Here’s one of the first picture I took from my hotel room of the Gran Vía in Madrid. Believe it or not, it’s about 2am. A travel guide of Madrid by the National Geographic asked where in Europe can you find a city where there are traffic jams at 5am Sunday?
Gran Vía is one of Madrid´s busy arteries at any hour.
The truth about what happened in Trelew almost 40 years ago clearly shows who were Argentina’s real enemies. After shooting down in cold blood suspected left-wing guerrillas at a maximum security prison, the Argentinian navy covered up the incident by stating that the victims had tried to escape. New revelations, however, have shown a very different story.
The horrific events that happened in the southern Argentinian city of Trelew not only reveal the cowardice of the navy, they bring relief to many that these men in brass that once dominated the country are no longer in power.
While it is a good and healthy matter that Argentina is carrying out a long and painful historic psychoanalysis of its grim past, the outlandish events of the so-called dirty war era (1976-83) emphasize the importance of bringing to justice and putting behind bars those who committed crimes against humanity, be it the “security” forces, left-wing or paramilitary groups.
Until justice has spoken and until we know the whole truth, the dirty war will continue to live inside every Argentinian.
Many generations are going to have to pass before the wounds heal from that incomprehensible era. Being patriotic in Argentina doesn’t mean succumbing to silence in the face of the facts. It challenges us to speak out and bring to light what happened. We owe it to future generations of Argentinians and Latin Americans.
I was conscripted in the army in 1977-1978. I never killed anyone even though I was a very tiny part of a state that terrorized its people. Like many who lived during that period, the experience changed my life for good. Although 20 years have passed, I can still hear the muffled cries of the victims of that war. There are also those who did not disappear, like us, who continue to suffer for those that are no longer with us.
But it is misguiding to believe that people “disappeared” during the dirty war. If you think of it carefully, they’re still inside of us demanding justice.
Los hechos verdaderos de la Masacre de Trelew que se han destapado después de casi 40 años demuestran claramente quienes fueron los verdaderos enemigos de la Argentina. Los hechos no sólo ponen a la luz la cobardía de la marina sino es un alivio saber que estos hombres que dominaban una vez al país no están más en el poder.
Aunque es cosa buena y saludable que Argentina haga un psicoanálisis histórico sobre su sombrío pasado, los hechos viles de la época de la llamada guerra sucia ponen énfasis a la importancia de procesar y encarcelar a todos aquellos que cometieron crímenes de lesa humanidad, sean de las fuerzas de “seguridad,” grupos izquierdistas o paramilitares.
Hasta que no haya justicia y hasta que no se sepa toda la verdad, en cada argentino seguirá viviendo la guerra sucia.
Van a pasar muchas generaciones antes que las heridas se curen por esa época tan incomprensible. “Hacer patria” no es quedarse callado ni aceptar en silencio los hechos – es levantar la voz y traer a la luz lo que pasó. Se lo debemos a futuras generaciones de argentinos y latinoamericanos.
Yo hice la conscripción en 1977-1978 en el ejército. Nunca maté o reprimí a nadie aunque fui parte de un estado terrorista. Como muchos que vivieron esa época, esa experiencia cambió mi vida para siempre. Aunque han pasado 30 años, todavía sigo escuchando los gritos apagados de las víctimas de la guerra sucia. También están aquellos que no desaparecieron, como nosotros, que seguimos sufriendo por ellos.
Pero es una mentira que alguien haya “desaparecido” porque si lo pensás bien, cada uno de ellos están dentro de nosotros reclamando justicia.
I came across an interesting article Monday in the Ecuadorian daily El Comercio on what some psychologists call the Ulysses syndrome, which is an illness that inflicts some immigrants when they live separated in faraway lands from their loved ones.
The article continues: Norma lived in terror and in hiding. This 45-year-old single mother left her 11-year-old son in 1999 when she migrated to Madrid. When she moved to Spain, she didn’t know anyone never mind have a place to sleep. She was an illegal alien.
The woman was afraid that the police would find and deport her. “It was that way nine years ago,” she admits. I would never go out for a stroll. I’d forget to board a metro at stops because I was in another world thinking of my child.
It took some time for the Ecuadorian to find work. She eventually got a low-paying job that paid 300 euros ($435) a month working four hours a day. She’d wire money to her family in Ecuador, pay debts and lived in extreme conditions.
This is one example of the Ulysses syndrome.
Immigrants cannot sometimes figure out why they feel depressed. Psychiatrist Joseba Achotegui of the Universitat de Barcelona describes the illness in the following manner, according to an article in the Naples Sun Times: It comprises loneliness, as family and friends were left behind; a sense of personal failure, and a survival struggle that takes over all other priorities. The syndrome is characterized by physical symptoms like headaches, and psychological symptoms like depression.
Those who are critical of immigrants and accuse them wrongly of being lazy and that they don’t want to learn the local culture, nothing could be further form the truth. The only way an immigrant can survive in a new country is by NOT being lazy and learning the ropes of the new culture.
Today is a beautiful sunny day in Madrid. It’s one of those days that so forceful that one forgets that there’s a season like winter. This would be a great day to go to the barber shop, I thought.
I walked into the first barber shop that I saw in the neighborhood of Salamanca, located pretty close to downtown Madrid. As I walked in an old man greeted me. He acted like the barber but I found out 10 minutes later that it was his daughter that was the one that was going to cut my hair.
“She’ll be right with you, señor,” the old barber said. “I can’t cut your hair because I’m retired. I’d get into a lot of trouble if an inspector caught me.”
The decor and feel inside the barber shop was almost like from the 1960s. All it needed was a portrait of former dictator Francisco Franco on the wall.
“How do you want your hair cut,” the woman barber says.
“Short.”
She started to do away with my hair with an electric razor in the same way as a harvester cuts wheat. I started to get worried.
As if we’d known each other for years, she started telling me about her intestinal problems and how she had to eat a restricted diet comprising of high-fiber vegetables and fruits.
After that she started to ramble on about how good the Republican Party was in the US and that Condi should run for president. The lady sounded like a neocon but a Spanish version of it, which is just as bad.
She didn’t have nice words for Spain’s socialist prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. “Es un hijo de puta (he’s a son of a bitch),” she said.
I was pretty happy that she was almost through cutting my hair, or should I say scalping it.
It’s the last time I’ll ever go to that barber!
For a person like me who grew up in Southern California, Spain in general and Madrid in particular have a special touch of home. Certainly if I’d want to get a good feel for the “European” Southern California I’d have to travel to Andalucia in southern Spain.
One of the matters that makes Spain such a special place is that it has developed socially in leaps and bounds during the past 40 years. It has a touch of Latin America but without the social problems. In many respects Madrid is a near-perfect city for me. I look forward to making this my new home.
Once I get an apartment and settled in, I’ll file some pictures of the city for everyone to feast their eyes.
Before I begin, I’d like to thank all the readers who have dropped by this blog even though I’ve been absorbed in work and writing my thesis. In the past very intense three months, I got a job offer to go to work for a Spanish newspaper in Madrid. So from February, I hope to start writing about life in Spain.
I used to live there with my family in 1996-1998. Having grown up in Southern California, southern Spain was very much like home but without the skyscrapers and the madness you’ll find in Los Angeles. It’s a quieter place in Europe and in Latin America at the same time.
If any of you are interested, my thesis was on a Finnish colony founded in subtropical Argentina in 1906. A wild place just like when the West was conquered by white Americans. In Misiones, located in northeast Argentina, there were very few Amerindians when the Finns and other Europeans colonized the region.
I’ll leave you with one of ten portraits that I exhibited recently in Finland. One of these exhibitions was at Kaapelitehdas in Helsinki (http://www.kaapelitehdas.fi/index.html?menuid=227&aid=1198)
This is the first of ten portraits of my photo exhibition called “Journey to Colonia Finlandesa.” The text is in Finnish. It tells about how the colony looked back in 1984. It was back then a very empty and poor place.
My apologies to all for the dry spell in writing. I’ve been busy writing my thesis, which I hope to finish in December. It has robbed all of my time.
Right now, however, I’m surrounded by sub-arctic winter. Like a lover claiming your heart, another magical season has descended — darkness and silence are sometimes so thick in these parts that you can almost lean against them without falling.
Winter can get very cold these parts as well. It may in such cases attempt to tuck you into bed and when this happens you are in a trance induced by darkness and winter. Normally in such cases you awake in spring by the vivid sounds of singing birds atop of budding trees.
There was a bit of sad news: Our dog Rosa, a boxer, was put to eternal sleep Nov. 22 at about 2:45PM. She was about 11 years old. Even if she’s no longer with me, I miss her a lot.
Rosa passed away on Nov. 22.
A nice saying my father told me: One must never be an egoist but with time you have to.
I’d like to share with you a postcard that I got from a friend when I left Argentina in 1978. It’s one of the most important postcards I ever got and cherish it a lot. In its few sentences it reveals who I once was and where I’m partly from. Back in 1978, Argentina was still ruled by a ruthless military regime that was responsible, among a long list of other atrocities, for the disappearance of over 30,000 people.
Casa de Gobierno/Government House by Anikó Szabo.
Here’s the writing on the back:
The aim of this postcard is that you’ll never forget these distance parts, located almost at the END of the Earth, but so loved by all of us. The day will come when the sun will shine for real for all of those who live here. The thing is to continue to be as we are and to form and educate the people so that they’ll understand and begin to awaken, open their eyes.
Claudia
In Spanish:
Esta tarjeta es en realidad para que siempre te recuerdes de estos pagos tan lejanos, practicamente en el FIN del mundo pero que es tan querido por nosotros. Ya va a llegar un día en que el sol saldrá realmente para todos en estas latitudes, el asunto es seguir siendo como somos y formar a la gente, educarla para que comprenda y comience a despertar, a abrir sus ojos.
Claudia
By condoning the use of torture we inflict more
damage on our institutions than on our enemies.
I’m still awed that some columnists in the US continue to be surprised about the US condoning torture. One of these columnists is Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post.
He writes:
How the United States became associated with torture is not just a matter of historical interest. And that’s all the more clear today, with the publication of a major New York Times story describing the Bush administration’s ongoing circumvention of national and international prohibitions against barbaric interrogation practices.
In other words: It continues.
It still continues?! Yes, and for many decades under many US administrations.
One has only to look south of the border. Some of the outlandish matters that the CIA taught security forces in Latin America was training and the infrastructure for torture.
When we look at the colossal mistake by the US for invading and remaining in Iraq, why doesn’t anyone mention what happened to the Shah of Iran?
The autocratic leader, who was put in power by the CIA in 1941, was ousted in 1979 by a zealous anti-Western religious cleric called Ayatollah Khomeini.
Many of the torture measures used throughout Latin America were encouraged by the US and executed by the CIA. In Argentina “waterboarding” is known as el submarino, the submarine. There are many other torture methods as well: the electric prod, simulated executions with chalk bullets, deprivations of the unimaginable kind.
The US must not look at only this disgraceful period under President George W. Bush as the blackest in our history, it must take a closer look at the administrations of presidents like Richard Nixon, which used the CIA like a private army to topple democratically elected governments and instill a reign of terror and coercion through torture methods mastered at Langley, Virgina.
Torture condoned by the US has happened a long time ago. It’s not something that the Bush administration invented.
