Since last week many things have happened in the world, my own included. Many strange, fate driven things like night and day, birth and death, and love and hate; the kind of things you know are bound to happen when you are stuck in fifth gear with nowhere to go but straight ahead. I have known this feeling my whole life. At times it’s a burden as I know bad things are to come. But I’m too much of an addictive personality to make that right turn and shy away into the sunset.
Not this week…
On Monday of this week, I was emotionally struck by the hundreds-of-thousands of Argentineans who took to the street to reflect for the 30,000 loved ones and friends who disappeared or where killed under the Gestapo like military junta that came to power for seven years from 1976-1983.
Coinciding with Argentina’s National Day of Remembrance is a nationwide strike entering its fourth week. Striking farmers have strategically blocked all major routes paralyzing the country’s transportation network, leaving supermarket shelves empty.
Meanwhile the nation is a bit worried at how the newly elected president is handling her first major issue. The local Wall Mart in Bahia Blanca, for instance, has empty shelves and no one, not even President Cristina Kirchner, knows when normality will return to the grocery aisles of the nation.
Things aren’t dull here. I can guarantee that. Argentina is a wonderful place to be if you’re taking a whirlwind two-week tourist excursion. But I won’t kid you… This country is deeply divided. Politics is a favourite pastime of Argentineans, history justifies this.
And judging by today’s sentiment, Argentineans are fed-up; with the state of their economy, the growing divide between the rich and poor and the long-line of president elects who make promise-after-promise but never deliver.
This attitude doesn’t go unnoticed. I’ve been told by almost everyone I’ve met that this is how life has always been in Argentina. Ever since the Spanish first settled this country, passion runs dark red in the blood of Argentineans. To understand this all you have to do is turn on the T.V. and watch the reaction of football fans or the audience at a presidential speech. Politics in South America is a true blood sport, one that makes its North American cousins look weak and timid by comparison.
To the outside world Argentina may appear as a stable cool nation held together by world-class football talent and the best beef in the world. But inside, it is boiling and the temperature is rising with each passing day. The economy is still recovering from a 2001 collapse that saw the bottom completely fall out. Inflation is rampant; foreign debt as well as unemployment continues to grow at an unstable pace and the government is in panic mode with heavy-handed tax reforms and sale of state owned assets.
So it’s no wonder that politics is just as hot a topic in this country as its militaries history of human rights; which brings me back to my original reason for writing this week’s blog…
Argentina is currently on its fifth Republic. In layman terms… it’s had a long brutish history of going back-and-forth between military coups and civilian rule.
As much as politics gets my blood pressure up, Human Rights is where my heart resides…and it’s been beating there for a long time, even when I forgot about it…
So buckle up because this is not going to be pleasant…
Imagine walking home from work one day, its late evening, and the sun has just set. You’re walking-up a quiet, familiar street you’ve taken a thousand times before. But this time you feel someone is following you, two men and their pace is increasing. You speed up. Your thoughts start to roam; fear grips you. Your heart starts to beat frantically. You notice a car, a Ford Falcon pulling up slowly behind you, to your left. You decide to run but within a few meters, they catch you. You’re held tightly arm-in-arm, blind-folded, thrown into the car and brought to a secret place for questioning. You endure hours if not days of torture. You’ve lost count of the blows to your face, of pain, of time… You fear for your family, your friends, and your neighbours, anyone who knows you. You know they will go after them next. You realize it’s only a matter of time now. It’s time to go… They blind-fold you again; you have no idea where you are going until you feel the wheels leave the ground. Twenty-minutes later a voice screams “Stand up!” You’re legs are paralyzed by fear. They drag you for what seems a mile. All of a sudden it’s windy; the blindfold is taken off. You look down at the Atlantic Ocean… 10,000 feet below.
Welcome to one of the cruel realities of Operation Condor…
“In 1975 the leaders of the military intelligence services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay met, with Manuel Contreras, chief of DINA (the Chilean secret police), in Santiago de Chile, officially creating the Plan Condor.” From that point onwards the horn of South America would endure a brutality known only by its native population during Spanish colonization some 500 years ago. In approximate total; 50,000 murdered, 30,000 "desaparecidos" and 400,000 persons were incarcerated and tortured from 1976-1983.
The aim of Operation Condor was to deter a growing left-wing influence and its ideas before South America fell into the hands of Marxist Communists. After all this was the height of the Cold-War and with U.S. approval, provisions of organizational intelligence, financial and technological assistance, Operation Condor took flight and cast its shadow on world history.
My dear friend Margarita Fioriti, whose parents were political activists during the 1970s, knows all too well the brutality of the Operation Condor.
“I was barely a year old when my mother, Maria Elena Peter, and father, Armando Fioriti were abducted,” says Margarita.
The scars of this terrible moment in Argentinean history are still present and reside deep in the memory of the nation. I’ve lost a few nights’ sleep over the stories I’ve heard and while many people openly speak about what is called “Los Desaparecidos” which translates as “The Disappeared “, there still remain those who, out of fear, retribution, or loss of faith in the justice system, remain silent.
“Justice in Argentina is a very long and winding road with no end in sight.” Margarita says to me as we head home from the local museum of The Disappeared in Bahia Blanca.
Margarita’s story is as much a story about the present as it is the past. It’s only in the last few years that she has learned new information about the courage and resilience of her parents. In particular her mother, one of the leaders of ERP -22 De Agosto (Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo) a political group made-up of intellectuals who conducted clandestine espionage operations against the military junta.
Her father, who at one point in his early years entered the seminary, was also a low-ranking member of ERP-22 De Agosto. But unlike his oppressors, he was a kind man who made wood toys for children.
“My story and my parents is a warning against indifference and inaction in the world,” says Margarita. “I want the world and Argentineans to never forget what happened and for those responsible to be brought to justice.”
It’s been a difficult and emotional week for Margarita. She spent March 24 in the small, quiet town of San Martin in La Pampa Province, where her mother grew-up. The governor of the province and the town’s mayor dedicated a park in honour of her mother, Maria Elena Peter.
Margarita is by no means naïve. She knows March 24 is nothing more than PR face-value for the present government. Like the rest of the victims, she knows that she may never find out what really happened to her parents but that isn’t stopping her from telling her story.
Currently she is working on “El Nombre de las Flores”, a film about a young girl who’s retracing her parent’s life in order to find herself. She says she isn’t interested in how the life of her parent’s ended. She has read countless reports about all the sick and menacing ways the junta snuffed out its enemies. Her pursuit is justice.
Today she is more concerned with educating a new generation of Argentinean youth, who seem to have no real concept about what happened.
I’m not a psychologist but anyone who spends five-minutes with Margarita gets the sense that whatever she is doing is right; that sooner or later she and her fellow Argentineans seeking justice will prevail over the forces of old and evil. The momentum of goodness and truth is on their side.
Final thought... Still I’m haunted by the stories I’ve heard, in particular her father. Who would kill a man that makes toys for children?
-- April 1, 2008
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