Clandestinity and militant culture in Latin America, 1960s to the early 1980s: epistemological and historical reflections and an agenda for research

Abstract

Clandestinity was a central aspect of the life and organisation of the militancies of the diverse cultures of the Cold War Latin America left. Yet the topic is scarcely considered central in testimonies or historical analyses of the period. In this article I approach both clandestinity as culture and the culture of clandestinity as lived experiences, ways of organising and modi operandi among militant organisations and individuals of the period. To do this, I resort to diverse types of literature, ranging from academic analyses to personal testimonies, including fictionalised accounts. I then elaborate on the possible historical, methodological and epistemological reasons why clandestinity has not been explored in the majority of the academic or testimonial corpuses presently available, stressing the possibility, as a hypothesis, that we may still be facing silence – a main tenet of clandestinity – as political doctrine. I also briefly discuss oral history as a main tool to access knowledge of clandestinity and question whether clandestinity may be an object of the historical record.