|
Old
Ideas in New Discourses: "The War Against Terrorism" and Collective
Memory in Uruguay and Argentina
Aldo
Marchesi, Researcher at Centro
de Estudios Interdisciplinarios Latinoamericanos (CEIL)-Faculty
of Humanities and Education Sciences, Uruguay
In Uruguay and
Argentina as elsewhere in Latin America's Southern Cone, there
has been a heated debate on the characteristics of the dictatorships
that affected the region during much of the 1970s and 1980s.
Controversies persist not only about the factors that caused
dictatorships to emerge but also about the nature and enduring
significance of human rights violations committed under military
rule. Struggles over memory of repression have been a key
aspect of re-democratization processes throughout the region,
as the military, political parties, social movements, human
rights organizations, and various cultural actors have all
taken part in the conflicts of "memory against memory."1
At the risk of oversimplifying, we can identify three positions
with regard to the dictatorships. First, there are those actors,
primarily in the military and on the political right, who
defend the dictatorships' actions, and justify them as a consequence
of the proliferation of subversive leftist forces in the region
during the 1960s and 1970s. A second stance is represented
by those political actors in new democracies who propose amnesties
and some degree of forgetting as the solutions to the painful
conflicts of the recent past. Finally, human rights organizations
and leftist political parties demand truth and justice in
order to repair the damage done by the dictatorships, and
to punish those responsible for violations of human rights.
These struggles over what and how to remember have been key
constitutive elements for the identities of these actors in
recent years, but the memories articulated by each of these
sectors should not be conceptualized as static or rigid. On
the contrary, our understanding of the past is very much affected
by the way we try to solve present problems. As Halbwachs
posits, collective memory is the reconstruction of the past
in light of the present.2 What each of these groups
remembers has a direct correlation to the present political
moment in which they live and try to exert influence.
It is in this context that we can understand a series of polemics
that have been waged in the Southern Cone following the attacks
on the twin towers. September 11th marked a watershed moment
in history, one of those rare junctures that immediately is
recognized by its contemporaries as an historic event. In
the Southern Cone, competing interpretations of the attacks
in the United States became a crucial space from which to
articulate positions concerning experiences that were far
closer to home.
Participants in contemporary societal conflicts deployed categories
created with reference to the region's own past in an effort
both to explain the new historic moment facing the world and
to establish strong continuities between the historic experiences
of repression in Latin America and terrorism in the U.S. An
examination of the continuing debates highlights the tension
between collective memories of the past and present conflicts.
In Uruguay, a military officer known for his involvement in
torture and disappearances made public statements for the
first time: "What made me accept an interview was the impact
of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York.
The television images reminded me of the pointlessness of
the terrorist aggressions experienced in this country (Uruguay)
many years ago, and the consequences that are felt even now."3
From his point of view, what had happened in the US was not
an isolated and distant incident; it was profoundly connected
to the recent past in Uruguay, and the methods employed to
combat the terrorism should also be the same:
Journalist: "How do you think state forces should act in
confronting these movements that operate, as you say, with
"irregular" methods?"
Cordero: "You must be creative in order to succeed. It's a
problem of ingenuity. But more than ingenuity, you must use
methods that go outside normal war and the legal norms of
treaties such as the Geneva Convention (which put limits on
states when they go to war). The rest is just playing the
game."
Journalist: "Do these methods imply killing, torturing,
kidnapping or disappearing people?"
Cordero: "I believe so, yes, because it's the only way. The
United States is advocating it with unanimous support from
Congress."
It is interesting to note not only the explicit public justification
of torture, but also the means and the moment that the officer
found to make this assertion. The reappearance of "terrorism"
as the ultimate target of President Bush's fight has much
in common with the discourse promoted by the military concerning
the putative threat of subversion during the 1970s in the
Southern Cone. The officer grasped this coincidence and sought
to capitalize on the new international environment to further
his interests in the contested politics of memory.
This discourse was not limited to the military. Some conservative
groups, for example, promoted the reappearance of language
very similar to that of the "archaic" cold war. The same Uruguayan
magazine that conducted the interview with the military officer
published an editorial about some governments' messages of
solidarity with the U.S. "It is not possible to accept today,
without a justified skepticism, the solidarity of the Husseins,
the Qaddafis, or the Fidel Castros, all of whom have helped
terrorists, have provided refuge and training for terrorists,
or have supported and flattered one another." A Montevideo
newspaper with wide circulation (El Observador) drew
a comparison between the role that Che Guevara played in Latin
America in the 1960s and the influence of Bin Laden in the
Arab world.
The same week, the Uruguayan Army called for increased resources
to fight terrorism, and the government granted it an important
role in the new fight, thus legitimizing military participation
in domestic affairs, which generated conflicts with the police,
who claim jurisdiction in that area. The recasting of the
concept of terrorism was also evident in political discourse:
initially, all political parties condemned the attacks, but
the most conservative sectors attempted to foster analogies
between the practices of some leftist groups in the 1970s
and the current fundamentalist terrorism.
Thus, the conflict that appeared on the 11th allowed some
actors and institutions to take old language out of the closet
and dust it off for new causes. With considerable persuasiveness,
they spoke again of the fight against "terrorism" without
eliciting significant protest. They rapidly integrated the
old and new enemy into the same thing. The "enemy" that has
been constructed and expanded appears to have much less coherence
than the enemy of the 1970s: the foes range from Fidel Castro
and the Frente Amplio,4 to the Venezuelan president,
Hugo Chavez, all the way to Bin Laden.
For the moment, all these discourses have been mere fanfare;
they have not had any real repercussions. This re-expression
of some old concepts seems to be a discursive strategy for
certain actors to obtain slight advantages in the post-September
11th political scene. For the military, September 11 has been
transformed into an opportunity to justify again their "antisubversive"
fight that was so "misunderstood" by many sectors of society,
and an opportunity to gain institutional space within the
state. In politics, the most conservative sectors have taken
advantage of the event to discredit their electoral adversary
on the left (Frente Amplio) based on the conduct of some of
its members during the 1960s and 1970s.
On the other side of the Rio de la Plata, the debate developed
in very different directions, but was also led by people who
had played a very important role in the conflicts surrounding
Argentina's recent past. In Buenos Aires, a fierce debate
emerged within the human rights movement, basically between
Hebe de Bonafini, the current leader of one of the factions
of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and Horacio Verbitsky,
a well known journalist who is director of CELS, an important
human rights organization. During a public presentation on
the "imperialist war" at the "Popular University of the Mothers
of the Plaza de Mayo," Bonafini declared that she was happy
about the September 11th attacks. "I felt that there were
many peoples who were pleased at that moment and that the
blood of many had been avenged."5 At the same conference,
two intellectuals connected to the "University of the Mothers
of the Plaza de Mayo" affirmed that Bin Laden's actions could
be understood as another step in the "anti-imperialist class
struggle."
Verbitsky refuted these assertions in the Buenos Aires daily,
Pagina 12. The central argument of his criticism lay
in the negation of the dualism implicit in Bonafini's position.
"These new definitions come at a moment when the world is
grieving the pernicious provocation of September 11 and the
terrible reprisals against people equally as innocent as those
assassinated that day. They require a response from those
who do not believe it is necessary to choose between Milosevic's
ethnic cleansing and the "collateral damage" of NATO, between
Bin Laden's explosions and Bush's explosions, between Sharon's
fascist colonies and the serial assassins of Hamas..."6
The polemic continued for an entire month with the participation
of progressive intellectuals and social and political activists.
The debate was rife with mutual accusations, insults and references
to old disputes.7 These distinct reactions to September
11th implicitly reflected two different visions of Argentina's
recent past. Each perspective interpreted the event within
its respective ideological vision, but also within the politics
of memory that each of the organizations had promoted in the
last decade.
Bonafini attempted to integrate Bin Laden's fight with the
guerrilla groups in Argentina in the 1970s:
But the day of the attack I felt that there were very brave
men and women. They were courageous, like a mountain of
brave men that prepared themselves and donated their lives
for us, perhaps not for us, but for our grandchildren. They
declared war with their bodies, piloting an airplane to
explode and destroy the greatest power in the world. And
I was content, why not. To some it will appear bad. Everyone
will consider and evaluate. I am not going to be dishonest.
I toasted my children, toasted so many dead, against the
blockade, everything that came to my head. I toasted the
brave ones. I toasted the men that declared war with their
bodies.
This text is a clear effort to seek continuity
between the struggle of the revolutionary left of the 1970s
and that of Al-Qaeda. "I toast my children," she says, suggesting
that the disappeared were fighting for the same thing as
Bin Laden.
Several aspects of this attempt to establish continuity
between past and present merit emphasis. First, it is a
defense of certain methods and political practices of the
1970s. In this case, it is not a condemnation of political
violence in general, nor the terrorist method in particular.
On the contrary, it shares, vindicates and considers just
the terrorists acts of September 11th. Second, it is the
defense of a notion of anti-imperialism that is strongly
linked to the concepts developed by the left in the 1960s
and 1970s in experiences like the "tri-continental." In
that view, cultural and regional differences would be overcome
through unification around a common objective: the fall
of "imperialism."
Finally, Bonafini suggests an empathetic relationship with
those who would be the new "victims":
But the propaganda is so brutal, they have so
much in their hands, that as they themselves and many agencies
have said, North Americans in power first lie to their people.
The powerful lie so much that the people believe it and
then they can do what they want since they have the trust
of the people, just like what happened here. Like Vinas
said: our children were terrorists, and many people stayed
quiet because they believed that it was acceptable to kill
terrorists, since if they were terrorists what else could
be done? Terrorism. Then, we were the mothers of terrorists.
We spoke and spoke but many people said: no, but they make
bombs. We suffered many years; we spent much of our lives
maintaining that our children were revolutionaries, raising
them to the highest level possible, making the people believe
that they donated and handed over their lives for a better
world, so that we could speak, live, sustain them, defend
them, and go on fighting.
Verbitsky's discourse was quite different,
but it was also clearly influenced by a reading of what
had occurred in Argentina during the 1970s. Thus, he employed
terms connected to the guerrilla strategies of the 1970s,
like "foquismo"8 to refer to the attack of the
11th. "We believe that relationships with prevailing powers
can only be changed through mass popular mobilization that
broadens rather than restricts democratic spaces, and not
by the incendiary 'foquismo' of six masked men." He also
accused Bonafini of having "favored 'foquista' violence
in her speeches." Verbitsky's position is a strong critique
of "foquismo," which as he sees it is currently being pursued
by the Muslim fundamentalists. This formulation also suggests
continuity, but in this case a negative one. For Verbitsky,
this type of violence does not contribute to promoting popular
mobilization or to expanding democratic spaces. Moreover,
his position does not emanate from the "anti-imperialist
struggle," in the sense of a group of dominated peoples
fighting against an imperial nation. Rather, it stems from
a universalist condemnation of human rights violations,
no matter where they take place.
These two episodes on either side of the Rio de la Plata
demonstrate how discourses about the past have a performative
effect in the interpretation of newly emerging historic
moments. To a certain extent we can say that the disputes
over the meaning of September 11 were impacted heavily by
the memories created within the region several decades earlier.
Although there is an enormous distance between the conflicts
in the Southern Cone during the 1970s and what began with
September 11th, some actors intentionally sought to build
connections in order to legitimate their past behavior in
this new present. They seek to identify the old and the
new enemy as synonymous with the terms "terrorism" or "imperialism,"
and try to demonstrate the validity and the necessity of
certain methods like torture or political violence (which
had been very questioned in the democratization processes)
to achieve their political objectives. Basically, what seems
to have notably expanded is the range of discursive possibilities
arising from the attacks. Some things that were previously
said with embarrassment or reserve are now affirmed in a
much more blatant manner. In the context of a situation
loaded with heavy drama and drawn out through the media,
opinions are once again being expressed publicly that until
now had been reserved for the private sphere.
This is only the first act of the drama. None of what is
discussed here has a definitive meaning. Time will tell
how much of this is simply rhetorical strategy or implies
a real change in actors' behavior, and how much is necessarily
due to the effects of the 11th or is the result of radical
transformations taking place within these societies themselves.
In reality, this region had its own explosion; in December
the issue of the "fight against terrorism" took a back seat
on the public agenda as a result of the events that unfolded
beginning with De la Rua's resignation and the worsening
economic collapse in Argentina. The depth of the Argentine
crisis, its repercussions in the region and the urgent need
to overcome the present situation have come to occupy the
public debate almost exclusively.
The speed with which September 11 reverberated at the domestic
level in the region brings a relatively neglected issue
in recent decades back to the social science agenda. That
issue is the relationship between the United States and
local actors in Latin American countries. The excessively
Manichean use of the category "imperialism" in the 1960s
and early 1970s, which ascribed no autonomy to local actors
and viewed them simply as puppets of the great powers, has
been shown to be insufficient to explain a much more complex
and dense relationship. This, like many other cases, offers
a good opportunity to analyze how some national actors appropriate
international conjunctures in an active sense. They seek
to maximize local strategies and develop strategies for
legitimization that permit them to reinsert certain discourses
into local public space based on what is occurring at a
global level. Nevertheless, these asymmetric relationships,
in which each actor has a relative margin of freedom within
a field of limited possibilities, is still understudied
in the region. The changes that occurred after September
11th offer a timely opportunity to reflect again on this
problem.
Footnotes
1 Jelin, E., "Memorias en conflicto," Revista
Puentes No. 1, Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 2000.
2 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, University
of Chicago Press, 1992.
3 Semenario Busqueda, November 26, 2001, Montevideo,
Uruguay.
4 "Broad Front," the Uruguayan center-left coalition.
5 Taken from Resumen Latinoamericano No 14, accessed
at http://nodo50.org/resumen.
6 Diario Pagina 12, "La alegria de la muerte," October
10, 2001 (accessed at http://www.pagina12.com.ar.)
7 Bonafini made subsequent accusations in the publication
Revista 3puntos: "I believe that Verbitsky is a servant of
the United States. He receives a salary form the Ford Foundation,
and in addition to being a Jew, is totally pro-North American."
(Revista 3puntos No 227, accessed at http://www.3puntos.com).
The polemic touched on other relevant questions, such as the
role of North American foundations in the financing of diverse
civil society organizations in Argentina, and anti-Semitism
in some sectors of Argentine society.
8 "Foquismo" was a guerrilla cell-based strategy of political
violence used in Argentina in the 1970's.
|
View/print
essay only |
