READERS WRITE
MILAGRO SALAS’ TURN
The Supreme Court has confirmed a twoyear prison sentence against Túpac Amaru social activist Milagro Salas, who claims she is a victim of political persecution. Not only Kirchnerites in key positions, President Alberto Fernández also says she is a political prisoner. If the head of the Executive makes such a statement, why doesn’t he disclose the information to back up his accusation? There is the possibility that the stormy words used by the president lack substantial documentation so it ends up being a tempest in a tea-pot, very much in keeping with the nature of the so-called ‘post-truth.’ Likewise, Salas has not been able to produce concrete proof to fight the allegations against her while there is conclusive evidence of her violent intimidations. She once threatened to bomb a police precinct and, talking about explosives, I don’t think she is having ‘a blast’ in her present condition. She may be having second thoughts about intimidating people that way.
Adrian Insaubralde, Santa Fe
LUDWIG ERHARDT AND FEAR
Ludwig Erhardt (the father of the “German Miracle”) had the advantage that West Germans knew that next door were the Soviet troops and the Communists. When you are surrounded by enemies and you feel fear, you are willing to do things that you wouldn’t do in a normal situation.
Luis Spallarossa, via email
SMOKING AND INFLATION
In 1945, at the ripe old age of 13, I smoked my first cigarette. Over the years I got to consuming 50 or more per day. Time and again I tried to gradually reduce this figure, but to no avail. I was back at the same number in no time. Until September 8, 1988, when I had my first acupuncture session and, at the same time, my last cigarette. Remembering this the other day, it suddenly struck me that our inflation and my past smoking have something very important in common. Argentina has indulged, since the end of the 1940s, in the longest spell of high inflation in the history of mankind, albeit with periods of suppression which afterwards gave place to an explosion in prices. Since then, we have endured numerous gradualist intents to slow down our inflation, failing miserably each time. Right now our government, ignoring Albert Einstein’s advice that similar solutions produce similar results, is putting into practice the same failed methods so often already tried. So this is why I feel that, just as with smoking, we will only be able to defeat our so persistent inflation replacing gradualism with shock therapy. Painful, of course, but as the Germans say, better a fright with an end than an endless fright!
Harry Ingham, City
DEATH BECOMES HIM
With regard to this comment by Agustino Fontevecchia [Times, February 13]: “The alfonsinista dream that ‘we feed, cure and educate with democracy’ remains an implacable challenge from 1983.” It seems to me that we should stop with the hypocrisy of all these years. How many people must have died directly or indirectly due to the corruption, poverty, murder, etc. provoked by mismanagement since 1983?
Public education was one of the first victims, from the beginning. I can remember starting my first year at a public technical school in 1983, renowned then for its excellence. When I finished the sixth year, the same school had a bad reputation. When I was a child, before 1983, my mother used to tell me: “I send you to the public school because it’s where the intelligent boys go. The ‘burros’ go to the private school, because there they pay and pass.”
Like Borges’ regret in regards to Facundo not being the national book instead of Martín Fierro, if Alfonsín had said: “We feed, cure and learn to live in democracy with education” perhaps things would have been different.
Diego Roel, Lanús
DEATH BECOMES HIM
I really don’t know if this happens elsewhere, but I’ve noticed that in Argentina we tend to look up to anybody who passes away and we automatically forgive and forget all his/her wrongdoings. They die and they are at once redeemed, no matter what they did while still alive. Carlos Menem died last
Monday. He was accused – among many other things – of covering up the terrorist bombings of the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA Jewish community centre. He was found guilty of selling weapons to Ecuador and Croatia (let’s not forget the explosion in Ríotercero in 1995). His railway privatisation led to the death of hundreds of towns and cities in Argentina. In spite of all this, we’ve had three days of national mourning in his honour. As I’ve said, once you kick the bucket hereabouts, you turn over a new leaf. Sigh…
Irene Bianchi, Ringuelet, La Plata
BATTLE OF THE BULGE: PART 132
Odd country, Argentina. Eighth-largest in the world, 200 million acres of prime agricultural land, Andes mountain range stuffed with minerals, ‘Dead Cow’ shale, gas galore, but we just can’t get our act together. However, there is one redeeming feature: 85 percent of the 45 million inhabitants consider themselves middle class. This might just save us, eventually.
Another hopeful sign: classes returned to Buenos Aires last Wednesday. The sight of those white smocks cheered the cockles of our collective hearts. This good feeling should spread throughout the land, as from March 1, as the 23 provinces fall in. Despite more legal shenanigans from SHE who must be obeyed, all is not lost. Veremos – ‘Argentinos, a las cosas!’ (Ortega y Gasset, 1916).
David Parsons, via email