Above: Sarmiento, Peron, Lavalle, Videla, Dorrego, Yrigoyen and Sabato. We were Ernesto Sabato. An important writer and intellectual twentieth-century Argentina. Controversial as many as almost everyone.
Some stress his qualities as a writer, his memorable works as "On Heroes and Tombs" and "The Tunnel", his work in the CONADEP.
Others remember with regret his statements about the dictatorship in the famous meeting with Videla Borges Sabato ...
shows very own contradictions of our society. And just that thought makes us think of other divisions, most current. And old ...
Argentina, 2011 The cultural and media appears divided in two realities, quite different. Some Argentines
rise in the morning, come a time when changing TN and breakfast , Then listen Mitre, or Radio Network 10 during their journey to work (in the car or with headphones on bondi), and at night, back at home, watch the news on Channel 13. And Sunday, of course, buy "Clarín", "Profile" or "nation."
Other Argentines are more or less the same routes, but the list of media ranges: for TN is CN23, the radios can be National Mother's Radio Cooperativa or AM 750; on TV are the Public TV. And on Sunday buy "page 12", "Argentine Time" or "Miradas al Sur".
Argentina in the first living a completely different country Argentina in the second living.
This division is now crystal clear, and great depth, but this is possible because such a split would sink to the foundations of our history, because it reaffirms and highlights a reality that comes from far away. Hernán Brienza
account in the Epilogue of his impressive work "The crazy Dorrego", why he decided to write about this forgotten character. Brienza
recalls in the book that when he presented his work "Damn you're" a study on the suppression of the seventies focused on the figure of the priest Von Wehrnich, was invited to a radio program.
There began a discussion with journalist curious about of the work. The journalist said that the crimes of the dictatorship were a response to the Montoneros and the ERP. Brienza argued that these armed groups have emerged in response to murderous dictators who bombed the Plaza de Mayo, shot the General Valley and his followers, and created the "Night of the Long Canes" in universities. The journalist justify the military coup and from repressive authoritarian aspects of the first Peronism. And then Brienza ... ... ... For what followed. Fell until 1828, until the shooting of Manuel Dorrego by General Lavalle, the first major act of violence Argentine could not "justified" by a previous action. This debate prompted
Brienza investigating Dorrego. And led him to conclude that murder, Dorrego, was the first step of the "civil war" that has been divided since the Argentines.
The nineteenth century Argentina was very violent. Ran rivers of blood. "No less blood gaucho is all they have of men," say Sarmiento. And it was not just a phrase.
The nineteenth century ended with the triumph of one faction. And while the strictly political in the Constitution of 1853 embodies aspects of both orientations, cultural as the defeat of the Federals was absolute. Those who won wrote the history, deleting or "demonized" the losers. And even some declared "winners", the "makeover" to cover certain aspects, because they are only partially served.
For example, San Martín was transmuted into a military "apolitical" because their ideas did not respond at all to the model advocated by them. Belgrano was only remembered as the creator of the flag, and as a makeshift military, brave and somewhat sloppy, but concealing his deep economic thought.
The federal leaders were simply wiped off the face of the Earth, neglected, ignored. Or, failing that, demonized, as in the case of Roses.
The big problem was that it is the victors much easier to alter the history of social reality. And that fact had led to the emergence of these leaders omitted or demonized, generated in the twentieth century the emergence of other figures, different but equally controversial, indigestible to the dominant culture, as Hipolito Yrigoyen, as Juan Peron, or Eva Duarte to name but a few.
And then the cleaning operation must restart cultural and proscriptions were major party (both happened to them as a Peronist radicals at different times), persecution and pogroms.
But to the victors the problem will not be only the new political leaders, but Many of the old figures buried in history, from the 40s, beginning to be revised, reinterpreted, by ideologically diverse group of historians and intellectuals, who find in them a light that clarifies certain aspects of reality certain problems of the present.
always had two cultural realities. Even before the start, as would Brienza, the "civil war" that begins with the death of Dorrego.
why so many of our political figures and our intellectuals are and have been so controversial, have had such extreme contrasts. That is why we argued so much about figures like Rosas, Sarmiento, Yrigoyen, Peron, Eva, Alfonsin and Kirchner, or intellectuals like Borges and Sabato.
In this sense, it is perfectly true that we look to people like Sarmiento, Yrigoyen and Peron, with a deep chiaroscuro, and that for some heavier than the clear and decisive than others are dark ..
But there are other cases that are unacceptable.
Ernesto Sabato, in his classic novel "On Heroes and Tombs" Juan Lavalle transforms into a romantic tragic hero.
Lavalle was an army officer from San Martin. Was noted for his courage, but not for your insight: his friends called him "The Hollow Sword." In 1828 stars in the first military coup in history overthrowing Dorrego, and shot him without even attempting a mock court-martial. Then unleashed a fierce crackdown in the province of Buenos Aires. Many historians argue that in that year the province had more deaths than births. We speak of 2500 deaths, enormous sum for the time, in Argentina forty times less populated than it is now.
then took his hatred to the point of allying rosismo imperial power of France, who then sought colonies in the Third World ...
The balance is easy: Lavalle is a despicable character and forgettable, which does not even have the intellectual or literary brilliance of Sarmiento or a Mitre (also great repressors).
The fact that a intellectual and Ernesto Sabato, who shone in the CONADEP, who wrote some literary treasures, has managed to transform a character in the mold of a romantic hero Lavalle, shows that the contradictions and divisions in society are large and Argentina come from afar.
For all the foregoing, the present dual media may end up being very positive. For its rawness, its coarseness, foregrounds these contradictions, previously hidden by gray and lead visions, and forces us to ask which side we get, with which we identify sector.
And in doing so, perhaps we get to evaluate each with its contrasts, marking their strengths and weaknesses, and let others clear dark, unknown occupy their rightful place in our history and our present reality. Adrian
Corbella, May 3, 2011
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