Rare Steaks and Wild Politics
By Bill Duryea ’05
A mother of a "disappeared one" explains
the horror of Argentina's Dirty War.
In balmy mid-December, we arrived in Buenos Aires to find its shops and restaurants bustling with customers. Thanks to two consecutive years of robust economic growth, the bitter memories of the president’s forced resignation and financial catastrophe seemed to be receding quickly.
Even longtime observers had reason to feel excited about the turnaround. As Charles R. Eisendrath told Ricardo Kirschbaum, editor-in-chief of Clarin, Argentina’s leading daily newspaper: “I deeply appreciate the sophisticated introduction to Argentina that you and Clarin have given dozens of Knight-Wallace Fellows over the last six years. I have known and loved this place since working here in the 1970s. In all that time I have wanted to feel optimistic. Now, for the first time, I do.”
But Argentina is a country steeped in paradox and ambiguity, as interviews (and countless demitasses of coffee) with some of the nation’s leading politicians, businessmen and human-rights activists showed. With unemployment at 13 percent, defaulted loans totaling $100-billion, and a lingering debate over human-rights violations, Argentina is a country struggling to repay its debts, both financial and moral.
The point of KWF’s trips, unique among journalism fellowships, is simple, says Eisendrath: to “radicalize” U.S. reporters—most of whom have had little direct experience with other cultures and many have not traveled outside their own country—“about the importance of the world.”
This year’s trip, the sixth Eisendrath has led, was distinguished by the presence of Jill Abramson, managing editor of The New York Times, who saw an opportunity to immerse herself quickly in a country she had never visited.
“I wanted to join the Fellows because I have been so impressed by the program and was interested in connecting with mid-career journalists, many of them from outside my New York-Washington orbit,” Abramson said. “A trip to a part of the world that seems undercovered, even by the Times, was also part of the allure, as well asseeing the U.S. from a different perspective.
“Our meetings with political and cultural figures were extremely eye-opening and my visit with one of the Fellows to a Pentecostal church, where I was ordered to close my eyes, was even more eye-opening.
“After spending five days with younger journalists and getting their take on the Times, I returned with as many insights about my paper as I did with impressions of Argentina.”
Our introduction to Argentina could not have been more civilized: a full-dress, white-glove lunch with the German Ambassador Rolf Schumacher, arranged by one of our own, Matthias Schepp ’05 of DerStern magazine.
As waiters served salmon and Riesling, Schumacher and his guest, Angelos Pagkratis, the European Union’s ambassador to Argentina, were asked about the perception of U.S. foreign policy. Eisendrath offered and the diplomats accepted “Wallace House rules,” meaning their comments were off the record. But they left no doubt that U.S. emphasis on unilateral action and market-driven approaches to development issues were seen as out of touch with Europe and South America.
Their comments were amplified at an informal briefing arranged by Abramson, with Larry Rohter and Juan Forero, who cover South America for the Times.
There’s no understanding Argentina without meeting its wealthy landowners, or at least watching them. When the estancieros venture out for a sporting match, they don’t mix with the boisterous, banner-waving masses at a soccer stadium. They head for the Campo Argentino de Polo. “Pay attention to the people,” Eisendrath told the Fellows gathered inside the stadium for the championship match.
Jason Tanz '05 and guest Fellow Jill Abramson, New York Times, ride the pampas.
In a way that seemed almost perverse, the crowd on the “rich side” of the stadium resembled the ponies on the field. They were sleek, impeccably groomed—and beautifully trained for a world that many other Argentines either don’t know about, don’t talk about, or both.
That was the point. But at the same time that the polo crowd seemed detached, there was no avoiding that the countryside furnished Argentina with the central, unifying folklore of the gaucho. The following morning, we were on horses, ourselves, galloping (okay, some of us not galloping) across the pampas, that fantastically fertile land that stretches for 1,000 miles in nearly every direction from Buenos Aires.
Eisendrath’s theory is that you can’t understand Argentina if you don’t ride horseback there. Maybe. But it is demonstrable fact that you can’t visit the “Los Dos Hermanos” estancia in Zarate, a two-hour drive north of the capital, without eating prodigious amounts of asado, marveling at gaucho horsemanship and snoozing in a hammock.
Our visit, however, departed from tradition in one important way. We brought American journalism with us. In the shade provided by a tree a few yards from the corral, Abramson talked about the legal imbroglio of Judith Miller, the Times reporter who was subpoenaed to reveal a source in a story she never wrote, and the unprecedented attacks on the paper.
Abramson said she wonders whether the time has come to respond directly to the many attacks on the credibility of the Times. Three “blogs” are dedicated to critiquing the Times’ coverage, and Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly criticized the paper 64 times in one month, she said. But the Times’ policy has always been to ignore such attacks.
The state religion of Argentina, it has been said, is “football.” We went to one of its cathedrals, the south Buenos Aires stadium of the champion Boca Juniors.
“Seventy percent of the country is involved in soccer in some way,” said Mauricio Macri, president of the team, near-miss candidate for mayor and likely rival of president Nestor Kirchner in the next elections. His standing in the world of soccer gives him name recognition and an instant political base.
Not surprisingly, Macri said he could do a better job running the country. Argentina needs to promote its tourism industry, bolster the rule of law by giving more power to the judiciary and improving the tax code, which Macri says is unfair and the primary reason that 50 percent of people don’t pay what they owe.
We also talked with a former vice president of the same club, the distinguished banker Carlos Heller of Banco Credicoop. He doesn’t agree with Macri about much, and worries that an ugly economic reality hides behind the polished surface of Buenos Aires.
“You might think if you stayed only in Buenos Aires with its restaurants and shops that everything was just fine,” Heller said. “But you can drive 30 minutes in any direction and see stunning poverty. It’s two different countries.”
Buenos Aires Mayor Aníbal Ibarra (center, rear) hosts KWF '05.
Experts debate economics, but there is no disputing the moral authority of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. “As mothers you created a new kind of political force without precedent in its effectiveness,” Eisendrath said by way of introducing our group.
Nearly 30 years ago, the first 14 mothers marched on the Plaza de Mayo to protest the disappearance of their children under the dictatorship. Members of the military have been tried, convicted and ultimately been given a presidential pardon. Now there is an effort to try them again. Throughout the legal saga the mothers have continued to march.
“If someone went missing people always said there must be some reason for it,” said Taty Almeida, whose son Alejandro was 20 when he was detained in 1975.“Thirty thousand went missing. Of course there is a reason they went missing. They undertook a political-social mission and that is why they went missing.”
The madres spoke in front of a wall papered with photos of their vanished children. It was heartbreaking, tear-making—but only part of the story.
Another part was heard when we visited the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, Justice Elena Highton. She is part of an effort to assert the rule of law through a more independent judiciary, and one of the first questions involves re-prosecution of militares accused of crimes during the Dirty War.
“Many people accept that it was a war, the only way to treat subversion,” she said. She defended the failure of the judiciary to act during that time, but now will be among those who decide how far the past may be re-opened to meet the charges of the madres and others.
We visited a military man for another perspective. “Twenty-five years have gone by since these things happened,” said retired Army Maj. Gen. Daniel Reimundes. “It is not reasonable to keep an institution and its men under suspicion.”
One of the last stops was with Elisa Carrió, a chain-smoking firebrand of the opposition. She doesn’t believe time has changed the essential corruptness of the government, despite the rosy economic figures.
“There’s a difference between seeing the light and being dazzled,” she said. “Public institutions are booty for those who are in office… There has never been less freedom of the press than there is now. The press keeps everything under wraps and reports only what the government wants. I’m resigned to the fact that society doesn’t want to see.”
After a mere week on the ground, we were in no position to know whose argument trumped whose. But we knew that we weren’t the same people who had stepped off the plane from Miami.
“The Argentina trip opened my eyes,” said Christine Tanaka ’05, managing editor of XETV, the Fox affiliate in San Diego. “It underscored for me the importance of telling stories that reflect our connections to the rest of the world. We’ve got to find ways to make that happen.”— Bill Duryea ’05 is a general assignment reporter for the St. Petersburg Times.
