilla, and sugar. People enjoy atole during the winter months and it comes served warm.

The next day is for the spirits of all the dead. To celebrate these many people come together in their cities wearing skeleton painted faces and have parades in the streets. They also visited the cemetery as the families went to decorate their family's grave with marigold flowers, gifts, and sugar skulls with their names on them. It's mandatory that they clean the gravestone and restore the color.

10 traditions from Day of the Dead-

1. The first day is represented to the children that have passed away
2. They set up their homes for the return of the dead
3. A small town setting get together also known as a festival
4. The traditional Papel Picado flag that associates with the occasion that lights up
5. A 'classy skeleton lady' that represents this holiday is called La Catrina
6. The sugar skull that is popularly made out of chocolate that they write the names of the dead people on
7. The food for this holiday is decorated in similar ways. The most popular food is called 'sweet bread of the dead' which people eat at night with coffee or hot cocoa
8. In many cities, a festival takes place on the most important streets. You will always be greeted by large mystical colorful creatures which are known as Alebrijes. The most traditional celebration takes place in Mixquic
9. Classical imagery which is what Mexicans associate with which can be found in the warm with pastel-like colors of the traditional oilcloths
10- Marigold flowers wouldn't make the tradition more magical which is why they always use them every year to show they never forget the family members taken from them.

The day of the dead is a way of maintaining a healthy and intimate relationship with the unknown. It's not an excuse to throw a festival it's to be able to allow them to reflect on the life of death and to be able to invite their loved ones to recollect and also be able to reflect on the life of death with them.

Fun facts about Day of the Dead:

Day of the dead is not the same as "Mexican Halloween" as people mistake it to be the same, it's shown that they both have similar afterlife beliefs but are very different in the modern-day.

The people celebrating Day of the Dead view death as a welcomed part of life and do not think about it as a sad event. This is why they light up their cities with colorful skeletons and skulls during the holiday. They see smiling as a gentle nod to death, even mocking death.

Mexicans are not the only ones to celebrate the Day of the Dead. It is celebrated in many countries worldwide. The act of honoring the dead is widely celebrated around the world but the Day of the Dead is known to be a unique tradition.

One reason why they celebrate Day of the Dead is to show that they believe the family members dead are never dead to them until they have forgotten them.

https://dayofthedead.holiday/

https://blog.amigofoods.com/index.php/mexican-foods/atole/

https://www.seriouseats.com/introduction-to-pulque

https://www.winemag.com/2019/08/27/difference-mezcal-vs-tequila/

https://www.spanishdict.com/translate/pan%20de%20muerto

https://dayofthedead.holiday/traditions/10-traditions-that-make-up-day-of-the-dead

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A dedication to the deceased

Day of the Dead (Dia De Los Muertos) is a two day holiday that reunites the living and dead. Families create ofrendas (Offerings) to honor their departed family members that have passed. These altars are decorated with bright yellow marigold flowers, photos of the departed, and the favorite foods and drinks of the one being honored. The offerings are believed to encourage visits from the land of the dead as the departed souls hear their prayers, smell their foods and join in the celebrations!

Day of the Dead is a rare holiday for celebrating death and life. It is unlike any holiday where mourning is exchanged for celebration.

"Day of the Dead is a holiday to remember loved ones by sharing a meal with them as one would when they were alive."

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Day of the Dead is a celebratory holiday to remember the dead. Explore the vibrant traditions, tasty dishes, and everything that brings this day to life!

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The plot of A Mother's voice is to tell the story of a family who has suffered the agony of not knowing what happened to their beloved Husband/Father Ramon. It tells the story of one women's journey in setting South America. It's known to be a powerful play due to the performance being based on a true story. It incorporates physical theatre and dances which also makes it effective.

The main characters to tell the story are the three ghosts who participate throughout the whole play, the reason they are important is that it shows to the audience the message we are trying to get across which is what happened in South America where innocent people lose their lives and disappear without being told why they've gone and doesn't tell the family of the whereabouts of their loved ones. The ghosts imply that the father of the main plot of the story has died through guiding the father along the way throughout the performance. It also shows the audience that the ghosts are the dead which helps to tell the story as they are also known to be victims themselves.

They wanted this performance to be an engaging message to educate people on what happens still to this date. The plot of this performance is to raise awareness of the struggles families have gone through of losing their family members. The women also keep themselves busy so they don't think about the situation of what's happening around them. The whole point in all the cast is for each character to tell a bit of the plot, for example, the gossip characters are known to speak about the things going on that you miss in the performance and to help the audience to understand the story of the play. The fishwives also play the main part in telling the story by talking about what's happened so far in the situation with Constantia and her family as their husband/father has gone missing.

At the end of the play, it talks about each woman choosing someone of their choice who is missing in real life to raise awareness that there are people all around the world still in search of their family members. This relates back to the plot of the performance due to using real-life people and giving important information over and trying to help show that this is still happening in real life, maybe not as brutal as it was back then but innocent people are still being tortured and killed.

The plot of the performance is to show that military police are kidnapping innocent people and torturing them and killing them with no explanation which becomes a serious thing in the wider world. The ghosts are known to be the spirits leading the next victim to the next life. They also show flashbacks of the life they all had together before things changed and Ramon went missing.

http://www.chrisowenonline.co.uk/newfile6.html

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In the second week we began to shape and form the play still further whilst rehearsing scenes we had now written out. About half way through this second week we had a full script - all that was left was to rehearse and perfect this for performance!

In the third week we presented four performances of what had now become "A Mother's Voice".Working in this intense fashion produced a remarkably powerful performance that moved and affected all who saw it. Many left the theatre in tears.

It was a remarkable experience for all concerned. The process of rehearsal produced a real sense of engagement and involvement from the students and many found a depth to their performances that they had not tapped before. It was a great way for them to finish their course.

Of all my plays, A Mother's Voice , is the one that I am most pleased with to date. It does, however, require more than a simple translation of the script from page to stage in order to make it work. As a final performance piece I had to ensure there were opportunities for students to explore their "specialisms". Therefore, aswell as characters to develop, there are many opportunities for movement, music and dance along the way. On the page the script can look a little stark - it is only through performance that the full richness of it can be discovered. The expression is poetic at times and the action moves from the realistic to the surreal. The characters are emblematic rather than fully rounded - though the performance of the central characters requires considerable commitment and understanding if the emotional core of the piece is to be exposed.

There are some terrific theatrical moments in the piece - such as the bringing in a the father's body held high above the heads of the crowd; Constantia's dreams of the land of the dead; Baptista and Ernesto discovering each other as the washing lines lift to become the flags at the festival and the search of the mother for her missing daughter mirrored by scenes of what her daughter is enduring. And yes - even in all this - there is still room for comedy in the gossiping of the villagers and the taunting of the local heart throb by the more knowing factory girls!

A Mother's Voice can be set anywhere in the world but was originally written against a quasi central/south American background. The breathy Andean pipe music certainly added to the haunting quality of the piece.

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A Mother's Voice - a dramatic ensemble play about the disappeared

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In the second week we began to shape and form the play still further whilst rehearsing scenes we had now written out. About half way through this second week we had a full script - all that was left was to rehearse and perfect this for performance!

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This mind-map that I have created is to show the different aspects of my first initial ideas on the character I am playing. In this mind-map I talk about the personality of my character from my point of view from reading the script and how she acts towards different people, I also talk about the important information such as who her family is, where she was born, her age, and what I think she would be wearing and how she would be having her makeup and the different hairstyles.

I go into detail about all the important information such as the background of my character, I go into detail about how she has been brought up and the emotions she has gone through. I focused mainly on showing that her emotions about her Father's disappearance have impacted her and why she is the mature one due to her being the eldest.

Another is Francisca's character, this is an important thing to note down due to being able to understand my character further myself. The first thing I spoke about is how my character is mature and I went on to explain further why I think this. I also spoke about how my character is kind and caring even when she doesn't seem to be, everything she does she does for the right reasons at being able to comfort her family even if that means coming off as rude. It's only because she cares about her family and wants them to be happy.

I also go into detail about my character's journey. I break it down into beginning, middle, and end which talks about my character's journey throughout the play. This seemed to be beneficial for me because it allowed me to show an understanding of my character when talking about her journey.

I also spoke about my character and who she is, for example, I talk about who she is in the family, that she is the eldest daughter, and I also research what her name is and talk about how that links back to my character. I talk about her relationship and that she lives away from home but does come back to visit her mother and siblings.

Lastly, I talk about the hair, makeup, and costume that I think my character will be wearing. I said about my character having a natural face due to the play being naturalistic. I talk about her hair being up and curly, this is because women in South America are known to have hairstyles like this and due to it being set in South America we will be following their style the way they look. The costume I feel like my character will be wearing is floral skirts due to speaking with my lecturer and playing around with different floral skirts and researching what women wore in South America and there being floral skirts with a plain top. I would put my character in dolly shoes or sandals too.

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Question 1- What's your name? My name is Francisca
Question 2- What is your age? Although there isn't an exact age for Francisca, looking through the script it's clear that she is a very mature character which makes me believe that she is in her early 20s.
Question 3- Do you have a husband? Francisca has a partner called Basilio, it isn't confirmed that they are married.
Question 4- Do you have a relationship with your parents? Francisca has shown throughout the script to have a close relationship with her mother, Constantia. She also had a relationship with her father before he disappeared. This is shown through the flashbacks of the family together whilst Ramon was around.
Question 5- Do you have children? Francisca does not have any children yet, at the end of the play she talks about being pregnant which seems to be her first.
Question 6- Do you have siblings? Francisca has 3 younger siblings with Baptista being the second oldest, Maria being the third, and Isabel is the youngest.
Question 7- Where are you on the scale of oldest to youngest? Francisca is the eldest daughter
Question 8- Who is your Mother's favorite? I personally think that Isabel is Constantia's favorite child due to her being the youngest and needing more support so she is constantly spending all her time around Isabel that they get on better.
Question 9- When you were young what is the one thing you could always be sure of? When looking through the script it showed me that Francisca had a happy and healthy family, they were always so close. This was shown through the past life of Dream Mother, Father, and the siblings and how much fun they had together.
Question 10- Where did you grow up? Since the play is set in South America I'm saying she was brought up around South America
Question 11- What is your life like at the moment? It's clear that her life is stressful with her father disappearing, her mother who is in denial that her husband is dead so Francisca being the oldest daughter has so much stress on her because she needs to make sure that as well as herself and her Mother is okay that her siblings are also okay.
Question 12- What are your physical surroundings like? The surroundings of Francisca are daunting, her father has gone missing, and her sister Baptista then goes missing towards the end of the performance they then find out that her beloved father, Ramon is dead when he gets brought into the festival dead.
Question 13- How do you feel about the place you stay now? Personally, I feel like I am scared of where I am staying due to many people disappearing but mainly at the fact her father has disappeared and that her sister has also been taken.
Question 14- Who do you live with? I live with Basilio which is shown through when her Mother, Constantia says that it is a nice surprise to see Francisca insinuating that she doesn't live at home.
Question 15- Do you have the answers to things you are questioning? It's shown that she doesn't actually have the answers to the things she is questioning, for example, her father disappears, she has an idea that he is dead but it's not fully answered until the end of the play. Right now it's a guessing game until the end which will answer all her questions apart from why he was killed.
Question 16- How do you deal with stress? I feel like my character deals with stress by thinking about the worse possible thing in the situation so that she doesn't overstress. This is shown when it's clear that she is the only one thinking that her father is dead, I feel like the only reason she is thinking like this is so she doesn't get stressed at the thought of where her father could be. Towards the end when she's trying to find out the answers as to why her father died and where Baptista is.
Question 17- What do you consider your most admirable personal quality? I feel like my most personal trait is that she is a very caring character, although it's shown in the script that Francisca and Constantia bicker she's doing it out of the kindness of her heart. She loves her family and only wants the best for them and wants to help them all whenever she can.
Question 18- What's her relationship like with her siblings? I feel like Francisca's relationship with her siblings is different. For example, her relationship with Baptista is more mature and grounded due to them being the oldest and being able to agree on things such as when Francisca talks about not laying her father's place tonight Baptista agrees because they're both on the same level of understanding their father is dead. Her relationship with Maria seems to be close this is shown when Maria breaks down into Francisca's arms and Francisca comforts her. The relationship between Francisca and Isabel isn't as close as her relationships with her other siblings due to Francisca being the eldest and Isabel being the youngest but they still have a good relationship which is shown throughout the script.
Question 19- What do you do when you have negative feelings? My character seems to be very strong-minded and pushes all her problems to one side so personally, I feel like she pushes her problems to one side to not have to deal with them. She always thinks of the positive side of every bad situation.
Question 20- How often do you see your parents? Francisca lives away from her parents but when reading the script  it’s like she visits often. Although her father is missing she still spends with with her Mother.
Question 21- What choices have you made that your parents don't approve of? The biggest choice Francisca has made that her Mother doesn’t approve of is that she is thinking the worst outcome for her father being dead which as shown in the script her and her Mother seem to bump heads on this situation and her mother doesn’t agree with her choice of words.
Question 22- When did your father die? In the script it says that her Father has been missing for 2 months, I’m guessing it wasn’t long after he went missing that he was then killed
Question 23- What keeps you awake at night? My character is a very stubborn but caring character and the worry of how her Mother is doing , personally would keep her up at night, although they don’t get on when talking about the disappearance of her Father she still worries for her Mothers health
Question 24- What was your childhood like? I think Francisca’s childhood was fun and memorable, this is shown through the scene with Dream Mother and the daughters and Father, they show the times they had together with their Father, the scene is very wholesome and shows the relationship and memory they shared together before his disappearance
Question 25- Do you have love in your life right now? Francisca talks briefly about her partner Basilio who she lives with. She doesn’t really like to talk much about their relationship but I feel like they’re very much in love
Question 26- Are you happy in your relationship? I think Francisca is happy in her relationship, if she didn’t have this kind of relationship in her life the way she approaches things would be different but because she has a good and happy relationship she is stronger due to this. I reckon if she wasn’t happy then she wouldn’t form a family with him as it shows at the end of the play that she is pregnant

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Amnesty International was formed in July 1961, in London, UK by lawyers- Peter Benenson and Philip James. It draws attention to human rights abuses and campaigns with international laws and standards. They use it to create public opinions and to generate pressure on governments where abuse takes place.

Amnesty International is a non-government organization that puts the effort in for the upliftment of human rights and has close to 7 million supporters around the world. There are 140 countries and territories across the world that are members of Amnesty International. It throws light on human rights violations by the government, armed political groups, and companies. As of September 2020, Amnesty International stopped all its human rights operations in India.

Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for the rights of other people. Members give their free time to victims of human rights violations to try and help. Amnesty International researches the importance of human rights abuses and documents and reports what is going on but the work they put in does not end there. All members take practical, effective actions to stop the abuses when possible. It's organized to make it possible for anyone who suffered abuse to speak up and to help raise awareness on behalf of other people who are in danger. Al members are from many different countries and different backgrounds who come together to determine to change the world and the way human rights are seen.

The main objective of Al is to manage rigorous research and initiate measures to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights and provide justice for the majority of the community. The movement is created purely to help other people speak up and to help those who are in harm by abuse.

The areas of work that are closely looked into by Amnesty International are- Women, children, minorities, and indigenous rights. They also look into ending torture, ending the death penalty, rights of refugees, rights of prisoners of conscience, and protecting human dignity.

Principles of Amnesty International-

International solidarity,

Effective action for the individual victim,

Global coverage,

Universality and indivisibility of human rights,

Impartiality and independence,

Democracy and mutual respect.

https://byjus.com/free-ias-prep/amnesty-international/

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Amnesty International (commonly known as Amnesty and AI) is a non-governmental organization that works for the upliftment of human rights and has a supporter list of close to 7 million around the world. There are members of Amnesty International in more than 140 countries and territories around the world.

AI throws light on human rights violations by governments, armed political groups, companies, etc., via different sources like newsletters, annual reports, and background papers. This topic is relevant for all IAS exam aspirants.
Why in the news?
As of September 2020, Amnesty International has stopped all its human rights operations in India post-Indian government froze its bank accounts. Read the entire issue in brief on BYJU'S September CNA - 30th September.

The candidates can read more related information from the links provided below:

Amnesty International (AI)

Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for human rights.

Its members give freely of their time and energy in solidarity with the victims of human rights violations.

It is a campaigning organization.

It researches, documents and reports on human rights abuses, but its work does not end there.

AI members take practical, effective action to stop these abuses.

Amnesty International is organised to make it possible for ordinary people to speak up - to protest on behalf of other human beings who are in danger.

The work of Amnesty International is built upon international solidarity.

Its members come from many different cultures and backgrounds, with widely different beliefs, united by a determination to work for a world where everyone enjoys human rights.

When was Amnesty International formed?

The Amnesty International was formed in July 1961, in London, United Kingdom by the lawyers-Peter Benenson and Philip James. Amnesty draws attention to human rights abuses and campaigns for compliance with international laws and standards. It works to mobilize public opinion to generate pressure on governments where abuse takes place.

How is Amnesty International Structured?

Amnesty International is largely made up of voluntary members but retains a small number of paid professionals. In countries in which Amnesty International has a strong presence, members are organized as "sections". Sections co-ordinate basic Amnesty International activities normally with a significant number of members, some of whom will form into "groups", and professional staff.

They also co-ordinate basic activities but have a smaller membership and limited staff.

In countries where no section or structure exists, people can become "international members".

Two other organizational models exist: "international networks", which promote specific themes or have a specific identity, and "affiliated groups", which do the same work as section groups but in isolation.

The organization is headed by a secretary-general for its day to day functions.

The following table gives a list of the secretary-general (s) over the years.

What is the objective of Amnesty International?

The main objective of Amnesty International is to conduct rigorous research and initiate measures to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights and to provide justice for the deprived section of the community.

The movement is organised to make it possible for ordinary people to speak up - to protest on behalf of other human beings who are at risk of abuse.

What are the areas of work looked into by Amnesty International?

The major areas that are covered by Amnesty International include -

1. Women's, children's, minorities' and indigenous rights

2. Ending torture

3. Abolition of the death penalty

4. Rights of refugees

5. Rights of prisoners of conscience

6. Protection of human dignity.

Vision of Amnesty International

Its vision is of a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.

In pursuit of this vision, AI's mission is to undertake research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the context of its work to promote all human rights.

Note:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets out the human rights which are fundamental to the dignity and development of every human being.

These include political rights, such as freedom of opinion, expression and association; economic rights, such as the right to work and to an adequate standard of living; civil rights, such as equality before the law and the right to marriage; and social or cultural rights, such as the right to education and to participate in the cultural life of the community.

It is the responsibility of every government of every state in the world to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of all people in their territory.

AI aims to put pressure on governments to accept and act on this responsibility.

To know more, read about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from the linked article.

Guiding Principles of Amnesty International

All AI's work is guided by the principles of:

International solidarity,

Effective action for the individual victim,

Global coverage,

Universality and indivisibility of human rights,

Impartiality and independence,

Democracy and mutual respect.

Candidates can familiarise themselves with the exam pattern by visiting the UPSC Syllabus page. For more UPSC related preparation materials and articles, visit the links given in the table below:
Related Links:

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Amnesty International - Origin, Objectives & Functions [UPSC Notes]

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Amnesty International (commonly known as Amnesty and AI) is a non-governmental organization that works for the upliftment of human rights and has a supporter list of close to 7 million around the world. There are members of Amnesty International in more than 140 countries and territories around the world.

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Encanto is about a Colombian teenage girl that has to suffer the frustration of being the only girl in her family without any magical powers. The Madrigals tell the story of an extraordinary family living hidden in the mountains of Colombia, in a vibrant town called Encanto. The Encanto has blessed every child with different magical powers, this is to heal every child except one, Mirabel. When she finds out that the powers they have are causing danger she tries her hardest as the only ordinary Madrigal that this might be her family's last choice.

The family has found shelter in the secured blossom mountain house in Colombia which beams with bright colors and represents kindness. Mirabel is the only family member to not yet found her talent and it's when danger to the house starts to appear that only she can sense she needs to start trying to save her family.

It is about Alma Madrigal who tries to escape conflict and loses her husband Pedro but saves her triplets Julieta, Pepa, and Bruno. The candle Alma carries with her insinuates that it is magical which gives everyone their magical powers. The village then grows to allow the powers to help the villagers. Bruno's superpower leads to precognition which causes multiple conflicts that lead to the family attacking him. Whereas Julieta's daughter Mirabel gets treated differently for not having any sort of superpowers.

Mirabel suddenly sees signs of Casita cracking, but her warnings were turned off as the Casita is seen to look fine. Mirabel who is trying to save the house goes round questioning the family. Her sister possesses superhuman strength says that Bruno's room may answer some of the questions she has. Mirabel starts to see things in the Casita that have been repaired come away enduring danger is going to happen. When she leaves she starts to realise her family's super powers are starting to get weaker.

At dinner time, Mirabel's older cousin Dolores admits to overhearing Mirabel and her father talking about Bruno's vision. Mariano's proposal gets ruined when the Casita once again begins to crack. Mirabel's sister Isabel them blames her for the cause of the Casita cracking. Mirabel then catches a glimpse of a man and follows him through the walls to find out it was Bruno himself who is known to never leave his house to protect his family as he loves them. Bruno makes another vision, which shows that the Casita will collapse and an image of Mirabel embracing Isabela.

Mirabel goes to apologize to Isabel but instead learns Isabel's struggles of being perfect and her not wanting to marry Mariano. Isabel's powers start to develop and both sisters start to reconnect. Alma then discovers Mirabel's actions and thoughtlessly blames her for the family's misfortunes. Mirabel then takes it out on Alma and says everything is her fault for making people do things her way which led for this to then happen. Their arguement got bigger meaning the Casita then gets knocked down. Alma's magical candle starts to blow out in Mirabel's hands in her futile effort to save it, effectively stripping the Madrigals of their powers.

Everyone is then worried of the whereabouts of Mirabel is and Alma finds her tearful down at the river where Pedro died. Alma then apologizes for pressuring the whole family. She then talks about how she forgot the gift isn't about the magical powers given to one another it is about the family itself. They then reunite with Bruno in it to. They start to piece together the Casita and Mirabel puts the door knob back on the door and it then recreates the whole house again for them. Before the end of the film they then take their first family photo outside the house including Mirabel and Bruno in this one.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2953050/plotsummary

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Edit

Summaries

A Colombian teenage girl has to face the frustration of being the only member of her family without magical powers.

Encanto tells the tale of an extraordinary family, the Madrigals, who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia, in a magical house, in a vibrant town, in a wondrous, charmed place called an Encanto. The magic of the Encanto has blessed every child in the family with a unique gift from super strength to the power to heal-every child except one, Mirabel. But when she discovers that the magic surrounding the Encanto is in danger, Mirabel decides that she, the only ordinary Madrigal, might just be her exceptional family's last hope.

The Madrigals are an extraordinary family who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia in a charmed place called the Encanto. The magic of the Encanto has blessed every child in the family with a unique gift -- every child except Mirabel. However, she soon may be the Madrigals' last hope when she discovers that the magic surrounding the Encanto is now in danger.

Blessed to live in a secret, enchanted haven, the exceptional Madrigal family has found shelter in the bosom of a secured, mountainous realm in Colombia brimming with colour and kindness. However, as the mystical power of an inconspicuous artefact bestows its residents with supernatural gifts, introspective teen Mirabel has yet to receive her distinct talent. But when an unpredictable, terrible crisis puts the future of the tight-knit community in jeopardy, it is up to Mirabel to step up and try to save the day. Can the unlikely defender protect the family and find her true calling?

Spoilers

The synopsis below may give away important plot points.

Synopsis

While escaping her home from armed conflict, a young Alma Madrigal loses her husband Pedro but saves her triplet infant children Julieta, Pepa, and Bruno. The candle Alma carries with her becomes magical and creates a sentient house, the "Casita", for the Madrigals to live in. Years later a village grows, protected by the Casita, and members of the Madrigal family are gifted superhuman abilities they use to help the villagers ("The Family Madrigal"). However, Bruno's gift of precognition causes multiple conflicts that lead to the family vilifying him, while Mirabel, Julieta's youngest daughter, is treated differently for having no gift at all.

During the evening of Pepa's youngest son Antonio being gifted with the ability to speak to animals, Mirabel suddenly sees the Casita cracking, but her warnings go unheeded when the Casita is found seemingly fine ("Waiting On A Miracle"). Mirabel, resolving to save the magic of the Casita, goes around to investigate and question her family members. Her older sister Luisa - who possesses superhuman strength - suggests that Bruno's room may hold some clues to the phenomenon ("Surface Pressure"). There, Mirabel sees a cave of sand and pieces of a slab of opaque jade glass, which - when repaired - constitute an image supposedly showing her causing the Casita to fall apart. After Mirabel leaves, she discovers that her family members' gifts are starting to weaken ("We Don't Talk About Bruno").

At a dinner where Mirabel's oldest sister Isabela -who can make flowers grow at will - is to become engaged to neighboring villager Mariano Guzman, Mirabel's oldest cousin Dolores - who possesses superhuman hearing - admits to overhearing Mirabel talking with her father about Bruno's vision. Mariano's proposal gets ruined when the Casita once again begins to crack, causing Pepa - whose emotions control the weather - to conjure up a thunderstorm much to everyone's shock. Isabela then blames Mirabel despite the latter denying her involvement in the cataclysm. Amidst the situation, Mirabel suddenly catches a glimpse of a man who she then chases through a hidden passage in the walls, discovering that he was none other than Bruno himself, who never really left their house because he still loves his family. Mirabel convinces him to make predictions again and gets Antonio's permission to use the latter's room. Bruno makes another vision, which shows the Casita collapsing and an image of Mirabel embracing Isabela.

Mirabel goes to apologize but instead learns of Isabela's burden of being perfect and her desire not to marry Mariano. Having poured out her feelings, Isabela's powers start to develop and both sisters reconcile ("What Else Can I Do?"). However, Alma discovers Mirabel's actions and thoughtlessly blames her for the family's misfortunes. Mirabel then finally snaps at her, saying how everything was truly all her fault for making everyone do things her way. Their argument suddenly creates a gigantic fissure that destroys the Casita while Alma's magical candle extinguishes in Mirabel's hands in her futile effort to save it, effectively stripping the Madrigals of their powers.

Alma later finds a tearful Mirabel at the river where Pedro died and finally admits her fault of pressuring the family, forgetting that the real gift given was not the powers but the family itself ("Dos Oruguitas"). Both reconcile and, with Bruno in tow, reunite the Madrigals to rebuild the Casita, assisted by the villagers. When Mirabel places the last doorknob, the Casita springs back to life and the magic returns ("All Of You"). The movie ends with the Madrigals taking their first family picture with Mirabel and Bruno now included in it ("Colombia, Mi Encanto").

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Edit Summaries A Colombian teenage girl has to face the frustration of being the only member of her family without magical powers. Encanto tells the tale of an extraordinary family, the Madrigals, who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia, in a magical house, in a vibrant town, in a wondrous, charmed place called an Encanto.

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The Metal marker above marks the members of the daughters in South America. A fraternal order was founded in Allegheny in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, in 1891.

The daughters of America organization was founded as part of the anti-immigrant movement in the 19th Century. The organizations relate to white males and females of moral characters. These are known to be the main tennets of the order:

Resist unrestricted immigration
Help Americans find employment
Encourage the growth of American businesses
Support Bible reading in public schools
Oppose sectarian influences in state and national governmental affairs
Promote the Jr. Order of United American Mechanics
Provide funds to support orphans of deceased DOA members
Provide funds for the aged and infirmed members of the organization

15 Medinah Court is an organization for Daughters in North and South America. It was created in 1972 and has many amounts of revenue and employees. There are many organizations for Daughters in South America such as:

*Daughters of Isis of North and South America-216 Daughters Daytona Beach which is located in Memphis, TN.
*Daughters of Isis of North and South America-103 Abdul Court located in Shreveport, LA
*Daughters of Isis of North and South America-69 Alaraf Court located in Oklahoma City, OK
*Daughters of Isis of North and South America-187 Cazimi Court which is located in Woodland, MS

https://gravelyspeaking.com/2011/09/24/daughters-of-america/

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The metal marker above marks the grave of a member of the Daughters of America, a fraternal order founded in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, in 1891 as the auxillary organization of the Jr. Order of United American Mechanics.

The eagle and the stars above the shield represent patriotism, the open Bible in the shield symbolizes religion. Below the Bible are clasping hands, representing the unity of membership.

The Daughters of America organization was founded as part of the anti-immigrant movement in the later part of the 19th Century. The organization admits white males and females of good moral character. Following are the main tennets of the order:

Resist unrestricted immigration

Help Americans find employment

Encourage the growth of American businesses

Support Bible reading in public schools

Oppose sectarian influences in state and national governmental affairs

Promote the Jr. Order of United American Mechanics

Provide funds to support orphans of deceased DOA members

Provide funds for the aged and infirmed members of the organization

This entry was posted in Metal Markers. Bookmark the permalink.

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The metal marker above marks the grave of a member of the Daughters of America, a fraternal order founded in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, in 1891 as the auxillary organization of the Jr. Order of United American Mechanics. The eagle and the stars above the shield represent patriotism, the open Bible in the shield symbolizes religion.

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Women's rights throughout the last century have achieved strides. Women have fought for the right to vote all over the world. They've voted to go to school and to express themselves. The timeline of women's rights in South America explores the pivotal moments for it during the last 150 years. Before having the right to vote, women have launched actions, wrote publications, and protested governments.

Timeline of Women's Rights in South America:

1883: Elvira Gracia y Gracia pioneered the path for women's rights in South America before feminism was a word. She also created the girls' school, Liceo Peruano where she brought education to many young girls across Peru. She inspired girls to obtain an education.

1919: Bertha Maria Julia Lutz and other women founded the League for the Intellectual Emancipation of Women, which was organized at addressing the inability of women to vote. This organization focused on voting for the right for women to work across Brazil without their husband's authorization. Lutz tackled key issues until having the rights in 1932. She was successful in working to obtain international women's rights at the U.N. in 1945.

1938: Julia de Burgos, a Puerto Rican writer, released a controversial collection of poetry on social justice issues. The connections to the poems were things such as slavery, colonialism, and women's rights in South America. After the first publication, she started writing about feminist theory. The main topic of her work is to show the idea that motherhood and womanhood were not synonymous.

1945: Lucila Godoy Alcayaga or Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American woman to win the Nobel prize for literature as a Chilean woman. She was considered passionate about education and to become a school teacher by the young age of 15. The way she stood up for women's rights in South America was by making sure girls had access to quality education.

1946: Felisa Rincon de Gautier became mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and became the first female mayor of the capital city in the Americas. She stood for women's rights in South America with a strong debate that all women should have the right to vote and have the opportunity to be active in politics. It shows that she continued to engage in the movement throughout her life even when she was as old as 95.

1969: Maria Jesus Alvarado Rivera was the first modern champion of women's rights in the country. She was also honored by The National Council of Women of Peru. Throughout Maria's life, she thought very hard to believe that all women of South America should have the right to education and educate the public about women's suffrage.

1999: All of these women's activities prompted the Venezuelan government to create a new constitution. A major of the republics in the Western Hemisphere. It stated that all the citizens no matter of their gender, social, political, and economic rights. The Assembly of social movements also brought to light and dealt with domestic abuse, sexual harassment, and discrimination.

Since the disagreement of the century, non-government organizations have put up a fight to continue providing opportunities to strengthen women's rights within South America. Many women and allies across the continent have made commitments to gender equality.

https://borgenproject.org/womens-rights-in-south-america/#:~:text=Before%20even%20having%20the%20right%20to%20vote%2C%20women,brought%20education%20to%20countless%20young%20girls%20across%20Peru.

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Women's rights throughout the last century have achieved huge strides. All over the world, women have fought for the right to vote, to go to school and to express themselves. This timeline of women's rights in South America explores the most pivotal moments for it during the past 150 years. Before even having the right to vote, women have launched movements, wrote publications and protested governments, all to ensure that others would hear their voices.

Timeline of Women's Rights in South America

Elvira García y García 1883: pioneered the path for women's rights in South America before feminism was a word. She created the girls' school, Liceo Peruano, where she brought education to countless young girls across Peru. Through this, she tore down traditional gender barriers and inspired girls to obtain an education.

Bertha Maria Júlia Lutz and another woman founded the League for the Intellectual Emancipation of Women, which was an organization aimed at addressing the inability for women to vote. This historic organization fought for voting rights and the right for women to work across Brazil without their husband's authorization. Lutz relentlessly 1919: tackled key issues until obtaining the right in 1932. Further, she successfully worked to obtain international women's rights at the U.N. Charter at San Francisco Conference on International Organizations in 1945.

Julia de Burgos, 1938: a Puerto Rican writer, released a controversial collection of poetry on social justice issues. The poems discussed slavery, colonialism and women's rights in South America; after the first publication, she went on to write about feminist theory. One main topic of her works was the idea that motherhood and womanhood were not synonymous. These works continued to live through the movement and eventually inspired American Latina Feminist creators like Mariposa, Andrea Arroyo, Luzma Umpierre, Rosario Ferré and Yasmin Hernandez.

Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, or Gabriela Mistral, was the first Latin American woman to win 1945: the Nobel Prize for Literature as a Chilean woman. She was also passionate about education, becoming a school teacher by the young age of 15. One of the primary ways she fought for women's rights in South America was by ensuring that girls had access to quality education.

Felisa Rincón de Gautier became mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, becoming the first female mayor of a capital city in the Americas. She fought for women's rights in South America with a strong belief that all women should have the right to vote and have the opportunity to be active in politics. She continued to 1946: engage in the movement throughout her life, even at the age of 95.

1969: María Jesús Alvarado Rivera was the first modern champion of women's rights in the country, as honored by The National Council of Women of Peru. Throughout her life, she fought for women's rights in South America by educating the public on women's suffrage. She too worked to ensure education for young girls across the country.

All of these brilliant women's activities prompted the Venezuelan government to develop a new constitution, aligning with a 1999: majority of the republics in the Western Hemisphere. It explicitly stated that all citizens, regardless of gender, have social, political and economic rights. The Assembly of Social Movements also recognized and addressed domestic abuse, sexual harassment and discrimination as issues.

Since the turn of the century, non-government organizations have fought to continue providing opportunities to strengthen women's rights in South America. Countless women and allies across the continent have made huge commitments to gender equality. More women are involving themselves in these movements and organizations than ever before, which is not only a cause for celebration but also a victory for the women who dedicated a lifetime of activities towards improving women's rights in South America.

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A Timeline of Women's Rights in South America - The Borgen Project

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Women's rights throughout the last century have achieved huge strides. All over the world, women have fought for the right to vote, to go to school and to express themselves. This timeline of women's rights in South America explores the most pivotal moments for it during the past 150 years.

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The relationships Francisca has with different cast members are different in many ways, for example, the relationship between her and her family is different than she has with her friends. I will back the choices I make for each character through looking in the script and focusing on the way Francisca talks to each character in the play.

Dream Mother-

The relationship between Francisca and Dream Mother appears to be reminiscent of the past and looks back at everything they did together as a family. Although Francisca and Dream Mother are not together in many scenes, they are close due to the dream mother being Francisca’s mother from the past and it shows to the audience the relationship the family had before they all grew up. For example, the scene where they are in the hills together shows a relationship between the whole family and the fun and joy, they all got up to when they were younger.

Ramon-

It’s shown that the relationship between Ramon and Francisca used to be something Francisca enjoyed, this is shown through the memories that are shown in the past life of Francisca and her sisters all playing games with their father. The relationship now is like Francisca is determined to find the underlying cause of the death of her Father. Francisca is shown to be a mature character although it seems like she is dealing with her father going missing. She is trying to reassure her family that he will not return and that he is dead. This is not because she is giving up on her father, it is due to the fact she respects her father and knows he would not just abandon them without any contact.

Constantia-

The relationship between Francisca and her mother is shown to be difficult. This is when she returns to the village in the scene “Absence and Loss” she and her mother have a heated argument about the whereabouts of their beloved father/husband is. Although it looks like their relationship isn’t strong it’s clear that they rely on one another due to Francisca being the oldest so she is more mature and aware of the situation and can give her mother the support she needs. Throughout the play, it shows their relationship becoming stronger, especially when they encourage one another to enjoy themselves at the festival and go on and dance together. Francisca is always looking out for her mother and the same for Constantia, due to them being similar it’s clear that they can rely on each other for moral support. Towards the end of the play, their relationship seemed to grow when Francisca says “Madre, you are the best mother there can be” this is when she announces to her mother that she is pregnant, and they share a special moment together.

Maria-

The relationship between Maria and Francisca is shown to be more wholesome, this is from the very first scene where Francisca comforts Maria when she gets up over her father. It shows that Maria really confides in her older sister, which is clear throughout the play. When looking at the script I noticed some key moments for Francisca and Maria, the main one being when they find the body of their father it says that Maria falls into my arms which personally shows that they share a close relationship. Although they’re extremely close due to being sisters I feel like it’s more of a choice to be that close due to Maria spending more time with Francisca, showing that they grow closer together each time they are around one another. Another great example is when they dance, Francisca shouts for Maria to come on and dance with her and when she looks for Maria to dance out of everyone in the festival she wanted to dance with Maria and Maria wanted to dance with Francisca too.

Isabel-

With Isabel being the youngest sibling, it doesn’t show much of Francisca and her having much of a relationship and she does with the others. Although they don’t talk to each other as much in the play, I personally believe Francisca would still be caring and loving towards Isabel. I feel like it’s harder for them to have a relationship due to them being completely different when it comes to talking about their father. They do share a cute bond when their father’s body enters the festival where they all come together and care for one another. I feel like my initial gut instinct would be to comfort my sisters but make sure Isabel was okay due to her being the youngest and having more faith that her father was going to return whereas the rest of us had that feeling he was already dead.

Baptista-

The relationship between these two characters shows that they’re similar and have the same beliefs, for example, when talking about their father they both have the same thoughts as to whether he is dead. They get on great because they’re the two oldest and understand things in a more mature way. Their relationship is strong, this is shown when Francisca is happy that she has found Ernesto but tells her “You must tell Mother soon Baptista, it is wrong to keep this from her” it shows that she is a trustworthy sister and that she doesn’t want her to get into trouble keeping it from her mother. I would also say that they have a respectable relationship due to being so similar in age that they know how to respect each other.

Inez (girl from festival)-

The relationship between Inez and Francisca is shown to be like a close friend, this is shown when at the festival she shouts “Francisca” as if she was excited to see her, and the fact that Maria runs over to her is shown that she is well known in the family and Francisca is eager to go over and spend some time with her friend and her Mother tells her to go over. Although this is the only time, she is mentioned it’s shown from the audience's side that they have a close friendship due to the conversation they have whilst at the festival and all the laughs and smiles made, she is the only friend that Francisca has connections with which is important to show the bond they share.

Ernesto-

The relationship between Ernesto and Francisca is shown through the politeness they share when Baptista introduces him to me and Maria. Although they don’t talk much Francisca is the type of person to get along with anyone and because Ernesto and Baptista are getting closer it’s important to Francisca to get along with him for the sake of her sister. It shows that they are friendly when she shakes Ernesto’s hand, and he talks and encourages us to go up and join in with himself and Baptista when they are dancing.

Gossip-

Personally, I feel like Francisca stays well clear of the gossip due to them trying to figure out where Ramon is and making different accusations. When Francisca says “Mother, they are terrible gossips. Some say bad things. It will do no good” this shows that they don’t get along and Francisca finds them horrible and that they don’t care about what is going on and they only want to find out the latest news to then tell everyone else.

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1976 Argentine coup d'etat:

The dictator in Argentina in the 1970s was Jorge Rafael Videla Redondo, who was a commander in chief of the army, he was also a member of the Military junta. The 1976 Argentina coup d'etat was a right-wing coup that overthrew Isabel Peron as president of Argentina on 24th March 1976.

1976 Argentine coup d'etat which is part of the Operation Condor/ The Dirty War and the Cold War. It was dated 24 March 1976 and the location is Casa Rosada, Buenos Aires. As a result, they overthrew Isabel Person, and Jorge Rafael Videla becomes President of Argentina.

Prelude to the coup:

When President Juan Peron died of natural causes on July 1, 1974, he was then succeeded by his wife. Despite the claim she had made as to the country's rightful ruler, she instantly lost political gravitas and power. Military officials took control in revenge to revitalize Argentina's deteriorating social climate.

On February 5th, 1975 the Operativo Independencia was launched. This style of intervention aimed to cancel the guerrillas in the Tucuman jungle, who held the center in the area from May 1974.

On December 18, a number of warplanes took from the Moron Air Base and strafed the Casa Rosada in an attempt to run out Isabel Peron who was the President. Then the rebellion was brought to a halt, four days later by a chaplain through arbitration.

Although the military did succeed in removing the only officer remaining loyal to the government, Air Force commander Hector Fautario.

The Coup:

Subsequent events:

1973 Chilean coup d'etat:

United States involvement in regime change in Latin America:

United States involvement in regime change:

Latin America-United States relations:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Argentine_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

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The 1976 Argentine coup d'état was a right-wing coup that overthrew Isabel Perón as President of Argentina on 24 March 1976. A military junta was installed to replace her; this was headed by Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera and Brigadier-General Orlando Ramón Agosti. The political process initiated on 24 March 1976 took the official name of " National Reorganization Process", and the junta, although not with its original members, remained in power until the return to the democratic process on 10 December 1983. Given the systematic persecution of a social minority, the period has been classified as a genocidal process. This has been established in the sentences of trials for crimes against humanity.

The right-wing coup had been planned since October 1975, learned of the preparations two months before its execution. Henry Kissinger met several times with Argentine Armed Forces leaders after the coup, urging them to destroy their opponents quickly before outcry over human rights abuses grew in the United States.

When president Juan Perón died of natural causes on July 1, 1974, he was succeeded by his wife (then vice-president) Isabel Perón, also known as "Isabelita." Despite her claim as the country's rightful ruler, she rapidly lost political gravitas and power. A group of military officials, tasked by Perón to aide the vice-president,[citation needed ] took control in an effort to revitalize Argentina's deteriorating political and social climate. This shift in governance paved the way for the ensuing coup.

On February 5, 1975 Operativo Independencia was launched. This Vietnam-style intervention aimed to eliminate the guerrillas in the Tucumán jungle, who had maintained strongholds in the area as early as May 1974. In October the country was divided into five military zones, with each commander given full autonomy to unleash a carefully planned wave of repression.

On December 18, a number of warplanes took off from Morón Air Base and strafed the Casa Rosada in an attempt to overthrow Isabel Perón. The rebellion was brought to a halt four days later through arbitration by a chaplain.

However, the military did succeed in removing the only officer remaining loyal to the government, Air Force commander Héctor Fautario. Fautario drew harsh criticism from the Army and Navy owing to his vehement opposition to their repressive plans, and for his refusal to mobilize the Air Force against the guerrillas' strongholds in the north. Fautario was Videla's final obstacle in his pursuit of power.

By January 1976 the guerrilla presence in Tucumán had been reduced to a few platoons. Meanwhile, the military, fully backed by the local élite, along with Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet, the United States Central Intelligence Agency, and the administration of President Gerald R. Ford, bided its time before ultimately seizing power.

Shortly before 01:00 am, President Perón was detained and taken by helicopter to the El Messidor residence. At 03:10 all television and radio stations were interrupted. Regular transmissions were cut and replaced by a military march, after which the first communiqué was broadcast:

[...] People are advised that as of today, the country is under the operational control of the Joint Chiefs General of the Armed Forces. We recommend to all inhabitants strict compliance with the provisions and directives emanating from the military, security or police authorities, and to be extremely careful to avoid individual or group actions and attitudes that may require drastic intervention from the operating personnel. Signed: General Jorge Rafael Videla, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera and Brigadier Orlando Ramón Agosti.

A state of siege and martial law were implemented, as military patrolling spread to every major city. The morning was seemingly uneventful, but as the day progressed, the detentions multiplied. Hundreds of workers, unionists, students, and political activists were abducted from their homes, their workplaces, or in the streets.

The Junta assumed the executive power until March 29 when Videla was designated president. Congress was disbanded with senators, deputies and staff members being arrested, brutally beaten and thrown out of doors and windows of the Congressional Palace. An entity known as Legislative Advising Commission (in Spanish: Comision de Asesoramiento Legislativo - CAL), comprised entirely of officers from the military and police, assumed a Legislative role.

Human rights activists state that in the aftermath of the coup and ensuing Dirty War, some 30,000 people, primarily young opponents of the military regime, were " disappeared" or killed. Military men responsible for the killings often spared pregnant women for a time, keeping them in custody until they gave birth, before killing them and giving their infants to childless military families. Kissinger privately assured the military regime that they would have the full support of the United States government in their war and associated actions, a promise that was opposed by the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina at the time, Robert Hill.

The dictatorship counted on the complicity of civil and ecclesiastical sectors, therefore it is usually characterized as a civic-military-ecclesiastical-business dictatorship.

The Junta remained in power until the election of Raúl Alfonsín as the President of Argentina, in December 1983.

The 24th of March anniversary of the coup is now designated in Argentina as the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice.

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The 1976 Argentine coup d'état was a right-wing coup that overthrew Isabel Perón as President of Argentina on 24 March 1976. A military junta was installed to replace her; this was headed by Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera and Brigadier-General Orlando Ramón Agosti.

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I found a few lines that I say that say one thing but make me act another way. The subtext is the difference between what is said and what is done. When looking through the script and the things I have blocked already it has shown me things I say differently from how it is portrayed in the script.

When saying "Mother, he will not come through that door, he will never come through that door" I start to raise my voice and stand up to show the frustration on my face at the fact Constantia is determined that Ramon will return home. In the script, it's spoken as if I'm being calm, although my character starts to become angry at the fact her mother won't listen to her. This is shown through my tone of voice being raised compared to how I spoke before saying this line and my body language when Constantia leans forward to Francisca showing the tension happening in the room.

Another one I thought about was "Father is dead. He is not coming back" this is again when Constantia and Francisca are having a heated argument and in the script, it sounds like she is saying this as she is sympathetic but really she's trying to make a point that he will not be coming back and that he is dead. This shows Francisca's personality at the beginning because she gives the impression to be laid back but in reality, she is getting frustrated at how her Mother will not listen to what she has to say. This line is also said in the middle of Constantia's line "What must stop, Francisca" this is to show the tension between both characters and to show they're throwing comments back and forth to one another which isn't stated in the script it's been thought about in the rehearsal process to make the scene more effective and to show the personalities of both characters in more depth and allow the audience to see the intentions for these characters.

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I feel like my character is a stubborn character this is through the beginning of the play when my character first enters and instantly starts a feud with her Mother over the disappearance of her father, Ramon. For example, when she says "Father is dead" this shows that she isn't thinking about what she is saying and is just instantly snapping at her mother in frustration and stubbornness.

I think my character will also walk very mature due to her being the eldest daughter and wanting to represent a good example for her younger siblings. Francisca is the one to act mature and be real with whoever she is talking to so I feel like her tone of voice will come across as serious throughout the whole play apart from the scene with memories of her time with her father as they show happier times and she could be younger in these flashbacks which makes me want to act differently for these specific scenes. This is shown when Francisca says "You must tell mother soon, Baptista. It is wrong to keep this from her" this shows her maturity by wanting her sister to do right by her mother and tell her about Ernesto before she hears it from anyone else. The time where it shows her younger self is the scene called 'Picnic in the hills' which is a memory from the past meaning that she wasn't the age she is now. This is known from her saying "Look at all the colors and the flags" personally for me this is different from how she speaks now which shows she is younger and less mature.

I personally feel like my character is a very liked character this is because so many people interact with Francisca throughout the play and she is spoken highly of by the people who know her best. For example, in the festival scene, it's shown that she is liked when her friend Inez shouts "Francisca" out of everyone at the festival it's Francisca, which shows the personality of my character to be likable.

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The CIA has formed forty-five years ago, under secrecy. Operation Condor was then finally released which was a global campaign of violent repressors who were against Latin America, who were also left by the region's military dictatorship. The US government knew about the program, it also helped them to engineer it.

In Buenos Aires, a former Chilean general returns home, he is blasted thirteen feet in the air when his car explodes, incinerating his wife. A conservative opponent of the country's military dictatorship and his wife took a walk together and were gunned down. A car blows up killing two out of the three people who were inside of it.

South America is in the grip of military dictatorship and rocked by the same kinds of social and political movements which was demanding change all over the world in the 1960s and 70s. A secret global campaign of violent repression that spanned not just countries, but the continents too.

It was known by the US government that the years of investigations and document releases since then meaning that they now know the CIA and the top-ranking US officials supported the abduction and torture to murder.

Conder was a uniquely shocking case of anticommunist paranoia spiraling out of control. There are connections to anti-communist terror in Europe which have become clearer. It was a successful example of the covert war in the US national security state which was set into motion all over the world against democracy.

World War Three:

In the 20th century, there was a flourishing of people's movements in Latin America that threatened to upend rigid hierarchies of the hemisphere. Peasant-led movements for agrarian reform, and other movements. Naturally, they had to be stopped.

Washington-backed juntas and dictatorships had a good social change and overthrew the government and the movements that succeeded. Changes threatened the power and privileges of the region's long-standing elite. The US-owned corporations such as Chase Manhattan, Anaconda Copper, and Pepsi, former corporate lawyer, and then-president Richard Nixon backed the military overthrow of Salvador Allende's elected government in 1973.

Their internal campaigns of terror were not enough so, in 1975, the government of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay secretly met in Santiago, Chile, and then agreed to work together to keep note of suspicious individuals and organizations.

"South American officials saw themselves as fighting a 'Third World War.'"

The Dirty Work:

Years the official story was that the US government learned about Condor roughly around the exact amount of time as everyone else, which was in 1976. It's known that this program of state terror had been sanctioned, facilitated, and encouraged by the US government.

A CIA report produced for Congress in 2000 would admit that "within a year of the (1973 Chilean) coup, the CIA and other US government agencies were aware of bilateral cooperation among regional intelligence services to track the activities of and, in at least a few cases, kill political opponents"

"Evidence suggests that US government wasn't just aware of the crimes of Operation Condor, but directly involved in them."

There are disagreements about the extent of which the US involvement in Condor, people such as McSherry and Dinges agree that the evidence they've uncovered shows that the government was the least complicit in its crimes.

Here are some key quotes throughout the page that I feel are important to share and really sum up what CIA involvement means without having to research that deep into it:

"The US government's role in the birth of Condor went beyond diplomatic winks and nods."

"Is it conceivable that we are so obsessed with the insurgency that we are prepared to rationalize murder as an acceptable counter-insurgency weapon?’ asked one Guatemalan embassy official."

"There are no rules"

"The US government got in bed with not just authoritarians and dictators, but even out-and-out fascists."

"It’s impossible to talk about the details of Condor without thinking of the ‘war on terror', launched by George W. Bush nearly twenty years ago."

"In a rare bit of real-world poetic justice, it is now the perpetrators of Condor who seem to have nowhere to hide."

"Examining the legacy of Operation Condor should prompt us to think about which institutions in American life have been most hostile to democracy."

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/11/operation-condor-cia-latin-america-repression-torture

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These were just some of the most prized scalps claimed by Operation Condor, officially inaugurated forty-five years and two days ago. With South America in the grip of military dictatorships and rocked by the same kinds of social and political movements that were demanding change all over the world in the 1960s and '70s, a handful of the continent's governments made a pact to work together to roll back the rising tide of "subversives" and "terrorists."

What followed was a secret, global campaign of violent repression that spanned not just countries, but continents, and featured everything from abduction and torture to murder. To say it was known about by the US government, which backed these regimes, is an understatement: though even this simple fact was denied at the time, years of investigations and document releases since then mean that we now know the CIA and top-ranking US officials supported, laid the groundwork for, and were even directly involved in Condor's crimes.

Zooming out, Condor was hardly some uniquely shocking case of anticommunist paranoia spiraling out of control. As its connections to anticommunist terror in Europe have become clearer, it looks more like a particularly successful example of the covert war the US national security state had set into motion all over the world against democracy and the Left, a war that saw it get into bed with fascists and that, in some cases, arguably constituted genocide. It was the system working exactly as intended, in other words, and a stark reminder of the lengths the global centers of power will go to keep things the way they are.

The middle of the twentieth century saw a flourishing of people's movements in Latin America that threatened to upend the rigid hierarchies of the hemisphere: feminist and workers' movements, movements for indigenous rights, peasant-led movements for agrarian reform, and leftist movements, to name a few. Naturally, they had to be stopped.
The middle of the twentieth century saw a flourishing of people's movements in Latin America that threatened to upend the rigid hierarchies of the hemisphere.
But for the region's paranoid leadership, even their internal campaigns of terror were not enough. So, in 1975, the governments of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay secretly met in Santiago, Chile, and agreed to work together to spy on and track "suspicious individuals" and organizations "directly or indirectly linked to Marxism." Before long, Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador joined up, too. The information-gathering initiative was dubbed "Condor," in honor of the national bird of several of the participants, including the host country.

Despite what the minutes stated, this was no mere surveillance pact. What Operation Condor meant in practice was that the state kidnappings, torture, and murder that had run roughshod over the remaining pockets of dissent within these countries would now go beyond their national borders. If you were a leftist or anyone else the government saw as a threat, then escape, exile, and even asylum would no longer save you. There was nowhere to hide.

"Argentina was still a democracy at the time, and was a safe haven for many leftists who had been forced out of several countries in the Southern Cone," says New York University associate professor Remi Brulin. "Suddenly, they realized that was not safe anymore."

While Condor officially lasted only a few years, the region's governments had long collaborated in less formalized ways to stamp out their political opponents. According to the Database on South America's Transnational Human Rights Violations, between 1969 and 1981, such cross-border operations claimed at least 763 victims of atrocities ranging from kidnapping and torture to outright murder, nearly half of them Uruguayan, close to a quarter Argentine, and 15 percent of them Chilean. Most of these atrocities took place in Argentina, which saw 544 cases, with Uruguay a distant second at 129.

As explained in a 1976 report by Harry W. Shlaudeman, Richard Nixon's assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, South American officials like Uruguay's foreign minister Juan Carlos Blanco Estradé ("one of the brighter and normally steadier members of the group") saw themselves as fighting a "Third World War," with "the countries of the southern cone as the last bastion of Christian civilization." Having come to power "in battle against the extreme left," he noted, these repressive governments had "their ego, their salaries, and their equipment-budgets" inextricably wrapped up in this concept.

The result was a stream of often stomach-churning crimes. The typical Condor operation might go something like this: once a target was identified, a team - made up of nationals from one or more member countries - would find and surveil the individual, before a second team snatched and spirited them away to a secret prison, sometimes in the country they'd been found, sometimes elsewhere. There they would be held and tortured, including beatings, waterboarding, mock executions, electrocution, rape, and worse, sometimes for months on end. In some cases, family members were kidnapped and tortured, too, or even stolen from them, for no reason beyond sadism. According to the database, there are at least twenty-three cases of the kidnapping of victims' children, passed off to their killers to be raised as their own.
South American officials saw themselves as fighting a 'Third World War.'
Yet such testimony also spoke to the resilience of the human spirit and the sense of solidarity that knitted such leftist groups together. Fuentes was in good spirits, witnesses said, and bucked up other prisoners by singing. One young prisoner recalled how Patricio Biedma, another arrested MIR member, had been a father figure for him in prison, teaching him how to survive. Biedma's wife and three children never learned what became of their loved one.

Though Condor ostensibly targeted "guerrillas" and "Marxists," the people of South America learned early on and in an especially brutal way what US protesters and law-abiding Muslims would learn after the Bush years: that such malleable terms can be stretched to mean almost anyone.

"Operation Condor pursued many types of political opponents, including congressional representatives, former ministers, human rights advocates (including people in Amnesty International), constitutionalist military officers, peasant leaders, unionists, priests and nuns, professors and students," says J. Patrice McSherry, professor emerita of political science at Long Island University and author of Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America. "Condor targeted not only the Left, but also the center-left and other democratic sectors that were fighting to demand their rights and make more inclusive the elitist democracies of the era."

"First, the aim was to stop terrorism," one operative from the Department of National Intelligence (DINA), Chile's feared secret police, explained. "Then possible extremists were targeted, and later those who might be converted into extremists." Or, as one Argentine general put it: "First we will kill all the subversives; then we will kill their collaborators; then their sympathizers; then those who are indifferent."

Though this was supposed to be justified by the dire threat of left-wing violence, it's hard to take such a threat seriously today. Not only were the Condor governments targeting individuals who were peaceful or unconnected to any revolutionary movements, but those movements had largely been defeated or even given up on armed struggle. As Shlaudeman put it to Henry Kissinger in 1976: "Both terrorists and the peaceful left have failed. This is true even in the minds of studious revolutionaries." Fernando Lopez has argued that the regimes "grossly overstated the threat posed by the revolutionary movements" so they could go after their real target: the opposition in exile, who drew global sympathy and solidarity, and isolated the Condor governments internationally.

Their plans weren't confined to the continent. Twelve of the victims of cross-border operations came from countries outside of the region, including the UK, Italy, France, and the United States, while some of the most high-profile targets were assassinated in European countries, making Condor not just a transnational operation, but a global one. As exiled left-wing and moderate opponents of Pinochet's dictatorship planned to campaign for diplomatic isolation of the country, he plotted to take them out.

Agents of DINA planned attacks in Portugal and France, and tried repeatedly to kill Carlos Altamirano, general secretary of the Socialist Party of Chile: once in Mexico, when they showed up too late; several times in Paris, when they were foiled by French intelligence; and once in Madrid, where the attempt failed. Bernardo Leighton, the founder of Chile's Christian Democrat Party, may not have been a radical - he opposed much of Allende's program - but he was guilty of meeting with Socialist leaders to form an opposition front of exiles against the regime. He survived a gunshot to the back of the head in Rome, but was left with permanent brain damage, ending his opposition activities.

While Pinochet took a leading role, the targets weren't just Chilean. Scotland Yard prevented the assassination of Uruguayan senator Wilson Ferreira Aldunate in London, while then-representative Edward Koch, later to become mayor of New York City, was warned by then-CIA director George H. W. Bush that there was a threat on his life, thanks to his successful amendment to end US military aid to Uruguay. In Buenos Aires, two Uruguayan legislators and two activists were kidnapped in the early morning and later found with shots to the head in a car left under a bridge. Meanwhile, as journalist John Dinges has pointed out, a slew of seemingly natural deaths in a few short years of opponents in exile of the continent's various dictatorships raises further suspicions.

Perhaps the most famous victim of Condor was Orlando Letelier, Allende's former ambassador to the United States. After being detained and tortured by the regime following the coup, diplomatic pressure allowed Letelier to escape and eventually return to Washington, DC, where he soon became one of the most visible and influential members of Chile's opposition to exile. Set up in the heart of American power and hobnobbing with US officials and their families, Letelier led a successful legislative campaign to ban US arms sales to Chile, lobbied against a $63 million investment by a Dutch company into the country, and fiercely criticized Pinochet's free-market economic reforms.

All of it made him a marked man. In 1976, two DINA agents entered the United States on passports from Paraguay, a fellow Condor member, and with the help of two exiled Cuban anti-communists, rigged a bomb to Letelier's car that detonated right on DC's Embassy Row, killing him and one of his two American passengers. Until September 11, 2001, it would remain the worst act of foreign terrorism on US soil.

For years, the official story was that the US government learned about Condor roughly around the same time as everyone else, in 1976. In fact, through declassifications, firsthand testimony, and the work of historians, we now know that this program of state terror had been sanctioned, facilitated, and encouraged by the US government.

Contrary to its denials at the time, a CIA report produced for Congress in 2000 would admit that "within a year after the [1973 Chilean] coup, the CIA and other US government agencies were aware of bilateral cooperation among regional intelligence services to track the activities of and, in at least a few cases, kill political opponents" - a "precursor" to Condor. Consider, too, that Manuel Contreras, the ruthless DINA chief knee-deep in Condor, was a (at one point, paid) CIA asset from 1974 to 1977, despite an internal 1975 report finding him "the principal obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy within the junta."
Evidence suggests the US government wasn't just aware of the crimes of Operation Condor, but directly involved in them.
Though there's disagreement about the extentof US involvement in Condor, figures like McSherry and Dinges agree the evidence they've uncovered shows the government was at least complicit in its crimes.

Archival documents show the CIA, FBI, and even US embassies providing intelligence and names of suspects to the Condor governments, with both hemispheres looking into suspects on their home turf at the other's behest. That included Fuentes, the results of whose interrogation (including the names he gave up) the US embassy in Buenos Aires relayed to Chilean police. Contreras himself later insisted, in court and to reporters, that the CIA had been involved in both the murder of Letelier and Carlos Prats, the former Chilean general blown up in Argentina a year before Condor's founding, and that he had given the FBI documents proving his claims in 2000.

There is strong evidence that US officers played a key role in the 1973 murder of two Americans, journalist Charles Horman and student Frank Teruggi, in the days that followed the coup, and that US intelligence was surveilling them. A 1979 Senate report stated that as early as 1974, the CIA had warned local authorities in France and Portugal about incoming Condor assassinations and discussed setting up a Condor headquarters with DINA in Miami - a move it rejected at the time but proceeded with a few years later with the Argentinians.

In fact, it was precisely those at the very top, like Kissinger, who gave their approval to the Condor governments' plans. Upon being told by Brazil's newly installed dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici in 1971 that the South American country was planning to help overthrow Chile's elected socialist government, Nixon offered money and aid for the effort, telling him the two governments needed to work together to "prevent new Allendes and Castros and try where possible to reverse these trends." It was during those meetings, according to a later memo, that Nixon asked Médici for support "in safeguarding the internal security and status quo in the hemisphere," which one general read as a request for Brazil to "do the dirty work."

Kissinger himself infamously told the foreign minister of Argentina in June 1976, in between repeatedly assuring him the US government hoped for the new junta's success: "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly."

But the US government's role in the birth of Condor went well beyond diplomatic winks and nods.

The methods and strategies employed by Condor operatives had their roots in the US training that Latin American militaries received through vehicles like the notorious School of the Americas (SOA), which aimed to pass on the battlefield and counterinsurgency lessons the US military had learned over its past decades of war-making. The SOA's "graduates" eventually comprised one of every seven members of the DINA command staff, after learning the very things they would soon become feared for in their home countries: assassination, extortion, coercion against family members, psychological manipulation and the use of drugs, and torture techniques, including electrocution and even the specific, sensitive nerve points it could be applied to - just to name a few.
The US government's role in the birth of Condor went well beyond diplomatic winks and nods.
Before Condor, the earliest laboratories for this training were Guatemala and Vietnam. Guatemala saw around 200,000 people killed between the 1954 coup and 1996, many of them victims of, first, a US-led assassination and paramilitary war program in the 1950s, and, through the 1960s, a counterinsurgency program that featured bombing, kidnapping, torture, and murder of "communists and terrorists" - the first instance of mass disappearances in Latin America, and all taught and facilitated by US security forces.

Running parallel to this was the CIA-led Phoenix Program in Vietnam, in which US forces financed, directed, and oversaw a campaign of assassination, terror, and torture carried out by South Vietnamese locals against the Viet Cong and, especially, their civilian sympathizers. The resulting atrocities didn't stop the Phoenix experience from informing the training manuals for future Condor operatives.

Besides this, the United States also laid the groundwork for Condor by instigating and formalizing a unified, anti-communist front among the powerful Latin American militaries. The US government had been warning its commanders about the communist menace since at least 1945, with US money, arms, and training soon following. This escalated after the 1959 Cuban revolution, with President John F. Kennedy issuing the internal defense and development (IDAD) doctrine encouraging military repression in the region, and the Conference of American Armies (CAA) held annually from 1960 on. As one 1971 state department cable later outlined, "it is especially desirable that such neighboring countries as Argentina and Brazil collaborate effectively with the Uruguayan security forces and where possible we should encourage such cooperation."

The United States then took a leading role in establishing the post-coup dictatorships' spy agencies who provided the foot soldiers of Condor, including Paraguay's La Técnica, Brazil's SNI, and, of course, DINA. Contreras would later charge that the CIA officers sent down to do the honors actually "wanted to remain in Chile, in charge of the principal DINA posts," an idea Pinochet nixed.
'Is it conceivable that we are so obsessed with insurgency that we are prepared to rationalize murder as an acceptable counter-insurgency weapon?' asked one Guatemalan embassy official.
While sanctioned by its security forces and high-ranking officials, US involvement sometimes elicited objections, even horror from those lower down. The US embassy in Argentina warned Kissinger in 1976 that the "kind of counterviolence" employed by the country's dictatorship "could eventually create more problems than it solves" and that "many who formerly supported the govt [sic] have been alienated by its tolerance of excesses on the part of the security forces - often involving innocent people." It echoed the more unabashed outrage of one Guatemalan embassy official in 1968, who asked: "Is it conceivable that we are so obsessed with insurgency that we are prepared to rationalize murder as an acceptable counter-insurgency weapon?"

The more information we learn only deepens US government complicity. This year's revelation that the Swiss encryption company Crypto AG was secretly a CIA front that gave the agency a back door to the encrypted communications of the governments that used it suggests the US government was likely aware of what Condor members were up to in real time. Condor countries had, after all, built their entire communication network around Crypto AG's hardware.

That the US government was behind a secret, continent-wide campaign of political terror and repression speaks to the paranoia of the country's elites, inflamed by the rising power of the Soviet Union and the movements they viewed as manipulable by it. As the 1954 Doolittle Report put it, when "facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means . . . there are no rules in such a game," "acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply," and "long-standing American concepts of 'fair play' must be reconsidered."

No wonder the blood-soaked officials of Condor countries saw kindred spirits in their US counterparts. "The only thing separating us is our uniforms, for the men of the armies of America, I believe, have never before understood one another as we do at this moment," the commander of Uruguay's joint chiefs told a 1975 CAA meeting. "There exists a coordination among the armies of the continent to combat and impede Marxist infiltration or whatever other form of subversion."

What this meant in practice is that the US government got in bed with not just authoritarians and dictators, but even out-and-out fascists.

Noam Chomsky has pointed out the parallels between fascist thought and the "national security doctrine" that drove the Latin American dictators' repression, with its belief in the preeminence of the state over the individual and of permanent war. But US officials noticed it, too. As Shlaudeman noted, the Latin American dictatorships were driven not just by anti-Marxism, but by a nationalist "developmentalist" ideology in which military establishments partnered with technocrats to deliver industrialization.

"National developmentalism has obvious and bothersome parallels to National Socialism," he wrote. "Opponents of the military regimes call them fascist. It is an effective pejorative, the more so because it can be said to be technically accurate."
The US government got in bed with not just authoritarians and dictators, but even out-and-out fascists.
These parallels were more horrifyingly clear in the militaries' treatment of dissidents. As figures like photographer João de Carvalho Pina and historian Daniel Feierstein have noted, the overcrowding, starvation, tortures, and general dehumanizing treatment of prisoners by the Condor dictatorships bore obvious similarities with the conditions of Nazi concentration camps.

Ex-fascists "infiltrated various sectors of the Argentine Society," Argentine journalist Tomás Eloy Martínez explained. "It would be useful to ask whether it is only a coincidence that the use of torture attained such heights of cruelty and sophistication. We should continue to ask ourselves whether or not the appearance of concentration camps, mass graves, and hundreds of bodies floating in Argentine rivers after 1974 is merely coincidental."

This connection to European fascists links Condor to another secret, continent-wide anti-communist initiative: the NATO-led stay-behind program in Europe, the most famous of which was Operation Gladio in Italy. Like Condor, the stay-behind armies were a US-devised and US-backed network of local right-wing paramilitaries, meant to activate in case of communist invasion or simply electoral victory, and who, in the meantime, carried out a campaign of assassinations, destabilization, and general political violence in their home countries. And like Condor, they employed current and "former" fascists, usually in direct alliance with the countries' high-ranking security forces.

It was the Gladio-linked neofascist organization Avanguardia Nazionale, contracted by DINA, that carried out the failed attempt on Bernardo Leighton's life. DINA agents and even Pinochet himself met in advance of the assassination with its leader, Stefano Delle Chiaie, who later worked for DINA and, he claimed, helped create it, before going to serve alongside Barbie in Bolivia's coup government. Delle Chiaie also happened to meet personally with Pinochet just days before the Chilean dictator formalized the creation of Condor, and he arrived in Chile to get to work shortly thereafter.

There is, in other words, more than a hint, as McSherry has argued, that "US forces transferred the stay-behind model to Latin America" in the form of programs like Condor. As the Pentagon Papers revealed, the US government had already done so in another Cold War theater, Vietnam, where in 1956 it tasked a special forces unit "with the initial mission of preparing stay-behind organizations in South Vietnam just below the 17th Parallel, for guerrilla warfare in the event of an overt invasion by North Vietnamese forces."

But the evidence also hints at something darker: at a "global anti-Marxist agreement," in the words of the court testimony of Michael Townley, the DINA agent behind the Prats, Leighton, and Letelier assassinations.

Though Condor has long been over, its language and practices continue to echo today.

According to Brulin, it was with the ascent of Ronald Reagan from 1981 on that the bellicose political discourse around terrorism that had suffused the Condor countries infected the United States, with Reaganite "anti-terror" rhetoric initially focused on Central America. As the years passed, its spirit continued to haunt US politics, even as the focus shifted to the Middle East.

"Everything the US has been saying after 9/11 is something Reagan is saying about Central and South America in the 1980s, and what US officers are saying to Latin American dictators in the 1950s and 1960s," says Brulin. "And always based on the same lie: how strong the enemy was, and what we are doing about them, which in the real world is using death squads."
It's impossible to talk about the details of Condor without thinking of the 'war on terror' launched by George W. Bush nearly twenty years ago.
Of course, it wasn't just discourse. It's impossible to talk about the details of Condor without thinking of the "war on terror" launched by George W. Bush nearly twenty years ago.

"We witnessed the use by US counterterrorist forces of disappearances, cross-border renditions, torture, secret 'black sites' located in other countries, and so on, approved by civilian authorities," says McSherry. "All of these methods characterized Operation Condor."

"There have been other manifestations of Condor-like practices that have taken place and are taking place in the decades since," says Francesca Lessa, who is researching the crimes of and accountability for Condor at the University of Oxford. "If you think about the practices of clandestine rendition in the war on terror, for example - those have all of the hallmarks of what Condor used to be in Latin America several decades earlier."

Even the torture employed by Condor operatives, such as threatening to kill or rape loved ones, squalid conditions forcing total dependence on one's captors, and simulated drowning, was in many cases exactly the same as the techniques used by US forces against accused terrorists and taught to Latin American forces by US officers decades before that.

As the "war on terror" progressed, we've seen some of the hallmarks of Condor operations increasingly turned on the domestic US population. This is particularly so with Donald Trump, who, sometimes to the enthusiastic applause of liberal politicians, has repeatedly railed against socialists and other domestic enemies, and more recently engaged in a range of behavior that would be familiar to the victims of Condor: law and order rhetoric, threats to declare dissidents terrorists, and massively overstating the power of the groups he opposes. Perhaps more alarmingly, street kidnappings and other counterinsurgency tactics have now apparently become legitimate elements of domestic law enforcement under his presidency.

Ironically, this has happened at the same time that the perpetrators of Condor and its member governments have increasingly found themselves facing justice, exposing more about its workings in the process. While impunity held fast in the hemisphere as late as the 2000s, campaigns and legal efforts by survivors and victims' families have changed all that, assisted by a vast and incriminating archival paper trail created, ironically, by the program's highly organized and transnational nature.

According to the numbers compiled by Lessa in her Operation Condor project, since the 1970s, there have been forty-four criminal investigations into Condor-related crimes across eight countries. Those include not just Condor member nations, but Italy, France, and the United States, too.
In a rare bit of real-world poetic justice, it is now the perpetrators of Condor who seem to have nowhere to hide.
In a rare bit of real-world poetic justice, it is now the perpetrators of Condor who seem to have nowhere to hide. Years of pressure from those pushing for justice were given a boost by Pinochet's arrest and nearly two-year-long detention in London, whose warrant was based partly on a Condor crime, and which firmly established that individuals really could be prosecuted for crimes against humanity regardless of where they were, where the crimes were carried out, and the nationality of everyone involved. Though he escaped extradition, it opened the door to his 2004 indictment in Chile, which in turn paved the way for further attempts at retroactive justice for the dictatorship's crimes.

"The Pinochet case in 1998 was indeed critical in galvanizing international justice efforts in South America and beyond," says Lessa. "But if the preexisting demand and justice efforts had not been there even before, the Pinochet case might not have been enough on its own."

The reverberations were felt beyond Chile. Pinochet's arrest and the investigation of Argentine military officials in foreign courts spurred a raft of new cases and even arrests and indictments in Argentina over Condor-era crimes, leading to the 2003 annulment of the country's amnesty laws, used to protect human rights abusers for decades. A year later, an Argentine court declared that the statute of limitations didn't apply to human rights crimes, in a case that concerned the 1974 murder of Carlos Prats.

Transnational repression has given way to borderless justice, it seems. The year 2019 alone saw Adriana Rivas, Contreras's former secretary and allegedly one of DINA's "most brutal torturers," arrested in Australia (her extradition to Chile was approved last month), while a former Uruguayan naval officer was sentenced to life in prison in Italy over his role in Condor. The most recent sentence was handed down just days ago, with four former Argentine security personnel convicted for a slew of crimes, including the kidnapping and detention of two young children, privy to their mother's torture and later abandoned in a public square in Chile.

All the while, we continue to learn more about the once-shadowy program. In 2019, the US government released tens of thousands more pages worth of previously secret files relating to Argentina's dictatorship during the Condor years. Among the revelations: that in September 1977, "representatives of West German, French, and British intelligence services had visited the Condor organization secretariat in Buenos Aires . . . to discuss methods for establishment of an anti-subversive organization similar to Condor."

With veterans of France's brutal counterinsurgent wars in Algeria and Vietnam having passed on their own training and experience to their Latin American counterparts, perhaps one day we will find out that the "global anti-Marxist agreement" Condor was a part of was even broader than once thought.

As typically recounted, the story of the twentieth century goes something like this: after briefly uniting to defeat fascism, the United States and the Soviet Union turned the rest of the century into a clash of ideologies, one that always threatened to erupt, but never quite did, into outright great-power war. With nary a shot fired, free-market capitalism won out, thanks to the hearts and minds won by the power of television, cheeseburgers, and convenient home appliances.

But programs like Operation Condor cast that history in a very different light. With them in mind, that triumph looks intensely violent - one in which the US government swiftly allied with autocrats and even fascists to attack democracy and brutally put down people's movements of all kinds the world over, lest their goals of a more just, egalitarian world threaten Western strategic and business interests. And with that economic system now sputtering under the weight of several crises, the repressive measures long reserved for the rest of the world are becoming more visible at home, as an agitated US public turns ever more unruly in the face of their own long-declining living standards.
Examining the legacy of Operation Condor should prompt us to think about which institutions in American life have been most hostile to democracy.
It's an episode especially relevant to the post-Trump era, where agencies like the CIA have successfully rebranded as defenders of democracy and liberal values against impending fascism. It reminds us of the unvarnished, well-organized brutality that lies behind the global order Trump and his predecessors inherited, a sometimes neo-fascist brutality engineered and led by those same agencies to protect elite power and business interests.

A well-founded fear of fascism and democracy's subversion will remain a key part of US political discourse well beyond Trump. Examining the legacy of Operation Condor should prompt us to think about which institutions in American life have been most hostile to democracy and, when the time calls for it, eager to align with fascists. But it's also a reminder that, in the face of popular struggle, even this violence has a shelf life, and impunity doesn't last forever.

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The CIA's Secret Global War Against the Left

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Forty-five years ago, under a cloak of secrecy, Operation Condor was officially launched: a global campaign of violent repression against the Latin American left by the region's quasi-fascist military dictatorships. The US government not only knew about the program - it helped to engineer it.

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The dirty war was a name used by the military junta and civic-military dictatorship of Argentina for the period of state terrorism in Argentina which was formed from 1976 to 1983 as a part of Operation Condor. Military and security forces and right-wing death squads are in the form of the Argentina Anticommunist Alliance which is hunted down by political dissidents and whoever is believed to be associated with socialism, left-wing Peronism, and the Montoneros movement.

It is known that between 9,000 and 30,000 people were killed or disappeared, some were difficult to report due to them being related to the nature of state terrorism. South American countries that participated in Operation Condor were communists guerrillas. The target of Operation Condor included students, militants, trade unionists, writers, journalists, artists, and any citizens suspected of being left-wing activists. The disappeared included those thought to be a political or ideological threat to the junta.

By the 1980s, the economy collapsed alongside the public discontent and the disastrous handling of the Falklands War which resulted at the end of the Junta. Many members of the junta are known to be in prison for crimes against humanity and genocide.

In the 1976 coup, Argentina's military supported the Argentine establishment created by the Juan Peron government and attempted a coup in 1951 before succeeding in 1955 with the Revolution Libertadora. Argentina went through a long period of political instability. In 1973 Peron returned back from exile. The ex-president Hector Jose Campora retired allowing Peron to take over and become president. In 1974 Peron died and his vice president, his wife Isabel Peron became president in memory of her husband. Argentina went into chaotic periods of instability having many kidnappings and assassinations.

The junta referred to their policy of suppressing opponents like the National Reorganization Process. South America coordinated actions with Argentina's dictatorship during Operation Cooper. The result of the Falklands War meant that the military government lost out on the remaining popularity after Argentina's defeat by Britain.

The meaning behind "Dirty War" is referring to the military junta, which was claimed to be a war that albeit with "different" methods, was necessary to maintain the social order and eradicate political subversives. The explanation had been questioned in court by human rights NGOs, as it suggests that a "civil war" was going on and justified the killings that also happened. Julio Strassera suggested that the term "Dirty War" was a "euphemism to try to conceal gang activities."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War

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The Dirty War ( Spanish: Guerra sucia) is the name used by the military junta or civic-military dictatorship of Argentina (Spanish: dictadura cívico-militar de Argentina) for the period of state terrorism in Argentina from 1976 to 1983 as a part of Operation Condor, during which military and security forces and right-wing death squads in the form of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA, or Triple A) hunted down any political dissidents and anyone believed to be associated with socialism, left-wing Peronism, or the Montoneros movement.

It is estimated that between 9,000 and 30,000 people were killed or disappeared, many of whom were impossible to formally report due to the nature of state terrorism. The primary target, like in many other South American countries participating in Operation Condor, were communist guerrillas and sympathisers, but the target of Operation Condor also included students, militants, trade unionists, writers, journalists, artists and any citizens suspected of being left-wing activists, including Peronist guerrillas. The disappeared included those thought to be a political or ideological threat to the junta, even vaguely, or those seen as antithetical to the neoliberal economic policies dictated by Operation Condor. All were killed in an attempt by the junta to silence social and political opposition.

By the 1980s, economic collapse, public discontent, and the disastrous handling of the Falklands War, resulted in the end of the Junta and the restoration of democracy in Argentina, effectively ending the Dirty War. Many members of the junta are currently in prison for crimes against humanity and genocide.

In the decades before the 1976 coup, the Argentinian military, supported by the Argentine establishment, opposed Juan Perón's populist government and attempted a coup in 1951 before succeeding in 1955 with the Revolución Libertadora. After the fall of Perón's government in 1955, Argentina entered a long period of political instability. In 1973 Perón returned from exile, and president Héctor José Cámpora resigned allowing Perón to take over as President. In 1974 Perón died and his vice president, his wife Isabel Perón, became president. Argentina entered a chaotic period of instability, with daily kidnappings and assassinations by leftist terrorists and right wing factions. In 1976 the military junta overthrew the government of Isabel Perón. After taking control, the armed forces proscribed Peronism, a decision that triggered the organization of Peronist resistance in workplaces and trade unions, as the working classes sought to protect the economic and social improvements obtained under Perón's rule. Soon after the coup, Peronist resistance began organizing in workplaces and trade unions as the working classes sought economic and social improvements. Over time, as democratic rule was partially restored, but promises of legalizing the expression and political liberties for Peronism were not respected, guerrilla groups began to operate in the 1960s, namely Uturuncos and the EGP (People's Guerrilla Army). Both were small and quickly defeated.

As Perón returned from exile in 1973, the Ezeiza massacre marked the end of the alliance between left- and right-wing factions of Peronism. In 1974, Perón withdrew his support for the Montoneros shortly before his death. During the presidency of his widow Isabel, the far-right paramilitary death squad Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA, or Triple A) emerged. In 1975, Isabel signed a number of decrees empowering the military and the police to "annihilate" left-wing activists. In 1976, her government was overthrown as a part of Operation Condor by a military coup led by General Jorge Rafael Videla.

The junta, calling itself the National Reorganization Process, organized and carried out strong repression of political dissidents (or perceived as such) through the government's military and security forces. They were responsible for the arrest, torture, killings and/or forced disappearances of an estimated 9,000 people. With the help of Washington , the junta was aided with $50 million in military aid. Another group on the far right that was responsible for the deaths of many was Alianza Anticomunista Argentina, otherwise known as Triple A. Triple A was led by José López Rega, the Minister of Social Welfare who used Triple A as a death squad. Both the junta and Triple A targeted young professionals, high school and college students and trade union members. These groups of people became main targets because of their involvement in political organizations that resisted the work of the right-wing group. Assassinations were carried out via mass shootings and the throwing of people from airplanes in the South Atlantic. Additionally, 12,000 prisoners, many of whom had not been convicted through legal processes, were detained in a network of 340 secret concentration camps located throughout Argentina. Triple A partnered with the army, navy and the air force to terrorize the population. Military personnel, such as Navy captain Adolfo Scilingo, who was tried for genocide, 30 counts of murder, 93 of causing injury, 255 of terrorism and 286 of torture. These actions against victims called desaparecidos because they simply "disappeared" without explanation were confirmed via Scilingo, who has publicly confessed his participation in the Dirty War, stating that the Argentinian military "did worse things than the Nazis". In 1983, the National commission on Disappeared People forced Scilingo to testify where he described how "prisoners were drugged, loaded onto military planes, and thrown, naked and semi-conscious, into the Atlantic Ocean". A vast majority of those who were killed disappeared without a trace and no record of their fate.

The junta referred to their policy of suppressing opponents as the National Reorganization Process ( Proceso de Reorganización Nacional). Argentine military and security forces also created paramilitary death squads, operating behind "fronts" as supposedly independent units. Argentina coordinated actions with other South American dictatorships during Operation Condor. Faced with increasing public opposition and severe economic problems, the military tried to regain popularity by occupying the disputed Falkland Islands. During the resulting Falklands War, the military government lost any remaining popularity after Argentina's defeat by Britain, forcing it to step aside in disgrace and allow for free elections to be held in late 1983.

The democratic government of Raúl Alfonsín was elected to office in 1983. Alfonsín organized the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons ( Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas, CONADEP) to investigate crimes committed during the Dirty War, and heard testimony from hundreds of witnesses and began to build cases against offenders. The commission organized a tribunal to conduct a transparent prosecution of offenders, holding the Trial of the Juntas in 1985. Among the nearly 300 people prosecuted, many of the leading officers were charged, convicted and sentenced for their crimes.

The Argentinian armed forces opposed subjecting more of its personnel to the trials, threatening the civilian leadership with another coup. In 1986, the military forced the passage of the Ley de Punto Final (Full Stop Law) in 1986, which "put a line" under previous actions and ended prosecutions for crimes committed by the National Reorganization Process. Fearing military uprisings, Argentina's first two presidents sentenced only the two top Dirty War former commanders. The Punto Final Law stated that military personnel involved in torture were doing their "jobs". In 1994, President Carlos Menem praised the military in their "fight against subversion".

In 2003, Congress repealed the Pardon Laws, and in 2005 the Argentine Supreme Court ruled they were unconstitutional. Under the presidency of Nestor Kirchner, the Argentine government re-opened its investigations on crimes against humanity and genocide in 2006 and began the prosecution of military and security officers.

The term "Dirty War" was used by the military junta, which claimed that a war, albeit with "different" methods (including the large-scale application of torture and rape), was necessary to maintain social order and eradicate political subversives. This explanation has been questioned in court by human rights NGOs, as it suggests that a "civil war" was going on and implies justification for the killings. During the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, public prosecutor Julio Strassera suggested that the term "Dirty War" was a "euphemism to try to conceal gang activities" as though they were legitimate military activities.

Although the junta said its objective was to eradicate guerrilla activity because of its threat to the state, it conducted wide-scale repression of the general population. It worked against all political opposition and those it considered on the left: trade unionists (half of the victims), students, intellectuals including journalists and writers, rights activists and other civilians and their families. Many others went into exile to survive and many remain in exile today despite the return of democracy in 1983. During the Trial of the Juntas, the prosecution established that the guerrillas were never strong enough to pose a real threat to the state and could not be considered a belligerent as in a war:

The guerrilla had not taken control of any part of the national territory; they had not obtained recognition of interior or anterior belligerency, they were not massively supported by any foreign power, and they lacked the population's support.

The program of extermination of dissidents was referred to as genocide by a court of law for the first time during the trial of Miguel Etchecolatz, a former senior official of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police.

Crimes committed during this time ( genocide of civilian population and other crimes against humanity) are not covered under the laws of war (jus in bello), which shields enlisted personnel from prosecution for acts committed under orders given by a superior officer or the state. Estela de Carlotto, president of the Argentine human rights non-governmental organization Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo states:

[That term] is a way to minimize state terrorism and is a term born outside the country. It is a totally wrong concept; there was no war, dirty nor clean.

Since former army officer Juan Perón was ousted from the presidency by a coup in 1955 (Revolución Libertadora), military hostility to Peronism and populist politics dominated Argentine politics. The 1956 Aramburu decree prohibited the use of Perón's name and when General Lanusse, who was part of the Argentine Revolution, called for elections in 1973, he authorized the return of political parties. However, Perón, who had been invited back from exile, was barred from seeking office.

In May 1973, Peronist Héctor José Cámpora was elected as president, but everyone understood that Perón was the real power behind him. Peronism has been difficult to define according to traditional political classifications and different periods must be distinguished. A populist and nationalist movement, it has sometimes been accused of fascist tendencies. Following nearly two decades of weak civilian governments, economic decline and military interventionism, Perón returned from exile on 20 June in 1973, as the country was becoming engulfed in financial, social and political disorder. The months preceding his return were marked by important social movements as in the rest of South America and in particular of the Southern Cone before the military intervention of the 1970s, thus during Héctor Cámpora's first months of government (May-July 1973) approximately 600 social conflicts, strikes and factory occupations had taken place.

Upon Perón's arrival at Buenos Aires Airport, snipers opened fire on the crowds of left-wing Peronist sympathizers. Known as the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, this event marked the split between left-wing and right-wing factions of Peronism. Perón was re-elected in 1973, backed by a broad coalition that ranged from trade unionists in the center to fascists on the right (including members of the neo-fascist Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara) and socialists like the Montoneros on the left. Following the Ezeiza massacre and Perón's denouncing of "bearded immature idealists", Perón sided with the Peronist right, the trade unionist bureaucracy and Radical Civic Union of Ricardo Balbín, Cámpora's unsuccessful rival at the May 1973 elections. Some leftist Peronist governors were deposed, among them Ricardo Obregón Cano, governor of Córdoba, who was ousted by a police coup in February 1974. According to historian Servetto, "the Peronist right... thus stimulated the intervention of security forces to resolve internal conflicts of Peronism".

On 19 January 1974, the Trotskyist People's Revolutionary Army attacked the military garrison in the Buenos Aires city of Azul, prompting a harsh response from the then constitutional president Juan Perón and contributing to his tendency to lean more and more on him. Rightist faction of the justicialist movement during its last months of life.

Extreme right wing vigilante organizations - linked to Triple A or its kind of "subsidiary" Córdoba "Comando Libertadores de América" - assassinated the union leader and ex-Peronist governor of Córdoba, Atilio López, as well as leftist lawyers Rodolfo Ortega Peña and Silvio Frondizi - brother of the ousted former Argentine president Arturo Frondizi, who had served as first president between May 1, 1958 and March 29, 1962. Also in 1974, the Third World priest Carlos Mugica and dozens of political activists from left.

Isabel Perón's government

Juan Perón died on 1 July 1974 and was replaced by his vice president and third wife, Isabel Perón, who ruled Argentina until she was overthrown in March 1976 by the military. The 1985 CONADEP human rights commission counted 458 assassinations from 1973 to 1975 in its report ( Never Again): 19 in 1973, 50 in 1974 and 359 in 1975, carried out by paramilitary groups, who acted mostly under the José López Rega's Triple A death squad (according to Argenpress, at least 25 trade-unionists were assassinated in 1974). However, the repression of the social movements had already started before the attempt on Yrigoyen's life: on 17 July 1973, the CGT section in Salta was closed while the CGT, SMATA and Luz y Fuerza in Córdoba were victims of armed attacks. Agustín Tosco, Secretary General of Luz y Fuerza, successfully avoided arrest and went into hiding until his death on 5 November 1975.

Trade unionists were also targeted by the repression in 1973 as Carlos Bache was assassinated on 21 August 1973; Enrique Damiano, of the Taxis Trade Union of Córdoba, on 3 October; Juan Avila, also of Córdoba, the following day; Pablo Fredes, on 30 October in Buenos Aires; and Adrián Sánchez, on 8 November 1973 in the Province of Jujuy. Assassinations of trade unions, lawyers and so on continued and increased in 1974 and 1975 while the most combative trade unions were closed and their leaders arrested. In August 1974, Isabel Perón's government took away the rights of trade unionist representation of the Federación Gráfica Bonaerense, whose Secretary General Raimundo Ongaro was arrested in October 1974. During the same month of August 1974, the SMATA Córdoba trade-union, in conflict with the company Ika Renault, was closed by the national direction of trade unions and the majority of its leaders and activists arrested. Most of them were assassinated during the 1976-1983 dictatorship. Atilio López, General Secretary of the CGT of Córdoba and former Vice Governor of the Province, was assassinated in Buenos Aires on 16 September 1974.

Peronist guerrillas, estimated at 300 to 400 active members (Montoneros) in 1977 (and 2000 at its peak in 1975, though almost half of them related to militia), committed a number of attacks during this period such as bombings at the Goodyear and Firestone distributors, Riker and Eli pharmaceutical laboratories, Xerox Corporation, and Pepsi-Cola bottling companies. Director-general of the Fiat Concord company in Argentina was kidnapped by ERP guerrillas in Buenos Aires on 21 March 1972 and found murdered on 10 April. in 1973, a Ford Motor Company executive was killed in a kidnapping attempt; a Peugeot representative was kidnapped and later released for a reported US$200,000., and FAP guerrillas killed John Swint, the American general manager of the Ford Motor Company. On December, the director of Peugeot in Argentina was kidnapped.

In 1974, FAP guerrillas killed the labour relations manager of the IKA-Renault Motor Company in Córdoba. In 1975 a manager of an auto parts factory and a production manager of Mercedes-Benz were kidnapped by Montoneros, and an executive of the US Chrysler Corporation and a manager of the Renault plant in Córdoba were killed. In 1976, Enrique Aroza Garay of German-owned Borgward automobile factory and a Chrysler executive were killed. In all, 83 servicemen and policemen were killed in left-wing guerrilla incidents.

Annihilation decrees

In 1975, the Guevarist People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), inspired by Che Guevara's foco theory, began a small rural insurgency in the province of Tucumán with no more than 100 men and women, but were soon defeated by the Argentine Army. In February 1975, Ítalo Luder, President of the National Assembly who was acting as interim President instead of Isabel Perón, who was ill for a short period, signed the secret presidential decree 261, which ordered the army to illegally neutralize and/or "annihilate" the insurgency in Tucumán, the smallest province in Argentina. Operativo Independencia granted power to the armed forces to "execute all military operations necessary for the effects of neutralizing or annihilating the action of subversive elements acting in the Province of Tucumán". Extreme right-wing death squads used their hunt for far-left guerrillas as a pretext to exterminate any and all ideological opponents on the left and as a cover for common crimes.

In July, there was a general strike. The government, presided temporarily by Ítalo Luder from the Peronist party, issued three decrees, 2770, 2771 and 2772, that created a Defense Council headed by the president and including his ministers and the chiefs of the armed forces. It was given the command of the national and provincial police and correctional facilities and its mission was to "annihilate [...] subversive elements throughout the country".

March 1975 raid in Santa Fe

Isabel Perón's government ordered a raid on 20 March 1975, which involved 4,000 military and police officers, in Villa Constitución, Santa Fe in response to various trade-unionist conflicts. Many citizens and 150 activists and trade unionists leaders were arrested while the Unión Obrera Metalúrgica's subsidiary in Villa Constitución was closed down with the agreement of the trade unions' national direction, headed by Lorenzo Miguel. Repression affected trade unionists of large firms such as Ford, Fiat, Renault, Mercedes-Benz, Peugeot and Chrysler and was sometimes carried on with support from the firms' executives and from the trade unionist bureaucracies.

Military's rise to power

The sentence at the Trials of the Juntas stated the following: "The subversives had not taken control of any part of the national territory; they had not obtained recognition of interior or anterior belligerency, they were not massively supported by any foreign power, and they lacked the population's support". However, the supposed threat was used for the coup.

In 1975, President Isabel Perón, under pressure from the military establishment, appointed Jorge Rafael Videla commander-in-chief of the Argentine Army. "As many people as necessary must die in Argentina so that the country will again be secure", declared Videla in 1975 in support of the death squads. He was one of the military heads of the coup that overthrew Isabel Perón on 24 March 1976. In her place, a military junta, headed by General Jorge Rafael Videla, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera and General Orlando Agosti and was installed.

The junta, which dubbed itself National Reorganization Process, systematized the repression, in particular through the way of "forced disappearances" ( desaparecidos), which made it very difficult as was the case in Augusto Pinochet's Chile to file legal suits as the bodies were never found. This generalization of state terror tactics has been explained in part by the information received by the Argentine military in the infamous School of Americas and also by French instructors from the secret services, who taught them " counter-insurgency" tactics first experimented during the Algerian War (1954-1962).

By 1976, Operation Condor was at its height. Chilean exiles in Argentina were threatened again and had to seek refuge in a third country. Chilean General Carlos Prats had already been assassinated by the Chilean DINA in Buenos Aires in 1974, with the help of former DINA agents Michael Townley and Enrique Arancibia. Cuban diplomats were also assassinated in Buenos Aires in the infamous Automotores Orletti torture center, one of the 300 clandestine prisons of the dictatorship, managed by the Grupo de Tareas 18, headed by Aníbal Gordon, previously convicted for armed robbery and who answered directly to the General Commandant of the SIDE, Otto Paladino. Automotores Orletti was the main base of foreign intelligence services involved in Operation Condor. One of its survivors, José Luis Bertazzo, who was detained for two months there, identified Chileans, Uruguayans, Paraguayans and Bolivians among the prisoners. These captives were interrogated by agents from their own countries.

According to John Dinges's Los años del Cóndor, Chilean MIR prisoners in Orletti center told José Luis Bertazzo that they had seen two Cuban diplomats, Jesús Cejas Arias and Crescencio Galañega, tortured by Gordon's group and interrogated by a man who came from Miami to interrogate them. The two Cuban diplomats, charged with the protection of the Cuban ambassador to Argentina Emilio Aragonés, had been kidnapped on 9 August 1976 by 40 armed SIDE agents who blocked off all sides of the street with their Ford Falcons, the cars used by the security forces during the dictatorship. According to John Dinges, the FBI as well as the CIA were informed of their abduction. In his book, Dinges published a cable sent by Robert Scherrer, an FBI agent in Buenos Aires on 22 September 1976, where he mentions in passing that Michael Townley, later convicted of the assassination on 21 September 1976 of former Chilean minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., had also taken part to the interrogation of the two Cubans. The former head of the DINA confirmed to Argentine federal judge María Servini de Cubría on 22 December 1999, in Santiago de Chile, the presence of Townley and Cuban Guillermo Novo Sampoll in the Orletti center. The two men traveled from Chile to Argentina on 11 August 1976 and "cooperated in the torture and assassination of the two Cuban diplomats". According to the " terror archives" discovered in Paraguay in 1992, 50,000 persons were murdered in the frame of Condor, 9,000-30,000 disappeared (desaparecidos) and 400,000 incarcerated.

There were also some companies complicit in crimes against humanity. There has been participation of senior executives of Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Acindar, Dálmine Siderca, Ingenio Ledesma, and Astarsa

Victoria Basualdo, from Columbia University, investigated the complicity between large companies and armed forces. She found six companies in which dozens of union representatives were kidnapped and tortured, often detained inside the companies and transferred to clandestine detention centers (CDC) in vehicles provided by the companies. In the case of Dálmine Siderca, a CDC had been installed next to the factory, connected through a door. In the case of Acindar, a detention and interrogation center, staffed and operated by the Federal Police, was already in existence in 1975 during the Peronist government of Maria Estela Martinez de Peron.

Judge Alicia Vence was in charge of the investigation of acts of State terrorism committed in facilities and with the participation of authorities of the companies Ford and Mercedes-Benz. According to witnesses, the center at Mercedes Benz was led by the racing driver Juan Manuel Fangio. In 2015, an investigation was conducted to investigate these claims. José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, president of the metallurgical company Acindar, who was Minister of Economy between 1976 and 1980, was criminally prosecuted in the case of the kidnapping of the businessmen Federico and Miguel Gutheim, owners of SADECO cotton company.

There was also suspected participation from national media outlets such as Clarin, La Nación and La Razón, the three most important Argentine newspapers at the time. Together they negotiated the buyout of Papel Prensa, the largest national manufacturer of newsprint, then owned by the widow of David Graiver, Lidia Papaleo and his family estate, after his death in a plane crash on August 7, 1976.

Papaleo and the other private partners negotiated the sale of their shares on November 2, 1976. She, along with Graiver's brother and father, were illegally detained by the Buenos Aires Province Police on March 14, 1977 on suspected financial connections her late husband had with the guerrilla organization Montoneros, and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, though an appeals court later cleared the defendants of all charges.

According to Papaleo, the sale was made under duress. She had been receiving death threats and had been told by Papel Prensa's president, Pedro Martínez Segovia, who said was representing then Minister of Economy José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, that she should sell her stake in the company. She, along with her family, attended a night meeting at the La Nación offices on November 2. There, she testified, that the representative of Clarín, Hector Magnetto, presented her with a document which said "Sign, or it will cost you your daughter's life and your own".

In September 1978, a group of businessmen, among whom were Ernestina Herrera de Noble and Hector Magnetto from Grupo Clarín and Bartolomé Luis Mitre from La Nación, along with members of the military junta inaugurated the Papel Prensa plant in San Justo.

In 2016, Magnetto, Mitre and Noble were declared innocent. Federal Judge Julián Ercolini ruled that there was not enough evidence of any wrongdoing to accuse them.

During a 1981 interview whose contents were revealed by declassified CIA documents in 2000, former DINA agent Michael Townley explained that Ignacio Novo Sampol, member of the CORU anti-Castro organization, had agreed to involve the Cuban Nationalist Movement in the kidnapping in Buenos Aires of the president of a Dutch bank. The abduction was organized by civilian SIDE agents to obtain a ransom. Townley said that Novo Sampol had provided $6,000 from the Cuban Nationalist Movement, forwarded to the civilian SIDE agents to pay for the preparation expenses of the kidnapping. After returning to the United States, Novo Sampol sent Townley a stock of paper, used to print pamphlets in the name of Grupo Rojo (Red Group), an imaginary Argentine Marxist terrorist organization, which was to claim credit for the abduction of the Dutch banker. Townley declared that the pamphlets were distributed in Mendoza and Córdoba together with false flag bombings perpetrated by SIDE agents. The aim was to establish the existence of the fake Grupo Rojo. However, the SIDE agents procrastinated too much and the kidnapping was never carried out.

The exact chronology of the repression occurring before the Operation Condor's beginning in March 1976 is still debated, but some sectors claim the long political conflict started in 1969 as individual cases of state-sponsored terrorism against Peronism and the left can be traced back to the bombing of Plaza de Mayo and Revolución Libertadora in 1955. The Trelew massacre of 1972, the actions of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance since 1973 and Isabel Martínez de Perón's "annihilation decrees" against left-wing guerrillas during Operativo Independencia (Operation Independence) in 1975 have also been suggested as dates for the beginning of the Dirty War.

The discontent with Perón in 1973 started due to his drift to the right after having been a popular leftist leader for the first half of the 20th century. Many of the groups that supported him throughout the 1940s and 1950s argued that "Peron was betraying the movement by aligning himself with industrialists foreign interests." CIA research paper, "Insurgent Success and Failure: Selected Case Studies." Secret, May 1983 The attacks by the left were met by ruthless action by the government and the Argentina Anticommunist Alliance (AAA), a group known since the 1930s for its violent and brutal stance towards leftist groups.

Targets of the junta were anyone believed to be associated with activist groups, including trade union members and students. These included underage students, like the ones tortured and murdered in the Night of the Pencils, an operation directed by Ramón Camps, General and head of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police from April 1976 to December 1977. The rationale behind attacks against non-combatants was the belief that anyone not sharing government ideology or supporting its actions was a threat; it was believed that "any party that has supported or continues to support the enemy shall be considered a party of the enemy". ProQuest 821676937

Other junta targets were people who uncovered evidence of government corruption and those thought to hold left-wing views (including French nuns Léonie Duquet and Alice Domon, kidnapped by Alfredo Astiz). Ramón Camps told in 1984 that he had used torture as an interrogation method and orchestrated 5,000 forced disappearances. He had justified the appropriation of newborns from their imprisoned mothers "because subversive parents will raise subversive children". The individuals who suddenly vanished are called los desaparecidos, meaning "the missing ones" or "disappeared". The people that disappeared throughout the 1970s came from a variety of backgrounds: not just suspected terrorists, but also non-combatants. According to a declassified 1979 document from the U.S. Department of State, fifty-five disappearances were occurring per month, or approximately two per day. Additionally, people who sought to stay "peaceful" during the attacks were targeted by the government, based on the belief that if left alone, they would pose an even greater danger. This was despite the fact that 80 percent of Argentine torture victims had no knowledge of subversive activities.

In December 1976, 22 captured Montoneros responsible for the death of General Cáceres Monié and the attack on the Argentine Army 29th Mountain Infantry Regiment were tortured and executed during the massacre of Margarita Belén in the military Chaco Province, for which Videla would be found guilty of homicide during the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, in addition to the guilty verdicts against Cristino Nicolaides, junta leader Leopoldo Galtieri and Santa Fe Provincial Police chief Wenceslao Ceniquel. The same year, 50 unknown persons were illegally executed by firing squad in Córdoba. Victims' relatives uncovered evidence that some children taken from their mothers soon after birth were being raised as the adopted children of military servicemembers, as in the case of Silvia Quintela, a member of the Montoneros guerrillas movement. For three decades, the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group founded in 1977, has demanded the return of these kidnapped children, estimated to number as many as 500. In 1979, security forces violently arrested and threatened the members of this group, made up predominantly of mothers who held weekly silent demonstrations in the capital's main square for over two years to demand justice for their disappeared children. That same year, over 38 bodies, "many without heads or hands", were found on Argentina's shorelines. Department of State report, "Next Steps in Argentina," Secret, January 26, 1979

A declassified May 1978 U.S. State Department memorandum asserts that "if there has been a net reduction in reports of torture, this is not because torture has been forsworn but 'derives from fewer operations' because the number of terrorists and subversives has diminished". The memorandum adds that disappearances "include not only suspected terrorists but also encompass a broader range of people, for example, labor leaders, workers, clergymen, human rights advocates, scientists, doctors, and political party leaders". It also describes torture methods used to intimidate and extract information, including electric shocks, prolonged immersion in water, cigarette burns, sexual abuse, rape, removal of teeth and fingernails, castration, and burning with boiling water, oil and acid. Another declassified U.S. State Department memorandum stated that security forces "simply murdered" a couple in their own home without even taking them to a detention center, showing the power the military had in 1976 and beyond.

According to a 2000 Human Rights Review, previous Argentina coups had imposed a strong military presence, the military portraying its struggle as one seeking to preserve Argentine values, which justified their human rights violations. But none had been as violent and brutal as the 1976 coup.

In late 1979, Amnesty International accused the Videla military government of being responsible for the disappearance of 15,000 to 20,000 Argentine citizens since the 1976 coup. The Registro Unificado de Víctimas del Terrorismo de Estado (Ruvte) unconvered records of 662 people disappeared under the presidency of Isabel Perón, and another 6,348 disappeared during the military dictatorship.

In 1980, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a Catholic human rights activist who had organized the Servicio de Paz y Justicia (Peace and Justice Service) and suffered torture while held without trial for 14 months in a Buenos Aires concentration camp, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in defense of human rights.

Declassified documents of the Chilean secret police cite an official estimate by the Batallón de Inteligencia 601 of 22,000 killed or " disappeared" between 1975 and mid-1978. During this period, at least 12,000 "disappeared" were detained by PEN ( Poder Ejecutivo Nacional, anglicized as National Executive Power) and kept in clandestine detention camps throughout Argentina, before eventually being freed under diplomatic pressure. In 2003, the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons recorded the forced disappearance of 8,961 persons from 1976 to 1983, although it noted that the actual number is higher. Military junta members currently in prison for crimes against humanity refused to give Argentine courts the lists of names (and numbers) of kidnapped, tortured, murdered or disappeared people, so the exact number of victims remains uncertain.

Under the Carlos Menem government, Congress passed legislation to provide compensation to victims' families. Some 11,000 Argentine next of kin have applied to the relevant authorities and received up to US$200,000 each as monetary compensation for the loss of loved ones during the military dictatorship, while others such as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo refused to take any money from a government they considered to follow the same neoliberal policies dictated by Operation Condor. After a 2017 ruling by the Supreme Court, the National Congress of Argentina excluded convicts of crimes against humanity from the reduced sentences granted to other convicts.

In an unclassified memorandum from the U.S. Department of State written in 1976, it was stated the cooperation efforts there were among Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, etc. to fight against subversive groups. These efforts ranged from bilateral communications between these countries to capture and monitor these groups; the fight against these "terrorist exponents" proposed to unify the greatest enemies of South America: Brazil and Argentina given that they saw the threat of communism as more dangerous than each other. ARA Monthly Report (July) "The 'Third World War' and South America" August 3, 1976 An example of this alliance was the deportation of two Montoneros that were to arrive from Mexico in Brazil for a meeting with the leftist group but before the two Montoneros were intercepted in Rio de Janeiro by the Argentine military with permission of the Brazilian military intelligence. Conversation with Argentine Intelligence Source, April 7, 1980

The cooperation between these countries was closely monitored by the United States government given that it has always had interests in maintaining hegemony over this part of the continent. The United States worried that "these regimes threaten[ed] their increasing isolation from the West and the opening of deep ideological divisions among the countries of the hemispheres." The National Security Archive Even when the United States refused to call the conflict between these South American countries and the subversive groups a 'Third World War', according to the Memorandum, it was important for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay egos, salaries, and their equipment-budgets to believe in this 'Third World War'. Additionally, the U.S. states its critical goal which is to get the political ideology out of human rights in order to avoid "charges of 'intervention'" in any of these Latin American countries.

The interests of the United States in Argentina during the Cold War were rooted in different factors other than the threat of the spread of communism in South America as it may appear at first sight. Although the subversive groups that were attacking the Argentine government were leftist groups and some Marxist groups, the United States was much more interested in the nuclear power that Argentina possessed. According to a U.S. Department of State memorandum, Argentina was part of the "Dirty Dozen", which was a list of countries that either had the capability of acquiring nuclear weapons but no motivation to do so, or that had the motivation to acquire nuclear weapons but lacked the capability. In the document, it is noted that the biggest security concerns for Argentina were rivals Brazil and Chile, given that these three countries wanted hegemony in Latin America.

In the same realm, the Argentine economy needed to stop depending on fossil fuels and had strong motivation to expand their nuclear program; this could be one of the motivations behind the U.S.'s lack of action against the human rights violations that were happening in Argentina. In a 1976 declassified memorandum from the U.S. Department of State, it is stated the importance to let President Videla the "adverse effect revelation of the assassination scheme will have on Argentina efforts to obtain loans and otherwise come up with solutions for improving its economy". In this same document it is stated that "Argentina is the country which [the United States] should be able to exert the most leverage", which demonstrates the American desire for hegemony in the region, trying to exploit the 'weaknesses' of the Argentine dictatorship for its own benefit. The United States knew that it had to react to the human rights atrocities happening in Argentine because if it did not then "our singling out of Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile will appear highly politicized and will serve to fuel the critics who argue that US human rights policy is focused on countries where major US interests are not at stake."

In 2012 Professor Melisa Slatman published "Actividades extraterritoriales represivas de la Armada Argentina durante la última dictadura civil militar de Seguridad Nacional (1976-1983)" ProQuest 1944353635 in the Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación (FaHCE) of Universidad Nacional de la Plata where she gives her perspective about the creation of Operation Condor. Slatman argues that this operation was a product of a social construct where there was no empirical evidence other than the desire for repressive states to gain hegemony on the Southern of the hemisphere whether that was by the United States and its perceived fight against communism or by the Southern Cone and their desire of control.

She states that there is no way in which the people can truly know what happens during this operation given that the documents that have been released are merely a reflection of the voices and factors that played a part but it is only one side of the story. The use of these documents as the only sources that there are about Operation Condor fails to inform experts if it was truly an operation or if it was much more extensive than that more like a system. Furthermore, Slatman argues that these documents present a biased point of view given that the majority of them come from American institutions that seek to present the information that established American hegemony and the unilateral relationships between the U.S. and South American countries. ProQuest 1944353635

By the time of the coup on 24 March 1976, the number of disappeared held under Poder Ejecutivo Nacional (PEN) stood at least 5,182. Some 18,000 disappeared in the form of PEN detainees were imprisoned in Argentina by the end of 1977 and it is estimated that some 3,000 deaths occurred in the Navy Engineering School (ESMA) alone. These disappeared were held incommunicado and reportedly tortured. Some, like senator Hipolito Solari Yrigoyen and socialist leader professor Alfredo Bravo, were "detenidos-desaparecidos".

By refusing to acknowledge the existence of what was later established to be at least 340 concentration camps throughout the country they also denied the existence of their occupants. The total number of people who were detained for long periods was 8,625. Among them was future President Carlos Menem, who between 1976 and 1981 had been a political prisoner.

Some 8,600 PEN disappeared were eventually released under international pressure. Of these, 4,029 were held in illegal detention centers for less than a year, 2,296 for one to three years, 1,172 for three to five years, 668 for five to seven years and 431 for seven to nine years. Of these, 157 were murdered after being released from detention. In one frank memo, written in 1977, an official at the Foreign Ministry issued the following warning:

Our situation presents certain aspects which are without doubt difficult to defend if they are analyzed from the point of view of international law. These are: the delays incurred before foreign consuls can visit detainees of foreign nationality (contravening article 34 of the Convention of Vienna), the fact that those detained under Executive Power (PEN) are denied the right to legal advice or defense, the complete lack of information of persons detained under PEN, the fact that PEN detainees are not processed for long periods of time, the fact that there are no charges against detainees. The kidnapping and disappearance of people.

At the time when the CONADEP report was prepared, the Asociación Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo ( Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo or Abuelas), had records of 172 children who disappeared together with their parents or were born at the numerous concentration camps and had not been returned to their families. The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo now believe up to 500 grandchildren were stolen and 102 are believed to have been located. On 13 April 2000, the grandmothers received a tip off that the birth certificate of Rosa Roisinblit's infant grandson, born in detention, had been falsified and the child given to an Air Force civil agent and his wife. Following the anonymous phone call, he was located and agreed to a DNA blood test, confirming his true identity. Rodolfo Fernando, grandson of Roisinblit, is the first known newborn of missing children returned to his family through the work of the grandmothers. On 6 October 1978, Roisinblit's daughter, 25-year-old Patricia Julia Roisinblit de Perez, who was active in the Montoneros, was kidnapped along with her husband, 24-year-old José Martínas Pérez Rojo.

The case of Maria Eugenia Sampallo (born some time in 1978) also received considerable attention as Sampallo sued the couple who adopted her illegally as a baby after her parents disappeared, both Montoneros. Her grandmother spent 24 years looking for her. The case was filed in 2001 after DNA tests indicated that Osvaldo Rivas and Maria Cristina Gomez were not her biological parents. Along with army Captain Enrique Berthier, who furnished the couple with the baby, they were sentenced respectively to 8, 7 and 10 years in prison for kidnapping.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo is the best-known Argentine human rights organization. For over thirty years, the Mothers have campaigned to find out about the fate of their lost relatives. The Mothers first held their vigil at Plaza de Mayo in 1977, where they continue to gather there every Thursday afternoon. An article of the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo monthly publication caused quite a stir in the mid-1980s, when the Human Rights Group Familiares were quoted as saying: "Familiares assumes the causes of their children's fight as their own, vindicates all the disappeared as fighters of the people, [...] [and when occurs] the defeat of imperialism and the sovereignty of the people, we will have achieved our objectives".

In 1986, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo split into two groups: Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo - Linea Fundadora (Founding Line) remains focused in recovering the remains of the missing and bringing former police and military commanders to justice. On the other hand, the Asociacion de Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo Association) is opposed to the search for and identification of the missing and have also rejected monetary compensation. In April 2004, the former head of the Mothers of Plaza Hebe de Bonafini declared her admiration for her missing children Jorge Omar and Raúl Alfredo for taking up arms as left-wing guerrillas.

To this day, white handkerchiefs are painted on the streets of Argentina, as a reminder of the terroristic actions of the military junta and grief felt by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

In 1980, the Argentine military helped Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, Stefano Delle Chiaie and major drug lords mount the bloody Cocaine Coup of Luis García Meza Tejada in neighboring Bolivia. They hired 70 foreign agents for this task, which was managed in particular by the 601st Intelligence Battalion headed by General Guillermo Suárez Mason. After having been trained by the French military, in the frame of Operation Charly the Argentine Armed Forces would train their counterparts not only in Nicaragua, but also El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. From 1977 to 1984, after the Falklands War the Argentine Armed Forces exported counter-insurgency tactics, including the systemic use of torture, death squads and disappearances. Special force units, such as Batallón de Inteligencia 601, headed in 1979 by Colonel Jorge Alberto Muzzio, trained the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, in particular in Lepaterique base.

Following the release of classified documents and an interview with Duane Clarridge, former CIA responsible for operations with the Contras, the showed that with the election of President Jimmy Carter in 1977 the CIA was blocked from engaging in the special warfare it had previously been engaged in. In conformity with the National Security Doctrine, the Argentine military supported U.S. goals in Latin America while they pressured the United States to be more active in counter-revolutionary activities. In 1981, following the election of Ronald Reagan the CIA took over training of the Contras from Batallón 601. Many Chilean and Uruguayan exiles in Argentina were murdered by Argentine security forces (including high-profile figures such as General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires in 1974, Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz and Zelmar Michelini in Buenos Aires in 1976). Others, such as Wilson Ferreira Aldunate escaped death.

Although at least six U.S. citizens had been "disappeared" by the Argentine military by 1976, high-ranking state department officials including then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had secretly backed up Argentina's new military rulers. During his years as U.S. Secretary of State, Kissinger had congratulated Argentina's military junta for combating the left, stating that in his opinion "the government of Argentina had done an outstanding job in wiping out terrorist forces". The importance of his role was not known about until published in October 1987 an exposé written by Martin Edwin Andersen, a Washington Post and special correspondent, Kissinger had secretly given the junta a "green light" for their state policies, being the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), founded in 1946 assigned the specific goal of teaching anti-communist counterinsurgency training, the place where several Latin American dictators, generations of their military where educated in state terrorism tactics, including the uses of torture in its curriculum. In 2000/2001, the institute was renamed to WHINSEC. According to a Command and General Foundation News issue, the current curriculum at WHINSEC is compatible with curriculum taught at U.S. military academies. WHINSEC faculty members travel to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas throughout the year in order to remain up to date on curriculum changes. However, the school remains controversial due to its influence over affairs in Latin America and its education of Latin American state actors on crimes against humanity within the military and law enforcement.

In Buenos Aires, Robert C. Hill, a five-time conservative Republican ambassadorial appointee, worked behind the scenes to keep the Argentina military junta from engaging in massive human rights violations. Upon finding out that Kissinger had given the Argentine generals a "green light" for the state terrorism of the junta in June 1976 while at an Organization of American States meeting in Santiago (at the Hotel Carrera, later made famous as the Hotel Cabrera in the film ), Hill quietly scrambled to try to roll back the Kissinger decision. Hill did this although Kissinger aides told him that if he continued, Kissinger would likely have him fired. During that meeting with Argentine foreign minister César Augusto Guzzetti, Kissinger assured him that the United States was an ally.

In October 1987, The Nation noted: "'Hill was shaken, he became very disturbed, by the case of the son of a thirty-year embassy employee, a student who was arrested, never to be seen again,' recalled former New York Times reporter Juan de Onis. 'Hill took a personal interest.' He went to the Interior Minister, an army general with whom he had worked on drug cases, saying, 'Hey, what about this? We're interested in this case.' He buttonholed (Foreign Minister Cesar) Guzzetti and, finally, President Jorge R. Videla himself. 'All he got was stonewalling; he got nowhere.' de Onis said. 'His last year was marked by increasing disillusionment and dismay, and he backed his staff on human rights right to the hilt." "It sickened me," said Patricia Derian, the Mississippi civil rights crusader who became President Jimmy Carter's State Department point person on human rights, after Hill reported to her Kissinger's real role, "that with an imperial wave of his hand, an American could sentence people to death on the basis of a cheap whim. As time went on I saw Kissinger's footprints in a lot of countries. It was the repression of a democratic ideal".

In 1978, former secretary Kissinger was feted by the "dirty war" generals as a much touted guest of honor at the World Cup soccer matches held in Argentina. In a letter to The Nation editor Victor Navasky, protesting publication of the 1987 article, Kissinger claimed: "At any rate, the notion of Hill as a passionate human rights advocate is news to all his former associates". Ironically, Kissinger's posthumous lampooning of Hill (who had died in 1978) as human rights advocate was later shown to be false by none other than once and future Kissinger aide Henry Shlaudeman, later ambassador to Buenos Aires, who told William E. Knight, an oral historian working for the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) Foreign Affairs Oral History Project:

It really came to a head when I was Assistant Secretary, or it began to come to a head, in the case of Argentina where the dirty war was in full flower. Bob Hill, who was Ambassador then in Buenos Aires, a very conservative Republican politician - by no means liberal or anything of the kind, began to report quite effectively about what was going on, this slaughter of innocent civilians. He, at one time in fact, sent me a back-channel telegram saying that the Foreign Minister, who had just come for a visit to Washington and had returned to Buenos Aires, had gloated to him that Kissinger had said nothing to him about human rights. I don't know - I wasn't present at the interview.

State Department documents obtained in 2003 during the George W. Bush administration by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act show that in October 1976 Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and other high-ranking U.S. officials gave their full support to the Argentine military junta and urged them to hurry up and finish their actions before the Congress cut military aid. On 5 October 1976, Kissinger met with Argentina's Foreign Minister and stated:

Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed the better. [...] The human rights problem is a growing one. Your Ambassador can apprise you. We want a stable situation. We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better. Whatever freedoms you could restore would help.

The United States was also a key provider of economic and military assistance to the Videla regime during the earliest and most intense phase of the repression. In early April 1976, the Congress approved a request by the Ford administration, written and supported by Henry Kissinger, to grant $50,000,000 in security assistance to the junta. At the end of 1976, Congress granted an additional $30,000,000 in military aid and recommendations by the Ford administration to increase military aid to $63,500,000 the following year were also considered by Congress. U.S. assistance, training and military sales to the Videla regime continued under the successive Carter administration up until at least 30 September 1978 when military aid was officially called to a stop within section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act.

In 1977 and 1978, the United States sold more than $120,000,000 in military spare parts to Argentina and in 1977 the Department of Defense was granted $700,000 to train 217 Argentine military officers. By the time the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program was suspended to Argentina in 1978, total U.S. training costs for Argentine military personnel since 1976 totalled $1,115,000. The Reagan administration, whose first term began in 1981, asserted that the previous Carter administration had weakened U.S. diplomatic relationships with Cold War allies in Argentina and reversed the previous administration's official condemnation of the junta's human rights practices. The re-establishment of diplomatic ties allowed for CIA collaboration with the Argentine intelligence service in training and arming the Nicaraguan Contras against the Sandinista government. The 601 Intelligence Battalion, for example, trained Contras at Lepaterique base in Honduras.

U.S. corporations such as Ford Motor Company and Citibank also collaborated with the junta in the repression and disappearance of workers active in unions.

Investigating French military influence in Argentina, French journalist Marie-Monique Robin found in 2003 the original document proving that a 1959 agreement between Paris and Buenos Aires initiated a "permanent French military mission" in Argentina and reported on it (she found the document in the archives of the Quai d'Orsay, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs). The mission was formed of veterans who had fought in the Algerian War and it was assigned to the offices of the chief of staff of the Argentine Armed Forces. It was continued until 1981, date of the election of socialist François Mitterrand.

After release of her documentary film Escadrons de la mort, l'école française in 2003 which explored the French connection with South American nations, Robin said in an interview with newspaper: "French have systematized a military technique in urban environment which would be copied and pasted to Latin American dictatorships". She noted that the French military had systematized the methods they used to suppress the insurgency during the 1957 Battle of Algiers and exported them to the War School in Buenos Aires. Roger Trinquier's famous book on counter-insurgency had a very strong influence in South America. In addition, Robin said she was shocked to learn that the DST French intelligence agency gave DINA the names of refugees who returned to Chile (Operation Retorno) from France during their counterinsurgency. All of these Chileans have been killed: "Of course, this puts in cause [ sic - this makes responsible] the French government, and Giscard d'Estaing, then President of the Republic. I was very shocked by the duplicity of the French diplomatic position which, on one hand, received with open arms the political refugees, and, on the other hand, collaborated with the dictatorships".

On 10 September 2003, Green members of parliament Noël Mamère, Martine Billard and Yves Cochet filed a request to form a Parliamentary Commission to examine the "role of France in the support of military regimes in Latin America from 1973 to 1984" before the Foreign Affairs Commission of the National Assembly, presided by Edouard Balladur ( UMP). Apart from French newspapers did not report this request. UMP deputy Roland Blum, in charge of the commission, refused to let Marie-Monique Robin testify on this topic. The Commission in December 2003 published a 12-page report claiming that the French had never signed a military agreement with Argentina.

When Minister of Foreign Affairs Dominique de Villepin travelled to Chile in February 2003, he claimed that no co-operation between France and the military regimes had occurred. People in Argentina were outraged when they saw the 2003 film, which included three generals defending their actions during the Dirty War. Due to public pressure, President Néstor Kirchner ordered the military to bring charges against the three for justifying the crimes of the dictatorship. They were Albano Hargindeguy, Reynaldo Bignone and Ramón Genaro Díaz Bessone.

The next year, Robin published her book under the same title Escadrons de la mort: l'école française ( Death Squads: The French School, 2004), revealing more material. She showed how Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's government secretly collaborated with Videla's junta in Argentina and with Augusto Pinochet's regime in Chile. Alcides Lopez Aufranc was among the first Argentine officers to go in 1957 to Paris to study for two years at the Ecole de Guerre military school, two years before the Cuban Revolution and when no Argentine guerrillas existed:

In practice, declared Robin to , the arrival of the French in Argentina led to a massive extension of intelligence services and of the use of torture as the primary weapon of the anti- subversive war in the concept of modern warfare.

The annihilation decrees signed by Isabel Perón had been inspired by French texts. During the Battle of Algiers, the police forces were put under the authority of the Army. 30,000 persons were "disappeared". In Algeria. Reynaldo Bignone, named President of the Argentine junta in July 1982, said in Robin's film: "The March 1976 order of battle is a copy of the Algerian battle". The same statements were made by Generals Albano Harguindeguy, Videla's Interior Minister; and Diaz Bessone, former Minister of Planification and ideologue of the junta. The French military would transmit to their Argentine counterparts the notion of an "internal enemy" and the use of torture, death squads and quadrillages (grids).

Marie-Monique Robin also demonstrated that since the 1930s, there had been ties between the French far-right and Argentina, in particular through the Catholic fundamentalist organisation Cité catholique, created by Jean Ousset, a former secretary of Charles Maurras, the founder of the royalist Action Française movement. La Cité edited a review, Le Verbe, which influenced militaries during the Algerian War, notably by justifying the use of torture. At the end of the 1950s, the Cité catholique founded groups in Argentina and organised cells in the Army. It greatly expanded during the government of General Juan Carlos Onganía, in particular in 1969. The key figure of the Cité catholique in Argentina was priest Georges Grasset, who became Videla's personal confessor. He had been the spiritual guide of the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), the pro-French Algeria terrorist movement founded in Franquist Spain.

Robin believes that this Catholic fundamentalist current in the Argentine Army contributed to the importance and length of the French-Argentine co-operation. In Buenos Aires, Georges Grasset maintained links with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of Society of St. Pius X in 1970, who was excommunicated in 1988. The Society of Pius-X has four monasteries in Argentina, the largest one in La Reja. A French priest from there said to Marie-Monique Robin: "To save the soul of a Communist priest, one must kill him." Luis Roldan, former Secretary of Cult under Carlos Menem, President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999, was presented by Dominique Lagneau, the priest in charge of the monastery, to Robin as "Mr. Cité catholique in Argentina". Bruno Genta and Juan Carlos Goyeneche represent this ideology.

Antonio Caggiano, archbishop of Buenos Aires from 1959 to 1975, wrote a prologue to Jean Ousset's 1961 Spanish version of Le Marxisme-léninisme. Caggiano said that "Marxism is the negation of Christ and his Church" and referred to a Marxist conspiracy to take over the world, for which it was necessary to "prepare for the decisive battle". Together with President Arturo Frondizi ( Radical Civic Union, UCR), Caggiano inaugurated the first course on counter-revolutionary warfare in the Higher Military College. (Frondizi was eventually overthrown for being "tolerant of Communism").

By 1963, cadets at the Navy Mechanics School started receiving counter-insurgency classes. They were shown the film The Battle of Algiers, which showed the methods used by the French Army in Algeria. Caggiano, the military chaplain at the time, introduced the film and added a religiously oriented commentary to it. On 2 July 1966, four days after President Arturo Umberto Illia was removed from office and replaced by the dictator Juan Carlos Onganía, Caggiano declared: "We are at a sort of dawn, in which, thanks to God, we all sense that the country is again headed for greatness".

Argentine Admiral Luis María Mendía, who had started the practice of "death flights", testified in January 2007 before Argentine judges, that a French intelligence agent, Bertrand de Perseval, had participated in the abduction of the two French nuns, Léonie Duquet and Alice Domont. Perseval, who lives today in Thailand, denied any links with the abduction. He has admitted being a former member of the OAS and having escaped from Algeria after the March 1962 Évian Accords put an end to the Algerian War (1954-1962).

During the 2007 hearings, Luis María Mendía referred to material presented in Robin's documentary, titled The Death Squads - the French School (2003). He asked the Argentine Court to call numerous French officials to testify to their actions: former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, former French Premier Pierre Messmer, former French ambassador to Buenos Aires Françoise de la Gosse, and all officials in place in the French embassy in Buenos Aires between 1976 and 1983. Besides this "French connection", María Mendía also charged former head of state Isabel Perón and former ministers Carlos Ruckauf and Antonio Cafiero, who had signed the "anti-subversion decrees" before Videla's 1976 coup. According to Graciela Dalo, a survivor of the ESMA interrogations, Mendía was trying to establish that these crimes were legitimate, as the 1987 Obediencia Debida Act claimed them to be and further that the ESMA actions had been committed under Isabel Perón's "anti-subversion decrees" (which would give them a formal appearance of legality, although torture is forbidden by the Argentine Constitution). Alfredo Astiz also referred to the "French connexion" when testifying in court.

The junta relinquished power in 1983. After democratic elections, President elect Raúl Alfonsín created the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) in December 1983, led by writer Ernesto Sábato, to collect evidence of Dirty War crimes. The gruesome details, including documentation of the disappearance of nearly 9,000 people, shocked the world. Jorge Rafael Videla, head of the junta, was among the generals convicted of human rights crimes, including forced disappearances, torture, murders and kidnappings. President Alfonsín ordered that the nine members of the military junta be judicially charged during the 1985 Trial of the Juntas. As of 2010, most of the military officials were in trial or jail. In 1985, Videla was sentenced to life imprisonment at the military prison of Magdalena. Several senior officers also received jail terms. In the Prologue to the Nunca Más report ("Never Again"), Ernesto Sábato wrote:

From the moment of their abduction, the victims lost all rights. Deprived of all communication with the outside world, held in unknown places, subjected to barbaric torture, kept ignorant of their immediate or ultimate fate, they risked being either thrown into a river or the sea, weighted down with blocks of cement, or burned to ashes. They were not mere objects, however, and still possessed all the human attributes: they could feel pain, could remember a mother, child or spouse, could feel infinite shame at being raped in public.

Reacting to the human rights trials, hardliners in the Argentine army staged a series of uprisings against the Alfonsín government. They barricaded themselves in several military barracks, demanding an end to the trials. During Holy Week ( Semana Santa) in April 1987, Lieutenant Colonel Aldo Rico (commander of the 18th Infantry Regiment in Misiones province) and several junior army officers barricaded themselves in the Campo de Mayo army barracks. The military rebels, called the carapintadas, demanded an end to the trials and the resignation of army chief of staff General Héctor Ríos Ereñú. Rico believed that the Alfonsin government would be unwilling or unable to put down the uprising. He was partially correct in that the Second Army Corps commander's orders to surround the barracks were ignored by his subordinates. Alfonsin called on the people to come to the Plaza de Mayo to defend democracy; hundreds of thousands answered his call.

After a helicopter visit by Alfonsin to Campo de Mayo, the rebels finally surrendered. There were denials of a deal, but several generals were forced into early retirement and General Jose Dante Caridi soon replaced Erenu as commander of the army. In January 1988, a second military rebellion took place when Rico refused to accept the detention orders issued by a military court for having led the previous uprising. This time he barricaded himself in the 4th Infantry Regiment in Monte Caseros and rejected Caridi's calls to turn himself in. Rico again demanded an end to the human rights trials, saying Alfonsin's promises to the rebels had not been fulfilled. Caridi ordered several army units to suppress the rebellion. Their advance to the Monte Caseros barracks was slowed by rain and reports that rebel soldiers had laid mines which had wounded three loyal officers. Nevertheless, Rico's forces were defeated after a three-hour battle. They surrendered on 17 January 1988, and 300 rebels were arrested and sentenced to prison terms.

A third uprising took place in December 1988. This time the uprising was led by Lieutenant-Colonel Mohammed Alí Seineldín and supported by 1,000 rebel troops. This uprising proved successful. Several of Seineldín's and his followers' demands were agreed to. Caridi was forced into retirement and replaced by General Francisco Gassino, who had served in the Falklands War and was held in high esteem by the carapintadas. On 5 October 1989, as part of sweeping reforms, newly elected President Carlos Menem pardoned those convicted in the human right trials and the rebel leaders imprisoned for taking part in the military uprisings. These amnesty laws were long unpopular, first with surviving Dirty War victims and their families, later with most of the population.

In 2005, under the Nestor Kirchner presidency, the trials were opened again. Most of the Junta's members are currently in prison for crimes against humanity and genocide.

Foreign governments whose citizens were victims of the Dirty War (which included citizens of Czechoslovakia, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Peru and several other nations) are pressing individual cases against the former military regime. France has sought the extradition of Captain Alfredo Astiz for the kidnapping and murder of its nationals, among them nuns Léonie Duquet and Alice Domon.

On 23 January 1989, an armed group of around 40 guerrillas, a faction of the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (MTP or All for the Fatherland Movement), attacked the La Tablada army barracks on the outskirts of Buenos Aires to "prevent" a military coup. The attack resulted in 28 of the guerrillas killed, five "disappeared" and 13 imprisoned. Eleven police and military died, and 53 were wounded in the fighting. The guerrillas claimed to have acted to prevent a military coup. Among the dead at La Tablada was Jorge Baños, a human rights lawyer who had joined the guerrillas. The MTP attack to prevent a military coup has been suspected to be led by infiltrated Intelligence military service.

In 2002, Máxima, daughter of Jorge Zorreguieta, a civilian cabinet minister of Argentina during the early phase of the Dictatorship, married Willem-Alexander, crown prince of the Netherlands. All of the Netherlands had wrestled in controversy over her suitability, but ultimately the marriage took place without the presence of her parents. Máxima thus became Queen when her husband ascended to the throne in 2013. In August 2016, Argentine President Mauricio Macri was widely condemned by human rights group for calling into question the number of 30,000 disappeared and for referring to the period as a "Dirty War".

During the Argentine Bicentennial Independence Celebrations (on 9 July 2016), former Colonel Carlos Carrizo Salvadores drew criticism from the left for leading the march of Falklands War veterans and Veterans of Operation Independence, the counterinsurgency campaign in Northern Argentina. Carrizo Salvadores had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 2013 for his part as a paratrooper captain in the so-called Rosario Chapel massacre in Catamarca Province, but was acquitted under the new government of Mauricio Macri.

Under Néstor Kirchner's term as president in 2003, the Argentine Congress revoked the longstanding amnesty laws, also called the Pardon Laws. In 2005, the Argentine Supreme Court ruled these laws were unconstitutional. The government re-opened prosecution of war crimes. From then through October 2011, 259 persons were convicted for crimes against humanity and genocide and sentenced in Argentine courts, including Alfredo Astiz, a notorious torturer, that month.

In 2006, 24 March was designated as a public holiday in Argentina, the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice. That year on the 30th anniversary of the coup, a huge crowd filled the streets to remember what happened during the military government and ensure it did not happen again.

In 2006, the government began its first trials of military and security officers since the repeal of the "Pardon Laws". Miguel Etchecolatz, the police commissioner of the province of Buenos Aires in the 1970s, faced trial on charges of illegal detention, torture and homicide. He was found guilty of six counts of murder, six counts of unlawful imprisonment and seven counts of torture and sentenced in September 2006 to life imprisonment.

In February 2006, some former Ford Argentine workers sued the U.S.-based company, alleging that local managers worked with the security forces to detain union members on the premises and torture them. The civil suit against Ford Motor Company and Ford Argentina called for four former company executives and a retired military officer to be questioned. According to Pedro Norberto Troiani, one of the plaintiffs, 25 employees were detained in the plant, located 40 miles (60 km) from Buenos Aires. Allegations have surfaced since 1998 that Ford officials were involved in state repression, but the company has denied the claims. Army personnel were reported to have arrived at the plant on the day of the military coup on 24 March 1976 and "disappearances" immediately started.

In 2007, President Cristina Kirchner continued prosecution of military and security officers responsible for the "disappearances".

On 14 December 2007, some 200 men who were at military service during the dictatorship demanded an audience with the governor of Tucumán Province, claiming they too were victims of the Junta as they had no choice and suffered hunger, abandonment, physical and psychological injuries, demanding a military pension.

In February 2010, a German court issued an international arrest warrant for former dictator Jorge Videla in connection with the death of 20-year-old Rolf Stawowiok in Argentina. He was a German citizen born in Argentina while his father was doing development work there. Rolf Stawowiok disappeared on 21 February 1978. In earlier cases, France, Italy and Spain had requested extradition of the Navy captain Alfredo Astiz for war crimes related to his work with ESMA, but were never successful.

In 1977, General Albano Harguindeguy, Interior Minister, admitted that 5,618 people disappeared in the form of PEN detenidos-desaparecidos were being held in detention camps throughout Argentina. According to a secret cable from DINA (Chilean secret police) in Buenos Aires, an estimate by the Argentine 601st Intelligence Battalion in mid-July 1978, which started counting victims in 1975, gave the figure of 22,000 persons - this document was first published by John Dinges in 2004.

On 15 April 2005, a human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (now Pope Francis), accusing him of conspiring with the junta in 1976 to kidnap two Jesuit priests. So far, no hard evidence has been presented linking the cardinal to this crime. It is known that the cardinal headed the Society of Jesus of Argentina in 1976 and had asked the two priests to leave their pastoral work following conflict within the Society over how to respond to the new military dictatorship, with some priests advocating a violent overthrow. The cardinal's spokesman flatly denied the allegations.

It has since been revealed that Cardinal Bergoglio made efforts behind the scenes to save and evacuate suspected dissidents who face persecution by the Argentine military Junta when he was the head of the Jesuits It is estimated that during his time as the head of the Jesuits Bergoglio saved the lives of over 1000 dissidents The Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo, initially harsh critics of Bergoglio, would end up reconciling with him when he became Pope, with Hebe Bonafini their leader saying he is "with the people"

A priest, Christian von Wernich, was chaplain of the Buenos Aires Province Police while it was under the command of General Ramón Camps during the dictatorship, with the rank of inspector. On 9 October 2007, he was found guilty of complicity in 7 homicides, 42 kidnappings and 32 instances of torture and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Some Catholic priests sympathised with and helped the Montoneros. Radical priests, including Father Alberto Carbone, who was eventually indicted in the murder of Aramburu, preached Marxism and presented the early Church fathers as model revolutionaries in an attempt to legitimise the violence. A Catholic youth leader, Juan Ignacio Isla Casares, with the help of the Montoneros commander Eduardo Pereira Rossi (nom de guerre "El Carlón") was the mastermind behind the ambush and killing of five policemen near San Isidro Cathedral on 26 October 1975.

Mario Firmenich, who later became the leader of the Montoneros, was the ex president of the Catholic Action Youth Group and a former seminarian himself. The Montoneros had ties with the Movement of Priests for the Third World and a Jesuit priest, Carlos Mugica.

The United States Declassification Project on Argentina

According to its front page, The United States Declassification Project on Argentina "represents a historic effort by United States government departments and agencies to identify, review, and provide public access to records that shed light on human rights abuses in Argentina between 1975 and 1984". The project was announced by President Barack Obama in 2016 after a request from Argentine President Mauricio Macri and human rights groups on the 40th anniversary of the 1976 military coup in Argentina. The documents were released in three tranches, in August 2016, December 2016 and April 2019. Gastón Chillier, of the Cels human rights group said "There are documents from six or seven different US intelligence agencies. We're hopeful there may be information there that could help in the continuing trials against human rights offenders from the period". Contained within the documents are descriptions of the methods used by the Argentinian dictatorship to kill its victims and dispose of their bodies. In addition, during his 2016 visit to Argentina, President Obama said that the United States "was too slow" to condemn human rights atrocities during the military junta years but stopped short of apologizing for Washington's early support for the military government.

Art, entertainment and media

Argentina Betrayed: Memory, Mourning, and Accountability, by Antonius C. G. M. Robben (2018)

Dirty Secrets, Dirty War: The Exile of Editor Robert J. Cox, by David Cox (2008).

The Ministry of Special Cases, novel by Nathan Englander (2007).

La Historia Oficial (English: The Official Story), revisionist critique by Nicolás Márquez (2006).

Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina, by Antonius C.G.M. Robben (2005).

Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina, by Paul H. Lewis (2001).

Suite argentina (English: Argentine Suite. Translated by Donald A. Yates. Online: Words Without Borders, October 2010) Four short stories by Edgar Brau (2000).

God's Assassins: State Terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s by M. Patricia Marchak (1999).

A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, by Marguerite Feitlowitz (1999).

Una sola muerte numerosa (English: A Single, Numberless Death), by Nora Strejilevich (1997).

The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior, by Horacio Verbitsky (1996).

Argentina's Lost Patrol: Armed Struggle, 1969-1979, by María José Moyano (1995).

Dossier Secreto: Argentina's Desaparecidos and the Myth of the "Dirty War", by Martin Edwin Andersen (1993).

Argentina's "Dirty War": An Intellectual Biography, by Donald C. Hodges (1991).

Behind the Disappearances: Argentina's Dirty War Against Human Rights and the United Nations, by Iain Guest (1990).

Argentina, 1943-1987: The National Revolution and Resistance, by Donald C. Hodges (1988).

Soldiers of Perón: Argentina's Montoneros, by Richard Gillespie (1982).

Guerrilla warfare in Argentina and Colombia, 1974-1982, by Bynum E. Weathers, Jr. (1982).

Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, by Jacobo Timerman (1981).

Guerrilla politics in Argentina, by Kenneth F. Johnson (1975).

La ligne bleue (English: The Blue Line), by Ingrid Betancourt (2014).

Guerra Sucia, by Nathaniel Kirby (2011).

Hijos/Figli - Children (2001), directed by Marco Bechis.

The Death Squads: The French School (2003), by Marie-Monique Robin (book and film).

Cautiva (2003), directed by Gaston Biraben. Movie related to the "stolen babies" case.

Burnt Oranges (2005), directed by Silvia Malagrino, wrote by Monica Flores Correa and edited by Sharon Karp.

Crónica de una fuga (2006), directed by Israel Adrián Caetano. Movie related to the Mansión Sere case.

The Disappeared (2007), directed by Peter Sanders.

Our Disappeared (2008), directed by Juan Mandelbaum.

Where Is My Grandchild? (2015), documentary by Retro Report about the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Azor (2021), directed by Andreas Fontana.

Proyecto Desaparecidos/Project Disappeared.

Unearthing Mysteries of Argentina's "Dirty War". Slideshow by CNN.

War Diary of Brigadier-General Acdel Vilas.

How Much Did the US Know About the Kidnapping, Torture, and Murder of Over 20,000 People in Argentina? Now, President Obama has the chance to apologize for American complicity in the dirty war by Martin Edwin Andersen, , 4 March 2016.

Kissinger and the Dirty War by Martin Edwin Andersen, The Nation, 31 October 1987.

1984 Report of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons.

Old Ideas in New Discourses: "The War Against Terrorism" and Collective Memory in Uruguay and Argentina.

Information from the Vanished Gallery.

The furthest boundary documentary (2004) on YouTube directed by Pablo Ratto.

A Serene Advocate for Chile's Disappeared by Alexei Barrionuevo, The New York Times, 22 January 2010.

Argentine Torture Survivor Patricia Isasa Tells of Her Struggle to Bring Her Torturers to Justice.

Kidnapped and Raised by a Military Family, a "Recovered Grandchild" Finds His Way Home. Video report by Democracy Now!.

Argentina holds 'death flights' trial. Video report by Al Jazeera America. 29 November 2012.

New Memo: Kissinger Gave the "Green Light" for Argentina's Dirty War. Mother Jones. 14 January 2014.

The United States Declassification Project on Argentina

The CIA's Secret Global War Against the Left. . 30 November 2020.

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The Dirty War ( Spanish: Guerra sucia) is the name used by the military junta or civic-military dictatorship of Argentina (Spanish: dictadura cívico-militar de Argentina) for the period of state terrorism in Argentina from 1976 to 1983 as a part of Operation Condor, during which military and security forces and right-wing death squads in the form of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA, or Triple A) hunted down any political dissidents and anyone believed to be associated with socialism, left-wing Peronism, or the Montoneros movement.

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For my proposal form I have spoken about all the different things I have learned throughout my time in the course.

For the first section I talk about everything I have learned from joining the course and what i had already knew before joining the course. I talk about how I have used this throughout the roles I have been given throughout the last 2 years on the course.

For the project concept I talk about the name of our play which is ‘A Mother’s Voice’ and who it is directed by and the aim of what I want to do throughout the rehearsal process for example, learning my lines, taking feedback and applying it to my character.

The evaluation section I talk about how I am going to evaluate myself along the way. I talk about the things I will do for example, keep a record of all my rehearsals so I know what I need to work on and to ask for feedback for each rehearsal that we will be doing.

Within the references I have added the links as to how this has been possible to portray and develop my character and my understanding of the play. I have added relevant links to which has helped me improve my knowledge.

The action plan is a main part in the project proposal due to showing what I will do to help myself understand and develop my character and helping myself set goals and follow my goals to help me keep on top of the things I need to do.

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A Mother's Voice - a dramatic ensemble play about the disappeared

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A Mother’s Voice is related back to our performance due to it being based around Constantia and her family. Constantia is a mother who had lost her husband Ramon, it shows the different states she gets into and the way she is dealing with the grief within the different emotions throughout the play.

It’s important that I understand the story behind a mother’s voice so I can incorporate the backstory into my own character who is within the main family. To be able to understand my character further it is important that I read and fully understand what A Mother’s Voice is about to be able to put this into my own work so it becomes aware that I understand the play and what is needing to be produced throughout the play.

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In the second week we began to shape and form the play still further whilst rehearsing scenes we had now written out. About half way through this second week we had a full script - all that was left was to rehearse and perfect this for performance!

In the third week we presented four performances of what had now become "A Mother's Voice".Working in this intense fashion produced a remarkably powerful performance that moved and affected all who saw it. Many left the theatre in tears.

It was a remarkable experience for all concerned. The process of rehearsal produced a real sense of engagement and involvement from the students and many found a depth to their performances that they had not tapped before. It was a great way for them to finish their course.

Of all my plays, A Mother's Voice , is the one that I am most pleased with to date. It does, however, require more than a simple translation of the script from page to stage in order to make it work. As a final performance piece I had to ensure there were opportunities for students to explore their "specialisms". Therefore, aswell as characters to develop, there are many opportunities for movement, music and dance along the way. On the page the script can look a little stark - it is only through performance that the full richness of it can be discovered. The expression is poetic at times and the action moves from the realistic to the surreal. The characters are emblematic rather than fully rounded - though the performance of the central characters requires considerable commitment and understanding if the emotional core of the piece is to be exposed.

There are some terrific theatrical moments in the piece - such as the bringing in a the father's body held high above the heads of the crowd; Constantia's dreams of the land of the dead; Baptista and Ernesto discovering each other as the washing lines lift to become the flags at the festival and the search of the mother for her missing daughter mirrored by scenes of what her daughter is enduring. And yes - even in all this - there is still room for comedy in the gossiping of the villagers and the taunting of the local heart throb by the more knowing factory girls!

A Mother's Voice can be set anywhere in the world but was originally written against a quasi central/south American background. The breathy Andean pipe music certainly added to the haunting quality of the piece.

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A Mother's Voice - a dramatic ensemble play about the disappeared

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In the second week we began to shape and form the play still further whilst rehearsing scenes we had now written out. About half way through this second week we had a full script - all that was left was to rehearse and perfect this for performance!

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BIOGRAPHY: Katie Mitchell - Theatre Director - The Heroine Collective

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The reason I looked into Katie Mitchell is purely because she is the practitioner we are basing our performance around. To be able to add in her style of work and the techniques she uses it’s important that we all understand the way she works so we can incorporate that into our own performance.

Katie Mitchell focuses on creating backstory’s for each character which is something we have all had to do for the characters we have been casted as. For example, I am playing the role of Francisca and to understand my character I have to come up with a backstory with what I already know throughout the performance and by doing this I can build on my characters story along the way

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Katie Mitchell is a British theatre director whose unique style and uncompromising methods have divided both critics and audiences. Though sometimes causing controversy, her productions have been innovative and groundbreaking, and have established her as one of the UK's leading names in contemporary performance.

She was born in Berkshire in 1964, grew up in the small village of Hermitage and read English at Magdalen College, Oxford. She began her theatre career in 1986 with a job at the King's Head Theatre as a production assistant. She became an assistant director at Paines Plough a year later, and then took the same post at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. In 1990, she founded her own company, Classics on a Shoestring, where she directed a number of pioneering and highly acclaimed productions including the House of Bernada Alba and Women of Troy.

In the decades with followed, Mitchell worked as an associate director with the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Whilst at the RSC, she was responsible for programming at the now defunct black box space, The Other Place, and her production of The Phoenician Women earned her the Evening Standard Award for Best Director.

Her numerous theatre credits include 2071 and Night Songs for the Royal Court, The Cherry Orchard for the Young Vic, The Trial of Ubu for Hampstead Theatre, Henry VI Part III (to date her only Shakespeare production) for the RSC and A Woman Killed with Kindness and The Seagull at the National Theatre. She has also directed opera, working with the Royal Opera House and English National Opera. An exponent of Stanislavski techniques and naturalism, her style was strongly influenced by the time she spent working in Eastern Europe early in her career. Her work is characterised by the creation on stage of a highly distinctive environment, the intensity of the emotions portrayed and by the realism of the acting.

Mitchell's work has pushed boundaries and explored technique and, not just confined to the stage, has also taken her into other creative mediums. She has directed for film and television with work including The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd and The Turn of the Screw. In 2011, together with video maker, Leo Warner, Mitchell devised an immersive video installation called Five Truths for the Victoria and Albert Museum which explored the nature of truth in theatrical production.

She has also experimented with incorporating video into live theatre. Over the past decade Mitchell has created works in which performers use and manipulate cameras to project images onto screens. Her first foray into multi-media work such as this was Waves, a stage version of Virginia Woolf's novel for the National Theatre, in 2006. More recently she employed these techniques in her 2013 production of Miss Julie for Berlin's Schaubühne Theatre to great critical acclaim.

In recent years Mitchell has offered British audiences little opportunity to see her work. Instead she has concentrated on directing what have been described as some of her most ambitious productions in Continental Europe. She has worked on a variety of projects, mostly in Germany and France, including an opera based on Neil Gaiman's story Coraline, a stage version of two novels by Romanian Nobel laureate, Herta Müller, and a feminist retelling of Hamlet.

Is her recent distancing from British theatre a result of the vehement reactions her work has provoked here? Possibly not. But she has often attracted harsh criticism not only for the work itself but also for the methods she employs, chiefly the way in which she takes total artistic control over every single aspect of the production. This control also extends to the script and the approach has left Mitchell facing accusations of having a disregard for the text.

However, it is also precisely this individuality, this intense and visionary directorial style, which inspires such admiration and praise for her art. Mitchell is seen in many quarters of the industry as a highly skilful auteur whose painstaking hard work, attention to minute detail and willingness to take huge risks has created some incredibly beautiful and unique productions. She has even been described by her champions as Britain's greatest living theatre director and in 2009, she was awarded an OBE for her services to drama.

Whether critic or devotee, no one can deny the tremendous influence and impact Mitchell has had on contemporary theatre. "I don't believe in art for art's sake," she says. "That leads to vanity. The fundamental question one should ask oneself is 'What is my place of responsibility in the world community?'"

©The Heroine Collective 2015 - Present, All Rights Reserved.

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BIOGRAPHY: Katie Mitchell - Theatre Director - The Heroine Collective

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Katie Mitchell is a British theatre director whose unique style and uncompromising methods have divided both critics and audiences. Though sometimes causing controversy, her productions have been innovative and groundbreaking, and have established her as one of the UK's leading names in contemporary performance.

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South America | Facts, Land, People, & Economy

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The reason I’ve looked into South America is because it is where our performance is based. Our performance is based in South America around the 70s. It was important to do this so we could understand the country and get to know more about South America and what happened around the 70s to then get a better understanding of what we needed to produce.

When researching into South America I found it useful because it allowed me to see the different costume style that they wore which gave me ideas on the costume to wear for my character. It allowed me to get a better understanding of what happened and still does happen in South America within the Mother’s and Daughter’s as it’s important for me to know this to actually be able to understand and develop my character further.

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Héctor Fernando Avila | See All Contributors | View Edit History

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South America | Facts, Land, People, & Economy

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South America, fourth largest continent in the world, the southern portion of the landmass generally referred to as the New World, the Western Hemisphere, or simply the Americas. The continent is compact and roughly triangular in shape. Learn more about South America.

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The Story Behind Madres de Plaza de Mayo

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Madres de Plaza de Mayo relates back to my character due to her Mother, Constantia joining them in their March every Thursday to help find their missing children/grandchildren. This impacts my character due to her mother being involved in finding Baptista which is Constantia and Francisca’s daughter/sister.

The reason I chose to research into this is to understand what Madres de Plaza de Mayo is and what they do to find the disappeared. This again relates back to my character because Constantia tells my character Francisca and her two younger  siblings Isabel and Maria that she will be going them every Thursday on the search for Baptista.

I personally feel like my characters reaction to this would be different to how she might have reacted at the beginning of the play if she was to say this because her thoughts have changed since the beginning of the play. She’s become more reluctant because of the events that have happened throughout the performance and she feels as if she needs to support her Mother along the way so she allows her Mother to do what will keep her happy as she now has a child on the way and understands her pain and responsibility to help and support her children which she didn’t know at the beginning of the play

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The Argentina Story Behind the Date - March 24

Thursday, March 24, don't expect to go to work, to class, or shopping- it's a national holiday, and a big one at that. Known as el Día de la Memoria, the Day of Memory, it's not your run-of-the-mill recognition of some old battle. In fact, pretty much anyone over the age of 30 can remember the reasons all too well.

Juan Domingo Peron

After Juan Perón came back to Argentina in 1973 for his third term as president, he only survived one year of his term, leaving his second wife, Isabel Perón, in charge as the President of the nation after his death (she had run with him as his vice president). During her presidency, the military used a secret police force, called the AAA or Triple A, to hunt down, kidnap, torture and kill those who were seen as "subversives:" social activists, student organizations and workers' unions, progressive academics, etc. As the military became more unsatisfied with her government, the progressive sector of society was attacked more and more. Guerilla groups like the ERP and the Montoneros fought back against the armed forces, kidnapping multinational executives for large ransoms that were used to distribute food, clothing, educational materials, and medical supplies to slums and poor families.

On March 24, 1976, the three branches of the armed forces (air force, navy and army) took the government by force. The guerilla groups were the perfect excuse for the military dictatorship to declare a "war against terrorism" and to kidnap, torture, and execute anyone they felt opposed to their agenda. They established secret detention centers where "subversive" citizens were taken after being abducted where they were tortured extensively and often killed. These people, the desaparecidos, the "disappeared," are estimated to be around 30,000 people, not including those confirmed dead and those who survived the torture and were later released. Family members spent weeks, months, and years trying in vain to get any kind of information about their disappeared loved ones from the government.

Among strict laws including mandated dress codes (no miniskirts or women in pants), hairstyles (men had to have short hair), appropriate reading materials and political parties (the Communist Party as well as student and worker unions and organizations were declared subversive and illegal), the right to organize or meet in public was also totally prohibited. After running into each other over and over in government offices while trying to locate their children, some mothers decided to get together to demand information about their kidnapped children. Since more than 2 people speaking in public was declared a meeting and therefore illegal, the mothers began marching on Thursdays, walking in groups of just two people, around the Plaza de Mayo, holding photos and signs about their missing children: they became the famous Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. These women were essentially the only group who, out of desperation, fear and love, stood up to this brutal dictatorship to demand information about their missing children. Several of the mothers themselves were disappeared after joining the marches, including two of the three founding mothers, tricked into a secret military ambush by the priest at a church that claimed to be helping them.

Even now, more than 30 years after it began, tens of thousands of victims remain disappeared. Despite investigative truth commissions, exposure and investigation of secret detention centers, and trials of the leaders of the military junta, most of the 30,000 disappeared remain that way. Mass graves have been found and some bodies identified, but the majority remains missing.

Over 100 children born to disappeared pregnant women have been recovered from military families who "adopted" them after birth, thanks to the Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo. This group is made up of women who were part of the Madres, but whose children were pregnant or when disappeared. These women demanded to know what happened to their grandchildren. Since the dictatorship ended, it has come to light that pregnant women were systemically kept alive till giving birth and then murdered, and then their babies were given to families of military personnel or those who were friendly with the dictatorship. The Abuelas, along with the support of the Kirchner presidents, created a national DNA database of those looking for grandchildren and those who feel they may have been adopted, and have successfully found 100 of these stolen children. Some of them, now in their thirties, have taken their adoptive parents to court, while others stay in contact with them after being reunited with their real families.

Others have fought hard against this truth coming out, the most famous being the children of Ernestina de Noble, the millionaire media mogul and owner of the Clarín Group, who acquired several of her lucrative businesses through cozy contacts with the dictatorship, as well as, likely, her children. The government's strong support and pursuit of this high profile case, as well their investigations of the means through which the Clarín Group acquired their assets (in particular, Papel Prensa), explains why the Clarín newspapers, TV channels, radio stations and more have engaged so furiously in a public feud with the Kirchners, active supporters of human rights who maintain conflicting business interests with Clarín. If you are supplementing your Spanish learning by reading local newspapers, you're likely to have come across some of this. Recently, the courts ruled that the children must submit DNA samples to be compared with the national database to determine if it matches a searching grandmother.

The march on Thursday, March 24 will bring together people from all factions of life, all ages, and all parts of the country. All kinds of social organizations, political groups, human rights supporters and friends and families of those who were disappeared come together to remember the atrocities that took place and to fight for justice, human rights, and the truth. However, it's not a solemn, depressing event: It is both an event in honor of the victims and a celebration of them, of life, memory, human rights, and the truth. You'll see lots of families, artists, political groups, students, workers' unions, and more marching, celebrating, making music, chanting, and waving flags and banners of all sorts. It is an incredible opportunity to immerse yourself in the history of this country. There are endless signs and banners to decipher and many people are willing and eager to speak to you about their personal reasons for attending the march. If nothing else, it's a spectacular site to see some many people coming together with such passion, and one you're sure to always remember.

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The Story Behind Madres de Plaza de Mayo

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Thursday, March 24, don't expect to go to work, to class, or shopping- it's a national holiday, and a big one at that. Known as el Día de la Memoria, the Day of Memory, it's not your run-of-the-mill recognition of some old battle.

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The Vanished Gallery: The Desaparecidos of Argentina

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The vanished gallery relates back to my character because she is suffering with the disappearance of her sister Baptista so to be able to show her emotions on the way she feels was by researching into the vanished gallery which talks about what happened with people who have gone missing.

Francisca’s character relates to this because it allows her to adjust her understanding of all the reasons as to why they’re called the disappeared and to understand that she isn’t alone and other people are going through what she is going through in loosing their siblings or not knowing what has happened to them and are wanting to know and understand what other people are going through and how they cope which helps my character to show more emotions.

It also helps my character to understand who could be responsible for the disappearance of her sister and who could be responsible for killing her father. This is important for my character to read and understand so she can have specific things to blame and show this through the way she talks to people such as the officials as it proves in the performance that the officials know where Baptista is and is playing Constantia and Francisca around which is becoming furious for her to have to listen too with her knowing they know where she is.

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español italiano

Desaparecidos is the Spanish word for "The Disappeared." For thousands of Argentine families, this word has become a symbol of a long harrowing nightmare.

In a coup on March 24, 1976, a military junta seized power in Argentina and went on a campaign to wipe out left-wing terrorism with terror far worse than the one they were combating. Between 1976 and 1983 - under military rule - thousands of people, most of them dissidents and innocent civilians unconnected with terrorism, were arrested and then vanished without a trace.

In 1983, after democracy was restored, a national commission was appointed to investigate the fate of the disappeared. Its report revealed the systematic abductions of men women and children, the existence of about 340 well organized secret detention centers, and the methodic use of torture and murder. According to former president, Carlos Menem, records of the atrocities were destroyed by the military, following the 1982 Falklands War. The disappeared have not been heard of to this day.

These pages are a humble attempt to bring the voices of the desaparecidos and their loved ones to the world. The vanishing was swift, a burst into a home at night, a few minutes and they were gone - not enough time to be heard. We owe it to them.

[The Victims][The Responsible][CONADEP][Human Rights Org][Info Wanted][Acks][Reading][TOC+Search]

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The Vanished Gallery: The Desaparecidos of Argentina

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español italiano Desaparecidos is the Spanish word for "The Disappeared." For thousands of Argentine families, this word has become a symbol of a long harrowing nightmare. In a coup on March 24, 1976, a military junta seized power in Argentina and went on a campaign to wipe out left-wing terrorism with terror far worse than the one they were combating.

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This is shown as evidential proof when at the end of the script it talks about women dancing with someone who is missing anywhere in the world. This relates back to the Performance hints as it says South America isn't the only country who have suffered the loss of family members/friends going missing and that it is a worldwide problem.

This is related to my character because it shows that she dances with anyone of her choice that she needs to research into which is important to show that my character is sympathetic towards everyone and understands there frustration and sadness at their child/grandchild being missing.

My character, Francisca chooses someone to dance with towards the end to help raise awareness of all the people missing in similar ways like South America. Francisca’s hopes that she can send a message and help people understand the difficulties living without their loved ones are which is something similar to the performance hits as it explains the message and the importance of finding as many people as possible and to help other people raise awareness of the population of young people going missing.

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Full cast listing for the play A Mother’s Voice

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The reason I chose to research the metaphor of A Mother's Voice is to show the resemblance they face within the actual play. I wanted to look into this because for my character personally, it's important to understand the relationship between a Mother and Child.

I found it important to research this for my character specifically due to the relationship between Francisca and her mother, Constantia. I wanted to be able to take some inspiration to add it to the relationship between these characters and find ways to better my character's personality with Constantia.

I personally believe that this is important many times in the play although Francisca seems to be a strong character there are moments where she seeks her mother's support and it's critical that this is shown to give that boost for my character.

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How do children respond to a mother’s voice?

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© 2021 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved A mother’s voice has special power. It can provide comfort -- and improve outcomes -- for babies

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In today’s lesson, we went over the scene which we thought we needed to work on the most. This then helped me to be able to go through the things I am struggling with and helped me with focusing on improving the feedback given throughout previous rehearsals. We also played a game to help us warm up so that we had more energy and motivation so we could go through things that needed improvement.

We started off by going over the dances and improving them by making ourselves go in time with the beats, which is important to do for the festival scene especially. I feel like going over these dances helped me to feel more confident when doing them and helped me to remember them by going through them a few times. We also started going over scene one which I felt like I needed to work on personally because doing the agonizing cries that we need to do I personally struggled to do but going over them repeatedly helped me to understand what needed to be done. We also worked on our projection when whispering the dedicated lines in the opening which for me was “We are the dead” this was done so we could be louder when whispering these lines so that Dream Mother can react to the whispers that are being said around her.

We also went through scene two which I personally feel like I have improved a lot in this scene and added the feedback given to me within the last few rehearsals. When going over the scene I showed this by getting angrier and building up the tension in the room before having a heated argument with Constantia. I remembered the feedback given to me from previous rehearsals which then allowed me to develop my character within this scene. I feel like I have portrayed the meaning of my character in today’s rehearsal by showing that I am a role model to the younger siblings such as Isabel and Maria. This is shown through the tone of voice used when talking to them.

I feel like I have done well in developing my character by taking on feedback given to me in previous lessons and in today’s lesson and showing the different emotions my character is feeling in the second scene, such as building up the feud between Constantia and Francisca. I feel like I have also shown a different tone of voice when speaking in the second scene which was important for my character to show the different stages of emotions and frustrations that she is feeling. I also knew most of the lines for this scene which allowed me to work more on my physicality throughout the scene.

I still need to work on staying in character when going over the scenes, for example, I broke out of character when my voice broke, which I personally feel like I couldn’t then get back into character fully because I’ve come out of it which then for me personally felt difficult to get back into character, which again I felt brought down the emotion my character was feeling.

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In today’s lesson, we started off by carrying on from where we left off in the last rehearsal. I decided to go off script for this rehearsal to see what I could remember. We started off by warming up by playing a game to get us motivated and ready to begin the picnic in the hills scene which is where we got up to and is the first scene we started doing in today’s rehearsal. We play these games to help us get in the mood for doing run-throughs and blocking the rest of the play, this helps by our bodies being warmed up and vocals so we can project our lines to the fullest.

When going through the picnic in the hills scene I decided to go off script so I could focus on adding emotion to this scene as this is an important scene in the play due to it reminiscing the memories shared between Ramon and his family before he disappeared. It is important to add in a lot of emotion such as facial expressions to show the emotion my character is feeling.  Within this scene, the aim was to make sure I looked like I was enjoying my time and showing the effect of how close the family once was when they were all together. It is important to show the relationship between Francisca and Ramon when they have scenes together as it foreshadows what their relationship used to be like. When going over the picnic in the hills scene I knew the cues as to when I said my lines which is important so we can get the scene done and blocked straight away and move on and block the rest. When playing catch with Maria, Baptista, Isabel, Constantia, and Ramon it was important to show that although we all had to show we were having an enjoyable time, I felt like I personally had to show I was having a fun time and laughing and smiling with everyone to show the age difference between my character when the memory scene is done too how mature she is now. When Dream Mother and Ramon started to dance together Francisca and Baptista took it upon themselves to react with excitement at the cuteness of their parents. This is to show the relationship they had with one another and the impact it had on the sisters.

Today I went off script for all the scenes I was in to allow myself to focus on building my character and finding the different emotions my character is feeling and allowing myself to spend more time showing facial expressions which I personally feel like I do not show enough of when having my script. When going over the festival scene I feel like it is important to show as much emotion as possible even if the lines are small. For example, when saying “Mother” although it is a simple word it is important to show the term what it means within that piece of dialogue which is the fact my character is trying to be supportive towards her mother but at the same time, she is trying to get her mother to not think about Ramon and enjoy her night. When going over the festival dance as it was important, we did it because Ernesto played by Max was not there when we went over the festival dance, and he has a solo so it was important to go over it for all our sakes so we can improve on cheering Ernesto on to start the dance. I felt like I had done well in encouraging Ernesto to do the dance by smiling and clapping for Ernesto, which helped boost his confidence to start the dance for everyone else to then join in. I was also impressed at knowing the footwork of the dance and not having to look down at my feet constantly to make sure I was using the correct feet.

When going over the body of the father for the first time, I feel like I contributed to that well by saying to some of the cast that we should try and carry the dead body, who is played by the assistant director, Tayler. This is because it would give everyone the feeling of how they will need to carry him on and if it’s going to be easy to do and would be better, so they start earlier to make it look easier and not forced. We have spoken in previous rehearsals about who will be carrying the body and we concluded that it wouldn’t make sense for the family to carry on their father's body but walk beside the body with emotions going on. For example, when my character is walking beside the body she is in the middle of Isabel and Maria holding their hands and comforting them, I made this decision because it’ll show to the audience that I am the oldest sibling who is trying to comfort her younger siblings at this difficult time whilst grieving herself for the passing of her father. The emotions my character will be portraying is her head down whilst the body is being carried to show the upset she feels, and I will also be showing facial expressions to show the heartbreak she is really feeling but puts on a brave face for her siblings so she can be seen as confident and strong towards her younger siblings. When the body gets laid at Constantia’s feet, Baptista and Francisca comfort each other by holding hands and looking at the body with tears in their eyes, this shows her vulnerable state because she is around Baptista who is close in age and she feels like Baptista is more on her level than any of her siblings due to them both having that gut feeling of their father being dead but it is the realization of seeing him dead is what is upsetting them both. When they take Ramon away the girls instantly go and comfort Constantia to show she isn’t alone and they’re there for her. This is shown through the quick reaction of the girls hugging Constantia and the tension changing with the audience seeing the hurt and heartbreak they have all just had to go through.

I personally feel like this rehearsal has been one of the most rewarding rehearsals for me so far due to being on the ball with knowing my lines and being able to add more emotion in for each scene I done in this rehearsal. I am happy with how well the festival scene went and how much emotion I put into the dances, I personally feel like my facial expressions showed that I was enjoying my time which changed from my character never really having a smile on her face and constantly playing the role of big sister to her being able to enjoy her time with not only her family but with her friends too.

I still need to work on showing more emotion when being revealed that Ramon is dead, I personally feel like although Francisca had that gut feeling he was dead she would still be just as upset as the rest of them are. I feel like I need to work on making myself look more upset, especially when standing around the body, I need to show more emotion than just holding Baptista’s hand, I need to let out a cry on Baptista for the audience to see the different change of emotion that is happening within the festival scene and the drastic changes happening so quickly. I also realized I need to comfort the girls more, especially with me being the oldest I need to show more of a maternal relationship between them all especially between Francisca, Maria, and Isabel because they’re the youngest so it’s good for the audience to see Francisca comforting them and making sure they’re okay. It’s still just as important to make sure that I am there for Baptista just as much but as Baptista isn’t immature or a child it’s easier for her to find comfort from other people and not just her family, for example, she can confide in Ernesto whereas the other two only have myself and their mother but with Constantia being with Ramon on the floor they only have me so it’s important to show that maternal love for them.

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https://youtu.be/Haw06w_8n7I

https://youtu.be/2RvH237IKXM

In this video, I talk about everything we have done in this rehearsal and how I feel I personally got on with it. I talk in more detail about the video we took in college and why we have done this. Personally, I feel like this really benefitted me because it allowed me to see the development of my character. It also allowed me to go into detail about each question that I got asked which for me I felt helped me as it was set questions to answer which helped me to not ramble on about other different things and to focus on each question individually.

I also spoke about the exercise that we have done which was ZIP, ZAP, and BONG which we played at the start of the lesson to get us into the character we then started adding in character lines to be able to help us project our lines loud enough in the room. I go more into detail about how I felt this went for me personally and the lines that I decided to change ZIP, ZAP, and BONG to which were "No, I am not pregnant", "Father is Dead" and "This cannot go on." I feel like this really helped me and engaged me with this specific exercise because it worked well and got us all involved with the game having some relations back to the play. I also go into detail about how I felt it was difficult towards the end which was because I started to forget which line was meant for which and it got complicated towards the end.

Another part in the video that I talk about in the other exercise that we have done in today's rehearsal was getting into pairs and going from one side of the room facing each other and projecting "Hey, that's my bike" loud enough for it to travel across the room which we needed to work on so it allowed us to project and for me personally t, this helped me to project loud enough as we had practice throughout today's lesson. In this video, I talk about the positives of this warmup and how it made me feel and also went into detail about the negatives of this exercise and how I felt whilst doing it and how I felt after doing it, and what I had done wrong and how improved this within the lesson.

The last exercise that we have done was getting into a circle and going around and projecting the names of our characters three times to help us project and do it altogether to know and understand each character. This personally helped me as explained further in the video because doing this video helped not only myself but other people in the group to realize that we have been saying my character's name wrong. This exercise was useful to me personally because it allowed me to then focus on using projection and to know the names of the characters that I was particularly confident which, such as Juanita.

Overall, I feel like today's lesson was useful to me because we spent all day going over projection and doing different workshops based on our character which helped us to build up confidence for projecting and realizing that we need to be louder. For me personally, this was something that I needed to work on and because we spent all morning going over this it has helped me to project which is something I can carry on doing, It helped to get feedback on the spot so then I could apply it straight away.

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The reason I chose this specific dress is that when thinking about what my character would wear I looked closely into the way she portrays her character throughout the performance. I chose to have a floral but basic dress as it represents the emotions my character is feeling throughout the performance.

Due to my character also being middle class I found it important to make sure that my choice of costume made my character look, middle class. Although she isn't an upper class or lower class it's important for me to show my understanding of my character's costume to resemble the working class I personally feel like she is and due to it being set in South America, Argentina it is important to look into the costumes they wore back then to help me with the decision of what to put my character in.

The reason I chose a floral dress is that when researching the costumes they wore floral material and I feel like it's important to have this so it looks as naturalistic as possible which is the aim I am going for throughout the play. There were three different dresses I chose between. They all remind me of the similar outfits that were worn in South America.

The first dress, which is the dress I have decided to go for is the floral white with flowers on which is because I feel like this best represents my character due to my character being very formal and I feel like she wouldn't go all out there in wearing something to please others. I also feel like because she is the oldest daughter it's important for her to remain mature and an outfit can determine how mature someone looks. To ensure I carried this out I had to pick a dress that would represent my character to be mature, responsible, and also middle class, which is why I chose this dress because when I vision my character in this costume it makes me think of the level of mature she will feel when wearing something that isn't childlike. With my character throughout the play hardly showing any emotion I thought this dress would best represent her as I don't have many colours to the dress and shows her emotions through it being plain which again shows the personality of my character just through the costume choice I have made.

The second dress I thought about was the purple one, after having much thought going into it, I personally feel like it isn't something my character would wear as I feel like it wouldn't go well with her personality. It shows too much colour and I feel like with my character's personality and the way she acts this dress wouldn't fit well with my character. I was drawn to the pattern of the dress more than the colour itself as it had the patterns of what I feel like my character would wear but with the colour being too bright I felt like it would be the opposite of who my character is.

The third dress I saw and liked for my character was similar to the first, and chosen dress which was white with patterns on it but I decided not to use this because the dress had a different style to what I have seen that women wear in South America and I don't think my character would wear this. I feel like this is too out there for my character. The reason I wanted this dress for my character was that it was plain which best represented my character.

When thinking about the shoes I would be wearing I started by asking my director, Emma what she is looking for in our costumes. Although I know we are deciding on our own costumes, I still wanted input on what shoes would look best with our costumes. I also researched what they wore in the 70s and these kinds of sandals for women were highly recommended so I found a few I would want to have used myself.

The first picture of the sandals on the mood board was the first pair I had found that I wanted to wear, this is because the colours and style matched what people wore back in the 70s in South America and went really nicely with the dress I had chosen after looking at what shoes that are expected to wear I decided these wouldn't be the best fit for my character because they aren't the same material.

The second choice is the one I chose to keep and use for my character because the sandals are very similar to the ones that have been suggested to us all. When researching the shoes women wore these sandals also came up very similar so I personally feel like they are a better fit for my character and the style of costume needed to perform this play.

The last picture of the sandals were one of the options I was going for because of the colour of the sandals. This is because when getting sent examples of shoes to wear the colour was brown with similar pattern, after looking through more I realised that they were apron material and didn't look similar to the ones we got suggested, although they were the same colour and pattern I felt ike it wouldn't be a good idea for my character to wear these because she is dancing and they don't seem strong enough to balance the movements that go on in the dance scenes.

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Rendition is about a father/husband that got taken without the consulting of being told why. It talks about the Mother seeking answers as to where her husband is and what has happened to him. It shows the abuse the father has been getting throughout the trailer.

Rendition is where the government has authorized anyone they think might be a terrorist to send to a prison outside of the US. It shows the torture they put them under to get answers to something that the victims are innocent in. They beat them until they give the answers they want to hear.

It shows that the woman doesn't stop until they find out what it is their husband has actually done and there shows to be no sign as to what he has actually been accused of.

http://youtu.be/syL__E0P93Q

Rendition is a 2007 American political thriller film directed by Gavin Hood. It focuses on the controversial CIA practice of extraordinary rendition and is based on the true story of Khalid El-Masri, who was mistaken for Khalid al-Masri.

The plot of Rendition is, in North Africa, CIA analyst Douglas Freeman briefs an agent. A suicide attack kills the agent and 18 civilians, the target was ranked police official Abbas, a liaison for the United States who talks about interrogations with techniques amounting to torture.

It is based on an engineer living in Chicago with his mother, his pregnant wife, and their son. He is believed to be linked to a terrorist Rashid by the record. He returns from South America and is then taken by American officials and sent to a secret facility near the earlier attack, where it was known that he was in fact interrogated and tortured.

Due to Isabella's constant fight to return her husband new information came to light as to Isabella knowing her husband got on the same flight and showed his bank statement to than helping her case people tried to bring him home but were being shot down and weren't accepting of his return.

It is known that Anwar started to confess that he helped a man named Rashid with chemicals to enhance explosives and was promised $40,000. Freeman then suspected his confession was fake and to which he asked Interpol to trace the name which was not found on the record confirming that Anwar was in fact giving false confessions.

Freeman urges that Anwar is returned back to America via a clandestine ship to Spain, after this it is shown that Anwar returns home to Isabella and shed a few tears as he reunites with his wife and his little boy, and the newborn baby.

The rendition was directed by Gavin Hood, written by Kelley Sane, and produced by Steve Golin, David Kanter, Keith Redmon, Micheal Sugar, and Marcus Viscidi.

Starring in Rendition was Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Peter Sarsgaard, Alan Arkin, Meryl Streep, Omar Metwally, Igal Naor, Moa Khouas, and Zineb Oukach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendition_(film)

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Every year on the anniversary of the people missing, tortured and killed thousands of people march together with the relatives and the friends of the disappeared. It's known that their presence is a reminder of a search for the truth and for justice must always continue until they're all found.

There are many people in Argentina who just want to forget the past and move on because it is too damaging for them to feel dwelling on what had happened years before. They feel that for them to heal their country need to embrace the memory of all those that have disappeared.

In Germany after the holocaust, people in Argentina need to grow up with consious of this dark chapter that has happened. The memorial ceremony was held at a school where one of the disappeared used to work. They talk about new generations understanding the past, not to stay in it but more so to live in the present democracy and to be able to walk into the future with memory, truth, and justice.

In the paper they show some of the missing to raise awareness, Patricia L. Dixon, who was a girl from university she was brought to Espacio para la memoria were 5000 people were brought there to be tortured and then were secretly detained for days, weeks and even months, and then they would be brought back and killed by being thrown from planes into the river to be left there.

For the people who drive past there everyday is a constant reminder of all the people who have been tortured and the fact they took over Argentina in 1976. Photographs where taken in the Navy mechanic school which was made by a survivor but hid the negative and tortured photos, they're the only known images of these people.

Photographers published them in a book called 'Memory under construction' one of these photographs are of his own brother. The images included in the published book has had sixty five artists works, they're artists from different generations who are interested and have been influenced by the same facts. They also contribute important information and views that are different and original.

There are three different sculptures that are in the park which are representations of three different people who had a big impact on them. The father of the sculptures said, "I knew it was the representation of my children" they talk about the bodies being empty which shows the idea of them being from the disappearance, and how it's only their profile that remains.

http://youtu.be/nxkiLUfxw3k

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Human Rights Watch supports freedoms in connection with fundamental human rights, like freedom of religion and the press. Human rights watch is seen as a messenger for victims of human rights violations. They gather the information from witnesses and victims themselves.

They defend the people of human rights violations from across the world, who are trying to understand the suffering that people have had to go through or that they have been through themselves. They talk about how they can prevent things such as trauma from happening. This is done in more than 100 countries.

They're a small but helpful team with 518 staff members and 89 nationalities, they've known to have experts of all kinds within their small community to help the victims that have suffered. They're on the ground investigators, lawyers, journalists, open-source experts, and media teams that share their findings with the world.

Their method is known to be simple, for example, they investigate human rights abuse, expose the truth through in-depth information that they have gathered, and are strongly supported in wanting a change with the highest level of power they can get. They speak to governments from all around the world and show them the information and evidence as to what is happening and it is known that they don't stop until change is created and proven to be made. They've spoken about the results being dramatic. They have been in desperation for 8 years to get a ban on landlines. They worked for 7 years to get a ban on child soldiers. It is known that they don't accept government funding, they want to be independent and impartial at all times.

They want to see a world that is safe and free for everybody across the world people have said "If it's not okay for it to happen to me, it shouldn't be okay for it to happen to someone else" they see it as if there is something that can be changed they won't stop until it is perfect, they believe everyone anywhere deserves a life to feel free and safe.

https://youtu.be/5AtF9Ra6cPQ

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The Nizkor Team believe that the fight against human rights violation is clear. They believe it is easier to kill, torture, or violate human rights when it is done in secret. This is why they have created this page to help other people to see the conflict and how serious these situations really are.

They work for the respect of human rights in Latin America and the rest of the world. Their work includes the socialization, investigations of abuse, the development of the international human rights law, preservation of memory, and the fight against impunity this is to help everyone understand the important information on Derechos Human Rights.

Derechos Human Rights was created in 1998. Many non-government organizations went online and started publishing their materials. International organizations began to make large portions of their materials available online, which helped to make research easier for people.

World War II had raged from 1939 to 1945, and when it became closer to the end cities throughout Europe and Asia lay in smoldering ruins. Millions of people were announced dead, more were homeless or starving.

In April 1945, delegates from fifty countries met in San Francisco with so much optimism and hope. The goal of the United Nations Conference on International Organization was to promote peace and prevent future wars.

The new United Nations organizations went into effect on October 24, 1945, which is a date that is celebrated each year as United Nations Day.

In 1948, the United Nations' new human rights commission captured the world's attention. The commission set out a draft of the document that then became the Universal Declaration of human rights. It was adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948.

In its preamble, the declaration unequivocally proclaims the inherent rights of all human beings across the world.

The Member States of the United Nations started working together to promote the thirty Articles of human rights.

http://www.derechos.org/
https://www.derechos.org/about/esp.html
https://www.derechos.org/human-rights/manual.htm#:~:text=Derechos%20includes%20an%20online-journal%20of%20human%20rights%2C%20a,of%20these%20documents%20are%20only%20available%20in%20Spanish.

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Chile was under an oppressive, military dictatorship from 1973 to 1990. Gen. Augusto Pinochet ruled the country and decided to use the failings of the presidency as a justification for the regime.

Chilean courts are still prosecuting people for their abuses during military rule. Lots of perpetrators of human rights offenses have faced reduced sentences. This has then resulted in punishments in comparison to the crimes. Chile is still in recovery from its period of military rule. The Chilean people are demanding change.

Facts about Human Rights in Chile:

1. The government of Chile had attempted to rectify past human rights violations from the time of the military period. December 2015, the Ministry of the Interior's human rights document announced that justice authorities are investigating 1,048 cases of human rights violations all from the time of the military.

2. The prisons are filled past capacity, these institutions were functioning at a capacity of 103.2 percent in August 2016. In some prisons, the capacity was increased by 200 percent. In October of the same year, the Santiago Sur Preventive prison center reached a volume of 5,057 prisoners.

3. Living conditions for children are seen to be having improvements. The National Service for Minors has been under scrutiny after the death of 34 children between the months of January and June 2016. 171 centers were investigated. 197 children who were questioned opened up about their abuse of out the 405 children that they interviewed.

4. People still face discrimination, throughout Chilean history, the Mapuche people had been discriminated against. President Bachelet had publically apologized to the Mapuche government. The government has offered land transfers and increased social spending on this mistreated group.

5. There is still evidence of the government using excessive force, mainly on indigenous groups. The government has developed new ways to investigate and punish police corruption. Excessive force and human rights offenses are still happening by the national police force.

https://borgenproject.org/facts-about-human-rights-in-chile/

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Nostalgia for the light is about discovering the origins of mankind, the planet, and the solar system. It talks closely about being interested in the sky because many people with the telescope could look deeper and past the sky so they could see their loved ones who were above it. In the last 17 years, Pinochet assassinated and buried the bodies of many political prisoners. The women who search for their dead come together and demand answers from the people responsible for their disappearances. It's known that those who have a memory are allowed to live in the fragile moment and those who don't have any life nowhere.

http://youtu.be/ns_EzkFqVQ4

The nostalgia of the light is about two different searches that were created in the Chilean Atacama Desert. Astronomers were looking for answers about the history of the cosmos, and the other was women looking for the remaining parts of their loved ones killed by Pinochet's regime.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1556190/plotsummary?ref_=tt_stry_pl

Nostalgia for the light is a 2010 documentary film directed by Patricio Guzman to find out the lasting impacts of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. Guzman focuses on the similarities between astronomers researching humanity's past, from an astronomical aspect, and also shows the Chilean woman who struggles and still searches for their loved ones.

It opens with a view of a telescope and many images of the moon. The narrator, Patricio Guzman, explains how he came to love astronomy and began to remember his childhood during which "only the present moment existed." Chile became the center of the world as astronomers and scientists flocked to Chile to observe the universe through the thin skies.

The documentary then changes to Chile's recent past by dealing with Pinochet and his dictatorship. Luis Henriquez, who is a survivor of the Chacabuco concentration camp, describes how a group of around 20 was led by a Doctor. He was taught theory during the day and then learned how to indentify constellations.

Valentina Rodriguez openly talks about her grandparents and how they were pressured into giving up the location of her parents. After they threatened to hurt Valentina, her grandparents felt the urge to save her and had to tell them the location of her parents which instantly her parents got taken away.

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http://youtu.be/jxS7PKxgypI (Las Abuelas de plaza de mayo/history)

The Abuleas video clip tells the story of the government kidnapping their grandchildren. They have spent the last 40 years fighting to have them returned. As from 1976 to 1983 Argentina fell into a military dictatorship.

During this time government death squads hunted down anyone suspected of political dissidence. There are known to be more than 30,000 people who disappeared, some were pregnant women and the mothers were kept alive until giving birth, but after they gave birth they were then killed. Their orphaned newborns were then taken to couples who supported the government. It was estimated that 500 newborns were kidnapped and the grandmothers of the lost children refused to give up.

Mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared came together they keep strong and go and stand up to the government by marching in a silent protest every Thursday around the Plaza de Mayo.

Grandmothers earn the title of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo as they became their own detectives. By 1987, they had found 39 of the lost children but it is known that hundreds are still missing. They then took the next step and turned to a scientist in Mitochondrial DNA, which could match individual children with women who might be their maternal grandmothers, they still need samples from those who were taken in 1997. They invited anyone who was uncertain about their identity to come forward, and many did which helped not only the Abuelas but the individuals find their families and their identity. Abuelas helped bring the number of lost children found to more than 120. The Abuelas is now a recognized human rights organization, they have received many votes for the Nobel peace prize and remained dedicated to rebuilding families and finding justice until the rest are returned. They began their search for the missing grandchildren in 1983 when the regime fell. It shows that the Abuelas are protective of their grandchildren's safety and will stop at nothing until they have found all of their grandchildren.

http://youtu.be/rZGq15IhAi0 (Abuelas)

Everyone thought that when the military came in everything would've been okay. That they'd get things running again but that isn't what happened. The military was to serve the constitution, to preserve the decision. Abuelas are to thank for the return of many babies who had been kidnapped. Families were left to the military forces.

This video clip goes into detail about the disappeared and their return. They go into detail about their experience whilst being kidnapped and the experience of finding out that their families aren't who they thought they were. They talk about their fake family throughout the years spent with them and talk about the real family that they have spent a little amount of time with.

Juan Cabaride is a grandchild that had been found by the Abuelas. It is known that he was the 77th grandchild to be found. He was born on 26th March 1978 and was discovered in 2004 at the age of 26. They captured him when his dad went out for work. They went to the house and also captured the Mother too. When he was born he was with his biological mother for 20 days before he was given to another family which was no choice of his mother. His mum and dad both disappeared. The military stole their identity so their biological family couldn't trace them and find him. Within his 26 years, he has spoken about having emotional instabilities throughout his time growing up in a house that he felt off in. It also gave him depression and made him emotionally unstable. After having these thoughts he questioned if his military family were his actual family. He decided to get a DNA test and within 6 months of waiting he found out that they are not his biological family and he is the son of two disappeared people. His family and grandparents are looking for him.

Tatiana Sfiligoy is the first-ever grandchild to be found by the Abuela's nonstop search for their missing grandchildren. She was born on July 11 1973 and was discovered by her identity in 1980. Her age at the time was 6 years old. Her story started with her father's disappearance in 1976 and then a few months later her mother disappeared too. Tatiana and her sister witnessed the disappearance of their mother, which was in a park. Military men dressed in green came towards them. Their mother began to hug them as if it was going to be their last time together. The sisters didn't understand why. She was doing it to protect them by walking away whilst the military ran after her, this is because the mother didn't want Tatiana and her sister to also be kidnapped so she left them where nobody could find them. After this, their lives changed. They were abandoned in the streets, they were then sent to an orphanage because they had no family. Tatiana has three and a half years of age at the time and her sister was just a tiny baby. The 'Mother' that was taking the baby in was surprised she had a sister and decided to bring them together and look after them. When in court the 'Mother' asked the judge many times if they had a family and the judge replied with "M'am they do not have a family, stop asking" so she never asked again, when she found out the Abuelas were looking for Tatiana, the family appeared in court again with a photo of both the children to show that they do have family and they're in fact looking for them. Tatiana's biological family and adopted family came together and came to the agreement there was no intention of them hiding Tatiana's story or lying to her. After this, she decided to study psychology because of what she has been through and to be able to share her experience and help others with similar experiences as hers.

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Women used sewing to protest in Chile when the same things were happening to them that were happening to other Women in South America. This specific page tells the story of many women who shared the same struggles. They chose to testify against neoliberal and patriarchal power. This helped them by having a needle and thread, known to already be reused and enhanced in the 1960s by the Chilean artist Violeta Parra from 1917 to 1967.

11th September 1973 marked a crucial moment in the history of Chile which is when General Augusto Pinochet took power. A Military dictatorship dominated the country of Chile for seventeen years. This date signified all the individual rights of all the political and social activities. In the context of this real and symbolic violence based on control of society, the thought of women was not secondary. The Military took on a gendered dimension. The majority of the left-wing militants, leaders, unions, professional associations, and localities were male. Women were kept in their roles that are known to be traditional to ensure that "By praising their spiritual values and placing them above their daily needs, they were distanced from the public, masculine sphere and the eventual desire to participate, becoming totally excluded from decision-making arenas"

Throughout this undemocratic transition, women living in slums or poor neighborhoods who were willing to take care of their families were disrupted by the mass and arrested and were in charge of family members disappearing. As the domestic triad mother-wife woman disappeared they then became aware of the role she could play in the transformation of society. Lisa Baldez mentioned "The recession thrust many working-class families below the poverty line and forced women to find alternative ways to provide for their families" this showed a crisis for many women in Chile.

The first arpilleras workshop opened in March 1974 and is known for the bright colored pictures stitched onto sacking and chronicles of the life of the
poor in Chile in the 1970s and 1980s during the totalitarian military regime. The early embroideries reveal the talismanic power that these objects concealed "The arpilleras had an enormous impact on the national culture. The artillerists began work during the period in which nobody dared reject the authoritarian rule, a time of self-control and obedience. These women were among the first to create a culture of resistance" and they started a social portrait of marginality which was to silence the institutional denial.

The first creation that the women created corresponds to the phase "Solidarity construction" which testified to human rights violations committed by the regime. Within time, the arpilleras have begun to highlight aspects of the precarity that affected daily life in Chile such as notably health, unemployment, hunger, and exile. There were two events that confirmed the subversive strength of these objects, the first being the opening of the Galeria de Arte Paulina Waugh in Santiago de Chile in 1975. This event led to both the closing of the space and the loss of various arpilleras and works by Roberto Matta and others. The second is related to discovering the arpilleras which are outside the national territory and at the point of crossing borders. They traveled with exiles and contributes to the activation of a transnational solidarity network to support the writings that escaped censorship. They also support the fight by the Chilean people. They attended the global community who are now aware of these crimes committed against humanity. The arpilleras were found many times by the police and were reported in the press as "Anti-Chilean", "subversive propaganda", and "tapestries of slander."

The women defended themselves anonymously but were animated by the profound desire for justice and the truth. They launched a movement opposed to the established system. The movement is associated with material culture at the service of social change. The arpilleras serve themselves as models in the fight against subjugation in favor of free speech, action, and emancipation of all the men and women in the world.

https://awarewomenartists.com/en/magazine/ecritures-de-la-subversion-les-arpilleristas-chiliennes/

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In today’s lesson, we started off warming up by playing improvisation in our characters for the play. We have done this by getting into a circle and one person thinks of a scenario and another two people pick which characters need to improv using gestures and mannerisms from their character. This was to help show the understanding of each of our characters and to see the relationship between each character together. For example, I had to improve with Robyn who plays the character of Catalina which then allowed me to show my understanding of my character not liking Catalina and how I would react if something like this was actually going to happen. After that, we did another improv game where we all were in the scene and we had to act in character throughout the whole duration of this scenario.

When playing this improv game we got told to focus on how our characters act within the play so we can then add it into our warmup, I played my role in this improv game to be boring and maternal this is because throughout the play she acts maternally to her sibling’s so I thought I would show it here so that it's aware that I have a good understanding of my character and the way that she reacts. The scenario that we were given was at a hen do and this scenario best fitted my character to show the motherly love that she shows throughout the performance towards her siblings. By making sure I do this I started by looking for Isabe and Maria to make sure that they were okay and to make them leave as I feel it's inappropriate for them to be at a hen do so young so this showed my character's development through proceeding to take care of her siblings and to show that responsible effect on her siblings. My character is seen to be boring because of the way she acts within the play so when doing this warmup I made my character boring by trying to get Constantia to come home as it's not fair for the girls to be seeing this even though Isabel and Maria are enjoying their time Francisca takes that away from them by sending them home or not allowing them to engage with what is going on.

After doing this warmup game we then started to do a full run-through of the play of what we have done so far but only using physicality and no words. The reason we decided to do this was that we realized we focused more on getting the words right than adding in physicality. In the beginning, I personally feel like this was a good choice because I didn't feel as if I was adding in much physicality when doing the scenes that I was in, so being able to go over the scenes we have done so far I thought would help me to improve on my physicality. I felt like the first scene was easy to do because there aren't many lines being said from myself, I focused more on getting the movements right which felt a lot less pressured to say lines too. When going into scene two I felt it become more difficult for me to understand where we were up to in the scene because there were no lines being said which made it harder for me to react. After talking to the assistant director we all came to the agreement to have some cue lines to help us be able to understand where we are in each scene.

After break we then agreed that we were going to go through some scenes that needed work on and come back to the physicality another day, this benefitted e because we worked on scene two which wasn't a strong point of mine especially with the scene being so heated. This helped myself and Mia to be able to go over the dialogue which we felt we needed to work on the most because it tells a big part of the story right at the beginning of the scene. When going through this scene we applied the feedback given to us which was to get angrier at one another before it starts to kick off, I have done this by getting agitated when Constantia doesn't listen about not laying Ramon's place tonight which starts to show the tension building up and the tone of voice changing which helped to show the different emotions that my character was feeling at different times within this scene.

Throughout today's rehearsal process, I feel I took the feedback really well and applied it to my character. For example, when doing the physicality at the start of the lesson, although I did find it difficult it allowed m to focus on the movements at the start of the play instead of worrying about the lines that are needing to be said. I also stayed in character throughout the whole warmup that we have done which helped me to build my character's personality as it allowed me to understand and see the way my character would act and to be able to add things I have added before, for example, when spending most of my time around the younger girls it's made me realize that I need to interact with them more to show that maternal bond that Francisca has with her sibling's. Although the physicality part of the lesson didn't go as planned I still knew the cues to come on and off stage which I felt was important as it shows the understanding and acknowledgment I have been taking in the lessons previously.

I still need to work on not laughing and coming out of character in scenes, for example, in the second scene today when doing our heated argument we tend to laugh which is something that myself and Mia have both said we need to work on together which will then help us to get better at making sure we stay in character throughout the scene. I also noted for myself that I need to slow down when I speak as I have realized talk too fast, this is important for me because the lines I say are important and tell a part of the storyline so it's important for the audience to be able to here me. To ensure I do this, I will go over my lines and see where I can pause and what I can slow down on to make sure that I am not rushing my words.

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In today's lesson, we started off by warming up and playing a game relating back to our character. Before we have done this we went around the circle and spoke a little about our characters such as who they are, what political beliefs they have, and their background story. This was beneficial for me because it helped me to understand everyone's character in more detail. It also helped me personally when coming to me talking about my character because it shows that I have researched my character and how she acts which was important for this game and to know and understand each character individually for this game to work. The aim of the game was for one person to go outside and we then switched character's from one to the left, the character I then had to answer questions in was Dream Mother (Constantia) the aim was for Ellie who went outside to then crack what we have changed by asking us questions and trying to figure out what we have done. I feel like this warm-up was helpful because it allowed us to show that we pay attention to other people's characters. When talking about who are characters are we came to the realization that my character's childhood had been taken away from her from a young age because she had to step up and become a young role model for her siblings due to the situations going on at home. She also wants to bring her child up in a completely different environment that she was brought up in and to enjoy their childhood as much as possible.

After doing this warm-up we then started by going over a few scenes, for example, we went over the gossip scene and I decided to go off script for the first time so that I could add in more emotion which is something that is important to show as my character doesn't like the gossip which I started to show by not paying much attention to them and being really sharp with them. This helped to show my character's decisions as it wasn't shown in the play that she doesn't like them I chose this because of the way she acts in the scene and the way my character reacts throughout the play. It's also shown when I say "They are terrible gossip, some say bad things it'll do no good" which shows her frustration about the gossip and her opinions on them.

We also went over the news/officials scene which for me I needed to work on because my emotional state needs to change throughout the scene to show my anger towards the officials about wanting to find Baptista. This helped because it allowed me to focus more on changing the different tones within the scene to show the different emotions I was feeling at that moment in time.

We also have been told to work on our pitch, pause, and pace this is something that I need to work on because I need to change the way I say a few things for example when saying "Mother. Mother. I am pregnant, I want my child to meet it's grandmother" this needs to change them and put in some pauses to make it look more effective so that the scene can slow down a little bit but this is definitely something that I need to work on throughout the play. I also need to work on not blocking myself within the scenes because there are some great moments that are missed because I am blocking myself and the facial expressions that I am pulling which relate back to the conversation that is happening. I also need to work on not just following Constantia around the official scene because it shows that and now this is my cue to follow Constantia I need to find reasons to go across the stage to different officials by showing facial expressions and thinking about if I'm wanting to find Baptista and what are my reasons for wanting to go there or if there is something that I need to do.

In today's rehearsal, I feel like I have done well by reacting to the character change in the warmups and knowing information about Dream Mother that I didn't know before which helped me to play the warm-up game. I also feel like I have done well by coming off-script and being able to add more facial expressions and body language into this scene which then helped me to develop my character more in today's lesson. I feel like I also did well in the official scene by reacting to the different officials and showing that we were scared when Max spoke his line.

I still need to work on making sure I don' block myself, this is important for me so that all the facial expressions from the officials/news scene are shown so you can see how my character feels and interacts. I also need to start by adding in pitch, pause, and pace because it'll be more effective to show the different tones of voice used within the play.

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In today's lesson, we done our first full run through and focused more on what needs to be improved so that we can include this in the next rehearsal and we focused on each scene and if it needed improved we would do that straight away so we can work on improving them all individually. I also ended up being off script for most of the run through today which helped me improve my physicality.

In the first scene we all got told we need to work on making our whispers louder for Dream Mother to react whilst walking through us all. We need to make sure that we don't come out of character which is something that we all need to work on as a group. The movements that we do in the first dance need to be clearer and smaller, this is because we are supposed to represent the dead meaning that the movements can't be over the top because we are meant to represent dead people.

In the second scene, the feedback given to me was I need to be louder at the beginning when entering and to be able to project across the room. The feedback that was given to us all was to react more towards the fight scene between myself and Constantia which is something that I can do too after having the heated argument to show my frustration through my facial expressions and be able to give eye contact to Baptista and Maria and respond to them.

We started going through the picnic in the hills scene which we need to work on a lot, the feedback we were given was we need to focus on how old we would be in this scene as it's a past memory where we would be younger which is something that I am missing because i'm focusing more on making sure I get the physicality and body language in instead of focusing on being younger. We need to make the whole scene brighter and happier to show that the times spent as a family were times to remember. We also added in that at the end of the picnic in the hills scene I walk off with Emily to show the relationship between the two characters.

When doing background acting we were told to always make sure we were acting in our character and to always show that we are creating a back story as to what is happening on stage. This mainly focuses on the festival scene because whilst we are all mainly acting in it we still have moments in the scene that we are talking to one another whilst other things are happening so it's important to speak as if we are continuing a story from the play as the audience will still watch to see what everyone else is doing in the background. After doing the festival scene we got told that the energy left the room and there wasn't much energy within the rest of the play that we went through so the energy needs to stay throughout the play.

When going through the officials scene Harriett didn't like the way we walked across the room multiple times which was something we then had to discuss with the assistant director and then we decided to keep it because it started to make sense through our frustration after crossing each official.

We also went through the last scene for the first time being directed by the assistant director who helped us to bring this scene alive, this was because we never spent any time on this scene since rehearsing so we didn't know how to portray this scene and how we should block it. When going over this scene as a small group we then had some good moments that we added in and which was important to see due to this being one of the happiest scenes in the play.

The feedback I got given throughout the rehearsal today was that the actions when talking about drastic events need to be made bigger such as talking about Ramon being dead. The emotion needs to be bigger to show everyone's feelings towards this conversation. The feedback I gave myself after watching ourselves is that we need to make the ending scene bigger.

The feedback given to us that were positive were all of us being off script then allowed more emotion to come out and to be able to develop our characters further and be able to create bigger facial expressions and our faces were visible which showed some food moments throughout the play. The last scene that we did seemed to be good as there wasn't any feedback from any directors. We changed some things towards the end of the lesson when I face Constantia when saying "you cannot take the world on your shoulders" and then standing up with excitement when saying "I am pregnant" which shows the different atmosphere that is going on in the room which is something that was needed to be changed through the family suffering from so many tragic events.

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When recording this evaluation, I spoke about everything that we had done in today's lesson which felt easier for me to do because we went through so much, and being able to go into as much detail as possible helped me to understand the lesson more and the things we have done and being able to speak about individual things helped to put more information into each part to be able to understand when I refer back to this in the upcoming rehearsals.

I talk about the improvements that I thought I needed and got to do in this rehearsal and I talk about why they needed some improvements. It helped me to get in time with the music and focus on my emotional state within this specific scene as it's important to show the change of emotion for my character. I talk about how this has helped to jog my memory of all the dances that we have done so far and better my footwork along the way. I also talk about the difference between my character when dancing to how she is when in scenes, like scene 2 she is very different from how she acts with her mother in other scenes and mainly in the dances. I also talk about the importance of portraying my character.

I talk about the struggles I faced within the scenes and how recapping all our memories really helped me because it's something that I have wanted to work on and during today's lesson it allowed me to work on that. Going over the first scene I talk about how beneficial that was for me because it is the scene I struggle with the most and going in time with one another when we say "We are the dead" and I talk in more detail about how this rehearsal has allowed me to develop on this.

I mention everything that I feel I have improved on during this lesson and how this has made me feel, for example, when talking about scene 2 I talk about the guilty conscience that the older sisters are feeling at not laying in Ramon's place for dinner tonight and how we approach that to show to the audience that is how we feel, I go into detail about the physicality we use to show this. I go into more detail also about the emotions I feel in the scene and how I need to show that I am becoming more frustrated as the scene goes on for nobody listening to her when she tries to say that their father is dead.

I also talk about the things I have improved on such as showing a lot more emotion in the heated argument between Fransicasa and Constantia and how this has been done, this is important for me to be able to reflect and look back at what I am proud of in this lesson and to focus on the things I still need to work on.

https://youtu.be/82A54CUWxb4

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In this video, I talk closely about the warm-ups and the games that we get up to and how this helps us before going through the play. I talk about how this helps me personally and how it motivates not only myself but everyone else in the class before getting on with going through the play. I talk about why it's important we do warm-ups such as vocal and physical because it helps warm up our bodies and voice.

I then start to talk about how it felt for me to go off script in today's lesson and how that made me improve and if it did then how was that done and the things I do whilst having my script with me. I personally feel like deciding to go off script today really helped to add more emotion which is what I spoke about in the video and everything that I felt like I did better when not having my script.

I also go into detail about the picnic in the hills scene and how I'm finding it and the understanding of the feedback given to me about my character and how my character isn't the same age as she is in the picnic in the hills scene and how it's a scene that shows past memories that they've all shared together. I talk about the different emotions my character is feeling in the picnic in the hills such as happiness, and excitement. I've gone into more detail about how I've done this and how that improves the understanding of the scene.

I also talk about when going over the dance scene in today's rehearsal and how I wasn't so confident when going through it due to dancing and the footwork not being a strong point of mine. I then talk in more detail about how I felt I had done in this rehearsal when going over the dances and the improvements that I have noticed have been done. I also mention how I showed more emotion in the dance and faced toward instead of worrying about if my footwork is wrong which allowed everyone to see my face and the fact I was enjoying my time with everyone.

Another thing I spoke about was how I contributed to the lesson when talking about the river of the death scene and the dead body, as we haven't rehearsed bringing the dead body on yet so I thought we should do that so we can see if it's doable and if so how many people we need. I also talk about how I felt about being told to bing on the dead body and how I felt I couldn't show as much emotion until I had to walk next to the body which would be easier for the audience to see the different emotions happening in the scene and the way the family is comforting one another. I also talk about how all the siblings then comfort Constantia as the rest of the cast takes off the body to show the love and support that is to be shown to Constantia at the end when she needs it most.

I go into detail about how I feel this rehearsal has gone and the things I am happy with and that I have improved on which was my aim for this lesson and to be able to go into detail about all of the things I am proud of and the things that were given to me I feel like I personally took the feedback and applied it into this rehearsal.

The things that I've said I need to work on in the video are adding emotion into the river of death scene as it's an important scene and having so many different emotions and things to do made me not add as much emotion into the scene which is something I am going to work on for the next rehearsal. I talk more about needing to comfort the girls more in the scene as it's more of a natural instinct to do as she is the oldest daughter but I go into more detail about the improvements in the video and the things I will work on for the next rehearsal.

https://youtu.be/38lVZ_k9cRw

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In this evaluation, I talk about the video we had to make in the lesson today to help us understand our characters and to talk about what we feel we have achieved, and to show our understanding of our characters. We got told to make a few questions up to ask in our pairs which we then went and asked each other. The one question I got asked was how I feel I am getting on in my character and I feel like this video helped me to go into detail and explain the things I feel like I am doing well at. I feel like this specific part of the lesson was beneficial for me because it helped me to see what I know about my character and to help me realize who I am and what I should be doing.

In the video, I talk about this exercise being the most successful because it helped to build up our personality and character individually and to speak from our own personal perspectives of our characters. I talk about who I was paired up with and how this helped me as I got to learn more about Ramon's character it's important to know more about the characters we interact with as Ramon is the father of my character so being able to talk about my experience and the way she behaves about her father's disappearance helped to relate back to their relationship.

I also talk about the game we played which was ZIP, ZAP, BONG but turned it into using our own words from the play. This helped to show the understanding of our lines and to practice going over our lines so we come more familiar with different lines. It was a fun and engaging game that we all could show our projection which was the aim of the game in the first place as we needed to be louder with our lines which I feel, personally helped me to become more comfortable with saying my lines with projection from going over it so many times and realizing that I haven't been projecting throughout the rehearsal process from the beginning. We also did another warmup where we got into a circle and said our names and repeated them three times as a group it helped us to again know how to project and to understand the pronunciation of the names as some of them aren't names that we are aware of so it's important to know how to pronounce everyone's names. I talk about the misunderstanding of my own character's name due to the way it's spelled and realized that not only myself but the group have been saying my character's name wrong which helped to do this warmup to know the actual saying of each name.

I also talk about another exercise that we have done in today's rehearsal which goes into detail about how I found this useful and how it helped me improve for the rehearsals that are coming up. I speak in more detail about how standing on the other end of the room from my partner was beneficial to helping me project and how it made me feel when doing it.

I go into detail about how this rehearsal was spent more on figuring out who are characters were and how to project which was helpful for me personally because it allowed me to take some tie and really focus on improving my character's physicality and the tone of my character.

Towards the end of the video, I talk more in detail about how I am going to involve this rehearsal in the next lesson and how everything we have done today helped and made me improve my character a whole lot more when focusing on a specific issue that is happening. It benefitted us all because we all were struggling with being able to project which allowed us to focus on doing this at our own speed and just focusing on our characters all day in today's lesson.

https://youtu.be/9OsyEB9zusg
https://youtu.be/Haw06w_8n7I

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In this video I talk about the improv game that we have done at the start of the lesson, this helped to focus on the character's emotion that goes on within the play and to show our understanding of our characters. I go into further detail about the aim of the game and what was expected when having to be in a specific scenario.

When talking about this warm-up that we have done I talk about the pros and cons of when I was acting as my character and what I could've done better and what I feel like I did well within this warm-up.

I also go into detail about what we have done in today's rehearsal, for example, in today's rehearsal we focused on the physicality of our character instead of worrying about our lines, this is because we are too drawn to making sure we know the lines for each scene I personally feel like I don't end up showing much physicality throughout the play. I mentioned doing a run-through of everything we have done so far just using physicality because I thought that it would benefit not only me but everyone else in my group so we could focus more on getting the physicality to match our characters and the emotions of my character feel.

When doing this I go into more detail about how difficult it was to perform with no lines because I kept on forgetting whereabouts we were in the scene which didn't show my physicality because I was focusing on trying to find where we were up too within the scene. I do talk more about how this did help me as well through being able to realize that I need to start adding more physicality into my character throughout the play because I was doing things that I have never added into rehearsals before.

I go into more detail about how we changed what we decided to do in today's rehearsal and how we started to go over the scene that we felt needed improvement. For example, when going through scene two I spoke about the improvements that I feel we needed to work on as I lost character when trying to be serious, this is something that I have managed to overcome in today's rehearsal as we went over it a few times allowing myself to feel more comfortable and aware of what is going to happen.

https://youtu.be/y9oUCYtY7Yw

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In today's rehearsal, we started by going through the dances in the opening scene which I felt we needed to work on the most because it still needs work due to not everyone knowing the footwork and it being too loud so that we aren't being too loud over the music. We worked closely on scenes that needed to be worked on which were absence and losses, land of the dead, and river of death this was because we all need to add in facial expressions and more emotion throughout these scenes.

When going over the beginning scene I found this useful because it allowed me to focus on the improvements and then be able to apply feedback given to me in previous rehearsals to improve on and adapt my character's personality. This helped me because we went over the dances many times to correct our mistakes and we included the feedback given to us which I feel like I took on really well by following the dance moves in small steps and going in time with the music and the beat. We also went over "We are the dead" today as we need a lot of work on this so that it looks effective when doing it. This needs a lot of work because we aren't all saying it when we are supposed to which is making the scene not look as dead as it is supposed to look due to us all going in time with one another which we aren't meant to do we are supposed to say it at different times which we got allocated different times to say it. As a group, I feel like this is one of the main things we need to work on together as it's a group effort to go right to make sure we all say the lines the way we are supposed to and at the time we are supposed to.

When rehearsing the second scene we decided that I need to come on sooner when saying "Like I did you mean" because the line is said from across the room and doesn't make sense when entering the room as I'm not in the house yet so it's as if I am saying out the back. I also got told to highlight some words to change because the tone of voice in this scene is the same there it has to be different levels of emotions running through my character's mind where she feels she has to be more high pitched than other times.

We also went through the river of death scene which I feel like we personally need to work on as a family to show the emotions we are all feeling of the return of Ramon and him being found dead at the bottom of the river. Although we are showing close friendships with one another we need to be more emotional when walking through with the other cast carrying the body.

In today's rehearsal, I feel like I personally did really well in making sure I said "Father is dead" in a more frustrated tone to show the different levels of frustration that I am feeling. I also feel like I applied the feedback given throughout the whole rehearsal because it allowed me to improve physically especially in the opening scene by working on my footwork.

I still need to improve on making sure that I go on time with the music when doing the dances as I need to go in time with the beat. I also need to work on changing the tone of my voice throughout the performance which is something that I feel I have improved on within this lesson because we went over it multiple times until we felt right with it.

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Today's rehearsal I was in costume for the first time which for me really helped me to engage in my character through having the costume on. We also did a vocal warmup which helped me to be able to warm up my voice before going over the scenes we have today. We also made improvements to the picnic in the hills scenes to make it more fun and enjoyable. We then focused on working on the ending scene which I personally felt needed a little more improvements to make it look like a happy memory.

When doing the warmup I felt this was helpful because we got into two different groups which was the family in the picnic in the hills scene and then the rest of the group got into another group and we blind folded Ramon and worked on trying to show the relationship between each character and show the fun and enjoyment we had in this specific memory so we worked on that until we felt like it was improved.

We then started making improvements to the ending scene which is one of the happiest scenes in the play which for me personally is important to show the reactions and the happiness that comes along with it. Constantia wants Francisca to be pregnant and the loss of Ramon and the disappearance of Baptista show that there is something to look forward to and something to keep Constantia sane again. Although it's a happy moment Francisca still wants to be there for her mother and by doing this she wanI needs to show the different levels of emotion in my character's voice and the physicality which is being close and content with her mother but also saying "I want my child to meet its grandmother" is something that I feel is important to say in the scene because she is still trying to show the happiness and joy this will bring to her family but also that her mother needs to focus on this now and to stop stressing herself out.

We went over the picnic in the hills scene and went over it until we done it right. We worked on our physicality and facial expressions which I felt really benefitted me because I was able to apply feedback throughout the duration of going over this scene and make my character look younger which was important due to this scene being a memory of when Ramon was with his family and the fun memories they created together and to show the relationship between them all.

In today's lesson, I felt like I improved on being younger in the picnic in the hills scene which helped to go through with a lot of time put into it because after doing it the laughs and enjoyment happening in the scene after were real and it looked realistic. I am also happy with how well we improved the ending scene in now, going over this scene helped to then build up more excitement for me personally because the improvements what were giving to me really helped me to develop my character's emotions a lot more.

I also feel like I need to work on adding more facial expressions and excitement into the ending scene because it shows the happiness I feel at the fact I am pregnant. I also feel like I need to react more when Constantia says "So your Basilio is a man after all" as it's a funny moment that they all share together which is something that they haven't been able to do throughout the beginning of the play.

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Jose Poot's biological name is Jose Ernesto Chan Poot. When researching into him and who he was, I struggled to find much information on him personally but found things that help as to when and where he got taken.

The case clarification which has been identified was that he is an endangered Missing, which means that a person who is missing is younger than 20 years of age. It also means someone who is missing and is found to be under the influence of a law enforcement agency.

Jose Poot has been missing since April 13, 1998, and research has shown that he still has not been found. He was last seen in Seye, Yucatan, Mexico which is his hometown. In the 70s it was more common for men to go missing within their area of living which relates back to the reason for doing the research on this specific genre as it goes well with the play.

The physical description that I have found of my character is that he was born on January 1, 1985. He was 17 years old when he went missing and his race is white/Hispanic.  It is known that he was 5'5 in height and his weight was unknown.

His appearance was that he had brown hair and black eyes. It also talks about his features which was that he was a thin build which helps to picture when thinking about him although there isn't much information about him there's also a photograph of what he looks like which helps to picture what he would look like now.

It also shows on the information chart that he had 2 silver fillings in the upper front incisors which is something that could be helpful for the people investigating his case and trying to find him on the small marks of what he had that could be different to what other people have. His fingerprints and DNA were also seen as unknown which shows that there aren't many appearances of him and who he belongs to.

The clothing he wore was blue pants which is the only description of the clothing he was wearing when he went missing, he had unknown jewelry but he couldn've been wearing jewelry that was unseen or unknown and there is no record of additional personal items.

The circumstances of the disappearance of Jose was he went missing from his home in Seye, Mexico on the 13th of April 1998. This relates back to the play which is why I chose to research and go further with his disappeared person because Ramon also disappeared from his hometown so I felt like doing someone which relates back to the play will make more sense as to why we are all dancing with real missing people within the same connections.

The agencies that are investigating this case are Procuraduria General de la Republica, their contact person is the Office of the public prosecutor- Trafficking of Minors. The phone number they used for any information found on Jose Poot call 01 800 008 5400, their case number is 53/POV/98. They never had an email address to contact them through.

https://www.doenetwork.org/cases/3396dmmx.html

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The reason for researching Jose Poot is because at the end of the play the women all dance with someone missing and read out information about these people. The reason I chose Poot was that there were similarities as to how he went missing which relates back to the play. For example, this is shown through the story of A Mother's Voice is trying to find out what happened to Ramon and then later down the line what has happened to Baptista.

The reason for this is to help raise awareness of everyone who has still not been found under these horrific circumstances. To make this successful we got told to research someone to dance with at the end of the play.

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Name: José Ernesto Chan Poot
Case Classification: Endangered Missing
Missing Since: April 13, 1998
Location Last Seen: Seye, Yucatán, Mexico

Physical Description

Date of Birth: January 1, 1985
Age: 17 years old
Race: White/Hispanic
Gender: Male
Height: 5'5" (165 cm)
Weight: Unknown
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Black
Nickname/Alias: Unknown
Distinguishing Marks/Features: Thin build.

Identifiers

Dentals: 2 silver fillings in the upper front incisors.
Fingerprints: Unknown
DNA: Unknown

Clothing & Personal Items

Clothing: Blue pants.
Jewelry: Unknown
Additional Personal Items: Unknown

Circumstances of Disappearance

José disappeared from his home in Seye, Mexico on April 13, 1998.

Investigating Agency(s)

Agency Name: Procuraduría General de la República
Agency Contact Person: Office of the public prosecutor - Trafficking of Minors
Agency Phone Number: 01 800 008 5400
Agency E-Mail: N/A
Agency Case Number: 53/POV/98

Information Source(s)

NCMEC
Procuraduría General de la República

Admin Notes

Added: 5-6-2007;Last Updated: 10-21-2021 - By: Htmlcnvtr

Questions or comments? Please contact appropriate member of the Area Team
** Listed information is from the time of disappearance. Return Home

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Name: José Ernesto Chan Poot Case Classification: Endangered Missing Missing Since: April 13, 1998 Location Last Seen: Seye, Yucatán, Mexico Date of Birth: January 1, 1985 Age: 17 years old Race: White/Hispanic Gender: Male Height: 5'5" (165 cm) Weight: Unknown Hair Color: Brown Eye Color: Black Nickname/Alias: Unknown Distinguishing Marks/Features: Thin build.

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https://youtu.be/bQzrftIknxU

In today's rehearsal, we started by going over the scenes we thought needed worked on the most for example, the beginning scene mainly when we do the agonizing cries which is something we need to work on together as a group. We also went over the second scene to perfect it and help myself understand what I need to do and where I need to change my tone of voice. We also got told to do a video on asking questions to our peer about how we feel like we are getting on in our characters and the things that we have done well and need to improve on.

When having to ask questions to one another we focused on the reasons behind the physicality of my character and how do I approach certain characters. For me these questions really helped me to understand my character by giving reasons as to why I approach different character's in different ways. I thought this was very useful because it allowed me to focus on the questions in more detail.

When going over the agonizing cries I felt this really helped me personally because it's something I needed to work on because it was something I was struggling with due to only being able to do the cries and not the movement which was important to represent in this scene to show Dream Mother and the audience that we are the representation of the dead.

We also fixed the second scene and went through the whole scene and picked different things that needed to change, for example, when saying "No Maria, do not even start to dream it. In the village they say for certain it was the police that took him" instead of saying this in the same tone as being frustrated I need to bring the tone down to show that I am bringing the frustration back down and trying to tell Maria that Ramon is dead but in a way that doesn't hurt her or make Francisca come across as harsh.

In today's lesson, I feel like I done well by bringing down the tone of voice when speaking to Maria as spoken about and applied the feedback by sounding as if she is being caring and not wanting to be horrible. I also feel like I have applied the feedback given to me previously when saying "Father is Dead" as it shows the frustration and anger built up in side and the different of emotions and tone she uses with her siblings compared to her Mother. I feel like my agonizing cry has improved a lot by going over it and stretching my body out as uncomfortable as possible which makes it look more realistic.

When thinking of improvements, I feel like I could improve on looking more in the audience direction as the facial expressions aren't always seen when not looking towards the audience so great facial expressions will be missed. I also feel like I could improve on the sound I make when doing the agonizing cries, I feel like I could make it match the movement I do and make it come out as natural as possible and to make sure it is loud enough for the audience to hear the different sounds coming from each of us.

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Evaluating the progress so far and what we still need to work on as a group

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Evaluating the progress so far and what we still need to work on as a group

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Today we decided to do a group recording talking about how we have all felt we have done so far with blocking the play. This was helpful for all of us because we got feedback from nearly everyone about how they are feeling with the play and their thoughts on what needed improving and the things that are going well. We also talk about the things that are stressing us out and have group discussions on how we can all improve as a collective.

We all talk about how we feel the rehearsal process has been so far and talk about all the things that have been going well and all the things we are proud of. We also have a discussion on how we are getting on as a group and how we help one another and how we encourage each other to do our best which is something we all need when doing scenes because it can be a difficult time to process when nobody else is in a scene and you need some encouragement that's something our group does for one another through every rehearsal. Talking about everything that we are all doing well has not only helped me and boosted my confidence but has helped us all is showing how much we all care about this play and how we all want each other to do well.

We also talk about the things we have struggled with as a group, for example, not everyone being in so we can't do a full run-through which is so close to the day of the performance, and to learn how to be respectful when others are doing scenes. We also spoke about how frustrating it is that other people have to take on other people's roles because they aren't showing up and we need to make sure the roles have understudies in case we need them on the day of the performance.

https://youtu.be/iNNbbhf0yto

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Unit 12 - A Mother's Voice - Group Discussion

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Today I became an understudy which turned into me playing the role 100% due to the actor not turning up which meant that we were unable to move forward unless someone took on their role, as well as the roles, given to them.

In this video, I talk more into detail about being an understudy for Carmen who plays the fishwives and how this has made me feel. The reason I done this video is because I wanted to talk about the problems we faced whilst being an understudy and how stressful this was for us both to do and how we have over come this throughout the rehearsal process. Although I have only just become an understudy it is a lot more pressure because I have less time to learn lines and build up my character along side still working on my own character.

https://youtu.be/mGqbwouV8EM

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Being a fishwife is seen for the woman to be a "rude and rough woman" they were also known as "vulgar and abusive women." Fishwives are known for shouting and being gossiped about things that are happening around them. You get different kinds of women who are labeled fishwives. Hearing the word fishwife is known for women to cause trouble. The definition of a fishwife is wives and daugters who have men known as fishermen which is why they get called fishwives because they're within the fishermen.

In the 19th century, fishwives were appearing in satires as fearsome scourages of fops and foreigners. Fishwives do as their told, they do things to try and please anyone, they mainly do it to provide for their families and to be able to support them.

Some of the most famous fishwives:
1. Dolly Peel who is a fishwife of South Shields
2. Dolly Pentreath who is the last native speaker of Cornish
3.  Marretje Argents is a Dutch fishwife and rebel
4. Molly Malone who is the subject of an irish song
6. Lauri Kilgore Fisher who was married to KQRA personality which was called "Springfield's Fish"

The first known use of the fishwife was in the 15th century and the history of the fishwife was middle English. Fishwives are known to complain and criticize other people. It was known that the Fishwives were taking care of the Dutch business for them. They had to take on the Dutch role in serving fo their families whilst they were away. It's also known that the women had other powers that other women didn't have in many other countries due to these women being Fishwives allowed them to have more control and power.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/just-like-feminist-fishwife-was-supposed-to-be-an-insult

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishwife

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In this evaluation video, I go into detail about the game that we played which we had to be in character. The game was like wink murder but instead, we added dialogue in which the person in the middle needed to ask questions and find out the technique we used. I talk about how I found this game and if it helped to understand my character and everyone else's character. Personally, I feel like after this game I know a lot more about my own character and about everyone else's character as we went round in a circle and spoke a little about the characters that we had to pay close attention to for the game to be a success. The rule of the game was to not let the person in the middle know who your character is, the whole point of the game is to try and see how much you have listened to someone else's character to then answer the question given by answering the question as to the other character.

I also go into detail about some questions and answers that were given to me whilst talking about my character which I never really thought about before but made me understand my character more.

I also go into detail about working on my pitch, pace, and pause which is something that we have all been given something to work on. I feel like I need to work on this because of the different emotions that I feel throughout the play which could have a pause due to being the character that always tells people the news or tries to be serious and honest so I feel like she would pause a lot to show that she is thinking about her actions before speaking.

I talk about all the feedback given to me and what I need to remember for the next rehearsal, this helped me to then realize what I need to focus on improving and being able to work on this as soon as possible so that I can ensure that I am developing my physicality. Getting asked the questions, "Am I frightened?" and "Do I want to find Baptista?" I go into detail about why I have added this to today's video evaluation because it helps to then understand the emotion my character is feeling in this scene.

I talk in more detail about the emotional journey in the news scene which is something that is important to notice because of the number of times they've been to different officials and nobody is telling them anything about where Baptista is. I also talk about the relationship that is developing between Constantia and Francisca in the official scene due to Francisca comforting her mother when she starts getting upset and frustrated.

https://youtu.be/SC_Bdp1CdSs

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In these videos, the reason for having two separate videos is because it was too long for it to save as a full video but both parts follow on from one another. The first video is the start of the evaluation of the rehearsal that was done today and the second is following on.

In the video I talk about how this was our first ever run-through of the whole play and how that made me feel, for example, going through the play from beginning to end was so much pressure especially not having all the cast in which made it difficult to run the play smoothly.

I go into detail about the feedback given to me separately and how this will help me improve in the next rehearsal we have. I also talk about how I feel I have done throughout each scene that I am in and what I could work on to make it better. I also talk more in detail about the group improvements also and how we found it as a group and how we worked together in the scenes to make it as good as possible.

For it being our first run-through I feel like we all did a good job at just going through each scene with some motivation from peers. I talked about some of the important feedback given to make sure we work on it in the future as a collective.

When doing this evaluation I go into detail about everything I feel like I have done well in within today's lesson which helped me recap my memory but writing down the feedback given to me on the day so I could include everything and make sure I remember what needs to be kept the same.

Again I go into detail about the things that I need to improve on individually and as a group, this rehearsal has helped me to become more focused on getting the improvements sorted so that we can focus more on bettering other scenes that we still haven't worked closely on so that we can develop the character's physicality in this specific scene.

https://youtu.be/nQZeTT_zcSk
https://youtu.be/qLdB7BF3tUk

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In this video I break down what we done in the different scenes that we all felt needed more work so that we could then focus on other scenes and perfect them too. I go into detail about the first scene and how this helped me to improve with my agonizing cries and the footwork and how I felt I done throughout this specific part of the lesson.

I also talk about the "We are the dead" and how this needs improving because of how important the first scene is we need to make sure we are doing this correctly so personally for me I feel like going over this in today's rehearsal really helped me to then be able to gradually improve along the way.

I also go into detail about why I have to enter the second scene sooner than I did in today's rehearsal which I took on really well, I feel like this helped because I know the cue lines for when I need to start walking on which benefited me because I was able to do this on my own without asking when to walk on and improving this part by myself.

I talk about why I need to focus on some words to change the way I say them because my tone of voice is the same throughout the performance which needs changing due not always having the same emotions throughout the play so I need to work on what I need to say differently.

We also need to show more emotion on the part when the father gets brought on because we aren't putting in enough emotion which would be a difficult time for the sisters as their father has just been washed up from the river.

When saying "Father is dead" this shows that I have improved on making sure it's effective because I got told that it is good and that it's something I no longer need to work on which shows that the feedback I have been given throughout the rehearsal was added.

https://youtu.be/2K0vWyjxmrU

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For this rehearsal evaluation, I talk in more detail about my costume and how this was my first rehearsal in costume which I feel I needed to help me stay in character. I go into detail about how having my costume has helped me develop my character.

We also did a warm-up that linked back to the picnic in the hills scene which I felt personally helped me to be more joyful and cheerful throughout the scene. The game we have done was getting into groups, the group I was in was everyone in the picnic in the hills scene to help us understand what needs to happen on stage and not just in the warm-up which I speak about in my detail in this video.

I feel like in the picnic in the hills scene I have improved massively because the laughs and the smiles are genuine which makes it easier to be involved because I'm portraying my character more through showing the different emotions than what I do throughout the rest of the play. I found it beneficial to make it aware that this was a memory and to show the audience the relationships that were shared and how the relationships have grown throughout the years.

I also talk about how I will make sure I show this throughout the rest of the rehearsal process and not only in today's rehearsal. I also feel like I was able to show the difference in age between my character with this memory scene to how old she is now by being more bubbly, happy, energetic, and excited as it's not something you see much throughout the play until the very end.

After going over this we then started to do a vocal warm-up which is what I speak about in the video and go into more detail, I feel like this was fun because it allowed me to practice my projection

https://youtu.be/uVuTpeN_aB8

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In this evaluation video, I talk about the lesson that we have done today which I felt was really beneficial to me because we went over the agonizing cries which is something I personally feel like I need to improve on so spending some time on this allows me to develop and get better at it.

I also went over the second scene and changed how I say "No Maria, don't even dream it. In the village, they say it was the police that took him" I go into more detail as to why I had to change this and how it has become more effective and has made me think differently of my character and the different emotions she goes through throughout the second scene.

I also talk about my character and who she is and why she is saying the things she does in the second scene which helps me to understand why I say certain lines the way I do.

I also talk about another improvement that I have been given which is looking more at the audience when speaking this is because there are some great facial expressions that are happening and whilst my back is turned away from the audience they can't see the facial expressions that are happening in front of them which defeats the whole purpose.

I talk about doing the video where we ask one another a few questions about our character and some important information that helps not only me but everyone else understand the backstory of my character and who she is.

The things I talk about in more detail are the pros of going through this rehearsal this way, for example, the agonizing cries because every rehearsal we do it helps me to then feel more comfortable and helps me to ud=nderstand and improve on what I need to do which I personally feel like I have improved on in today's lesson.

I also included that I still need to work on changing my tone of voice throughout the performance which is something I personally feel I will get better at with the more rehearsals we do up until the day of the performance.

https://youtu.be/3t0ry9pmkrQ
https://youtu.be/bQzrftIknxU

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In this video, we talk about why we decided to focus on this specific part of scene 2. We talk about how we feel like we have done within this scene. I also talk about what was the most difficult and what I felt I did right.

Doing this video evaluation helped me to then be able to understand how we both felt after spending some of our own time going through this to make it as effective as possible.

We also talk about the struggles we have now overcome due to being able to go over this specific part many times until we felt happy with it.

https://youtu.be/NSlHOtSfXhY

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After today's rehearsal, Mia and I decided to stay behind and run through our fight scene together because we both felt it was something that we were struggling with. In this time we focused on making the tension between the two characters have more emotion as we felt it was something that we were both lacking. We decided to only focus on the ending because it was something that /I personally was not comfortable with due to not being able to stay in character for it which then enabled me to perform my best throughout the scene as I was no longer in character mode.

We spent half an hour going over this specific part to make sure that we were comfortable with it and understood the feedback given to us, te reason we spent this amount of time on a 20-second video was that we wanted to make it look as realistic as possible for the audience to watch, we started from the beginning many of times due to breaking out of character and laughing. This was one of the main issues we were facing when going through the scene in the lesson because the tension was so high we laughed at one another when giving eye contact which is something that we have recently been told to do, so after going through it in today's rehearsal we both felt it was something we needed to improve on in our own time to then come into the lesson the next rehearsal day to show that we have improved and took on the feedback given to us.

After going through it a few times I feel like I started to add more emotion into my character by showing facial expressions and body language which helped to show how I was feeling, this was something have been told previously to work on so I thought I would start by adding it in in my own time to then see what I could change and keep. This helped me to understand the empotion my character is feeling at this specific time to enable me to provide this scene to the best of my ablility. After going through it a few times we then started to record it to see the difference in the scene. I am happy with how well I took on the feedback and I am glad I went over it in my own time so that the improvements given to me were fresh in y mind and that I could apply it straight away to the scene and have a recorded video as proof that I have added in the feedback given to me by the assistant director.

When watching the video back I realized that although it's improved, I need to work more on not making much noise when pushing down on the table to stand up as it draws the attention from the scene to slamming my hands down on the table which I personally feel like is a distraction, I will work on this in my own time at home to make sure that I get the movement right in this scene so that I can make it as effective as possible and to ensure that I apply all feedback given to me. I feel like I also need to start showing more body language throughout the performance scene as it's an intensive sense and with the reactions from everyone else I feel I could react back to them, although we didn't have everyone practicing with us I could've still shown the facial expressions that I would when doing it in front of the whole class.

However, when watching it back I felt as if I kept the eye contact for long as that was something I was struggling with without smirking. This helped to go over the scene many times to start to feel more familiar with looking at each other with those frustrated eyes to show that they're in a heated argument. I also feel like showing my emotional journey throughout the rehearsal as the emotions I feel are different throughout the whole scene so seeing the change of tone in my voice helped me personally feel as if I have improved throughout the duration of our time practicing.

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https://youtu.be/JLgNTps0X64

In today's rehearsal, we went over the fishwife scene which for me was the first time going over it due to me now playing the character Carmen. We done a video on how we thought this rehearsal went with me being in the scene with the other fishwife's. We also went over the second scene and make sure that we were projecting loud enough and spent most our time going over the festival scene to improve on the dances and the excitement that we needed to include within this part of the festival dance.

In the fishwife scene I based my character of what I have been told since not having time to research into her. The character I have is a very gossipy character which works well with the lines I need to say. I felt like for my first time I done well in knowing some of my lines and the cues. I feel like throughout the process I developed my character more.

We went over the second scene too which for me, I felt was really needed because it allowed me to realise how loud I need to project and making sure that I projected loud enough we kept going over the scene until it was loud enough which for me was beneficial because it allowed me to improve on the spot.

We also went over the festival scene and making the dances look more clean and to show more happiness within our characters and to show we were having a good time. This was done by going over the dances many times until we showed the excitement and the joy in our faces and making noises to also let out that we was having a fun time which is something you don't see in the play as much so being able to show this we need to make sure that we go bigger and make it look like to the audience that we really are enjoying ourselves.

I feel like I done well in today's rehearsal when going over each scene until it was good for example, the fishwife scene to me was rewarding because I got feedback after doing it and then going back through it allowing me to add the feedback given and to show my determination and understanding of this scene. I also feel as if I have done well in the second scene although it took me a while to project I still managed to project and being able to work on that together over and over really helped me to understand what I was doing wrong and how I can improve in the rest of the scenes. I also feel as if I have showed the excitement and joy in the festival dance by interacting more with everyone in the dance and laughing and smiling with everyone around me.

I still need to improve on developing my character for the fishwife scene so that they can see the difference from Carmen to Francisca which is important to see that we aren't the same character's and that there is a difference between each. I feel as if I still need to work on my projection for the rest of scene two instead of focusing on that specific part that we kept going over. I also need to work on making sure I don't mess up the dance and to go bigger with my emotions in the festival scene.

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https://youtu.be/TUrd1ee7Al0

https://youtu.be/putwfWtMk6s

https://youtu.be/JVpi3M0VCdg

https://youtu.be/vrhAfpotrWc

https://youtu.be/baoRMN9CRBY

https://youtu.be/aQ_kRtSFIQE

https://youtu.be/O3-Flo8Bp_s

https://youtu.be/k4hC6T0V9oM

In today's rehearsal, we done a full run through which for me I felt was really beneficial because I could re watch the videos back to give myself some feedback as well as the feedback already given to me. We spent the whole rehearsal going through each scene without stopping and then done feedback towards the end to help us see what we needed to improve on.

In the first scene we realised that the footwear we are wearing is not appropriate and makes a loud noise so we have been told to make sure that we are starting to get our characters shoes in so we can practise more with them and see if that is any better. I feel like we done well in the opening scene by making our agonizing cries more believable and whispering loud enough for Dream Mother to react. We do need to work on making sure we whisper as soon as the dance ends so that the tension in the room is high.

In the second scene when I enter we made a few changes after going over the scene, overall in the second scene I feel like we done better in this rehearsal than we ever have as the emotions from not only myself but everyone else in the scene changed when it needed too. This made it easier for me to react to personally because the emotion was there and it didn't feel awkward to react because I had something to react too. The family argument between Francisca and Constantia was the best one we have done so far due to taking feedback that was given to me in previous rehearsals and being able to add it today which helped bring my character out a lot more. The improvements that were given after the lesson was when I enter Baptista and Francisca need to do a hand squeeze to show their relationship instead of not interacting with each other until they hug to show their bond and that they're close. Another thing I need to work on is making sure I am dithering for the line "come along, stop dithering" this is so that it makes sense as to why Constantia is saying this. Also when Maria is talking to Francisca and gets emotional they both need to hold their hands out to one another to show that they're supporting one another.

When going over the picnic in the hills scene it is important to remember not to always be at the back and to make sure to move forward so that the audience can see our facial expressions throughout the play. In this scene Francisca and Baptista took it upon themselves to set the picnic blanket out because Ramon took Dream Mother too early meaning that she didn't have enough time to set the picnic out. This shows their relationship through wanting to help each other out. I personally feel like I improved a lot within this scene through acting younger and more immature and making eye contact and smiling along with the other sibling's which we got told was a nice bond to see and that our relationship keeps improving every time we do this scene. Another thing that I done well in this scene was making the memory of the family being all together look fun and engaging for the audience.

When going over the fishwife scene the biggest thing I need to work on is making sure I don't block myself behind the other's this is important so that the audience can see my face when making facial expressions and being able to hear me better when speaking instead of wondering who is speaking. Another thing we need to work on together is making the scene bigger, this is important because it tells the story that hasn't been told yet about what might have happened to Ramon and why he went missing and who he was last seen with. I have been told that I am improving a lot within the last rehearsal because this is my second time going over it and I am developing my character really well.

The dance need needs worked on because we need to make it look like we are having fun and enjoying our time which is important because this is one of the only times we show our enjoyment all together so we need to make it look bigger and react more to show we are having fun and engaging with one another.

The search scene needs work on as I need to stop blocking myself in the scene, we got told this scene is effective and our facial expressions are good and overall it is effective but I still need to work on not blocking myself as the faces I pull are really important and show the feelings I am feeling throughout the scene and the different stages of going to different officials.