I have closed the associated Ñoñario blog (all visitors are blocked) at the request of the author, who no longer wishes an Internet presence. He has concluded that Argentines -- his prime audience -- are so insane that even trying to comment on current events and history on a factual basis is an Augean task not worth the time and effort.
Let Argentina sink to yet new astounding new levels, through the ever inventive self-destructiveness of Argentines. I am not kidding.
This is a country that, around 1910, was still had one of the top ten economies in the world. Today it is probably the 150th or so.
In the 1920s and 30s the Argentine elite fought tooth and nail to keep its feudal and largely agricultural society intact and its economy a net exporter of cheap commodities and a net importer of expensive manufactured goods.
In the late 1940s and 50s, Perón turned needed attention to the nascent industrial union movement, but he misspent the nation's then-vast gold reserves on patronage pet projects.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, the country was split between Peronists fighting for the return of their exiled leader and the middle class and oligarchy, ushering in military coup after military coup to prevent the return. Meanwhile, the peso lost value and the economy began to go to hell.
Unsatisfied with chaos, Argentines once again welcomed military rule in 1976. This time, the generals weren't kidding around: they made a proven 9,000 people disappear, kidnapped and tortured thousands of others, led the country to a disastrous war with a NATO member (the UK) and helped raise annual inflation to above 1,000 percent (that's thousand, not a typo).
By 1983, tired of military disasters, Argentines chose civilian ones instead. After the Mexican peso effect collapsed the Argentine economy briefly, a charlatan offered a supposed dollar-parity of the peso.
How was this illusion maintained? By selling off the state-owned airline, merchant marine, telephone company, oil company, etc., until all the family jewels were gone.
In 2001, the spell vanished and peso went from 1=1 peso to dollar to 3 pesos per dollar. One day you had a dollar, the next you had 33 cents. That's what Buenos Aires taxi drivers mean when they mention "the events of 2001" -- not 9/11.
So, having kept the country backward, devalued its currency and destroyed its economy and taken the country to a disastrous war, not to mention egregious human rights violations, what did Argentines elect new leaders to do? Of course, to incur an unpayable foreign debt in the billions!
Every time I've thought, "well, now, they've learned their lesson," they manage to surprise me by sinking to new and unsurpassed depths. They sank below hell decades ago!
Of course, try to tell that to an Argentine ... in Spanish. So now you know why my associate and I are sticking to English. The hell with them!
Monday, April 26, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Operation Eyes
[Editor's note: By popular demand, here is a translation of a recent post from Desde Yanquilandia from the Spanish.]
A week or so ago, I finished reading two books I brought back from Argentina in January. The first was a "The Question in Their Eyes," a novel, and the second "Operación Traviata," a jourmalist's investigative account of the 1973 murder of Argentine unionist José Ignacio Rucci.
Both books fascinated me by their common underlying themes, justice and injustice in Argentina, violence and dark, the "decensus in averno" the country experienced in the seventies. The authors of both books, oddly enough, belong to the that generation was too young to have really experienced all that and they have in common an oblique approach to the era, yet one that in my opinion is reliable.
The facts in question in the novel (which I understand differs from the Oscar-winning adaptation to film, "The Secret in Their Eyes") occurs in the late sixties, mostly in the central courts building I passed by every school day on the 102 bus. There are references to things I remember and also details of adult life that I did not experience in the flesh while in Buenos Aires.
As for Rucci's murder, it was a fleeting memory of a news story that flashed briefly when I lived in Canada. Despite my ideological and moral sympathies toward the labor movement and collective bargaining, to me Argentine union leaders who always seemed to be thugs, having workers shut off electricity whenever they wanted to pressure the government, which for many years was the largest employer.
But all that, in the novel and journalist's account, came before military repression, the Montonero and the ERP guerrillas, and eventually the disappeared and Weimar-like inflation in Argentina. No to mention other things.
Neither author expends effort attempting to debate whether the military really were "gorillas," as Argentine opponents called them, or which faction of Peronism was right. Everybody knows that the conclusion to such debates might be yes, no, and none of them.
Both authors treat that tragic and hair-raising recent history as background noise. Their stories, far from ignoring the noise, end up explaining and conveying the everyman experience of those years in Argentina, without getting into polemics.
A common crime becomes a reflection on violence, the shortcuts that sometimes one has to take to see justice served and the ultimate probability that there is no solution to such conundrums, apart from love. Similarly, premeditated murder and treachery become the excuse to examine the evolution of political and paramilitary forces in 1973 as they were heading for disaster, with the lone and persistent reporter cleverly avoiding the argument traps to present a credible version of what actually happened.
For 200 years, ever since the populace first demanded open proceedings in the discussion of breaking with Spain, the Argentine people have been demanding to know what is going in the spheres of power and institutionalized violence that the state assumes in name of society. These books bring that demand a step closer to becoming reality.
A week or so ago, I finished reading two books I brought back from Argentina in January. The first was a "The Question in Their Eyes," a novel, and the second "Operación Traviata," a jourmalist's investigative account of the 1973 murder of Argentine unionist José Ignacio Rucci.
Both books fascinated me by their common underlying themes, justice and injustice in Argentina, violence and dark, the "decensus in averno" the country experienced in the seventies. The authors of both books, oddly enough, belong to the that generation was too young to have really experienced all that and they have in common an oblique approach to the era, yet one that in my opinion is reliable.
The facts in question in the novel (which I understand differs from the Oscar-winning adaptation to film, "The Secret in Their Eyes") occurs in the late sixties, mostly in the central courts building I passed by every school day on the 102 bus. There are references to things I remember and also details of adult life that I did not experience in the flesh while in Buenos Aires.
As for Rucci's murder, it was a fleeting memory of a news story that flashed briefly when I lived in Canada. Despite my ideological and moral sympathies toward the labor movement and collective bargaining, to me Argentine union leaders who always seemed to be thugs, having workers shut off electricity whenever they wanted to pressure the government, which for many years was the largest employer.
But all that, in the novel and journalist's account, came before military repression, the Montonero and the ERP guerrillas, and eventually the disappeared and Weimar-like inflation in Argentina. No to mention other things.
Neither author expends effort attempting to debate whether the military really were "gorillas," as Argentine opponents called them, or which faction of Peronism was right. Everybody knows that the conclusion to such debates might be yes, no, and none of them.
Both authors treat that tragic and hair-raising recent history as background noise. Their stories, far from ignoring the noise, end up explaining and conveying the everyman experience of those years in Argentina, without getting into polemics.
A common crime becomes a reflection on violence, the shortcuts that sometimes one has to take to see justice served and the ultimate probability that there is no solution to such conundrums, apart from love. Similarly, premeditated murder and treachery become the excuse to examine the evolution of political and paramilitary forces in 1973 as they were heading for disaster, with the lone and persistent reporter cleverly avoiding the argument traps to present a credible version of what actually happened.
For 200 years, ever since the populace first demanded open proceedings in the discussion of breaking with Spain, the Argentine people have been demanding to know what is going in the spheres of power and institutionalized violence that the state assumes in name of society. These books bring that demand a step closer to becoming reality.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Anti-Religionism vs. Agnosticism
Lately I've cyberfallen in with a crowd that is all too suspiciously eager to proclaim what a crock religion is in order to fly the flag of atheism, which even Richard Dawkins notes can only really be agnosticism. While I am an agnostic, I see no reason for triumphalism or hatred of religion, merely to proclaim one's position.
To be agnostic one need not replicate churches, crusades or -- Universe's Echo help us! -- an inquisition, with the variable "God" merely assigned a negative value. Nor need one feel too superior to religious people who, after all, put on their pants one leg at a time just like everyone else.
Yet this is what I often find.
In "real time," of course, plenty of agnostics go to Unitarian churches, Ethical societies and the like, which have bake sales and bazaars just like Our Lady of Mercedes or St. Elfric the Tasteful, only they don't have crosses anywhere. And they don't dare even whisper G-o-d.
Online, life is more polemical -- this is mostly about words, after all -- and it takes the form of ye olde high schoole "hate" clubs. We Hate Unfair Criticism has evolved into We Don't Thank Deities for the Deeds of Humans.
My suspicion is that these agnostics are just as religious (and illiterate about religion) as most religious people. They're just religious about their agnosticism. This is not to say that religion "wins" or religionists are better. Far from it.
My only contention, as someone who knows a thing or three about the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition and its foundational books and thinkers, is that it is not necessarily unreasonable to believe, and most real believers should experience doubts every now and then, just as it is not unreasonable not to believe.
Not believing is not a new thing to be, it's merely little more than simply not managing to wrap one's mind around notions such as a man-god, prayer, not to mention an invisible being of whom there is no direct evidence.
When one doesn't believe, one still is left with doubt, inquiry, tentativeness and the uncertainties of real science. Trust me. I know about this.
To be agnostic one need not replicate churches, crusades or -- Universe's Echo help us! -- an inquisition, with the variable "God" merely assigned a negative value. Nor need one feel too superior to religious people who, after all, put on their pants one leg at a time just like everyone else.
Yet this is what I often find.
In "real time," of course, plenty of agnostics go to Unitarian churches, Ethical societies and the like, which have bake sales and bazaars just like Our Lady of Mercedes or St. Elfric the Tasteful, only they don't have crosses anywhere. And they don't dare even whisper G-o-d.
Online, life is more polemical -- this is mostly about words, after all -- and it takes the form of ye olde high schoole "hate" clubs. We Hate Unfair Criticism has evolved into We Don't Thank Deities for the Deeds of Humans.
My suspicion is that these agnostics are just as religious (and illiterate about religion) as most religious people. They're just religious about their agnosticism. This is not to say that religion "wins" or religionists are better. Far from it.
My only contention, as someone who knows a thing or three about the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition and its foundational books and thinkers, is that it is not necessarily unreasonable to believe, and most real believers should experience doubts every now and then, just as it is not unreasonable not to believe.
Not believing is not a new thing to be, it's merely little more than simply not managing to wrap one's mind around notions such as a man-god, prayer, not to mention an invisible being of whom there is no direct evidence.
When one doesn't believe, one still is left with doubt, inquiry, tentativeness and the uncertainties of real science. Trust me. I know about this.
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