“How is a writer to make an artful narrative out of tales in which the same miserable events unfold over and over again? ….[the author] finally resorts to assembling, in white type on 35 black pages, what she calls a ‘litany of hate, a topical and chronological register of acts of ethnic cleansing.”

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As it turns out, I am currently reading Nathan Englander’s new novel, “The Ministry of Special Cases,” which tells the story of the parents of a young man who is “disappeared” in Buenos Aires during the years of the junta in the 70s. Because the government denies that any of these people who were kidnapped were ever even in custody, much less tortured or killed, the goal of the parents for some of this book is to simply get the name of their son on a recognized list. One organization works to compile enough evidence to be justify the name being on the list. But the government itself must approve the list. What the government ultimately admits to is that they are accused of these kidnappings, but they continue to say nothing ever happened. The list is a protest that has no effect other than to busy those who are trying to compile it.

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I don’t mean at all to suggest that is what is happening here. We are not living in the Argentina of the junta. Yet. And public opinion can be moved, which can move lawmakers to act. What I want to point out is that in societies where there are people who are so marginalized that they can be killed or attacked in great numbers without public outcry; in a society where people can be killed in such numbers and it isn’t even a blip on the news as a story, there is a much deeper problem that needs to be addressed. These crimes serve the purposes of an authority or power structure, and this must be exposed. As surely as the unsolved murders of the women of Tijuana.