Rumblings on the Right
SHAPIRO, Arthur M.
THE NEW ARGENTINA-1 Rumblings on the Right BY ARTHUR M. SHAPIRO Buenos Aires Argentines take themselves very seriously, a trait that has resulted in an obsession with self-analysis extending to...
...Because if we do otherwise we become accomplices in our own victimization...
...When government and party spokesmen counteract the shenanigans of the extreme Right, it responds by calling the demurrers self-serving...
...Ricardo Curutchet, head of the anti-Semitic, openly neofascist Movement for National Restoration and publisher of the slimy weekly Cabildo...
...Mauricio Labat, secretary-general of the Peronist "62 labor organizations" in Cordoba...
...And Simon Lazara—Vice-President of the Permanent Assembly on Human Rights (co-founded by Alfonsin before he came to power), as well as political secretary of the small Socialist Party—called the whole scenario "a true act of provocation...
...The affair and its attendant publicity were meant to show that the various extreme Right factions could work to-gelher...
...and national Deputy Mario Roberto, a member, oddly enough, of Alfonsin's Center-Left Radical Civic Union...
...Several of my friends here noted cynically that Argentina is broke, and no foreign banker would give a regime controlled by soldiers a dime...
...Organizer Vattuone glibly remarked that "some speakers called for a change'in the political system— which is no crime in a democracy...
...The policies in question were massive cuts in defense spending and civilian trials for military personnel accused of kidnapping, torture and murder...
...The moderate press is also doing its best to discredit the drumbeat of disinformation...
...CIED's scandal-mongering did not go unnoticed...
...Taste in films reflects the new state of mind, too...
...Cesar Jaroslav-sky, the Radical Majority Leader in the Chamber of Deputies, lamented ofRo-berto: "It's sad he got into this...
...In 1984, CIED further claimed, Sendero Luminoso had task forces in two Argentine cities, Salta and Tucuman, and in the latter—once a Montonero center— had forged an alliance with remnants of the old Communist Vanguard and with the small Liberation Party...
...Because he handles high-level, large-scale embezzlement cases it was feared he had been kidnapped or murdered, and the Federal Police were called...
...Rightist antics come like clockwork, each week...
...Oscar Alende, former governor of Buenos Aires and head of the Intransigents, denounced the account as "an aggression" against his party and democracy itself...
...Many middle-aged, middle-class Argentines remember the terrorism of the late '60s and early '70s vividly and are willing to take political tall tales seriously...
...It is to impede to the fullest extent possible the nation's fervent desire for demilitarization...
...The soldiers have been making themselves heard directly, however...
...Its intent is that there be no more judgments of Armed Forces personnel [suspected of committing atrocities during the dirty war], and that they get more money in the budget...
...Imprisoned Montonero chieftain Mario Firmenich wrote to the mass media, labeling it nonsense...
...He added, though, that some of today's criminals were former operatives of the security forces in the "dirty war" on terrorism, now "using the same tactics to maintain themselves in the style to which they had become accustomed...
...Infamous lie...
...As for the Zariateguis and the Vat luones, their immediate objective is not simply to get the torturers off the hook and the Armed Forces budget fattened...
...The fount of all this, the communique concluded, was the youth wing of the Intransigent Party, said to have a number of acolytes in Nicaragua at the moment receiving guerrilla training...
...On a recent morning, Alfonso Rojas Funes, secretary to the Federal court that deals with economic crimes, did not show up for work...
...Apologizing lamely to Alende and the Intransigents, it promised to produce anything that was not top secret...
...In January everyone was talking about the kidnapping of Ricardo La-nusse Jr., scion of a venerable family and one of the country's richest men...
...It was the work of ultra-Rightists...
...More important, the ManintheStreet, regardless of party, is determined to make democracy work...
...That is true enough, except in this case the interest of Alfonsin and his supporters is the interest of democracy...
...means not tolerating blackmail directed at democracy...
...Greater explicitness marked the reflections of retired Admiral Horacio Zariategui, a notably undistinguished veteran of the Malvinas War: "There is no tendency toward a coup now, but I am concerned precisely with the fact that the government, without wishing to do so, is adopting policies which ultimately could change that attitude...
...In the annals of this national introspection 1985 will go down as the year of the destape, the time the lid came off...
...If the organizers thus hoped to put the government on edge they succeeded...
...After much hesitation, Raul Galvan, Troccoli's assistant and hatchet man, invoked national security and ordered CIED to reveal its documentation or retract its charges...
...THE NEW ARGENTINA-1 Rumblings on the Right BY ARTHUR M. SHAPIRO Buenos Aires Argentines take themselves very seriously, a trait that has resulted in an obsession with self-analysis extending to virtually every area of human behavior...
...Mainly, they are tied to the military, to the weapons lobby and to various far Right causes...
...A Defense Ministry official, Horacio Jaunarena, immediately denied that the government had any evidence of revived Left-wing violence...
...The angry responses were vindicated when the investigative weekly El Peri-odista succeeded in unmasking the elements behind CIED and The Law...
...It was Luis Zamora, Alfonsin's opponent as the presidential candidate of the Movement Toward Socialism, who had the most perceptive comment on the communique: "It reveals its origin in the tone and terminology, which are used habitually by sectors close to the Armed Forces and intelligence services...
...Then an obscure organization calling itself the Center for Defense Studies and Investigations (CIED) issued a communique through a juridical publication called The Law...
...Fantastically, as an insult to the Founding Fathers," he thundered, "they [the Armed Services] initiated an operation at the edge of the law, above the law, thinking of themselves as God and the law all rolled into one...
...The following day 500men and women gathered in the rain at a school in nearby Famailla, site of the dirty war's first clandestine prison, and watched Simon Lazara plant a tree...
...While officers are prohibited from speaking out on political matters, they do so anyway...
...misery to many...
...Hence the rumors, the communiques and the meetings...
...Although Buenos Aires always had a fairly racy cinema, even under censorship, the hard-core Caligula is now showing in the provinces and it seems that everyone, however staid, is flocking to it...
...In sidewalk cafes, where politics vies with taillessness as the number one topic of conversation, as often as not discussion concerns the far Right's campaign to destabilize the government of President Raul Alfonsin...
...Zariategui shot back, describing Gal-van as an "arrogant functionary" who "shows a lack of moderation and equilibrium...
...Chief of Staff Ricardo Pianta was reassuring, telling the press, "A coup isn't on anyone' s mind, and it's not a solution to any problem...
...There will be no coup in the near future...
...Moreover, we should not forget that Juan Peron and the generals and the admirals were not above using—and subsidizing—Left-wing terrorism to achieve their own purposes...
...The most striking evidence is the "tailless" swimsuit, prompting a major magazine to publish a beachfront interview with a noted psychiatrist about why middle-class women feel driven to expose their bottoms...
...Osvaldo Gazzola wrote in his popular "Sunday to Sunday" column in the Tucuman Gazette: "To assume responsibility...
...Instead of patriotic bumper stickers, one sees things like "Prohibitions Prohibited...
...Official spokesmen have reacted to the discontent of the military by observing that its budget has to reflect the nation's economic crisis...
...The gathering was a love feast of far Right enemies of freedom, held beneath a banner reading: "From the center Rightward, everything...
...Among those present were Admiral Zariategui...
...We cannot help to sharpen the guillotine for the executioners...
...As the austral summer comes to an end and the bare buttocks leave the chilly, wind-swept beaches, the political climate in Argentina is likely to warm up...
...they talk like Mussolini and [Jose F.] Uriburu [an authoritarian president of Argentina] and strut like Ongania...
...Subversion" was the term the military usually employed for Montonero activities...
...We are maturing," Argentines say...
...At the Interior Ministry Galvin snapped: "They are a hallucinating minority—high and mighty nationalists, disciples of Charles Maurras, [Jose Antonio] Primo de Rivera and Bruno Gen-ta...
...His words caused alarm, since he is well known for saying the opposite of what he is really thinking...
...To succeed, the far Right must create a climate of fear and thereby make the populace receptive to military protection...
...He was extraordinarily close-mouthed and professed to be unable to identify his captors...
...Interior Minister Antonio Troecoli felt obliged to state that professionals had probably carried out the crime for money...
...One Colonel Miguel Abbate indulged in similar speculations, then apologized on receiving threats of discipline...
...Cesar Jaroslavsky may call the Rightists "political mental cases," but they are crazy like the proverbial fox...
...Nothing of that sort had happened for quite a while...
...His comment pointed up the fact that therffstape involves more than a willingness to let it all hang out in the sun...
...A third challenge to Argentina's democratic rebirth, a recent meeting at the Hotel Crillon in Buenos Aires, was called by "Radio Splendid" commentator Carlos Vattuone...
...But one of his colleagues, General Enrique Bonifacio, managed to inflame public opinion by attributing the resurgence of democracy to the success of the campaign to root out subversion—forgetting seven years of dic-tatorShipand 10,000 "disappearances...
...Currents and countercurrents are swirling in the maelstrom of Argentine political life, and a few are hostile not merely to skimpy bathing suits but to the very idea of liberty...
...In any case, there were no arrests...
...According to CIED, the Revolutionary People's Army and the Montoneros, both generally regarded as extinct, were actually in the process of reorganizing to launch a renewed reign of terror...
...At a barbecue former President General Juan Carlos Ongania, who in 1966 overthrew the previous Radical head of state, Arturo Illia, proclaimed that "the time of the traditional coup is over in Argentina" and proceeded to roast Alfonsin...
...Christian Democratic Deputy Augusto Conte said the story had "no credibility...
...This Lanusse matter had a clear political content of the opposite kind: [It] was done with the goal of convincing the public it is unprotected...
...For after seven years of military dictatorship and goon-squad terror the people have discarded agreat many inhibitions...
...How jittery is Argentina...
...At news kiosks the old fascist magazines and biographies of Hitler have largely disappeared, replaced by blue comics, marriage manuals and disquisitions on what has gotten into stodgy, Catholic Argentina...
...This omission was not allowed to slip by...
...Later Raul Borras, the Defense Minister, was more explicit: "To think Sen-dero could have kidnapped Lanusse is stuff for crazies...
...it merely confirms his intellectual instability, which we've seen before...
...Democracy is the fruit of the Argentine people, because it was they who delivered the stroke that got rid, once and for all, of those who brought...
...Eventually, upon payment of an undisclosed ransom, Lanusse returned alive and well...
...Deputy Conte charged that "Zariategui is the only one creating prejudice against the Armed Forces...
...At noon, as they were about to begin their investigation, the supposed victim showed up—admitting, sheepishly, that he had overslept...
...The incident brought back memories of Montonero terror in the early 1970s, and paranoia was fueled by unattributed rumors in the sensationalist and Right-wing press to the effect that the Peruvian terrorist organization Sendero Luminoso had done the job...
...From the center Leftward, nothing...
...and was] either mendacious or delirious...
...A prominent Right-wing priest also made headlines a few months ago when he denounced democracy as "pornoc-racy" before an audience of soldiers...
...Picked up and distributed by the news agency DYN, the document, alleging that a "new wave of subversion" threatened the nation, soon found its way into Rightist dailies...
...Meanwhile, in the hills of Tucuman Province the Army has staged a commemoration of "Operation Independence," the anti-Montoneros campaign it mounted there 10 years ago...
Vol. 68 • January 1985 • No. 1
