Word: argentinas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Argentina's "Dirty...
...truly intent on making others disappear, he is far more likely to succeed by killing his enemies outright and announcing the deed publicly. Then at least one deals out certainty, which will probably be followed by despair. By creating "disappearances" in Argentina, the military leaders not only engendered a feeling of national absence and brooding but raised a question of logic. Gone? How can anyone be gone nowadays in our small, interconnected, excessively communicative modern world? Instead of a nation of mourners, the generals created a nation of snoopers, all pawing at the ground for bones...
...from year to year, reaching the same unimaginative decision about obliterating their impediments. The idea has simplicity to recommend it. "Nothing will come of nothing," King Lear told one of his daughters. He was wrong, of course. Everything comes of nothing in King Lear, as it tends to elsewhere, Argentina included. Technically the desaparecidos are nothing; the conscience and resolve of the new administration are nothing. Because of such nothings, former President Bignone is in prison this week...
...basis of those nothings does Alfonsin hope to make his nation reappear. Working toward nothing, the former leaders got rid of most left-wing terrorism in Argentina, but in terms of a stable government or a content citizenry, they achieved nothing. Perhaps they are most comfortable in the presence of nothing. Perhaps their wish from the start was to survey a wasteland from atop a reviewing stand, exquisitely alone in a world where everyone else has disappeared...
...protest, or did they think that their husbands and children might actually be recognized, and returned to them safely? Do they think that still? They had nothing to hope for, they walked in a circle, and they said nothing, by which they restored much that had gone away from Argentina. -By Roger Rosenblatt