In order not to abuse the occupation of space or torture the reader with repetitions, from the launch of the diary profile I stopped writing in the magazine NEWS like it did decades ago. I do so today moved by a topic that touches me personally and touches this magazine in particular.
It was hard for me to understand that the ruling in favor of Nacha Guevara in collecting compensation for her exile during the dictatorship generated criticism of the artist. The argument that the 12 million pesos that she will collect will take away resources from the State to help the most needy people, seems demagogic to me. With that criterion, no one who was not indigent should make claims to the State.
I think that behind this criticism of the exiles – mostly progressives – who received compensation, is the crack that devours all rationality.
But first I want to exhaust the economic issue.
The indemnities of this type that the Court orders the State to pay, become effective long after the ruling: items must first be approved within the Economy, among other ministries, being subject to deterioration due to inflation and are made with bonds that issued by the State, which is like issuing money in the future.
An example is the compensation that the Justice ordered the State to pay to Editorial Perfil, complying with the judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights through the Court of San José, Costa Rica. It was the return of the money Carlos Menem had received from Editorial Perfil in a trial of the then president for a cover of the NEWS magazine which, in his opinion, affected his honor. The cover was published in 1995, in 2011 the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of the magazine, in 2015 the Argentine Justice ruled that the State should pay as compensation the same amount that Menem had previously received. An amount that Editorial Perfil donated to the Center for Legal and Social Studies, Cels, because their lawyers defended NOTICIAS ex officio. Until now, only the collection corresponding to expenses and fees was made effective, still subtracting the collection of the capital.
What Justice is fair when repairing 20 years later a damage caused by the State itself, as in the case of the magazine NOTICIAS, or almost 50 years later as in the case of Nacha Guevara? Half a century later and drawing criticism! The artist, together with her partner and her three young children, went into exile for the first time in August 1974 after the death threat of the Triple A (Argentine Anticommunist Alliance). She tried to come back in 1975 and was only able to do so for a month before leaving again when a bomb destroyed the theater where she was to make her debut.
And the underlying question: How much is an exile worth? Nacha Guevara spent a decade abroad. Between the ages of 24 and 34 he was unable to work in front of his public. Those 12 million pesos that when he ends up collecting them could be less than the cost of surviving a year outside the country? But whoever did not experience the violence in the soul that produces an exile, nor the violence in the body that generates being illegally detained, can hardly understand what it is about. In ancient Greece, those sentenced to the maximum sentence were given the choice between suicide or exile because they were equivalent punishments.
i met nacha in my own exile, during the last year of the military dictatorship, when I was placed at the disposal of the Executive Power. We lived in New York just like James Timerman; another exile with whom, sharing vicissitudes, it was logical to meet. The photo that illustrates this column is from the note I made to him when he premiered a show in a small room in the Village, the bohemian neighborhood of Manhattan.
I remember her struggles to survive and provide for her three children, the source of her resilience. As adults, she wrote a letter to her children that in one of her paragraphs says: “You were my engine. Without their small presences, without having had the need and the duty to care for and protect them, I would surely have become depressed, resentful, self-absorbed and would not have made exile what it ended up being, a learning experience. (…) Today, who are fathers and good fathers, I know that they understand what I am telling them. You forced me to use resources I didn’t know I had, you pushed me with your small but powerful hands, to solve situations I didn’t know I was prepared for. (…) Thank you for being my children, you saved me”.
Yesterday (I am writing these lines on Thursday the 7th) Nacha came to visit me, she wanted to talk to someone who had gone through a similar experience. He did not stop crying and, among what he told me, I want to share with readers the identification that some images of Ukraine produced in him where a person was digging a grave for his loved ones killed by the Russian bombardment. A journalist approaches him and asks: “What do you feel?” To which the Ukrainian replied: “Now I can’t feel, I have to take care of myself”.
We reflected together on how in moments when life is in danger, one does not think: he acts. He draws strength from where he doesn’t know he has and, a long time later, the token falls and he feels what he had blocked at the moment of danger.
Nacha asked me why I had not sued the State not only for exile and ordering my arrest at the disposal of the Executive Power at the beginning of 1983, but also for having been detained in the illegal detention camp El Olimpo in 1979. I told her that I couldn’t, that I felt guilty for being alive when so many others died: in El Olimpo they detained 750 people and killed 700. I told him that when I returned from exile, with democracy and Alfonsín having been my habeas corpus lawyer, the Director of the Legal Department of Editorial Perfil consulted me before the statute of limitations if I wanted to present my claim. Editorial Perfil did present its lawsuit for the closure of the magazine La Semana, the predecessor of NOTICIAS, won the lawsuit and received its compensation. But I couldn’t, I’m thankful to be alive.
I remember that year in New York, with Nacha and Timerman among others, that when friends from Argentina came to visit me and I accompanied them to say goodbye to Kennedy airport, I cried.
Hopefully those who have political ideas different from those of many of those who had to go into exile, can separate the rejection of the false seventies from Kirchnerism, such as the improper use of just causes for human rights, which I share, and allow themselves to understand the other as a human being.
* CEO of Perfil Network and founder of NOTICIAS
