A Lexicon of Terror

By TINA ROSENBERG

The recent transition of southern Europe, Latin America and

the Communist bloc from dictatorship to democracy has
brought with it a proliferation of new reports, plays, essays
and novels that explore the quandaries of societies and
individuals as they attempt to deal with the legacy of tyranny.
Most of the material available in the United States reflects
Americans' interest in Communist Europe -- ''The File,'' by
Timothy Garton Ash, the novels of the Czech writer Ivan
Klima, ''The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin,'' by
Adam Hochschild. The play ''Death and the Maiden,'' by the
Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman, is one of the few works on this
theme published here that emerge from the Latin American
experience. ''A Lexicon of Terror'' helps remedy that
imbalance. It is a well-researched, intimate and perceptive
portrait of an Argentina still struggling with the crimes of the
''dirty war'' that ended nearly 20 years ago.

Marguerite Feitlowitz, who teaches writing at Harvard

University, lived in Argentina in the early 1990's and was
able to interview her subjects over a period of years. With the
exception of a chapter about the few repentant military men
who have come forward, and one showing the attempts by
Jewish leaders to justify their failure to speak out, the book
focuses on the victims -- though it is far more complex than a
simple victims' testimonial.

Some of the victims are former Montonero guerrillas. But by

the time of the 1976 coup, the guerrilla movements had been
virtually wiped out, and the vast majority of the 10,000-plus
''disappeared'' were guilty of nothing more than practicing
psychology or working with the poor. Even readers familiar
with the repression of urban Argentina will find fresh insights
in Feitlowitz's chapter about the poverty-stricken northern
province of Corrientes and the long struggle there of tobacco-
farming peasants for a decent life -- a fight that made them
major targets for kidnapping and murder.

Despite the title, only a small part of the book looks at the
words and phrases that entered the Argentine vocabulary
through its concentration camps and the pronouncements of
its military leaders. This is fortunate, as the language of terror
is an idea more interesting in the abstract than the particular.
While the junta did enrich the Argentine vocabulary with
words like desaparacido (disappeared person, almost always a
euphemism for someone murdered), chupado (sucked up, or
kidnapped) and trasladar (transfer, a euphemism for take
away to be killed), every dictatorship employs language as a
tool. Communist regimes used it far more extensively than
the Argentine junta. Feitlowitz's analysis of the junta's
propaganda also seems somewhat naive, although her
description of the grotesque apologies for the dictatorship
made by the American public relations company Burson-
Marsteller are appropriately horrifying.

Some of her own language falls into syrupy psychobabble

(''Those attending the Mass more than took back a violated
space; one could say they reconsecrated the sanctuary''). But
most of the time Feitlowitz avoids the generalities that often
plague writing about ''healing'' and sticks admirably to the
vivid and the specific.

The section on Jewish leaders is particularly strong. Jews

made up 2 percent of Argentine society but 10 percent of the
disappeared, largely because they were disproportionately
represented in the guerrilla movements, and also in the
professions of journalism, academia, psychology and social
work, which the junta considered just as dangerous. The
official organization of Argentina's Jews, the Delegation of
Argentine Jewish Associations, protested little, despite its
government contacts. The delegation was generally made up
of established, right-wing Jews eager to prove their
''Argentine-ness.'' It even chose not to protest the kidnapping
of Jacobo Timerman, perhaps the best-known journalist in
Argentina. ''What if he's done something wrong?'' the Jewish
leaders said, as if that would justify kidnapping and torture.

A chapter centered on the experiences of one prisoner, a

physicist named Mario Villani, grippingly describes the
surreal world of the camps. In between torture sessions, the
guards took Villani and a few pregnant women prisoners to
an amusement park and made them ride the kiddie train. A
guard whose nom de guerre was Blood brought his 6- or 7-
year-old daughter into the camp to meet Villani and other
favorite prisoners. Years after he was freed, Villani ran into
one of his principal torturers, a man known in the camps as
Julian the Turk. Julian recommended that Villani go see
another of his former prisoners to ask for a job.
Julian the Turk is free, of course, because military pressure
put a stop to the post-junta trials. After the convictions of five
of the nine commanders, repeated military uprisings
persuaded President Raul Alfonsin to propose laws setting a
time limit on prosecutions and exempting all men below a
certain rank. Congress quickly passed them both. Alfonsin's
successor, Carlos Menem, then pardoned the commanders
who had been convicted, along with several dozen other
prisoners.

''A Lexicon of Terror'' shows the consequences of all this.

Today, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo still march in front
of the president's office every week to remind Argentina that
they do not yet know the fate of their children. Relatives of
the disappeared are still holding commemorations. And
Alfredo Astiz, one of the most notorious kidnappers of the
navy, has revived all the old questions after giving a
controversial interview in which he justified the dirty war,
and said that he and his colleagues remain the best qualified
to kidnap and kill political dissidents and journalists.

In Chile, as well, the failure to prosecute the crimes of Gen.

Augusto Pinochet's regime has kept the issue of the
disappeared alive. Pinochet's retirement as commander of the
armed forces on March 10 and his assumption of a lifetime
Senate seat (where he is immune from prosecution) have
provoked new protests and attempts at trials. Polls show that
the vast majority of Chileans do not want simply to turn the
page on the disappearances and murders of the coup, even
though most of the deaths took place a quarter-century ago.
Forgetting cannot be decreed. That is the message of
Feitlowitz's moving book.