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We’ve all heard that the dog is ‘man’s best friend’, but it hasn’t always been like that. Used by the Spanish conquistadors as a weapon during the conquest; by US troops in prisons in Iraq; or by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians in the occupied territories, canines have also been victims of massacres in several Western countries. “Behind the canicides there are new ways of governing the city,” says Arnaud Exbalin.
“The killing of dogs goes hand in hand with other normative policies of society, with new forms of domination,” says historian Arnaud Exbalin, author of the book “The great killing of dogs, Mexico in the West from the 18th to 21st centuries,” a journey through the history of how canines arrived in Mexico, adapted, mixed, were slaughtered by the thousands and are now a symbol of social status.
Dog killings have spanned the centuries and marked the history of cities such as Bogotá, Paris, New York, Moscow, Havana and Istanbul. A situation that is partly explained because “a vision of the modern city was born in the Western world. We went from a baroque city, where there were a multitude of dogs, to a modern city where dogs became pets with owners”, says Exbalin.
In the 18th century, dogs were judged as disturbing, demonic, lubricious entities that had to be controlled or even exterminated. The guest of Escala en Paris explains why “canicides are one element, among several, that account for a radical change in the way of conceiving the city and public spaces as streets where flows can travel, clean streets without garbage , without excrement and without stray dogs”.
Obviously, these actions to eradicate dogs generated resistance among the population, and that from the beginning.
“The dog has always been a friend of man according to the ancient authors, but what has changed is that now, for the majority of residents, and I am speaking more of cities, the dog has become more of a pet member of the family” , considers Arnaud Exbalin.
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