Half a Century of Resistance in Argentina
Also in this edition: Granma 2.0 arrives in Cuba. For every ill, mezcal? Nearly 500,000 Indigenous Mexicans living in the U.S. Ayotzinapa: Sheinbaum seeks UN help.
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Art and struggle against dictatorship
Fifty years after the military coup of March 24, 1976, Argentina finds itself at a true crossroads, and the government of Javier Milei faces an extraordinary resistance led by human rights organizations, evident in their enduring slogan: “memory, truth, and justice,” writes our correspondent Stella Calloni. She describes the current situation as follows: “The government is adrift, in a critical situation, with the economy in free fall, unemployment, and poverty so severe that large sectors of society can no longer even survive.”
Hundreds of thousands marked the anniversary. “We are in this square with the 30,000 [disappeared] as our banner, with the Mothers and the Grandmothers, with survivors of the concentration camps, with sons, daughters, grandchildren, brothers and sisters, with relatives of the disappeared detainees, and with all human rights organizations, joined by the people, to tell Milei: memory is our tool,” declared Estela de Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, at the rally, Calloni reported.
“What is most extraordinary about this 50th anniversary is that the slogan ‘memory, truth, and justice’—which implies reclaiming identity (national identity in these times), history, and culture—are essential elements to combat attempts to recolonize this country and Latin America as a whole. Human rights organizations, so persecuted today, are fighting for national sovereignty, independence, self-determination, and universal justice. These 50 years of resistance have placed Argentina in a privileged position in the defense of human rights, as a model for the world,” the journalist writes.
In her book The Years of the Wolf: Operation Condor (reviewed in La Jornada by the Argentine-Mexican historian and rebel intellectual Adolfo Gilly), Calloni revealed the conduct of the “dirty war” by coup-installed military regimes in Argentina and other Latin American countries, coordinated with Washington.
The resistance of the Argentine people during the dictatorship and its aftermath was also expressed in the arts. In the face of enforced conformity and silence in cultural life, Teatro Abierto (Open Theater) emerged as an act of cultural resistance that sought to restore free expression to the country that has produced some of Latin America’s most prolific theater. That was dangerous, and the regime responded in the early hours of August 6, 1981: a fire completely destroyed the Teatro del Picadero. But the blaze failed to stop the movement.
After the fire, the organizing committee called a press conference attended en masse by journalists, intellectuals, and artists, including Ernesto Sábato and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (even Borges sent a note), where they announced their determination to continue the project by any means necessary. Osvaldo Dragún declared: “Teatro Abierto initially belonged to a group… today, it belongs to the entire country,” as recounted in La Jornada Semanal, which dedicates a full issue to Art and Thought Against Dictatorship in Argentina.
Literature, music, academic, intellectual, and journalistic contributions—such as those of investigative journalist Gregorio Selser and musicians Charly García, Mercedes Sosa, Atahualpa Yupanqui, and Liliana Felipe—by Argentina’s democratic activists and their diaspora in Mexico and other countries of the hemisphere have been fundamental in shaping critical perspectives for generations of Latin Americans.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel wrote in La Jornada: “Does the world care about the tears of the oppressed? Albert Camus stated that human life begins on the other side of despair. That is why we must hold utopia as our horizon, and if it does not exist, we must have the capacity to invent it. From this comes the concept of resistance. Another world is possible.” Later in the same text: “This continent suffered, in many countries, the militarization imposed by the United States through dictatorships installed by violence, through a carefully structured plan that left thousands dead, tortured, exiled, kidnapped, and institutionalized forced disappearance. (…) We have many expressions of resistance: those of Indigenous peoples; those of women, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo; (…) the struggle for human rights; in Mexico, the resistance in Chiapas and other forms of struggle (…) We, the peoples of the world, have the capacity for this change.”
The Quote:
Culture is the smile with ancient strength / It waits, wounded, forbidden, or buried / For time to come and illuminate its soul once again. Oh, oh, oh, life leaves / But culture remains here.
—León Gieco, Culture is the Smile
In Case You Missed It
◻️ Granma 2.0 arrives in Cuba. The Granma 2.0 boat, carrying 32 international activists and journalists from 11 countries, sailed from the port of Progreso in Yucatán to Havana with humanitarian cargo, including nonperishable food, medicines, diapers, bicycles, and 73 photovoltaic panels, to express that “Cuba is not alone” in this crisis.
◻️ Mezcal for every ill? In 14 years, mezcal production has increased by more than 1,000%, with most exported to the United States. At what cost? More than 34,953 hectares of dry tropical and pine-oak forests have disappeared over the past 27 years to make way for agave cultivation. The loss of native forests is accelerating soil erosion and reducing carbon capture by more than 4 million tons annually.
◻️ Nearly 500,000 Indigenous Mexicans in the U.S. At least 491,575 Indigenous Mexicans and 63,491 Afro-Mexicans live in the United States, forming an integral part of the immigrant population. The government has offered support to 189,830 Mexicans deported from the U.S. Analyst Magdalena Gómez notes that more information is needed about their places of origin and communities, particularly Indigenous peoples.
◻️ Ayotzinapa: Sheinbaum seeks UN help. After years without resolving the case, and with a new special prosecutor’s office, Mexico’s government has asked the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to propose experts who can assist in investigating the disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa. Abel Barrera Hernández, director of the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center, recalls the historic role of rural teachers’ colleges and says the case “revealed the intricate web of complicity involving authorities at all three levels of government, municipal, state, investigative, and federal police, the Army, Navy, and organized crime groups.”
◻️ One Hundred Utopias. At the inauguration of Utopía Mixiuhca, Mexico City’s head of government, Clara Brugada Molina, declared it the “birth of a new way of building a city.” It is the first of 100 such “Utopia” projects planned during her administration, aimed at reshaping urban life by bringing recreational, cultural, and wellness services closer to the population.
◻️ Festivals for Peace. This month saw the first round of Festivals for Peace, featuring artists such as Lila Downs, Siddhartha, Bronco, and Carín León in Tecámac, State of Mexico, and Tijuana, Baja California, drawing 260,000 attendees across both venues. “This initiative brings free festivals across the country as part of a policy to strengthen social bonds at the community level. It is culture without barriers, without tickets, without exclusion; free access for everyone,” explained Culture Secretary Claudia Curiel de Icaza.
◻️ What vital force drives Indigenous peoples? This is the latest issue of the supplement Ojarasca, which includes a text about seeds as “a fluid collective intelligence, like language.”
◻️ The living desert. The new issue of the La Jornada del Campo supplement explores life and culture in Mexico’s deserts. “Deserts are very much alive, and their biological and cultural diversity is equal to or perhaps greater than that of the tropics,” reports Armando Bartra. He adds: “Both biologically and culturally, our identity is equally Aridamerican. We are desert people who eat prickly pears and biznagas. We are sophisticated Nahuas, but also hardened Chichimecas.”
🎧 What We Are Listening To
Trump, war, and inequality: The crisis facing the United States. El Pulso de La Jornada speaks with correspondent David Brooks.
Edited by David Brooks and Jim Cason in the United States, Tania Molina Ramírez in Mexico City, of La Jornada, and Elizabeth Coll in Tokyo, under the direction of Carmen Lira Saade and Guillermina Alvarez. More information.