Prisoner

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Chapter 5 and 6 Discussion
“Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number” is a story told by Jacobo Timerman who was a journalist in Argentina and has decided to share the experiences of living under a dictatorship. In Chapter 5, the author mentions of a mother present in his office while looking for his son who was probably taken by the rebel soldiers. Timerman was a journalist and a publisher at the local Argentine local newspaper, La Opinion. He mentions that military dictatorship such as the one he is a victim to only occur due to lack of knowledge on forging better political formula to ensure that everyone is represented. Timerman explains the role of journalism in the political environment. As a journalist, Timerman became one of the victims of the clash between the government and the rebel group. Journalists whose responsibility is to report the actual events as they take place including political events are usually at the crossroads with governments trying to hide some information from the public. Therefore, there are attempts to suppress news, by trying to filter the information to reach the people. In the book the government of Argentina arrested and tortured those who had different ideologies as well as those who reported the actual events that the government felt were not supposed to reach the public. It shows the desperation by most governments to cover up “sensitive” information from the public.
The political and social environment when Timerman was in prison was hostile to the Jewish people.

He talks about anti-Semitism in Argentina. There are some incidences where Timerman reports to be mistreated because of his Jewish background. The narrator uses his ordeals as a prisoner to share the mistreatment of Jewish prisoners and Jewish people in general. Such experiences still exist to date in most of the South American countries.
Work Cited
Timerman, Jacobo. Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number. Univ of Wisconsin Press,
2002.