The desert war: the use of a comic book as an indictment | Guerra do Deserto: o uso de uma história em quadrinhos como denúncia

Abstract

This article analyzes the comic book “The Desert War”, by cartoonist Enrique Breccia. The research aims to follow how the work addresses the so-called “Conquest of the Desert”, a time when the Argentine state decimated the indigenous people in order to occupy territories in the south of the country. By analyzing the author's life and the comics, the aim is to show how that historical process was portrayed in the specific context of the Latin American Cold War and the eve of the coup for a new military dictatorship in Argentina. We understand that the aim was to criticize the official narrative of history and denounce the actions of the military in a deed they considered heroic, inverting the narrative by offering stories about ordinary people involved in the war, whether they were indigenous or mestizo and subaltern gauchos.