No, Argentina is not crying for you, Mr. Cohen, by Mempo Giardinelli
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-240937-2014-03-02.html
In this past Thursday's edition of The New York Times, an opinion piece entitled "Cry for Me , Argentina" and signed by Roger Cohen ( click here ), who our own newspaper La Nacion refers to as a "veteran journalist", raises once again the old myth of the rich and prosperous Argentina of the past, contrasting to the current one's abominable present.
The circumstance in which this country lives today makes it imperative to
refute Mr. Cohen, who makes arguments similar to those of Mario Vargas Llosa
and other renowned op-ed writers from El Pas, The Washington Post, O Globo,
and other major media. Local newspapers'
correspondents tend to echo these exaggerated claims, as they reproduce them
and promote them in front pages and major websites, and celebrate them as
partial victories against kirshnerismo.
To make it clear to colleagues like Mr. Cohen, we first need to stress that
this idea that Argentina "was more prosperous than Sweden and France a
century ago" is false. In any case,
we were a peripheral country, almost a colony, with many natural resources but
structurally extremely backward and governed by leaders who were opportunist,
corrupt, racist, and subservient to foreign interests.
Of course it is understandable that Mr. Cohen so much dislikes Peronism, but
what matters here and now is not to argue with him about Peronism, but to highlight
his incapacity to free himself from prejudice that leads him to confuse the
complex reality of a nation that 100 years ago not only was not better than
now, but was also infinitely worse, because it was more unjust, oppressed by a cruel
and selfish aristocracy, and victimized by the foreign greed that his acclaimed
wealth always aroused.
It is not worth answering Mr. Cohen's cliches about statistics, exchan ge rate, and participation in capital markets, which seem borrowed from articles signed by economists here from our not-so-distant, dark past. But it must be made clear to this gentleman that in Argentina we have no "obsession" with what he contemptuously calls a "lost little war", and instead we do have a vivid memory of historical abuse, as well as great pain for the criminal stupidity of a criminal military regime that Mr. Cohen's country pr otected and helped in an immoral fashion.
Indeed,
in this respect, we should urge Mr. Cohen to take a stance about the political
morality of the great victorious wars that his country participated in at least
over the last 150 years, that is, all the wars in this world in which several
million people died.
We must also point out that Argentina was never more prosperous than Sweden,
France, Austria, Japan, and other countries that Mr. Cohen uses as an example,
because since its independence it was h arassed and plundered, and had masses of illiterate and exploited
individuals, no social laws, and not enough public health or schools, and on
top of it all it was led by fraudulent politicians who could only thrive at the
expense of the sweat of Creoles and immigrants.
It is true that "our pampas had the most fertile land in the world", but
the concentration of this land in the hands of a few families and the null land
taxes on unproductive lands made of that wealth a mirage for the millions of
citizens who lacked almost any rights.
So like it or not, Mr. Cohen, that colonel named Juan Domingo Peron and his
wife Eve were those who began to make changes. With populist and
demagogic strategies, if you will, and exaltations and a general untidiness
that it would have been better to avoid. But they created the possibility of a
decent life for those who until then had only suffered humiliation.
Mr. Cohen writes: "There was so much to plunder, so much wealth in grains
and livestock, that strong institutions and laws - not to mention a tax system
that worked - seemed a waste of time." Of course he doesn't ask who were
the plunderers, the owners of grain and livestock, or those who for decades
made it impossible to have "a tax system that worked." Had he asked, he
would have easily found the answer: they were, and remain, more or less the
same who 100 or 30 years ago, or even today when we do have a tax system, go to
the greatest lengths to evade paying their fair share.
I'm not one to defend Peronism, but Mr. Cohen should know that due to a neutrality that neither his country nor white Europe ever forgave him for, they invented the myth of a Nazi-fascist Peron and an ambitious, prostitute wife, and in so doing they muddled the possibility of understanding and analysis. Only ignoring all this can one write that we Argentinians love that "strange blend of nationalism, romanticism, fascism, socialism, past, future, militarism, erotica, fantasy, whining, irresponsibility, and repression."
What Mr. Cohen merely shows is that he knows nothing about this country. Mere
clichés, received wisdom, and the same old slogans pulled from the playbook of
well-known Latin American right-wing sectors.
Finally, writing that "Brazil is in the process of being Argentina,
Argentina is in the process of becoming Venezuela and Venezuela, Zimbabwe," as Mr. Cohen argues, is racist, discriminatory and offensive towards
that African nation, Brazil, Venezuela, and us. But most importantly, it is
false and not an innocent statement. Maybe he is annoyed at the existence of the
ALCA, or does not support UNASUR or CELAC, but a competent and decent professional
journalist should be aware that peoples in developing countries have serious
conflicts, and that national processes are unique and non-transferable.
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