A Postcard from Argentina

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 that 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

The US and the World: Torture thy Enemy

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.

I met Che Guevara’s ghost

I once visited in 1987 as a reporter the far-flung village of La Higuera in Bolivia, where the famous guerrilla icon Ernesto Che Guevara was killed at the hands of a drunk sergeant. Even if twenty years have passed since my trip and 40 years on October 9 when he was killed, I can still recall details of that journey.

There’s an odd story today in the Bolivian government-run news agency ABI about Che Guevara’s assassin, an NCO called Mario Terán. Thanks to some Cuban medics, the article reports that the NCO had recovered his eyesight.

If the NCO is the same person, I was offered by the brother of Gary Prado, the Bolivian officer that captured Che Guevara, an exclusive interview with Terán for $1,000. I didn’t accept the offer.

One of the matters that surprised me most about the journey to La Higuera was how the village of 50 inhabitants had been spoiled by journalists. My guide told me that nobody would talk to you if you didn’t flash a few greenbacks.

I was, however, able to speak for free to the teacher of the school where Che Guevara was killed. She was one of the last people to speak to him before he was killed.

“It was a big mistake killing Che Guevara,” she said. “Only after his death did we find out that he wasn’t a bandit but a man who died for us, the poor.”

Che Guevara’s military campaign in Bolivia lasted 11 months and eight days. As one villager in nearby Pucará told me as legends are told: “When the sergeant [Terán] crashed in Che Gevara’s room [drunk after drinking 6 liters of beer], he stood up and said: Point your machine gun well and don’t forget who you’re shooting.”

Final note: After I reached the village of La Higuera on horseback, I wanted to visit as rapidly as I could the school where Che Guevara was killed. It was a very surreal experience to walk to that school with the backdrop of the majestic Andes all around you.

It was as if his life’s journey ended at the school but didn’t end at all.