Driving Terror - (Diálogos) by Karen Robert

Book Synopsis

Driving Terror tells the story of twenty-four Ford autoworkers in Argentina who were tortured and "disappeared" for their union activism in 1976, miraculously survived, and pursued a decades-long quest for truth and justice. In December 2018, more than four decades after their ordeal, the men won a historic human-rights case against a military commander and two retired Ford Argentina executives who were convicted of crimes against humanity.

The book uses this David-and-Goliath story to explore issues of labor repression and corporate complicity with Argentina's last military dictatorship as well as to shed light on the enormous obstacles facing victims of such crimes. Its emphasis on working-class activism in the arenas of labor and human rights introduces North American readers to a new narrative of contemporary Argentine history.

The Ford survivors' story intertwines with the symbolic evolution of the car the men helped build at Ford: the Falcon sedan. The political polarization and violence of the Cold War era transformed the Falcon from a popular family car to a tool of state terror after the coup of 1976, when it became associated with the widespread practice of "disappearance." Its meaning continued to evolve after the return to democracy, when artists and activists used it as a symbol of military impunity during Argentina's long-term struggles over justice and memory.

Review Quotes

"Before the darkened-windowed SUV became the preferred vehicle of the world's death squads, there was the green Ford Falcon. Karen Robert's extraordinary Driving Terror tells the story of how Argentina's anticommunist military region of the 1970s turned an object associated with middle-class pleasure and working-class pride into an instrument of terror. A wonderful, creatively and thoroughly researched book that details how the Cold War was, in places like Argentina, a class war."--Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City

"Few objects can encapsulate the history of twentieth-century Argentina as perfectly as the Ford Falcon, and Robert uses it effectively as a connecting thread to write a multilayered story of the company, the car, the workers, the military repression of labor, and the search for justice after the fall of the last dictatorship."--Natalia Milanesio, author of Destape: Sex, Democracy, and Freedom in Postdictatorial Argentina

About the Author

Karen Robert is an associate professor of history at St. Thomas University, where she teaches courses on Latin American history, world history, research methods, and global automobility. She recently translated Memories of Buenos Aires: Signs of State Terrorism in Argentina, a comprehensive guide to hundreds of memory sites relating to Argentina's last military dictatorship.