Remnants of the Past

I am fascinated by the so-called "dirty war" - the last dictatorship in Argentina that took place beginning with a coup in 1976 and lasted until 1983, about the same time that Pinochet ruled in Chile, and other dictatorships reigned havoc in Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay and elsewhere (many supported by US taxpayer dollars). In Argentina, 30,000 people were disappeared. Taken from their homes, workplaces, or simply grabbed on the street, brought to secret (or not so secret) detention centers, tortured, and their bodies disposed of after they died (or while they were still alive), often in the ocean or Rio de La Plata. It represents for me, one of the dark sides of hunamity that I struggle to understand. How can humans be so cruel, so driven by ideology or greed, or whatever drives them to inflict pain and suffering directly on another human being like that.

In Argentina, there continue to be reminders of that horrible time. Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the mothers of the disappeared, continue to make an appearance in the Plaza de Mayo every Thursday at 3:30. Wearing white scarves on their head, they assemble as they did during the dictatorship when protests were banned. During that time, they simply assembled quietly, wearing their white scarves in silent protest, providing one another with support and encouragement as they tried to find out where their husbands, children or other family members were.

Recentlly in the news, another relic of that time has resurfaced in the figure of Antonio Bussi. He is now on trial for his part in the disappearances and torture in the province of Tucuman. He is a very old man, covered with liver spots and hardly able to sit upright. The other day during his trial, he was taken out of the court room on a stretcher and sent to a hospital for observation. Yesterday I was watching the news and they questioned whether Bussi was perhaps pulling a "Pinochet". They showed Bussi in the courtroom, looking very tired, falling asleep, with his mouth open, being carried out on a stretcher, but then at one point, getting very angry at a testimony and interrupting it asking questions about what kind of torture the witness had observed. The judge had to tell him several times to be quiet. The news reporter contrasted this with Pinochet when he was arrested while on an overseas trip (in London?) and fell ill. His trial was suspended where he was returned to Chile, and upon leaving the airplane had made a miraculous recovery, walking on his own and waving victoriously to his supportors (I still find it hard to believe that people like that have supportors, but 27% of the American people still support Bush).

The question was whether Bussi was faking so that he could get out of being tried for his crimes.

I couldn't help feel contempt for this man, who looks to me like evil incarnate. If humans were really vengeful they would have removed the oxegyn from his nose and watched as he struggled to breathe. Instead, they cared for him like they would have cared for anyone, in spite of the fact that he was responsible for, or oversaw the torture and murder of hundreds of people.

I wonder if we will ever reach a point in the United States where people such as this will be brought to trial. We love pretending that we are so justice-minded, yet we have torturers, past and present, who are responsible for crimes such as these around the globe, and never once have we come close to bringing any one of them to trial.