Adolfo Pérez Esquivel He is 91 years old, but he doesn’t look it. Not just because of how she moves in the Evita Museum, energetic and as if he were at home, but because of the imprint and passion with which he relates his work. There are paintings and works of different types and formats: engravings, photographs, watercolors, and oil paintings, all made by the hand of the Nobel Peace Prize winner.
They are pieces of his own life, the crossroads of a boy who sold newspapers in San Telmo, the son of a worker who went blind, but they are also stories of Argentine history, from the dictatorship to the crisis of 2011. It is difficult to differentiate where one and where the other begins with Pérez Esquivel. “The revolution of non-violence”, is the name of the exhibition, which will be at the Evita Museum until October 29. “Evita had a lot of meaning for me. She gave my old man his retirement. She was very attentive, she had a lot of human sensitivity.”
News: How do you see MileYo? Would you paint a picture of him?
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel: I hope not, because I hope he doesn’t win. Denialism worries, hate: a society cannot be built on hate.
If we do not have love for our people, nothing we do is useful. That is why one demands from the political leadership, ethics and responsibility to live up to the people. Because the other, denialism, violence, hatred, is against the people. Please let the people not vote for their executioners.
TO Milei we have to help him. You have to help him to find a good psychiatrist to help him overcome hatred, the violence he carries inside and denialismeither. Because with this you can’t build anything. It is self-destructive. The best way is to help those who are not mentally and spiritually healthy. You can’t run a country like that.
News:What generated the act of Victoria Villarruel in tribute to the victims of terrorism?
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel: The act shocked me but did not surprise me at all because I know that they are provocative and hateful people, going against everything that was believed to be institutionalized. The problem is that they confuse people, especially new voters who don’t know the history. Villarruel confuses everything, because although there was a guerrilla that we are not unaware of, it is not the justification because the dictatorship attacked people who had nothing to do with the guerrillas. Second, he confuses what the guerrilla did, which are crimes, with the systematic apparatus that the state applied, which was state terrorism. Another point that he alerted me to was the support he had from the City Government, which once again shows its lack of political ethics and social responsibility.
News: Do you feel that there may be a vindication of the dictatorship in the people?
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel: Not from the town, but from a remnant that remained from that time, which never ceased to be. The majority of the Argentine people are organized and have a faithful conviction regarding the issue. In case it is put in danger, there will surely be a reaction that is not necessary for now. We have to get Milei and Villarruel some good psychiatrists. They want to remove ministries, destroy Conicet. They say “We are going to organize the country to…”. We already saw that movie and we know how it ends.
News: What is your reading of what happened in the last elections?
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel: There is a lot of discontent among people regarding the economic situation and it is reasonable. The government that takes office has to think about social justice, lower poverty and marginality rates and provide living conditions for the people. I get excited thinking that what happened in the PASO was a product of anger and boredom, but in October reason will prevail. We must ask voters to please not vote for their executioners. If the right to Argentina is going to be a setback of more than 50 years in the country. What its representatives such as Bullrich and Milei propose, They are old recipes, with bitter medicines, which we Argentines already experience. They are proposals that have failed in our country.
