Peering Into the Future:
A Personal Report on a Visit to Argentina
Michael Cassity
September, 1995
It is growing late and I want to tell you about this place I visited because I learned something about another country, about the world, and about our own society.
Come with me and listen while I tell you a little of my trip in July and August to Buenos Aires. I feel awkward writing like this, but if we were sitting out on the deck watching the sun set behind the mountains or sitting before an open fire in a dark room, it would come so much more easily to both of us. So get comfortable, and let's talk about things like the meaning of life and the future of the world.
The starting point is the trip. Fly out of Laramie, over the mountains, and then from Denver across the country to Miami. From there late at night, board a plane to Buenos Aires. Images come to me of that trip: There was the crackle of the captain's voice announcing that we were directly above Havana. Lots of food for thought in that brief announcement as I remembered the announcement of Castro's victory in the revolution, New Year's Day 1959, then the Bay of Pigs, then Kennedy's speech and the ultimate world confrontation in the Missile Crisis, and the haze of three decades of economic warfare since then. The silence and the dark gave me plenty of opportunity to dwell on those things. And then at another moment over Brazil: the full moon reflecting on a silvery river in the dark far below -- the Amazon? Maybe; I don't know. Or, another time when I looked out and saw the orangish glow of fire below piercing the darkness; maybe they were burning slash as they clear the rain forest, but the fire was big, the size of a city.
And then after the eight hour flight there was the landing at dawn in Buenos Aires at Ezeiza International Airport, meeting up with Pablo, the historian who invited me, and the beginning of the adventure.
Life, culture, people
The backdrop is Buenos Aires, capital of the Republic of Argentina, itself a nation torn by history and victimized by a global geographic tradition that places it at the bottom of a round earth. I went there for a couple of weeks to work with historians at two universities that sought to strengthen their U.S. history programs. My daughter Rebecca, 18 and getting ready to go off to Oberlin, went with me to help me and to learn. She did both. And I learned more because of her presence.
Buenos Aires is a big city -- 11 million people. Numbers that big are meaningless to me. What I can relate to is that the city has 55,000 taxis. That's more cabs than there are people in any city in Wyoming, even during the week. And I think I saw all of them one day. Then there was the night when I couldn't find a single one of them. I would take the subway to and from work every day. It's safe, timely, and cheap. The street traffic was awful. No laws except, evidently, the survival of the fittest (or is that the meanest?) regulated the flow of traffic as drivers created new lanes between other lines of traffic, as turns any direction could be executed from any lane, as the proper behavior upon approaching an intersection was to honk your horn or at night to flash your lights (they not being ordinarily on) to warn others of your approach so that they can get out of the way. It is not uncommon to see people passing an ambulance with its lights flashing (I was once in a car that did.)
It is a big city, a noisy city, and a dirty city. But don't get me wrong: it's not an underdeveloped city or country. They have all the benefits of "civilization"—computers, liposuction, cable TV, institutions of higher education, Hootie and the Blowfish, a national debt, McDonald's and Burger King, peer pressure, and everything else. (Before I went there, my friend told me that Buenos Aires was more expensive than New York, but not as costly as Paris. I don't spend much time in those places, but I've been to Casper and Cheyenne so I had an idea what he was talking about.) There are many prosperous people there, and I had never seen so many fur coats in all my life (including a fair amount of time out in the woods) prior to my visit there. You see, alas, my visit took place in their winter; Wyoming has six or eight weeks of summer a year and I spent two of them going to the other end of the globe where it was cold; go figure. I also saw a lot of people who have very little, those followers of Eva Perón called los descamisados, the shirtless ones, ever loyal to her, and who seem to increase now with every new action by the government. Fur coats and shirtless—and then the middle class that is declining in its own prosperity these days too.
Many people are fashion conscious, as in Continental Fashion. And the country views itself as more European in culture than Latin American and I have to agree that it may well be so. As I walked down Florida Avenue—a pedestrian mall that is about ten blocks long—I saw the stores representing the latest in European fashion. But the people walking down Florida were exactly as described by Daniele, one of the students at Palermo and a friend of Rebecca's: Busy, stern-faced, fast-walking, driven people, prosperous, and anal. Florida Avenue is essentially a fabulous, upscale, expensive shopping mall. Banks and offices mix with tony stores. The European influence was everywhere—the fashions, the stores, the imports, the language. About the language: yes, they speak Spanish, kind of. It is an Italianized dialect. (Rebecca says, no, it is an accent, not a dialect, and you need to know her perspective as well as mine.) They say ciao instead of adios. There is no "y" sound, but a "zh" sound instead, as in yo ("zho") or pollo ("pozho"); or Mayo is "Mazhyo" (think: DiMaggio). Caused me all kinds of problems as I tried to understand what people were telling me. Of course, I have that problem here in Laramie, too.
Here's a different way of looking at the country. In 1910 more than three fourths of all the residents of Buenos Aires had been born in a European country. And the immigration continued. There remain entire communities and enclaves where Italian is spoken, and, yes, where German is spoken. The post-World War II exodus to Argentina of German and Italian officials is legendary—and true. They have their Alps (or Tetons) which they call the Andes and which attract fanatic skiers from around the world. But the reference point for them globally remains Europe, not the U.S.A. It had not occurred to me, I guess, that people formerly enveloped by the Monroe Doctrine would have shifted their eyes and minds that direction so completely.
Now, I was down there at the behest of a couple of universities who were able to get the USIA to sponsor my visit. And I was the big shot and felt good about it—for a while. The local press came and interviewed me. At the beginning of the interview the guy—Roberto—asked me questions of a general nature (How old are you? What kind of question is that, for crying out loud?). He had been given a copy of my vitae and asked me if I had really published in Colorado Heritage. Sure, no big deal, I thought. I like that little item, but I've published more prominently and more significantly elsewhere. But in the printed interview there it was: Professor Cassity has published in such journals as The Journal of American History and Colorado Heritage. Still, this made no sense to me until a few days later when I found out that three people had been dismissed from the Ministry of Education in Argentina because of where they went to school. One had gone to Moscow University, another to the Lenin Institute (or something like that), and the third to the University of Colorado. The reason: in Spanish, colorado quite simply means "red." Mystery solved. Sigh. Big shot—sure.
Every day life? It was strange in a way when I heard about the cold front moving in from the south, but I felt more at home when the news reported that parts of Patagonia had been cut off by the blizzards. Then there was the Saturday that Rebecca and I caught the airfoil across the Rio de la Plata (widest river in the world) and visited Uruguay. We got off the boat and went along with everybody else to the tour buses and were duly greeted by a sharp, crisp and starched guide who promised a day of fun and adventure. When we didn't go straight to the colonial port, I figured we were getting a little perk; when we got off the bus at a ranch and were served a big meal, I thought something was amiss; when, part way through the meal, a gaucho with a bull horn jumped to the front of the dining hall and started talking excitedly and loudly about how we were going to get in the wagons and tour a real estancia (ranch) and see all that takes place on a ranch, I thought, uh-oh. I went to South America to see a ranch? Rebecca and I discreetly opted out of the wagon ride and walked around studying the fascinating birds and animals that we could scrounge up and lay down in the grass in the warm afternoon sun and thought how good life can be when things don't go as you plan them. From there we went back to Buenos Aires, a full day with good, somber memories, and more than one lesson learned.
There were other moments as well that stand out. There was the food. The United States' per capita consumption of beef is 78 pounds; in Argentina it is 220 pounds. Mighty fine meat. On two separate occasions I had huge beef tenderloins that were wonderful; they were the kind of good eating that could make a Wyoming cowboy ponder the mechanism of emigration. Splendid. And good wine from the Mendoza region in the West. Of course they eat at strange times, supper usually coming late in the evening, 9, 10, or 11:00. At the end of a good meal the satisfied diners clap the sabor, give the meal and its preparers a round of applause.
There was the tango. Ah, the tango. The tango is the national dance of Argentina and it is something else. I had heard about it, but still didn't know what to expect. One Sunday afternoon Rebecca and I walked to Barrio San Telmo, a neighborhood with lots of antique stores, coffee shops, a park, and, on Sundays, a market in the plaza where people set up booths with antiques, old books, jewelry, and such for sale. I was studying a booth's wares and vaguely, unconsciously felt myself pulled by some music off to my side, when Rebecca nudged me and nodded in the direction of the music and—closer than I realized—a couple was dancing the tango. Bold, sultry, sexy—my, my, it was beguiling. I was virtually hypnotized by the gyrations of the couple and the pair that followed them. At the start of one set the dark woman with the short hair stood provocatively and stepped forward a few paces—with a grand, luscious, inviting sweep of her arm and hand—saying boldly, provocatively, "Tahngo!" in a sweet but demanding voice that would have been impossible to resist. The second time she did this she was looking straight at me and I felt a thrill, a sensation all right. Of course, I suspect everybody did. I expected only to find a couple of old crooners working on their songs, but this was, yes, something else. I watched the intricate, but natural, steps as their bodies swayed and stretched and touched and entwined, as they seemed to communicate, implicitly, intimately, not through eye contact but through convergent auras, and I thought of Robb Dew's comment in her wonderful novel, Dale Loves Sophie to Death, that dancing "was far sexier than sex. . . . Dancing was all expectation; dancing was testing out sex; it was the first matching of rhythms. . . . they moved as though they had the same nervous system." It was true: they seemed to be part of each other in their movement, in their very being. Later I realized that the dance provided a metaphor for traditional relationships.
Then, there was the affection Argentines show each other, a puzzling ritual for me at first. They greet each other with hugs and kisses at hello and goodbye everyday (I asked a friend: but what if you don't like the person? He hadn't thought of that possibility and then said, well, maybe that's the way we keep liking each other.) And then, there was the real cultural encounter: the bidet. There are still some mysteries surrounding that device. The elaborate sepulchers of the rich and famous in the cemetery at Recoleto were fascinating for their art, for their spirituality, for their ostentation. Eva Perón's grave, actually for the Duarte family, was modest by comparison and was oft visited and always decorated. In contrast to the graves that appeared to be an effort to take it all with you, sepulchers that were literally as big as houses, but fancier, hers was plain black marble and said simply "Familia Duarte," was hard to find, and was marked by a simple plaque with her epitaph: "Don't cry for me, for I am neither lost nor distant; I am an essential part of your existence, with you in love and pain . . . ." The first part is the part we remember; the second holds the power. Those words, "an essential part of your existence," and "with you in love and pain" made me think of the fusion of souls and psyches in the tango. Pieces were coming together in understanding this people: the dance, the familiarity, the closeness, the bonds of mutuality.
I should also mention the feelings of colonialism I experienced there: the statue of Franklin Roosevelt, father of the Good Neighbor Policy and the Export-Import Bank, in a park; the espresso served by a silent servant at a meeting at the American Embassy (They wanted to meet Rebecca, not me. Her response: "They want me there? What did I do?"); the old, ornate offices of the Fulbright Center downtown with the teak/oak parquet floors, incredibly high ceilings, and a small, circular carved wood elevator going up, all with the aura of Kipling in India.
Education
That's the place I visited, well a glimpse of it anyway. What was I doing there anyway? There is an effort by a dedicated group of historians in Buenos Aires to teach more about the United States in the curriculum. This is a significant challenge since the U.S. is not exactly at the center of their attention. While a prodigious real-life education about the U.S. takes place daily through TV and news and through the marketing of goods and symbols exported from the U.S., the understanding of the society from whence all this comes is limited, as perhaps it is here too.
So I talked with faculty at the University of Buenos Aires and the University of Palermo (a private school), with their students, and with others, including a labor union, about U.S. history, about the responsibility of historians, and about the New World Order. I won't go into what I said to these people, since you are already familiar with how I see U.S. history, but I will say that everybody was very much interested, that they asked hard questions, and that they shared with me more than I shared with them (what else is new?). I learned lots.
There were several audiences. The history faculty (the catedra) responsible for U.S. history was an exciting, vibrant, and toilsome bunch. They are paid on a course by course basis, and, for that matter, are paid for the number of hours they are in class each month. They hold down several jobs, teaching at a couple of universities, a high school, and sometimes another regular job (such as one who is a medical worker to support the family but moonlights as an historian). Wonderful people: Pablo, Fabio, Gabriela, Alejandro, Julie, Andrea, Roberto, Graciela, and others -- I still remember the visage of each of them; they look tired and sad under the eyes, weary but committed, and they remind of me of Kerouac's desolation angels. A lot more serious, though. And each one has a story of her or his own that makes it hard to generalize. But I am grateful to them, they took me in and shared with me, they were patient with me, and they helped me and I feel close to each one. How do you pay that back?
The students are vastly different at the two universities. It takes more money, obviously, to go to the private schools. The students at the University of Palermo are bright, hard-working, and cultured. Less affluent youth and adults attend the public university. One man I met graduated from another private school, not Palermo; he told me that his father paid $4000 US a month in tuition for him to go to college; next year he is going to the London School of Economics with no scholarship for graduate work. He had never been to a public school. His dad works for a major American-based transnational corporation. I asked a group of students at the University of Palermo how many had been to the U.S. and they all answered in the affirmative. At the University of Buenos Aires I asked the same question and no one had. You see the difference. Clothes and appearances are different, too: no furs, no elegance at UBA, but clean, cloth coats, and tired faces from working all day and then attending class in the evening, knowing they will do it again tomorrow. Posters are different too. At UBA, posters exhort students to support the Chiapas Zapatistas, to join the general strike, to protest the new education laws, and so on. At the University of Palermo, posters invite students to come hear Robert Fogel talk about economic history.
And then there were the members of the telephone workers labor union. That audience reminded me of those I face in Wyoming. Great people. All ages. Men and women. Most were taking high school level courses. They asked hard questions and they made subtle connections. They wanted to know about race relations in the U.S. They wanted to know about democracy as opposed to the two party system. They wanted to know about the new Congress and public responsibilities. They wanted to know about U.S. policy toward Cuba. They wanted to know whether the problems associated with the industrial revolution were any more severe than those that they see accompanying the information revolution and the advent of neo-liberal economic policies. They wanted to know a lot of things historians are supposed to be able to tell them. I earned my supper that night.
I was there to teach, but I think I learned more than I imparted. When Roberto, the guy from the press, interviewed me, I remember him looking at me quizzically after we had finished, and he spread his arms and opened his palms and wrinkled his brow: "But why would you be interested in Argentina?" he said in all seriousness. I told him part of it was because I had read some about the country, but I also wanted to learn about my own country by learning about another. How is it different? How is it the same? What direction are we headed, all of us? I told him that I had much to learn. So what did I learn?
Dictatorship and Denial
It was a little jarring to hear people refer to a law that was passed (or repealed) "during the last dictatorship." What a frame of reference. One part of my interest was in the open acknowledgment of a repressive society; the other part was the implication that a free society had taken its place. I talked with people about their experiences then and since to learn more about this intriguing social change.
Before I left the U.S. I talked with someone who had spent a lot of time in Argentina and who provided me some guidance. He said that he was a little concerned about the President, Carlos Menem, since he had unethically gotten the constitution changed so he could run for re-election (which he did and which he won this spring). This surprised me, since of all Menem's sins, this may have been the slightest. His association with the military regime and his continued defense of their policies bothered me much more. I asked: What about the "disappeared" (the desaparecidos), what about those thousands of Argentines who vanished, who were kidnapped, who were tortured, who were murdered, who were buried in secret mass graves, who were taken out to sea and dropped out of a helicopter? "Well," he said, "I really doubt how much of that happened. I think there are a lot of those people living in Canada now." I was stunned. What about Jacobo Timerman's documentation of his own abduction and torture in his book that I read at the time, Prisoner without a name, Cell without a number? He said he had doubts about Timerman; he looked too healthy when he came out of his ordeal to have really suffered much. I persisted, What about the military officials who were tried and found guilty, what about the generals who just this past spring in the elections came forward and confessed their crimes? Not missing a beat, my acquaintance went on and said, "You're right; who would have thought there was this much going on?" Of course, the protests were loud and clear then and since; only those in deep denial were surprised. Go to any place where freedom is curtailed and you will go to a place where denial is rampant. (Think about that, please. What do we say about our own society?) While I was in Argentina, one of the admirals in the junta laughed off the accusation of the "disappeared" and said that they were all in Europe getting laid.
So what's the real story? The real story is that there is ample documentation of the atrocities and there always has been. There is a good book on this whole matter that needs to be studied: Martin Edwin Andersen, Dossier Secreto: Argentina's Desaparecidos and the Myth of the "Dirty War" in which Andersen demonstrates convincingly that the Dirty War—the government vs. the guerrillas—was a fabrication concocted by the government to mask its terrorism. The numbers are not clear, but it does appear that around 30,000 people disappeared during the years of the proceso, 1976-1983. The numbers get clouded by debates over the number murdered outright, the number abducted and ultimately returned, and the number of people abducted but who vanished without a trace. This was an effort to, literally, remove those people critical of the dictatorship. Some were enemies of the state. Some were trouble-makers at work. Some were kids—many infants stolen. It's easy to get into the game of "many were innocent," the implication being that those who were politically active were somehow not innocent, and that's wrong too. Some, like Timerman, were in part the victims of a vigorous strain of anti-Semitism. Some were just taken for no reason at all. But what it did was to create an environment of sheer terror in which people were afraid to act, to speak, to do anything but be compliant, and, yes, to deny the reality of the terror. The nearest I have found for a rationale for this was articulated to Jacobo Timerman:
"But if we exterminate them all, there'll be fear for several generations."
"What do you mean by all?"
"All . . . about twenty thousand people. And their relatives too— they must be eradicated—and also those who remember their names. . . . Not a trace or a witness will remain."
They were hooded and taken away and interrogated to get them to name names of others who were critical of the government, of confederates, of friends, of friends of friends. And they were roundly tortured in some of the most sadistic ways conceivable with various devices including electric prods—had "the machine" applied to them—and raped and molested and mutilated in clandestine buildings set aside for the purpose, often with music playing to conceal the screams. I took a picture of one of these buildings operated by army intelligence at the time, one of more than 340 such buildings. It haunts me. Think what it must do to those people to look at it, to walk past it. After all of that, they were sometimes released and sometimes disposed of. The kids that were taken, maybe from parents who were disappeared (yes that is an active verb there, not just the passive voice) and sometimes just as a market activity, were given or sold to families who wanted children, depending on their connections. While I was there one of these children had been identified. He was now 17 years old and had grown up with a good, loving family, but the family that he had been stolen from discovered his identity. So then the questions began of what to do with him. And certainly it is complex and there is no simple right answer now. On the other hand, had this youth been the stolen son of a prominent businessman or general, and had he been raised in a family of dissidents, the questions would have been fewer and the answer much less complicated, I fear.
There is a movie to watch. In 1985 the Academy Award for best foreign film went to La Historia Oficial (The Official Story) a movie about a woman who discovers that her adopted child was one of the disappeared. It has subtitles and is readily available. It's good, but it also slips into the trap of suggesting that some of the disappeared were innocent, while others were not. There is another movie too, based on a play. Death and the Maiden is more recent and just as powerful. Sigourney Weaver is unforgettable in that role; she was disappeared, later released, and thinks she recognizes the voice of one of her assailants.
Back to real life: The Mothers of the Disappeared, or, The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, formed shortly after this all began in the 1970s. They began marching in the Plaza de Mayo, the central plaza in the capital, that faces the Casa Rosada, the pink house, the government house. They demanded information about, and the return of, their disappeared children and they demanded the punishment of those responsible. Every Thursday afternoon they march, wearing their white head scarfs. And they have marched there for nearly twenty years. The troops used to gather and try to intimidate them, but it didn't work. They chanted at the soldiers, "Cowards, this plaza belongs to the Mothers!" I walked with them and I talked with them. What is surprising is not that their numbers have dwindled, but that they still march after all these years. They're tough. There's no denial there.
If looking into the eyes and talking with the Mothers isn't convincing enough, there are data to study. In 1983, just before turning over power to an elected government, the junta did its own study of the problem of the Dirty War and concluded that the government was innocent, but for good measure declared an amnesty for those guilty of terror against the citizens. The Alfonsín government, which replaced the junta, revoked the amnesty and established a commission to investigate the fate of the disappeared. I picked up a copy of the report, Nunca Mas (Never Again), which details the structure and operation of the terrorism in about 500 pages with pictures, diagrams, and testimony. The subsequent trials of generals proved their guilt and more trials were scheduled only to be halted by military rebellions in 1987. Carlos Menem subsequently pardoned the convicted junta leaders and gave a blanket amnesty to other criminals and a couple of years ago he thanked the military for saving the country from the subversives. So much for the return of democracy.
One more comment on the problem of freedom: A number of the people at the University of Palermo had been to the United States and they were quick to offer comparisons. Others made comparisons based on what they had learned about the U.S. from classes, CNN, and U.S. commercial marketing efforts. I was surprised at the number of people who believed Argentina to be a much freer country than the United States. Part of this comes from the experience of having passed through dictatorship; certainly the alternative would appear much freer. Part of it comes from travel experience and news programs whereby they see Americans living in cages of fear. The inability to go for a walk at night in urban areas seems to them absurd. And it is true, Buenos Aires is a very safe city and I found myself walking around late at night sometimes with no real insecurity. And they talked about race relations in the U.S. a lot, sometimes suggesting that class tension was the Argentine equivalent of our racial problems. But the thing that got me most was how different people expressed in different ways a common perception that the American people live lonely, isolated lives, that they live in small groups of people just like themselves with no sense of a broader community. People may live physically close to one another, they suggest, but they build walls and barriers to make sure they are separate from each other. It's like they were saying that our capacity for intimacy has declined. They also said that they saw more and more of this self-constructed isolation and sequestration creeping into their own society. These comments happened enough that I am forced to stop and think and wonder if they are right, not about their own vaunted freedom, but about our lack of it. I will also say that I could not successfully deny their charges. The point is that real freedom must be not just freedom for me but freedom for all of us before it is genuine. The connections between the people are their emphasis in measuring freedom.
Argentina and The New World Order
In 1977, a year after the generals took power, novelist and social critic Rodolfo Walsh wrote a scathing open letter detailing the horrors of the military government, but then he went on:
These acts, which rattle the conscience of the civilized world, are not, however, the worst suffering you have brought to the Argentine people nor the worst violations of human rights you have carried out. In the government's economic policies one finds not only an explanation for its crimes but a greater atrocity that punishes millions of human beings with planned misery. (quoted in Andersen, Dossier Secreto)
The next day Walsh was killed. And the economic policies he lamented were very simple and straightforward: destroy the labor unions through black-listing, repression and kidnapping, eliminate collective bargaining, privatize (at the insistence of the World Bank) public power and light, and generally move toward neo-liberal policies within the country and in relations with external powers, pursuing that odd, but not really, combination of "free" market and political repression.
Menem was elected in 1989 wearing the mantle of the party of Juan and Eva Perón and promising a populist administration to restore democracy and help the downtrodden—the traditional descamisados of the Perónist party. He immediately, upon election, broke every single promise and launched Argentina's current economic policies, policies that combine to make for the most austere economy in its history. He adopted a series of free market policies that dumped government regulation of, but not subsidies to, the private sector. He privatized government agencies that had provided services, like the airlines and telephone company and railroad. (Remember the guy who interviewed me for the press? I started asking him questions and it turned out that he used to be a cultural programmer for public radio until it was privatized and then there were the massive layoffs; he's doing several jobs now.) The national pension system used to be pretty good; upon privatization the retirement money was lost and the people who had relied on it wound up getting about $100-150 a month in a society that is at least as expensive as the U.S. to live in. So those people are now out in the job market also. It has continued in that vein since then. Not too long ago, downsizing at the University of Buenos Aires caused the loss of jobs for 40% of the faculty; the money saved then went to those who remained on the payroll. (You can also see where some of the taxi drivers came from.) The government has also cut wages drastically, usually in increments of 20%. In its subsidy to provincial governments, especially to those controlled by the other parties, it is requiring the provinces to pay their workers in government notes that are worth a fraction of face value. The government is also collecting taxes like never before, lowering the floor beneath which taxes aren't declared and pursuing the small sums much more vigorously than the big amounts. And also the government has weakened the labor unions by co-opting the big one, the CGT (General Labor Confederation) that Juan Perón brought into his political alliance. Unemployment is now 18.6% and climbing, and the secretary-general of the CGT lost half his audience—the unionists walked out—part way through a recent speech in which he encouraged the government to work closely with business and labor, but did not criticize the government or suggest that the neo-liberal policy was not working. (One leader of that walkout complained about his union's denial of responsibility: "It seems like nobody is to blame for what happens in the country.") The CGT has become exclusively a device for social control. Then there is the matter of corruption. Privatization opens up all kinds of opportunities for buying low and selling high, even back and forth to the government. My friend Pablo tells me that his students understand the Grant administration very well when he teaches U.S. history because they see it around them.
To be charitable to Menem would be to note that he is simply doing the bidding of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Export-Import Bank, and the private international bankers that are Argentina's creditors. And, in discussing this austerity with some people, one who is well versed in economics told me bluntly: "There is no choice." Others also hold this view. For that matter, I saw it in the Washington Post when I got home. The theory seems to be that if you take money away from those who have very little, those who have more will have even more and the economy will therefore be better. When I inquired about the possibility of collecting taxes from the big guys, of making foreign companies pay their share (yes, even the U.S. businesses), of increasing purchasing power in the public to make a healthy economy, some of the students at the private school thought this perhaps a little too colorado; the students at UBA nodded assent; and the telephone workers were clearly looking for a leader who would articulate that kind of vision for them in the halls of power. Perhaps the most salient comment of all was by Roberto, who told me that it looked like the government was turning the nation into a shopping mall; we both struggled for the words in English and in Spanish, but shopping mall was as concrete as either one of us could get to a crude marketplace. In this society-turned-mall, however, among the commodities offered for exchange are people's lives and fortunes. The nation, the very soul of the country, was being sacrificed for market values and institutions. And so were the people. And they know who is to blame.
The truth is, what we see happening in Argentina is a glimpse into the future; it is a glimpse into the New World Order. For that is both the origin and consequence—the context by which it all makes sense—of all of this. The welcome mat for foreign investment is out at the same time that the door is being shut in the face of workers, the poor, and the small businesses in the country. The IMF and World Bank have ordered retrenchment in government services and greater capital investment. In this they are but the bill collectors for the creditor countries. Argentina, like other countries, is integrating into the system of GATT of supposed free-trade where production can shift from one country to another, wherever labor costs are lower, and the production can be directed to one country or another, wherever the market is fatter and more privileged. Production and consumption are being removed more and more, being placed worlds apart. The consequence is being realized in Buenos Aires: workers are working multiple jobs for less and less money to produce goods that they cannot afford while those who profit from that system are less and less responsive to public needs or national interests. Roberto was right.
But there is one more step in the process. This two-tiered system that is so starkly evident in Argentina is spreading to the industrialized world. Look at the agenda of Menem's administration. Compare it to the agenda actively pursued by both parties, by the Clinton administration and by Congress in the U.S. We are importing the same class-divided social structure and making it official policy. The people at the bottom, whether in Argentina or the U.S.A., are being left out and made subject to market forces while those at the top dominate the markets.
Naturally, there has been some resistance to these policies in Argentina. We've already seen the Mothers of the Plaza staring down the fascists. Now think about the old people on pensions protesting, even rioting. They did and they do. Then there are the government workers in Cordoba who rioted over their pay reductions by the national government. And then there are the students calling a general strike to protest the levying of high tuitions for free public education. And on and on.
The government's response? You can guess. The national police is equipped like an army. One afternoon I was on my way to the post office to mail a post card. I heard what I want to think was firecrackers, but I'm not sure. As I went down a street to explore, I saw a crowd of people with banners and drums marching to protest government policies. Then, roaring down an adjacent street were several APC-like vehicles, heavily armored and armed, pushing through to their destination. The national police cordoned off an area with a solid line of police and the APCs behind them. The protestors could go no farther. The machine gun turrets loomed menacingly above the heads of the police as the crowd came to a halt. I took a couple of pictures and moved on; people were waiting for me elsewhere and I had learned plenty about the government's response to the plight of those excluded from the benefits of the system, or at any rate those with a different vision for their society. The military establishment and the masters of the economy manage to work together quite well. I'm trying to figure out what this bodes for us here at home. Not a cheery picture.
What is really happening in Argentina is that times are getting harder and harder, that the policies established by the fascists are a little more subtle but just as onerous now. The economic opportunities are there only for the rich and powerful; the poor are indeed being hit hardest and the middle class is becoming poorer and poorer. Yet that is only the surface. Beneath it all is a process of social disintegration in which an individual's fate is becoming more and more crudely determined by his or her resources (and I don’t mean talents and abilities). Just as the political opposition has been atomized by years of political repression so that there is no effective organized opposition now, in the economy the protections for those born into circumstances of despair are being removed in the name of the free market. This means that the weight not just of the appetites of the well-born must be carried by those at the bottom, but that the weight of organized society itself is being carried more and more by the weakest, those most in need of help themselves.
And one more thing: I think that it is common to think of those people coming to the U.S. to visit, to see what the future looks like. Actually, I think it is more the other way around. I think we can go to Argentina and other countries to see what our own future looks like in the New World Order where social institutions and services will be replaced with the priorities of the marketplace and are not tempered by values of compassion, social justice, and human dignity, values that are not derived from the market. And the future is this: a desperate competition, the collapse of democratic political mechanisms, the destruction of democracy itself, a dramatically widening gap between rich and poor, social disintegration, a society in which power is unrestrained by legal or moral responsibility. A shopping mall as the purpose of society? A society in which the economy is characterized by the same lack of constraint as ruthless street traffic? No purpose beyond profit, no bonds beyond the cash nexus? Not my vision. Not theirs, either, I'm afraid. But it is the prospect of the twenty-first century.
"I am an essential part of your existence, in all love and pain." Eva Perón
I get around Wyoming quite a bit and I have learned much from the regular folks I talk with when I visit historical societies, libraries, and other places where people gather. They tell me a lot about their values, their dreams, and their fears. When I visited Nicaragua I found some similarities with the people there, and not just in the Tom Mix hat of Sandino. Now, when I go to Argentina I am reminded of those similarities. Sure, the cultures are different and the languages aren't even the same and I will always feel like an outsider (Rebecca: "Dad, you really need to work on your accent."). But you can have much the same conversation with different people. Maybe this is just a reflection of how small the world really is. I'm not talking about technology here and faster airplanes that reduce the physical distances between people and cultures. I'm talking about the people finding themselves up against the same problems, dealing with the same issues and policies, and even dealing with the same forces and powerful companies. We are not separate from each other; we are an essential part of the existence of each other. And, the total—again, the metaphor of the dance—is more than the sum of the parts. At least that is where we find fulfillment and where the mark of humanity is evident. The problem is, though, that I find more and more people are finding themselves isolated, alone, outsiders to organized society. The solution is obviously to press for greater, more authentic democracy, broader inclusion and meaningful participation in society, in terms not just of politics but a broader diffusion of power throughout society, so that neither government nor business nor any other concentration of power will dictate the circumstances of life to us.
I don't have the strategy for doing this. I did come to an awareness of a starting point, however. It has to do with the denial of horror. It is possible for people to deny the existence of something plainly in front of them, whether it is totalitarianism and torture and disappearance or social injustice and oppression. Sometimes the denial goes through the device of minimizing whatever the problem is—“these are isolated instances, not part of a pattern" kind of thinking. Sometimes it takes place through a logic of blaming the victim—“they got what they deserved; if they were like me, it wouldn't happen to them." And sometimes the denial works through a process of putting it off until the future—“this will pass." Or inevitability: "there is no choice." The ultimate form may be the business of saying "it could be worse," a thought that can justify tolerating absolutely anything. There are probably a thousand more of these devices but whatever form it takes, the denial is important because it allows people also to deny responsibility for what is going on, to deny responsibility for helping each other, and to deny the responsibility that truly comes as a result of living together on this planet—being an essential part of each other's existence. And so long as that denial continues, so do the real problems and horrors and pains, and, yes, a bleak outlook for the future. I understand full well that feeling alone and powerless, being an outsider, both contributes to and grows from this denial. And I also recognize that we play many games to deny our own discontent, to convince ourselves that we really are happy when actually we face deep depression or disappointment or dejection. But I also know the basic truth of what Louise told Thelma: What you settle for is what you get.
What now? I don't know if I'll make it back there. I don't know that I have anything else to tell them that they don't already know. (Besides, Rebecca made a different point to me: "Dad, I'm not sure that I'm going to take you with me on the next history trip I go on.") But I will not turn my back on what I have seen and learned. There is an urgency, in fact, to this, some having to do with the global nature of the situation, and part of it with the way we live our lives every day. It seems like they actually converge here. I'm not sure how to bring them together. But I remain optimistic, especially after talking with people there and people here about our shared perspectives. I'm still trying to understand it all and this is a step in that direction. Let me know what you think. I could use your perspective on this to help come to a resolution.
Photos
1. Casa Rosada, the Pink House or Government House, Capitol of Argentina viewed from Plaza De Mayo. The balconies of Casa Rosada are perhaps most famous for Eva Perón's addresses from there to the masses gathered in the Plaza. Legend tells of her speech in 1945 that brought los descamisados by the hundreds of thousands into the center of town where they dominated the city and prevented a military take over of the country.
2. Hernán, a store in the Florida Avenue pedestrian mall.
3. Epitaph for Eva Perón, Duarte family sepulcher, Recoleto Cementerio. My best effort: "Don't cry for me, for I am neither lost nor distant; I am an essential part of your existence, with you in love and pain . . . ."
4. & 5. The Tango (tahngo). Public exhibitions at Plaza San Telmo.
6. Discussing the New World Order with telephone workers' union (Federación de Obreros Estatales Teléfonicos del República Argentine). The meeting took place in a classroom where many take classes. The posters commemorate Argentine independence. Photo by Rebecca Cassity.
7. Posters in hallway and entrance of classroom building at Universidad (Nacional) de Buenos Aires. Center poster urges the end of the laws that are destroying public education. It also calls on them to join the Worker Party. The poster to the right calls on students to make solidarity with the state workers of Cordoba who have been victimized by government decrees reducing their income.
8. Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo marching in the Plaza with Casa Rosada before them.
9. Citizen protest of government orders reducing wages and laying off workers. They are outside the government offices responsible for enforcing the orders.
10. Official response to the citizen protest. Note water cannon on vehicle behind line of police and behind that vehicle more such vehicles lined up. Adjacent streets held more in waiting. The police cordon prevented the crowd from advancing to the Plaza de Mayo, another block or two, and the Casa Rosada.
Come with me and listen while I tell you a little of my trip in July and August to Buenos Aires. I feel awkward writing like this, but if we were sitting out on the deck watching the sun set behind the mountains or sitting before an open fire in a dark room, it would come so much more easily to both of us. So get comfortable, and let's talk about things like the meaning of life and the future of the world.
The starting point is the trip. Fly out of Laramie, over the mountains, and then from Denver across the country to Miami. From there late at night, board a plane to Buenos Aires. Images come to me of that trip: There was the crackle of the captain's voice announcing that we were directly above Havana. Lots of food for thought in that brief announcement as I remembered the announcement of Castro's victory in the revolution, New Year's Day 1959, then the Bay of Pigs, then Kennedy's speech and the ultimate world confrontation in the Missile Crisis, and the haze of three decades of economic warfare since then. The silence and the dark gave me plenty of opportunity to dwell on those things. And then at another moment over Brazil: the full moon reflecting on a silvery river in the dark far below -- the Amazon? Maybe; I don't know. Or, another time when I looked out and saw the orangish glow of fire below piercing the darkness; maybe they were burning slash as they clear the rain forest, but the fire was big, the size of a city.
And then after the eight hour flight there was the landing at dawn in Buenos Aires at Ezeiza International Airport, meeting up with Pablo, the historian who invited me, and the beginning of the adventure.
Life, culture, people
The backdrop is Buenos Aires, capital of the Republic of Argentina, itself a nation torn by history and victimized by a global geographic tradition that places it at the bottom of a round earth. I went there for a couple of weeks to work with historians at two universities that sought to strengthen their U.S. history programs. My daughter Rebecca, 18 and getting ready to go off to Oberlin, went with me to help me and to learn. She did both. And I learned more because of her presence.
Buenos Aires is a big city -- 11 million people. Numbers that big are meaningless to me. What I can relate to is that the city has 55,000 taxis. That's more cabs than there are people in any city in Wyoming, even during the week. And I think I saw all of them one day. Then there was the night when I couldn't find a single one of them. I would take the subway to and from work every day. It's safe, timely, and cheap. The street traffic was awful. No laws except, evidently, the survival of the fittest (or is that the meanest?) regulated the flow of traffic as drivers created new lanes between other lines of traffic, as turns any direction could be executed from any lane, as the proper behavior upon approaching an intersection was to honk your horn or at night to flash your lights (they not being ordinarily on) to warn others of your approach so that they can get out of the way. It is not uncommon to see people passing an ambulance with its lights flashing (I was once in a car that did.)
It is a big city, a noisy city, and a dirty city. But don't get me wrong: it's not an underdeveloped city or country. They have all the benefits of "civilization"—computers, liposuction, cable TV, institutions of higher education, Hootie and the Blowfish, a national debt, McDonald's and Burger King, peer pressure, and everything else. (Before I went there, my friend told me that Buenos Aires was more expensive than New York, but not as costly as Paris. I don't spend much time in those places, but I've been to Casper and Cheyenne so I had an idea what he was talking about.) There are many prosperous people there, and I had never seen so many fur coats in all my life (including a fair amount of time out in the woods) prior to my visit there. You see, alas, my visit took place in their winter; Wyoming has six or eight weeks of summer a year and I spent two of them going to the other end of the globe where it was cold; go figure. I also saw a lot of people who have very little, those followers of Eva Perón called los descamisados, the shirtless ones, ever loyal to her, and who seem to increase now with every new action by the government. Fur coats and shirtless—and then the middle class that is declining in its own prosperity these days too.
Many people are fashion conscious, as in Continental Fashion. And the country views itself as more European in culture than Latin American and I have to agree that it may well be so. As I walked down Florida Avenue—a pedestrian mall that is about ten blocks long—I saw the stores representing the latest in European fashion. But the people walking down Florida were exactly as described by Daniele, one of the students at Palermo and a friend of Rebecca's: Busy, stern-faced, fast-walking, driven people, prosperous, and anal. Florida Avenue is essentially a fabulous, upscale, expensive shopping mall. Banks and offices mix with tony stores. The European influence was everywhere—the fashions, the stores, the imports, the language. About the language: yes, they speak Spanish, kind of. It is an Italianized dialect. (Rebecca says, no, it is an accent, not a dialect, and you need to know her perspective as well as mine.) They say ciao instead of adios. There is no "y" sound, but a "zh" sound instead, as in yo ("zho") or pollo ("pozho"); or Mayo is "Mazhyo" (think: DiMaggio). Caused me all kinds of problems as I tried to understand what people were telling me. Of course, I have that problem here in Laramie, too.
Here's a different way of looking at the country. In 1910 more than three fourths of all the residents of Buenos Aires had been born in a European country. And the immigration continued. There remain entire communities and enclaves where Italian is spoken, and, yes, where German is spoken. The post-World War II exodus to Argentina of German and Italian officials is legendary—and true. They have their Alps (or Tetons) which they call the Andes and which attract fanatic skiers from around the world. But the reference point for them globally remains Europe, not the U.S.A. It had not occurred to me, I guess, that people formerly enveloped by the Monroe Doctrine would have shifted their eyes and minds that direction so completely.
Now, I was down there at the behest of a couple of universities who were able to get the USIA to sponsor my visit. And I was the big shot and felt good about it—for a while. The local press came and interviewed me. At the beginning of the interview the guy—Roberto—asked me questions of a general nature (How old are you? What kind of question is that, for crying out loud?). He had been given a copy of my vitae and asked me if I had really published in Colorado Heritage. Sure, no big deal, I thought. I like that little item, but I've published more prominently and more significantly elsewhere. But in the printed interview there it was: Professor Cassity has published in such journals as The Journal of American History and Colorado Heritage. Still, this made no sense to me until a few days later when I found out that three people had been dismissed from the Ministry of Education in Argentina because of where they went to school. One had gone to Moscow University, another to the Lenin Institute (or something like that), and the third to the University of Colorado. The reason: in Spanish, colorado quite simply means "red." Mystery solved. Sigh. Big shot—sure.
Every day life? It was strange in a way when I heard about the cold front moving in from the south, but I felt more at home when the news reported that parts of Patagonia had been cut off by the blizzards. Then there was the Saturday that Rebecca and I caught the airfoil across the Rio de la Plata (widest river in the world) and visited Uruguay. We got off the boat and went along with everybody else to the tour buses and were duly greeted by a sharp, crisp and starched guide who promised a day of fun and adventure. When we didn't go straight to the colonial port, I figured we were getting a little perk; when we got off the bus at a ranch and were served a big meal, I thought something was amiss; when, part way through the meal, a gaucho with a bull horn jumped to the front of the dining hall and started talking excitedly and loudly about how we were going to get in the wagons and tour a real estancia (ranch) and see all that takes place on a ranch, I thought, uh-oh. I went to South America to see a ranch? Rebecca and I discreetly opted out of the wagon ride and walked around studying the fascinating birds and animals that we could scrounge up and lay down in the grass in the warm afternoon sun and thought how good life can be when things don't go as you plan them. From there we went back to Buenos Aires, a full day with good, somber memories, and more than one lesson learned.
There were other moments as well that stand out. There was the food. The United States' per capita consumption of beef is 78 pounds; in Argentina it is 220 pounds. Mighty fine meat. On two separate occasions I had huge beef tenderloins that were wonderful; they were the kind of good eating that could make a Wyoming cowboy ponder the mechanism of emigration. Splendid. And good wine from the Mendoza region in the West. Of course they eat at strange times, supper usually coming late in the evening, 9, 10, or 11:00. At the end of a good meal the satisfied diners clap the sabor, give the meal and its preparers a round of applause.
There was the tango. Ah, the tango. The tango is the national dance of Argentina and it is something else. I had heard about it, but still didn't know what to expect. One Sunday afternoon Rebecca and I walked to Barrio San Telmo, a neighborhood with lots of antique stores, coffee shops, a park, and, on Sundays, a market in the plaza where people set up booths with antiques, old books, jewelry, and such for sale. I was studying a booth's wares and vaguely, unconsciously felt myself pulled by some music off to my side, when Rebecca nudged me and nodded in the direction of the music and—closer than I realized—a couple was dancing the tango. Bold, sultry, sexy—my, my, it was beguiling. I was virtually hypnotized by the gyrations of the couple and the pair that followed them. At the start of one set the dark woman with the short hair stood provocatively and stepped forward a few paces—with a grand, luscious, inviting sweep of her arm and hand—saying boldly, provocatively, "Tahngo!" in a sweet but demanding voice that would have been impossible to resist. The second time she did this she was looking straight at me and I felt a thrill, a sensation all right. Of course, I suspect everybody did. I expected only to find a couple of old crooners working on their songs, but this was, yes, something else. I watched the intricate, but natural, steps as their bodies swayed and stretched and touched and entwined, as they seemed to communicate, implicitly, intimately, not through eye contact but through convergent auras, and I thought of Robb Dew's comment in her wonderful novel, Dale Loves Sophie to Death, that dancing "was far sexier than sex. . . . Dancing was all expectation; dancing was testing out sex; it was the first matching of rhythms. . . . they moved as though they had the same nervous system." It was true: they seemed to be part of each other in their movement, in their very being. Later I realized that the dance provided a metaphor for traditional relationships.
Then, there was the affection Argentines show each other, a puzzling ritual for me at first. They greet each other with hugs and kisses at hello and goodbye everyday (I asked a friend: but what if you don't like the person? He hadn't thought of that possibility and then said, well, maybe that's the way we keep liking each other.) And then, there was the real cultural encounter: the bidet. There are still some mysteries surrounding that device. The elaborate sepulchers of the rich and famous in the cemetery at Recoleto were fascinating for their art, for their spirituality, for their ostentation. Eva Perón's grave, actually for the Duarte family, was modest by comparison and was oft visited and always decorated. In contrast to the graves that appeared to be an effort to take it all with you, sepulchers that were literally as big as houses, but fancier, hers was plain black marble and said simply "Familia Duarte," was hard to find, and was marked by a simple plaque with her epitaph: "Don't cry for me, for I am neither lost nor distant; I am an essential part of your existence, with you in love and pain . . . ." The first part is the part we remember; the second holds the power. Those words, "an essential part of your existence," and "with you in love and pain" made me think of the fusion of souls and psyches in the tango. Pieces were coming together in understanding this people: the dance, the familiarity, the closeness, the bonds of mutuality.
I should also mention the feelings of colonialism I experienced there: the statue of Franklin Roosevelt, father of the Good Neighbor Policy and the Export-Import Bank, in a park; the espresso served by a silent servant at a meeting at the American Embassy (They wanted to meet Rebecca, not me. Her response: "They want me there? What did I do?"); the old, ornate offices of the Fulbright Center downtown with the teak/oak parquet floors, incredibly high ceilings, and a small, circular carved wood elevator going up, all with the aura of Kipling in India.
Education
That's the place I visited, well a glimpse of it anyway. What was I doing there anyway? There is an effort by a dedicated group of historians in Buenos Aires to teach more about the United States in the curriculum. This is a significant challenge since the U.S. is not exactly at the center of their attention. While a prodigious real-life education about the U.S. takes place daily through TV and news and through the marketing of goods and symbols exported from the U.S., the understanding of the society from whence all this comes is limited, as perhaps it is here too.
So I talked with faculty at the University of Buenos Aires and the University of Palermo (a private school), with their students, and with others, including a labor union, about U.S. history, about the responsibility of historians, and about the New World Order. I won't go into what I said to these people, since you are already familiar with how I see U.S. history, but I will say that everybody was very much interested, that they asked hard questions, and that they shared with me more than I shared with them (what else is new?). I learned lots.
There were several audiences. The history faculty (the catedra) responsible for U.S. history was an exciting, vibrant, and toilsome bunch. They are paid on a course by course basis, and, for that matter, are paid for the number of hours they are in class each month. They hold down several jobs, teaching at a couple of universities, a high school, and sometimes another regular job (such as one who is a medical worker to support the family but moonlights as an historian). Wonderful people: Pablo, Fabio, Gabriela, Alejandro, Julie, Andrea, Roberto, Graciela, and others -- I still remember the visage of each of them; they look tired and sad under the eyes, weary but committed, and they remind of me of Kerouac's desolation angels. A lot more serious, though. And each one has a story of her or his own that makes it hard to generalize. But I am grateful to them, they took me in and shared with me, they were patient with me, and they helped me and I feel close to each one. How do you pay that back?
The students are vastly different at the two universities. It takes more money, obviously, to go to the private schools. The students at the University of Palermo are bright, hard-working, and cultured. Less affluent youth and adults attend the public university. One man I met graduated from another private school, not Palermo; he told me that his father paid $4000 US a month in tuition for him to go to college; next year he is going to the London School of Economics with no scholarship for graduate work. He had never been to a public school. His dad works for a major American-based transnational corporation. I asked a group of students at the University of Palermo how many had been to the U.S. and they all answered in the affirmative. At the University of Buenos Aires I asked the same question and no one had. You see the difference. Clothes and appearances are different, too: no furs, no elegance at UBA, but clean, cloth coats, and tired faces from working all day and then attending class in the evening, knowing they will do it again tomorrow. Posters are different too. At UBA, posters exhort students to support the Chiapas Zapatistas, to join the general strike, to protest the new education laws, and so on. At the University of Palermo, posters invite students to come hear Robert Fogel talk about economic history.
And then there were the members of the telephone workers labor union. That audience reminded me of those I face in Wyoming. Great people. All ages. Men and women. Most were taking high school level courses. They asked hard questions and they made subtle connections. They wanted to know about race relations in the U.S. They wanted to know about democracy as opposed to the two party system. They wanted to know about the new Congress and public responsibilities. They wanted to know about U.S. policy toward Cuba. They wanted to know whether the problems associated with the industrial revolution were any more severe than those that they see accompanying the information revolution and the advent of neo-liberal economic policies. They wanted to know a lot of things historians are supposed to be able to tell them. I earned my supper that night.
I was there to teach, but I think I learned more than I imparted. When Roberto, the guy from the press, interviewed me, I remember him looking at me quizzically after we had finished, and he spread his arms and opened his palms and wrinkled his brow: "But why would you be interested in Argentina?" he said in all seriousness. I told him part of it was because I had read some about the country, but I also wanted to learn about my own country by learning about another. How is it different? How is it the same? What direction are we headed, all of us? I told him that I had much to learn. So what did I learn?
Dictatorship and Denial
It was a little jarring to hear people refer to a law that was passed (or repealed) "during the last dictatorship." What a frame of reference. One part of my interest was in the open acknowledgment of a repressive society; the other part was the implication that a free society had taken its place. I talked with people about their experiences then and since to learn more about this intriguing social change.
Before I left the U.S. I talked with someone who had spent a lot of time in Argentina and who provided me some guidance. He said that he was a little concerned about the President, Carlos Menem, since he had unethically gotten the constitution changed so he could run for re-election (which he did and which he won this spring). This surprised me, since of all Menem's sins, this may have been the slightest. His association with the military regime and his continued defense of their policies bothered me much more. I asked: What about the "disappeared" (the desaparecidos), what about those thousands of Argentines who vanished, who were kidnapped, who were tortured, who were murdered, who were buried in secret mass graves, who were taken out to sea and dropped out of a helicopter? "Well," he said, "I really doubt how much of that happened. I think there are a lot of those people living in Canada now." I was stunned. What about Jacobo Timerman's documentation of his own abduction and torture in his book that I read at the time, Prisoner without a name, Cell without a number? He said he had doubts about Timerman; he looked too healthy when he came out of his ordeal to have really suffered much. I persisted, What about the military officials who were tried and found guilty, what about the generals who just this past spring in the elections came forward and confessed their crimes? Not missing a beat, my acquaintance went on and said, "You're right; who would have thought there was this much going on?" Of course, the protests were loud and clear then and since; only those in deep denial were surprised. Go to any place where freedom is curtailed and you will go to a place where denial is rampant. (Think about that, please. What do we say about our own society?) While I was in Argentina, one of the admirals in the junta laughed off the accusation of the "disappeared" and said that they were all in Europe getting laid.
So what's the real story? The real story is that there is ample documentation of the atrocities and there always has been. There is a good book on this whole matter that needs to be studied: Martin Edwin Andersen, Dossier Secreto: Argentina's Desaparecidos and the Myth of the "Dirty War" in which Andersen demonstrates convincingly that the Dirty War—the government vs. the guerrillas—was a fabrication concocted by the government to mask its terrorism. The numbers are not clear, but it does appear that around 30,000 people disappeared during the years of the proceso, 1976-1983. The numbers get clouded by debates over the number murdered outright, the number abducted and ultimately returned, and the number of people abducted but who vanished without a trace. This was an effort to, literally, remove those people critical of the dictatorship. Some were enemies of the state. Some were trouble-makers at work. Some were kids—many infants stolen. It's easy to get into the game of "many were innocent," the implication being that those who were politically active were somehow not innocent, and that's wrong too. Some, like Timerman, were in part the victims of a vigorous strain of anti-Semitism. Some were just taken for no reason at all. But what it did was to create an environment of sheer terror in which people were afraid to act, to speak, to do anything but be compliant, and, yes, to deny the reality of the terror. The nearest I have found for a rationale for this was articulated to Jacobo Timerman:
"But if we exterminate them all, there'll be fear for several generations."
"What do you mean by all?"
"All . . . about twenty thousand people. And their relatives too— they must be eradicated—and also those who remember their names. . . . Not a trace or a witness will remain."
They were hooded and taken away and interrogated to get them to name names of others who were critical of the government, of confederates, of friends, of friends of friends. And they were roundly tortured in some of the most sadistic ways conceivable with various devices including electric prods—had "the machine" applied to them—and raped and molested and mutilated in clandestine buildings set aside for the purpose, often with music playing to conceal the screams. I took a picture of one of these buildings operated by army intelligence at the time, one of more than 340 such buildings. It haunts me. Think what it must do to those people to look at it, to walk past it. After all of that, they were sometimes released and sometimes disposed of. The kids that were taken, maybe from parents who were disappeared (yes that is an active verb there, not just the passive voice) and sometimes just as a market activity, were given or sold to families who wanted children, depending on their connections. While I was there one of these children had been identified. He was now 17 years old and had grown up with a good, loving family, but the family that he had been stolen from discovered his identity. So then the questions began of what to do with him. And certainly it is complex and there is no simple right answer now. On the other hand, had this youth been the stolen son of a prominent businessman or general, and had he been raised in a family of dissidents, the questions would have been fewer and the answer much less complicated, I fear.
There is a movie to watch. In 1985 the Academy Award for best foreign film went to La Historia Oficial (The Official Story) a movie about a woman who discovers that her adopted child was one of the disappeared. It has subtitles and is readily available. It's good, but it also slips into the trap of suggesting that some of the disappeared were innocent, while others were not. There is another movie too, based on a play. Death and the Maiden is more recent and just as powerful. Sigourney Weaver is unforgettable in that role; she was disappeared, later released, and thinks she recognizes the voice of one of her assailants.
Back to real life: The Mothers of the Disappeared, or, The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, formed shortly after this all began in the 1970s. They began marching in the Plaza de Mayo, the central plaza in the capital, that faces the Casa Rosada, the pink house, the government house. They demanded information about, and the return of, their disappeared children and they demanded the punishment of those responsible. Every Thursday afternoon they march, wearing their white head scarfs. And they have marched there for nearly twenty years. The troops used to gather and try to intimidate them, but it didn't work. They chanted at the soldiers, "Cowards, this plaza belongs to the Mothers!" I walked with them and I talked with them. What is surprising is not that their numbers have dwindled, but that they still march after all these years. They're tough. There's no denial there.
If looking into the eyes and talking with the Mothers isn't convincing enough, there are data to study. In 1983, just before turning over power to an elected government, the junta did its own study of the problem of the Dirty War and concluded that the government was innocent, but for good measure declared an amnesty for those guilty of terror against the citizens. The Alfonsín government, which replaced the junta, revoked the amnesty and established a commission to investigate the fate of the disappeared. I picked up a copy of the report, Nunca Mas (Never Again), which details the structure and operation of the terrorism in about 500 pages with pictures, diagrams, and testimony. The subsequent trials of generals proved their guilt and more trials were scheduled only to be halted by military rebellions in 1987. Carlos Menem subsequently pardoned the convicted junta leaders and gave a blanket amnesty to other criminals and a couple of years ago he thanked the military for saving the country from the subversives. So much for the return of democracy.
One more comment on the problem of freedom: A number of the people at the University of Palermo had been to the United States and they were quick to offer comparisons. Others made comparisons based on what they had learned about the U.S. from classes, CNN, and U.S. commercial marketing efforts. I was surprised at the number of people who believed Argentina to be a much freer country than the United States. Part of this comes from the experience of having passed through dictatorship; certainly the alternative would appear much freer. Part of it comes from travel experience and news programs whereby they see Americans living in cages of fear. The inability to go for a walk at night in urban areas seems to them absurd. And it is true, Buenos Aires is a very safe city and I found myself walking around late at night sometimes with no real insecurity. And they talked about race relations in the U.S. a lot, sometimes suggesting that class tension was the Argentine equivalent of our racial problems. But the thing that got me most was how different people expressed in different ways a common perception that the American people live lonely, isolated lives, that they live in small groups of people just like themselves with no sense of a broader community. People may live physically close to one another, they suggest, but they build walls and barriers to make sure they are separate from each other. It's like they were saying that our capacity for intimacy has declined. They also said that they saw more and more of this self-constructed isolation and sequestration creeping into their own society. These comments happened enough that I am forced to stop and think and wonder if they are right, not about their own vaunted freedom, but about our lack of it. I will also say that I could not successfully deny their charges. The point is that real freedom must be not just freedom for me but freedom for all of us before it is genuine. The connections between the people are their emphasis in measuring freedom.
Argentina and The New World Order
In 1977, a year after the generals took power, novelist and social critic Rodolfo Walsh wrote a scathing open letter detailing the horrors of the military government, but then he went on:
These acts, which rattle the conscience of the civilized world, are not, however, the worst suffering you have brought to the Argentine people nor the worst violations of human rights you have carried out. In the government's economic policies one finds not only an explanation for its crimes but a greater atrocity that punishes millions of human beings with planned misery. (quoted in Andersen, Dossier Secreto)
The next day Walsh was killed. And the economic policies he lamented were very simple and straightforward: destroy the labor unions through black-listing, repression and kidnapping, eliminate collective bargaining, privatize (at the insistence of the World Bank) public power and light, and generally move toward neo-liberal policies within the country and in relations with external powers, pursuing that odd, but not really, combination of "free" market and political repression.
Menem was elected in 1989 wearing the mantle of the party of Juan and Eva Perón and promising a populist administration to restore democracy and help the downtrodden—the traditional descamisados of the Perónist party. He immediately, upon election, broke every single promise and launched Argentina's current economic policies, policies that combine to make for the most austere economy in its history. He adopted a series of free market policies that dumped government regulation of, but not subsidies to, the private sector. He privatized government agencies that had provided services, like the airlines and telephone company and railroad. (Remember the guy who interviewed me for the press? I started asking him questions and it turned out that he used to be a cultural programmer for public radio until it was privatized and then there were the massive layoffs; he's doing several jobs now.) The national pension system used to be pretty good; upon privatization the retirement money was lost and the people who had relied on it wound up getting about $100-150 a month in a society that is at least as expensive as the U.S. to live in. So those people are now out in the job market also. It has continued in that vein since then. Not too long ago, downsizing at the University of Buenos Aires caused the loss of jobs for 40% of the faculty; the money saved then went to those who remained on the payroll. (You can also see where some of the taxi drivers came from.) The government has also cut wages drastically, usually in increments of 20%. In its subsidy to provincial governments, especially to those controlled by the other parties, it is requiring the provinces to pay their workers in government notes that are worth a fraction of face value. The government is also collecting taxes like never before, lowering the floor beneath which taxes aren't declared and pursuing the small sums much more vigorously than the big amounts. And also the government has weakened the labor unions by co-opting the big one, the CGT (General Labor Confederation) that Juan Perón brought into his political alliance. Unemployment is now 18.6% and climbing, and the secretary-general of the CGT lost half his audience—the unionists walked out—part way through a recent speech in which he encouraged the government to work closely with business and labor, but did not criticize the government or suggest that the neo-liberal policy was not working. (One leader of that walkout complained about his union's denial of responsibility: "It seems like nobody is to blame for what happens in the country.") The CGT has become exclusively a device for social control. Then there is the matter of corruption. Privatization opens up all kinds of opportunities for buying low and selling high, even back and forth to the government. My friend Pablo tells me that his students understand the Grant administration very well when he teaches U.S. history because they see it around them.
To be charitable to Menem would be to note that he is simply doing the bidding of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Export-Import Bank, and the private international bankers that are Argentina's creditors. And, in discussing this austerity with some people, one who is well versed in economics told me bluntly: "There is no choice." Others also hold this view. For that matter, I saw it in the Washington Post when I got home. The theory seems to be that if you take money away from those who have very little, those who have more will have even more and the economy will therefore be better. When I inquired about the possibility of collecting taxes from the big guys, of making foreign companies pay their share (yes, even the U.S. businesses), of increasing purchasing power in the public to make a healthy economy, some of the students at the private school thought this perhaps a little too colorado; the students at UBA nodded assent; and the telephone workers were clearly looking for a leader who would articulate that kind of vision for them in the halls of power. Perhaps the most salient comment of all was by Roberto, who told me that it looked like the government was turning the nation into a shopping mall; we both struggled for the words in English and in Spanish, but shopping mall was as concrete as either one of us could get to a crude marketplace. In this society-turned-mall, however, among the commodities offered for exchange are people's lives and fortunes. The nation, the very soul of the country, was being sacrificed for market values and institutions. And so were the people. And they know who is to blame.
The truth is, what we see happening in Argentina is a glimpse into the future; it is a glimpse into the New World Order. For that is both the origin and consequence—the context by which it all makes sense—of all of this. The welcome mat for foreign investment is out at the same time that the door is being shut in the face of workers, the poor, and the small businesses in the country. The IMF and World Bank have ordered retrenchment in government services and greater capital investment. In this they are but the bill collectors for the creditor countries. Argentina, like other countries, is integrating into the system of GATT of supposed free-trade where production can shift from one country to another, wherever labor costs are lower, and the production can be directed to one country or another, wherever the market is fatter and more privileged. Production and consumption are being removed more and more, being placed worlds apart. The consequence is being realized in Buenos Aires: workers are working multiple jobs for less and less money to produce goods that they cannot afford while those who profit from that system are less and less responsive to public needs or national interests. Roberto was right.
But there is one more step in the process. This two-tiered system that is so starkly evident in Argentina is spreading to the industrialized world. Look at the agenda of Menem's administration. Compare it to the agenda actively pursued by both parties, by the Clinton administration and by Congress in the U.S. We are importing the same class-divided social structure and making it official policy. The people at the bottom, whether in Argentina or the U.S.A., are being left out and made subject to market forces while those at the top dominate the markets.
Naturally, there has been some resistance to these policies in Argentina. We've already seen the Mothers of the Plaza staring down the fascists. Now think about the old people on pensions protesting, even rioting. They did and they do. Then there are the government workers in Cordoba who rioted over their pay reductions by the national government. And then there are the students calling a general strike to protest the levying of high tuitions for free public education. And on and on.
The government's response? You can guess. The national police is equipped like an army. One afternoon I was on my way to the post office to mail a post card. I heard what I want to think was firecrackers, but I'm not sure. As I went down a street to explore, I saw a crowd of people with banners and drums marching to protest government policies. Then, roaring down an adjacent street were several APC-like vehicles, heavily armored and armed, pushing through to their destination. The national police cordoned off an area with a solid line of police and the APCs behind them. The protestors could go no farther. The machine gun turrets loomed menacingly above the heads of the police as the crowd came to a halt. I took a couple of pictures and moved on; people were waiting for me elsewhere and I had learned plenty about the government's response to the plight of those excluded from the benefits of the system, or at any rate those with a different vision for their society. The military establishment and the masters of the economy manage to work together quite well. I'm trying to figure out what this bodes for us here at home. Not a cheery picture.
What is really happening in Argentina is that times are getting harder and harder, that the policies established by the fascists are a little more subtle but just as onerous now. The economic opportunities are there only for the rich and powerful; the poor are indeed being hit hardest and the middle class is becoming poorer and poorer. Yet that is only the surface. Beneath it all is a process of social disintegration in which an individual's fate is becoming more and more crudely determined by his or her resources (and I don’t mean talents and abilities). Just as the political opposition has been atomized by years of political repression so that there is no effective organized opposition now, in the economy the protections for those born into circumstances of despair are being removed in the name of the free market. This means that the weight not just of the appetites of the well-born must be carried by those at the bottom, but that the weight of organized society itself is being carried more and more by the weakest, those most in need of help themselves.
And one more thing: I think that it is common to think of those people coming to the U.S. to visit, to see what the future looks like. Actually, I think it is more the other way around. I think we can go to Argentina and other countries to see what our own future looks like in the New World Order where social institutions and services will be replaced with the priorities of the marketplace and are not tempered by values of compassion, social justice, and human dignity, values that are not derived from the market. And the future is this: a desperate competition, the collapse of democratic political mechanisms, the destruction of democracy itself, a dramatically widening gap between rich and poor, social disintegration, a society in which power is unrestrained by legal or moral responsibility. A shopping mall as the purpose of society? A society in which the economy is characterized by the same lack of constraint as ruthless street traffic? No purpose beyond profit, no bonds beyond the cash nexus? Not my vision. Not theirs, either, I'm afraid. But it is the prospect of the twenty-first century.
"I am an essential part of your existence, in all love and pain." Eva Perón
I get around Wyoming quite a bit and I have learned much from the regular folks I talk with when I visit historical societies, libraries, and other places where people gather. They tell me a lot about their values, their dreams, and their fears. When I visited Nicaragua I found some similarities with the people there, and not just in the Tom Mix hat of Sandino. Now, when I go to Argentina I am reminded of those similarities. Sure, the cultures are different and the languages aren't even the same and I will always feel like an outsider (Rebecca: "Dad, you really need to work on your accent."). But you can have much the same conversation with different people. Maybe this is just a reflection of how small the world really is. I'm not talking about technology here and faster airplanes that reduce the physical distances between people and cultures. I'm talking about the people finding themselves up against the same problems, dealing with the same issues and policies, and even dealing with the same forces and powerful companies. We are not separate from each other; we are an essential part of the existence of each other. And, the total—again, the metaphor of the dance—is more than the sum of the parts. At least that is where we find fulfillment and where the mark of humanity is evident. The problem is, though, that I find more and more people are finding themselves isolated, alone, outsiders to organized society. The solution is obviously to press for greater, more authentic democracy, broader inclusion and meaningful participation in society, in terms not just of politics but a broader diffusion of power throughout society, so that neither government nor business nor any other concentration of power will dictate the circumstances of life to us.
I don't have the strategy for doing this. I did come to an awareness of a starting point, however. It has to do with the denial of horror. It is possible for people to deny the existence of something plainly in front of them, whether it is totalitarianism and torture and disappearance or social injustice and oppression. Sometimes the denial goes through the device of minimizing whatever the problem is—“these are isolated instances, not part of a pattern" kind of thinking. Sometimes it takes place through a logic of blaming the victim—“they got what they deserved; if they were like me, it wouldn't happen to them." And sometimes the denial works through a process of putting it off until the future—“this will pass." Or inevitability: "there is no choice." The ultimate form may be the business of saying "it could be worse," a thought that can justify tolerating absolutely anything. There are probably a thousand more of these devices but whatever form it takes, the denial is important because it allows people also to deny responsibility for what is going on, to deny responsibility for helping each other, and to deny the responsibility that truly comes as a result of living together on this planet—being an essential part of each other's existence. And so long as that denial continues, so do the real problems and horrors and pains, and, yes, a bleak outlook for the future. I understand full well that feeling alone and powerless, being an outsider, both contributes to and grows from this denial. And I also recognize that we play many games to deny our own discontent, to convince ourselves that we really are happy when actually we face deep depression or disappointment or dejection. But I also know the basic truth of what Louise told Thelma: What you settle for is what you get.
What now? I don't know if I'll make it back there. I don't know that I have anything else to tell them that they don't already know. (Besides, Rebecca made a different point to me: "Dad, I'm not sure that I'm going to take you with me on the next history trip I go on.") But I will not turn my back on what I have seen and learned. There is an urgency, in fact, to this, some having to do with the global nature of the situation, and part of it with the way we live our lives every day. It seems like they actually converge here. I'm not sure how to bring them together. But I remain optimistic, especially after talking with people there and people here about our shared perspectives. I'm still trying to understand it all and this is a step in that direction. Let me know what you think. I could use your perspective on this to help come to a resolution.
Photos
1. Casa Rosada, the Pink House or Government House, Capitol of Argentina viewed from Plaza De Mayo. The balconies of Casa Rosada are perhaps most famous for Eva Perón's addresses from there to the masses gathered in the Plaza. Legend tells of her speech in 1945 that brought los descamisados by the hundreds of thousands into the center of town where they dominated the city and prevented a military take over of the country.
2. Hernán, a store in the Florida Avenue pedestrian mall.
3. Epitaph for Eva Perón, Duarte family sepulcher, Recoleto Cementerio. My best effort: "Don't cry for me, for I am neither lost nor distant; I am an essential part of your existence, with you in love and pain . . . ."
4. & 5. The Tango (tahngo). Public exhibitions at Plaza San Telmo.
6. Discussing the New World Order with telephone workers' union (Federación de Obreros Estatales Teléfonicos del República Argentine). The meeting took place in a classroom where many take classes. The posters commemorate Argentine independence. Photo by Rebecca Cassity.
7. Posters in hallway and entrance of classroom building at Universidad (Nacional) de Buenos Aires. Center poster urges the end of the laws that are destroying public education. It also calls on them to join the Worker Party. The poster to the right calls on students to make solidarity with the state workers of Cordoba who have been victimized by government decrees reducing their income.
8. Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo marching in the Plaza with Casa Rosada before them.
9. Citizen protest of government orders reducing wages and laying off workers. They are outside the government offices responsible for enforcing the orders.
10. Official response to the citizen protest. Note water cannon on vehicle behind line of police and behind that vehicle more such vehicles lined up. Adjacent streets held more in waiting. The police cordon prevented the crowd from advancing to the Plaza de Mayo, another block or two, and the Casa Rosada.
