READERS WRITE
WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON
August 18, 2022, marked the 100th anniversary of William Henry Hudson’s death. Born in 1841 in what is now Florencio Varela, Buenos Aires Province, he grew up on the pampas, the Argentine grasslands at a time when it was a pristine territory not yet settled on by the different waves of immigrants that came from overseas in the late 19th century. Long Ago and Far Away, one of his celebrated works, is about his memories of a happy childhood spent at Los 25 Ombués, an estancia that his parents had bought after leaving their hometown in Massachusetts, United States, and settling on a desolate vast territory where they raised sheep and lived at a home which, despite being far from civilisation , had an important collection of English classics. At the age of 33, Hudson travelled to the UK and, after starting his writing career in London, he never returned to his beloved pampas. In El Ombú, Days of Idleness in Patagonia and The Purple Land, he portrays the gaucho as a man who faced a life of deprivation with remarkable stoicism. He also describes him as having outstanding skills like whirling the boleadoras around his head while on horseback and flinging it at the feet of a fleeing rhea. Hudson wrote in English but, when he portrays the country dwellers living on the 19th-century pampas, they come off as believable and Argentine through and through. He should also be remembered as an earnest advocate fighting for the protection of wild birds slaughtered to provide feathers for the production of ladies’ hats.
Adrian Insaubralde, Santa Fe
WHOOPEE!
Driving on the outskirts of Buenos Aires this last weekend I was astounded by the incredible traffic I encountered. At the same time I heard of the record tourism numbers over this long weekend, and of the half a million people who enjoyed the asado competition along Avenida 9 de Julio, all this on top of incredible spending in July. Is there really an impending tsunami-style crisis in Argentina? Yes, of course, and this is the period of the final whoopee before the time of reckoning arrives.
And I am in the best of companies, in this conclusion. Guillermo Oliveto is, in my mind, Argentina’s leading authority on consumerism and how it reflects on our society. In his Monday article in La Nación he stated that “overwhelmed by an ominous and oppressive environment that they feel plays against them, to protect their economies Argentines decided to flee from the peso and, to protect themselves psychically, to flee from reality.”
Another important article published during the long weekend was Osvaldo Bazán’s ‘If the opposition wins the next elections we are going to have it very, very bad,’ in which he dramatically explains why we will have to go through great hardship if we once, and for all, want to put our country on the right track. A repetition of the crack of 1929, with an Argentine seasoning?
Whatever be, we are in for very rough times, yet at the same time hopefully we will begin at last to see light at the end of the tunnel, because: “It’s the Republic, dammit”!
Harry Ingham. City
BATTLE OF THE BULGE: PART 208
Dear Sirs,
Our Foreign Office thinks that both Cuba and Venezuela are genuine democracies and then receives the new Swiss ambassador, flying the Danish flag.
Need we say more?
David Parsons, via email
ROBERTO NAVARRO’S THREAT
One of CFK’S prominent boot-lickers, propagandist Roberto Navarro, owner of Radio El Destape and AM El Mundo, has accused several journalists (namely Jorge Lanata, Eduardo Feinmann, Luis Majul, Jonatan Viale, Alfredo Leuco, Baby Etchecopar) of generating violence and spreading hatred. He also warned “they should be afraid” and suggested: “We have to do something to stop them.”
Navarro has thus launched a sort of Mccarthyist witch hunt; he openly advocates a restriction on freedom of expression. Such a threat is clearly unacceptable in a democratic society. Let me quote some wise words – George Orwell: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”; George Washington: “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter”; Benjamin Franklin: “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” And finally, Oscar Wilde’s well-known cheeky irreverence: “I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.” Navarro has made an ass of himself.
Irene Bianchi, Ringuelet, La Plata