ARGENTINA: A Brief History
By Steve Church
An Argentine is an Italian who speaks Spanish, wishes he were English, & behaves as if he were French.
Aphorism
The first Europeans to land in Argentina, were promptly eaten by the Indians.....but hey, these people love to eat, & it wouldn't be the last time in the country's history that the Argentines would resort to eating each other.
Early settlers of this diverse land would, in fact, constantly be harassed by Indians, having to turn tale & flee, leaving their herds of cattle & horses behind to grow fat & multiply, on the 8 foot deep grasses of the Pampas.
These pesky natives made life miserable clear into the late 1800's when finally the Europeans organized, & launched the Conquista Del Desierto, or 'Lets Kill All The Indians War.' & within a few short years they had exterminated every single original Argentinean.
Being true Latinos however there was that certain element that would rather love than fight, & through inter-cultural mingling, before every single Indian disappeared, there was born a small race of mixed breed, hard drinking, hard riding, hard fighting, work hating, fun loving, lazy,
womanizing creature called the Gaucho.
Thanks to the now millions of cattle & horses that freely roamed the Pampas the Gaucho found life for the taking. There have been few individuals in the course of history that have led as an independent life as the Gauchos. They answered to no law, spent no time whatsoever weighing moral obligations.
The Gaucho, in fact, had no morals.
But as history dictates, just as a group of people are really starting to enjoy themselves, some jerk will come along & muck things up. This time it was old father greed, in the form of large landowners, dividing up the Pampas, building fences, taming the wild horses & cattle & in time taming even that wandering spirit, the Gaucho.
So now we've got some pretty large spreads, some pretty powerful people trying to do a little beef exporting to Europe. But the Spanish forced mercantile restrictions upon anything exported from Argentina, & this was really starting to chaff some butts back on the Pampas. The Spanish had to go, & with the help of the British (ironically) the colony of Argentina became independent in 1816, breaking that Spanish yolk.
So Argentina had her independence, but wait!! Hello! What's this? Seems the country folk were agitated now. If there's one thing a country person can't stand its a city person. So for the next 20 years country folks & folks from Buenos Aires slaughtered each other. It left Argentina bloody & exhausted.
Finally Juan Rosas, a city dude in gaucho's clothing, got control & kept it with his ruthless police force, the dreaded Mazorca. These 'human beings' in uniform institutionalized a long painful legacy of torture in Argentina.
By 1852 even Juan's' friends were tortured enough by him, they organized & booted him into exile.
Juan Manuel Rosas, murderer of tens of thousands, retired comfortably for the next 25 years in Southampton England.
In 1853 the Argentine Constitution was drawn up & the country took off. The land of opportunity opened her arms to millions of Italian, German, French,& Spanish immigrants. Exports of beef & sheep made Argentina the richest country in South America by 1940..... Enter Juan Peron.
Juan Peron had traveled Argentina extensively as an obscure Army colonel, he knew the people well, and when Juan married the much loved actress Evita, the people knew him. The pair was revered by the Argentines as they created wage increases, free education, voting rights for women, trade unions. They were equally despised by a powerful few. When Evita died in 1952, Juan was thrown into exile by his own military.
Now here's when things get a little weird.... Juan remarried a dancer by the name of Isabelita. Juan & his spiritualist Jose Rega, then stole the embalmed body of the charismatic Eva, propped her up in Juan's humble Italian home, & for the next 18 years did rituals over the body to imbue Isabelita with Eva's qualities.
The military rule had meanwhile thrown Argentina into chaos & in 1973 Juan saw his chance to return. 200,000 people met his plane, 200 people were killed in the crush to touch him. Juan however, was a sick old man by this time, & promptly died, leaving the fragmented country in the hands of ill-qualified Isabelita, who almost broke the national economy buying shoes.
Again the military took over, this time under sadistic General Jorge Videla. People started disappearing, anyone that had spoken out about the military, simply disappeared. People who had upset a General in a business deal, disappeared. If a General coveted a woman, her husband disappeared, if they wanted a child, his parents disappeared. The victims were, more than not, tortured to death in famous detention centers such as the Navy Mechanics School. For a heart wrenching story of these times read 'Imagining Argentina.'
The mothers of these "Disappeared', now some 20,000 gone, started marching in front of the Presidential Palace every Thursday. Their plight was getting world wide attention & the General in charge at the time, General Galtieri had to something to take the heat off himself, so.....he attacked the Falklands.
Unfortunately for General Galtieri, Margaret Thatcher also needed something to take the heat off herself, the Falklands was a perfect war. As you probably know Argentina lost, but to this day, graffiti around Argentina reads...The Malvinas,(Falklands) We'll be back!! See, the Argentines don't feel they lost that war, they see it like a soccer match, they took on England & America & simply came in second.
The people then elected Carlos Menem to the presidency. He pardoned the Generals of crimes against the people, he has stabilized the economy making the inflation ravaged peso worth one U.S. dollar, & in typical Argentine fashion Mr. Menem is a somewhat colorful character. In one shady deal an Italian construction firm presented Menem with a bright red Ferrari. So are the people just a little worried about their presidents moral character? Oh contrau, Menem has gained hero status by making it the 400 kilometers from Buenos Aires to Mar De Plata in under 2 hours in his red Ferrari....& in Argentina, that, is what really matters.
to be continued
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