Genocide in the Neighborhood

Cultural Writing. Latino/Latina Studies. Translated from the Spanish by Brian Whitener, Daniel Borzutzky, and Fernando Fuentes. GENOCIDE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD (an English translation of Genocida en el Barrio: Mesa de Escrache Popular by Colectivo Situaciones) documents the autonomist practice of the escrache, a system of public shaming that emerged in the late 1990s to vindicate the lives of those disappeared under the Argentinean dictatorship and to protest the amnesty granted to perpetrators of the killing. The book is an example of militant research, an investigative method that Colectivo Situaciones has pioneered. Through a series of hypotheses and two sets of interviews, GENOCIDE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD documents the theories, debates, successes, and failures of the escraches, investigates the nature of rebellion, discusses the value of historical and cultural memory to resistance, and suggests decentralized ways to agitate for justice. Think of it as a much needed model of political resistance.