Hades, Argentina – novel

 "Hades, Argentina”, the just published (January 2021) novel by Daniel Loedel is about the killing, torture and ‘disappearance’ of thousands of leftists during the brutal Argentine military dictatorship in the seventies.

 

Tomas Orilla, the main character in the novel, is a medical student who moves from his home town La Plata to Buenos Aires in 1976 to be closer to his teenage sweet heart Isabel. He discovers that she has become a member of the Montonero leftist guerilla movement. She seeks his help to infiltrate the government agencies involved in detention of opponents of the military regime. With the help of Colonel Felipe Gorlero, his guardian in the city and a senior official in the Military Intelligence, he gets a part time job in a secret and illegal military detention centre. Tomas’s job includes drugging the detainees to induce confession, revive them when they pass out after tortures and provide minimum medical help to keep the prisoners alive until  information is extracted from them. Thereafter they are transferred for disposal by killing. Tomas is traumatised seeing the macabre methods of torture, screaming of the victims and their suffering. The torturers carry out their gruesome work coolly and casually while listening to football match commentaries, joking about colleagues and making cruel comments on the victims. Eventually he is caught for espionage and his help to some detainees to escape.  He becomes a detainee himself and put in a hood for interrogation and tortures. But the colonel comes to his rescue and helps him to escape to Rome. In exchange for the Colonel’s help, Tomas had to give out information on the hide-out location of Isabel. From Rome, Tomas moves to New York where he marries an American. But the marriage breaks down since Tomas is unable to settle down, haunted by his nightmares. 

 

In 1986, he travels to Buenos Aires to see the mother of Isabel in the hospital with terminal illness. During his stay in the city, he is haunted by the ghosts of the Colonel and Isabel. He returns to the sites containing his darkest memories and most profound regrets. He wanders in the Recoleta cemetery and in the streets of the city lost in the labyrinth of memory, guilt and loss.  He realizes how hard it must be for those Argentines who hadn’t left the country, having to go about their daily lives with the possibility of bumping into their torturers at train stations and random intersections or having to wonder, because they’d been blindfolded back then, if the man giving them a funny look on the bus had raped them.

 

There are Dantesque dialogues between the Colonel and Tomas on death, sin, hell, purgatory and redemption. The two carry on their long conversations, alternating between real life and the after-life, during their wanderings through the Recoleta cemetery and long hours of sitting in cafes.

  

Loedel’s novel is based on the real life story of his own half-sister Isabel Loedel Maiztegui, a Montonero activist,  who was murdered and disappeared by the military dictatorship  in January 1978, when she was just 22. 

Loedel is born and lives in New York, where his father had moved from Argentina after the coup. Loedel travelled to Argentina in 2018 for DNA confirmation of the identity of Isabel from the bone and skull remains in the forensic lab. He buried her remains formally in a ceremony in 2019 in La Plata next to the others who were also killed during the Dirty War of the dictatorship.

                                                 photo of real life Isabel

 

Loedel reflects on his identity crisis as a US citizen of Argentine origin. His father refused to let him visit Argentina because of the bitterness of loss of his daughter. It was only at the age of 22 he visited Argentina for the first time. He connected to the extended family and friends of Isabel and collected information for the novel. His father translated the novel into Spanish, adding authenticity to the spirit and language. 

 

On the character of Argentines, the author comments aptly, “we Argentines are so particular, no one else would put up with us. The Porteños (residents of Buenos Aires city), who fancy themselves so European, turn up their noses at anyone from the rest of the continent. The country is one of the vainest in the world. So many of our problems stem from that. Have to be better than the Brazilians, have to be pretty, have to be European”. These are comments I have often heard from my Argentine friends themselves who would express the same more colorfully, with the choicest abusive words.

 

On the capital city of the country, the author comments, “Buenos Aires never showed its scars, never let its surface be ruffled; it was a city made for forgetting as much as for nostalgia”.

 

The author has an interesting definition, “Peronism is like poetry—it can’t be explained, only recognized.”  He says, “Peronism was the ideal vehicle for those like Isabel who wanted change but didn’t necessarily possess a full-fledged ideology or agenda. After Peron himself was booted from the country in 1955 and his party proscribed, their right-wing aspects were widely forgotten and the label evolved into a catchall for populism of every stripe, a handy banner for anyone who wanted to step on the battlefield. (Indeed, the Montonero guerrillas originally took up arms to bring Perón back from exile, before growing into a broader insurrection against state oppression.) The word almost had spiritual connotations now; for some, it was a moral lifestyle as much as a fight against injustice”. Peronism continues to divide the nation vertically even now. There is a constant and strong Peronist voter base which is seduced and cultivated by the politicians. On the other side, there is a significant part of the population who hate Peronism and blame it for all the problems of the country.

 

The military has gone back to the barracks irreversibly since 1983. But the civilian governments since then have mismanaged the economy periodically causing tragedies of hyper inflation, debt default, foreign exchange shortage and misery for the common people. Argentina, which was one of the top ten richest countries in the beginning of the twentieth century, has regressed and is in the middle of yet another cycle of financial crisis at present. 

"Hades, Argentina" reminds me of another Argentine novel "Purgatory" by Tomas Eloy Martinez. This is a similar story in which Emilia, the protagonist, is haunted by the memory of her husband who was 'disappeared' by the dictatorship.

Argentina seems to be still struggling to come out of the shades of Hades and purification in Purgatory

Impressive increase in India’s pharmaceutical exports to Latin America

India’s pharmaceutical exports to Latin America have increased by an impressive 23% reaching 790 million dollars in the first eight months of 2020 from April to November, according to the statistics of Commerce Ministry of India. The 23% increase is even more significant in the context of the 13% fall in India’s total exports to the region

 

The increase was over 100% in the case of Peru with 99 million dollars in the eight months of 2020 as against the previous whole year’s ( 12 months from April 2019 to March 2020) figure of 69 million dollars. Peru has overtaken Chile as the second largest destination of Indian pharma, after Brazil.

 

The second highest increase was to Mexico with 83 million dollars as against 63 m in the previous whole year.

 

Here are the export figures for other markets for  April-Nov 20 with  Apr 2019-March 2020 figures in brackets in millions of dollars

 

Brazil   200 (298)

Chile    74  (93)

Colombia 44 (65)

Venezuela 42 (39)

Dom Republic 34 (39)

Guatemala 31 (43)

Ecuador 18 (30)

Bolivia 14 (24)

Argentina 14 (22)

Honduras 17 (23)

El Salvador 14 (15)

Nicaragua 12 (18)

Panama 13 (11)

 

India is supplying covid vaccines to Brazil and other countries in the region. This Vaccine Diplomacy has enhanced India’s image as the ‘pharmacy of the world’. 

 

Latin America is projected to have a GDP growth of 3.7% in 2021 after the estimated contraction of 7.7% in 2020

 

Given this recovery of growth and enhanced image, India’s pharma exports should increase in the coming years.

 

India’s global pharma exports have gone up by 16% in the first eight months of 2020 reaching 12.6 billion dollars, despite the 16% decline in India’s total exports to the world.

 

India’s pharma exports to US (the #1 market of India) have increased by 14% in the period April-Nov 2020, reaching 4.8 billion dollars. For the first time, pharmaceuticals rank as the #1 export of India to US, overtaking diamonds, gem and jewellery exports.

 

“Populista: The rise of Latin America’s 21st Century strongman” – book by Will Grant

 “Populista: The rise of Latin America’s 21^st Century strongman”, the just published (January 2021) book is about the poster boys of the Pink Tide who swept into power in the first decade of this century, promising a New Latin America. They are: Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva of Brazil, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. 

These colorful and charismatic leaders placed the poor at the top of their political agenda and tackled the stigma of poverty and indigenous identity. They pulled out millions of people from poverty and gave priority to education, healthcare and infrastructure building. They were lucky that the high commodity prices and demand at that time gave them ample funds for their ambitious projects. They won the elections easily defeating their oligarchic right wing opponents. They supported each other and worked together for regional integration and collective strength. They challenged the hegemony of US and the neoliberalism imposed by the pro-US governments of the region. 

 

Yet within a decade and a half, the party was over. Hugo Chávez died leaving Venezuela in a disastrous mess. Lula went to jail, while Brazil suffers under a right wing dictatorship-loving  extremist president. Rafael Correa is in exile and banned from politics, facing corruption charges. Evo Morales had to flee the country into exile after his bungled attempt to prolong his term. Ortega has made a mockery of the Sandinista revolution with his family dictatorship. 

 

Will Grant, the author, gives a fairly objective narration of the rise and fall of these populistas and the impact they had on their countries and in the region. He has given biographical sketches of these leaders and described the circumstances and background of their emergence. He has analysed the characters of the leaders highlighting their strengths and weaknesses as well their achievements and mistakes. He has made interesting comparisons between these leaders pointing out their commonalities and contrasts.

 

Grant has lived and worked in the region as BBC correspondent and has personally met and interviewed these leaders at the height of their power and after their fall. He has also interacted with their admirers and critics. He has defined the Pink Tide as the period between the election of Hugo Chavez in 1999 and the death of Fidel Castro in 2016

 

Chavez was a product of the angry reaction of the Venezuelans to the corrupt oligarchic rule which left millions in poverty despite the massive oil wealth. Chavez harvested the people’s anger successfully and became the president in 1999, decimating the established political parties in the elections. He succeeded in poverty alleviation and reduction of inequality in the beginning. However, his priority changed after the opposition overthrew him in a brief coup in 2002 with the support of business and middle class. He then focused on attacking the opposition and imperialism polarizing the country and the region. He weakened the institutions of democracy and created a corrupt power alliance between Chavistas and military. When he died, the country was in a complete systemic collapse and had more poverty than when he came to power. The situation has become even worse after him. Over four million Venezuelans have fled the country to escape abject poverty and hopeless misery.

 

The election of Lula, a lathe worker from a poor migrant family, as President of Brazil in 2002 was a historic mile stone just as Obama’s victory was in US in 2008. President Obama called Lula as “the most popular politician on earth”. Despite his poor background and lack of higher education, Lula evolved as a respected world statesman and leader of Latin America with his vision, diplomacy and charisma. Under his presidency, Brazil’s profile rose as a regional and global power. He left office in 2011 gracefully after two terms with high approval rating and getting his chosen successor Dilma Rouseff elected as President. But Rouseff's poor political skills and inept handling of the Car Wash scandal gave a opening to the opposition which impeached her in a constitutional coup. Sergio Moro, the anti-Lula judge, bent the rules of law and justice to put Lula in jail, in a disproportionate punishment to prevent Lula from contesting the elections. Although Lula’s legacy has been tarnished, he is still personally popular while Bolsonaro has become a shame and disaster for the country.

  

Evo Morales made history by becoming the first native Indian to become the President of Bolivia. Although the Indians form over sixty percent of the population, they were kept in a kind of apartheid by the white minority which controlled politics and the economy. The prejudice against the Indians was illustrated by the crass comments of Bolivia’s contestant for Miss Universe in 2004, Gabriela Oviedo, a blonde. She told the judges that not everyone in Bolivia was ‘poor, very short people and Indian’. To the utter disbelief and indignation of the audience, she reassured the panel she was ‘from the east, where… we’re tall, and we are white and can speak English’.

 

Morales empowered the Indians by lifting them out of poverty and opening the doors of government and business to them. During his presidency of fourteen years, the macroeconomic fundamentals of the economy remained strong with an average of 5% GDP growth. However, Morales got carried away by hubris and thought that he was indispensable for the country. He broke the term limits of his own constitution and tried to stay on by manipulation of the court. In the 2019 elections, when the results did not give him the minimum required margin for first round victory, the counting was stopped mysteriously for 24 hours after which it was announced that he won with more than ten percent. The opposition took to the streets and the army advised him to get out. It is a pity that Morales spoiled his admirable legacy by such an inglorious ending. 

 

Rafael Correa is the most highly qualified among the populistas. He had done his economics masters in Belgium and PhD in US on the subject of globalization. As President, he refused to pay the immoral debt of the country accumulated by the previous corrupt governments. Like Lula, he also left quietly with his head high after two terms and getting his chosen successor elected. But the successor turned against him and opened up corruption cases against his former mentor. Correa had also made lot of enemies in politics and media with his intolerance, short temper and vindictiveness. He is now in exile in Belgium, the country of his wife. He has been banned from entry into politics by the Ecuadorian courts.

 

Daniel Ortega was part of the celebrated Sandinista revolution which brought down the criminal and corrupt Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979. When the Sandinistas were in  power from 1979 to 1989, the country was devastated by the Reagan administration through the contra wars, economic sanctions and other destabilization measures. Consequent to this, Ortega lost the elections in 1990 and he accepted the defeat with grace. After sitting out in the opposition for fifteen years, he got elected in 2006 and is continuing since then through undemocratic manipulations. His former comrades have left him, disgusted by his betrayal of the revolutionary ideals. He is running the country like a family property with his wife who has become vice president and son who is involved in corrupt business deals. 

 

Grant has added a last chapter on Fidel Castro, who inspired these leaders and cleared the path for their rise as the revolutionary icon of the region. Castro had a huge influence on all the left-wing populists in Latin America who came after him. Each of them visited Cuba, sat at his feet and kissed the ring of the communist elder statesman. Most received instructions or training on the island. Castro sent medical doctors to these countries to assist in healthcare. The five leaders provided political support to Cuba. Chavez provided subsidized oil to Cuba and Nicaragua.

 

Castro was infinitely more charismatic than Hugo Chávez, and a far more sophisticated guerrilla leader than Daniel Ortega. He easily outweighed the popular appeal of Evo Morales and had a sharper intellect than Rafael Correa. He was more determined and iron-willed than Lula, and possessed more daring, political astuteness and audacity than all those leaders combined. He was also more ruthless towards his critics. He survived CIA assassination attempts, Bay of Pigs invasion and crippling US sanctions.

  

What next for Latin America after these Populistas? Was the Pink Tide a passing political current or a genuine sea change?.  The answer lies in the fact that Latin America has the largest disparity in wealth and still there are millions of poor people whose conditions have become worse after the pandemic. These masses will continue to elect the Left who have the agenda for them. This is clear from the case of Argentina where the leftist Peronism has bounced back to power in 2019 after four year of centre-right Macri rule. It is a pity that the author has left out Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, who was the President of Argentina from 2007 to 2015 and was part of the Populistas group. The Peronist Left has taken strong roots in Argentina with a solid electoral base. The candidate and party of Evo Morales have been elected with a decisive and clear mandate in the 2020 elections in Bolivia. Morales is now back in Bolivia from exile. The socialist and nationalist agenda of Morales is continued ably by President Luis Arce who is a pragmatic technocrat. The Left has come to power for the first time in Mexico in 2018. The radical and maverick leftist Lopez Obrador has the perfect credentials to be in Will Grant’s List of Populistas.  The leftist candidate Andres Arauz, the protege of Correa is leading in the opinion polls for the presidential elections to be held on 7 February. If he wins, he is expected to pardon Correa and reinstate him in the country's politics.

 

While the Left will stay in Latin America as long as poverty and inequality exists, it cannot survive on the basis of its ideology alone. If it does not deliver or if it gets corrupt, complacent or overbearing, the masses will vote them out as evident in the recent elections. This is the case in Uruguay which has elected a centre-right government in 2020 after the fifteen years rule of the leftist Broad Front even though the Front did well in administration without any major scandals or failures. It is certain that the Leftist regimes of Maduro, Ortega and Castro will be voted out out if free and fair elections are held in their countries, where the people are suffering. As the Latin American electorate matures, the voters might give chance to both the left and right alternately to get the best out of both. The Chileans have elected leftist Michelle Bachelet and right wing Sebastian Pinera alternately in the last four elections.  

Grant’s book is a valuable addition to the knowledge and understanding of the Latin American politics, which has fascinated the world with revolutions and dictatorships in the past. It is a useful read for the Indian comrades who adore unconditionally the Latin American revolutionary icons with romantic nostalgia. I remember seeing the posters with the images of Castro, Chavez and Che together during a district-level conference of the communists in Idukki district in the interior of Kerala some years back. 

For such Trinity worshippers, this book should be even more interesting.

Restoration of democracy, socialism and Indigenous pride in Bolivia

Luis Arce was elected as President of Bolivia in the elections held on 18 October. He is the chosen successor of Evo Morales, who was President of the country from 2006 to 2019. 

 

Morales made history as the first native Indian to be elected as president in 2006. Although two thirds of the eleven million Bolivians are indigenous, they had been ruled by a tiny (15% of the total population) white elite of European descent in the last five hundred years. The oligarchic rulers had excluded the Indians away from political and economic power. They had marginalized and discriminated against the Indians keeping them as poor, illiterate and backward. Bolivia was like South Africa minus the formal label and laws of Apartheid. Morales fought against this racial domination by mobilizing the Indians, uniting them and getting them to vote him as president in 2006. Morales comes from a typical poor Aymara Indian family without any educational qualifications. 

 

As president, the first priority of Morales was to uplift the Indians from poverty, provide access to economic opportunities and empower them politically. In 2009, he got a new constitution for the country to reflect the rights and aspirations of the Indians. He got the name of the country changed to “ Plurinational State of Bolivia” in recognition of the many  distinct indigenous communities of the country. 

 

Morales had done a tremendous job of transforming the country. Firstly, he gave unprecedented political stability to the country which had gone through many coups and dictatorships. There were five presidents in five years before he came to power. 36 of the 83 governments in the past had lasted a year or less. Morales was the longest-serving president of the country. He survived a few coup attempts, separatist insurgencies and US destabilization.

 

Secondly, his government had reduced poverty drastically in the fourteen years of his government with pro-poor and Inclusive Development programmes. His administration had reached out to the indigenous communities in rural areas with building of schools, hospitals, roads and utilities. The World Bank and other outside agencies have recognized this as the most successful poverty reduction in Latin America. 

 

Thirdly, Morales nationalized the oil and gas and other sectors from which he increased state revenue. He got better price for the gas exported to Brazil and he even fought with his idol President Lula for higher prices. He ploughed the increased revenue into welfare projects.

 

Fourthly, Morales managed the economy prudently and pragmatically despite his radical leftist rhetoric. This was evident from the impressive average annual GDP growth rate of 5 % from 2006 to 2018. During his terms, inflation and external debt were low and the currency remained stable. Before his presidency, the country had suffered hyper inflation and currency devaluations in four to five digits and had exploded with debt crises. 

 

More importantly, Morales gave dignity, self esteem and pride to the Indian community. The Bolivian ladies wore polleras (traditional pleated and long skirts) proudly to offices and shopping malls.

During the protests against the interim government, the Indians chanted “the pollera will be respected!” Before his official inauguration in 2006, he visited the ancient temple in Tiwanaku and performedtraditional rites seeking the blessings of Indian gods.

 

Morales lead a simple and austere life without any personal ostentation. He was free from large scale corruption and did not acquire personal wealth or indulge in any luxuries. He continued as a bachelor and dedicated most of his time for the country, except for his indulgence in playing football and occasional girlfriends. 

 

After having been in power for such a long period of 14 years, Morales should have stood down in the 2019 elections, as mandated by the term limit imposed by his own new constituition. This would have safeguarded his great legacy of achievements.

 

But hubris went to his head and he started believing that he was indispensable. He held a referendum in 2016 seeking approval for another term. This was rejected by the people. Disregarding the verdict, he went to the constitutional court and got from friendly judges a verdict approving his reelection, on the spurious ground of his personal human rights. This shocked and divided his own supporters.

 

Morales made his worst mistake during the counting of votes in the 20 October 2019 elections. The live counting and telecast was shut down abrupty and mysteriously for almost 24 hours, when the margin between Morales and his nearest rival Carlos Mesa was narrowing. The next day, counting was resumed and it was announced that Morales won with more than ten percent difference in votes. This raised suspicions. When the opposition and external election observers questioned, Morales agreed to an audit and later to holding a new election. But it was too late. Seeing the best opportunity to bring down Morales, the opposition resorted to protests and clashed with his supporters. The military and police took the side of the protestors and turned against him. The US-trained army chief had advised him to leave the country for his own safety. He got the message and took the offer of Mexico for asylum and from there went to Argentina. 

 

The power vacuum following his departure was seized by a conservative senator Jeanine Anez, who proclaimed herself as the interim president with the support of the military. She was the second vice president of the senate and overrode the claims of the president and first vice president of the senate after intimidating and rejecting their constitutuinal rights for succession. Anez formed an interim government consisting of conservative whites who wanted to take revenge on the Indians who kept them away from power for fourteen years. 

 

The interim government gave extra powers to the security forces which brutally suppressed the protests of the Indian supporters of Morales. During her swearing in ceremony, Áñez made a show of bringing Christianity with her, after the last administration’s emphasis on Indigenous traditions. “The Bible has returned to the government palace!” she declared, carrying an oversized Bible. Anez posted racist twitter messages belittling indigenous people. Her supporters burnt the multicloured traditional Indian flag insulting the indigenous.

 

The interim government carried out a witch-hunt against the leaders of MAS (Movimiento Al Socialismo- Movement for Socialism, the political party of Morales) with detentions and prosecutions. They charged Morales himself with terrorism (by inciting anti-government protests), communism, drug trafficking and sedition. Interior Minister Arturo Murillo vowed to jail Evo Morales for the rest of his life. Several ministers of Morales' government went underground, left the country or sought refuge in foreign embassies. The interim government even sought the help of Israel to fight “terrorism”. They resumed relations with US, which had earlier shunned Morales.  They suspended relations with Venezuela and Cuba and sent hundreds of Cuban doctors and Venezuelan diplomats home. Áñez participated in a ceremony in Santa Cruz to honor the military veterans who captured Ernesto “Che” Guevara in the Bolivian jungle on Oct. 8, 1967 to mock Morales who is an admirer of Che.

 

The blatant acts of revenge and restoration of policies of discrimination and disrespect to the indigenous people by the interim government pushed the Indians to reunite and vote for their own party MAS. The Indians realized that the white elite had not given up their past racial prejudices. 

 

The President-elect Arce is a moderate and pragmatic technocrat. He was the economy and finance minister of Morales and before that had worked in the Central Bank. He did his Masters in economics from a British University and had worked as professor in a Bolivian university. He was responsible for the successful management of the economy during the presidency of Morales. 

Besides winning the presidency with an impressive 55% (as against the 28% of his nearest rival and 14% of the third candidate),the MAS party has also won majority in both the Senate and the Lower House. This means that the government of Arce will continue to be stable and could continue the progressive socioeconomic policies of the Morales presidency. He has said,“We’re going to work and resume the process of change without hate, and learning and overcoming our errors as MAS.”

Morales will soon return to Bolivia from his exile in Argentina. However, he is not likely to get any governmental position. He will continue as head of the party and be active in trade union bodies. 

 

It is important to note that a number of new young MAS leaders have won the elections to the Congress. These talents will be nurtured under the Arce presidency to take over power in the future providing continuity to the rule of Indians. The new Indian leaders and cadres of MAS 2.0 have learnt valuable lessons from the mistakes of Morales and the excesses of the interim white government. With these renewed beginnings, Bolivia is set for a stable political future with economic equity. 

 

The success of the MAS party has gladdened the hearts of leftists in Latin America, who were dismayed by the right turn in some countries of the region. Bolivia has shown that socialism need not be a dirty word as its critics see it in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. The victory of MAS is an apt response to the right wing leaders such as Bolsonaro and Trump who were waging a war against socialism.

 

The success of the Indians in Bolivia is an inspiration to the forty million Indians in Latin America. The Indians in other parts of Latin America will now feel emboldened to seek their entitlements and respect for their identities.

 

Despite their excesses, the interim government of Anez should be given credit for holding free and fair elections. There were no major incidents of violence or controversies during the elections. Anez was quick to congratulate Arce even before the completion of counting of the votes. The main opposition candidate Carlos Mesa also accepted the verdict gracefully and promptly. The Bolivian democracy has now become stronger and more stable. The debates and speeches during the Bolivian election campaign of the candidates were more civilized and decent unlike the racist, polarizing, ugly, ridiculous and hate-filled noises in US, the biggest and oldest democracy in the Americas. Bolivia has also averted going to the other extreme of right from left as happened in the case of Brazil. The democratic renewal of poor little Bolivia is a ray of hope and optimism at this time when the democracies in US, Europe and other parts of the world are being vitiated by the polarizing forces of racism and extremism. 

 

Purgatory – Argentine novel by Tomas Eloy Martinez

“Desaparecido” (disappeared) is the theme of the novel “Purgatory” by Tomas Eloy Martinez, the Argentine writer. The noun ‘desaparecido’ is an addition to Spanish vocabulary by the Argentine military dictatorship which made thousands of leftists disappear. 

In the novel “ Purgatory”, Simon Cardoso, a young cartographer and leftist sympathizer is made to disappear by the military dictatorship. This is soon after his marriage to Emilia, the protagonist in the novel. Devastated by the disappearance, she spends the rest of her life waiting for the return of her husband. She does not believe the news that he was killed, since she has not seen the body. Her oligarchic father, who makes money by collaborating with the Generals, thinks it is good riddance. Unable to have a life of her own without her love, she spends her whole life searching for her disappeared husband. She goes to Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico, when she gets false tips of sightings of Simon in those countries. Finally she settles in US but continues to look out for Simon even there. She is completely obsessed with her impossible hope of return of her husband and is lost in hallucinations and delirium.  She meets another Argentine also on exile in US and tells him her story. She says to him “the most unbearable loneliness is not being able to be alone”.

 

During the military dictatorship, the soldiers went on a rampage by picking up anyone, branding them as subversives and detaining, torturing and killing with impunity. Emilia and Simon were detained when they were on a map making mission in Tucuman area for the Automobile Club of Argentina. But the illiterate and ignorant soldiers on patrol in the area did not understand the mapping work. They arrested the couple, abused and tortured them. Emilia was saved by her influential father but not Simon. 

 

When asked about the whereabouts of someone abducted by the regime, one of the dictators responded, “ ni vivo, ni muerto, simplemente desaparecido” (not alive nor dead but simply disappeared). The military picked up leftists, and anyone suspected of sympathizing with communism, jailed, tortured, killed and even thrown a few prisoners from planes. Workers disappeared from their factory gates; farmers from their fields, leaving tractors running; dead men from the graves in which they had been buried only the day before. Children disappeared from their mothers’ wombs and mothers from the children’s memories. The sick who arrived in hospital at midnight had disappeared by morning.  Truth was made to disappear by the false propaganda of the regime.

 

The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo movement started a silent protest march in Buenos Aires in 1977 seeking information on their ‘disappeared’ children. The regime abducted three of the mothers and made them also ‘disappear’. Undeterred, the other courageous Mothers continued their march throughout the time of dictatorship which ended in 1983. 

 

The military regime made even the body of Evita disappear in 1955. Fearing that her body and burial ceremony would rally the leftists, the authorities sent the body in a coffin to be buried secretly in a cemetery in Milan. They made identical coffins and sent them to other European cities to confuse anyone trying to trace it. Finally Evita’s body was found and brought back to Argentina in 1974. 

 

In 1974, the Montonero guerrilla group kidnapped from the cemetery the body of General Aramburu who lead the coup against Peron and became President in 1955-58. He was earlier abducted and killed by the Montoneros in retaliation for his execution of Peronists. The group demanded the return of Evita’s body in exchange for that of Aramburu. Once Evita's body arrived in Argentina, the Montoneros gave up Aramburu's corpse and abandoned it in a street in Buenos Aires.

 

The military regime made even the names of Evita and Peron disappear from the public after the coup in 1955. Mentioning of the names in public or media was prohibited and violation was punished with imprisonment. In government files, Evita’s name was avoided and she was referred as ‘that woman’, ‘deceased’, ‘mare’ and ‘the person’.

 

Martinez has described in poignant detail the anguish and agony of Emilia who is unable to come to terms with the disappearance of her husband. This was the case with thousands of other Argentines who lost their loved ones and could not say farewell with proper burials. 

 

Martinez has written novels and articles on the disappearances, dictatorship and devastation of the Argentine society. My reviews of three of his novels in the links below:

The Peron Novel- https://latinamericanaffairs.blogspot.com/2010/02/peron-novel-by-tomas-eloy-martinez.html

Santa Evita - https://latinamericanaffairs.blogspot.com/2008/08/santa-evita-argentine-novel-by-tomas.html

The Tango singer- https://latinamericanaffairs.blogspot.com/2009/10/tango-singer-novel-by-tomas-eloy.html

 

Purgatory is Martinez’s last novel before his death in 2010.

 

Martinez himself was a victim of the dictatorship. The newspaper for which he was working in Buenos Aires was closed down by the authorities. He was forced into exile in Venezuela where he lived from 1975 to 1983. Thereafter he moved to US. On his exile, he says, ‘No one returns from exile. What you forsake, forsakes you’. 

 

El Salvador, the country in need of The Saviour

El Salvador was given its name by the Conquistador Pedro de Alvarado who dedicated the land of his conquest to Jesus Christ, The Saviour (El Salvador). The capital of the city is San Salvador which means Holy Saviour. The country is in dire need of the help of The Saviour.  It has one of the highest murder rates in the world and is notorious for deadly gang wars. The country has been traumatized by civil war and the right wing military dictatorships which massacred thousands of indigenous people and leftists. These days, the country keeps hitting news headlines in US with the caravans of Salvadorians seeking asylum, giving more fuel to Trump’s anti-migrant vitriols. It is in this context that we get a Salvadorian perspective of the issues from Roberto Lovato, a Salvadorian writer living in US,  in his memoirs “Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas”, published in September 2020. He narrates the history of the tragedy of violence through his own personal life story and that of his family. 

Lovato has the unique real life experience of having lived as a Salvadorian mara gang member in US, guerilla fighter in Salvador against the dictatorship, a redeemed evangelical and finally as a writer, journalist and human rights activist for the refugees from Central America coming into US.

 

Lovato’s father Ramoncito was an illegitimate son of a rich coffee planter. His mother was a poor Indian woman Mama Tey who worked for the planter.  Roberto is traumatised at the age of nine after witnessing the 1932 Matanza (cold bloodeded massacre) of indigenous community in his village by the military death squads.  After the massacre, Mama Tey flees to San Salvador, the capital where she makes a living by stitching clothes for low class prostitutes. Ramoncito gets his first job as a receptionist in a brothel, receiving customers and serving coffee for them. He takes to alcoholism and crimes in the company of his other poor friends. Later he and his mother move to Los Angeles, which has the largest Salvadorean community in US. His son Roberto Lovato is born and brought up in Los Angels. Lovato and his Salvadorean friends are taunted and attacked by the bigger Mexican and local white gangs. Life for Salvadorian youth in US is as insecure and dangerous as in El Salvador. For protection, Lovato joins a small Salvadorian gang “Los Originales” which steals cars and distributes drugs. But despite this gang involvement, Roberto finishes his university studies successfully and becomes a professor and writer. Moved by the tragedy of the massacre of innocent people, he travels to El Salvador and joins the FMLN (The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) guerilla movement fighting against the military dictatorship. He gets guns and supplies for the guerillas from US arranged by his own father besides others. After the end of the civil war, Lovato returns to US and resumes his academic career.

 

Lovato goes back to El Salvador to investigate the old massacres and the new gang wars. He goes to Ahuachapán, where his father was born and learns that his grand father (from father’side) was one of the active participants in the massacre of the Indians. He meets ex-guerilla leaders of FMLN who have now come to power through the ballot. He interviews members of the two notorious gangs MS 13 and Barrio 18. He visits the places where leftists and Indians were executed and buried in anonymous mass graves. He sees the working of the forensic laboratories which work with the bones and skulls to identify and analyse them for the government and family members. 

 

The Salvadoran military death squads had run “counterinsurgency” programs that starved, shot up, and bombed indigenous communities they perceived as supporting the FMLN, the main guerilla movement. As a former Guatemalan president and School of Americas (at Fort Benning, Georgia) graduate José Efraín Ríos Montt put it, “The guerrilla is the fish. The people are the sea. If you cannot catch the fish, you have to drain the sea.”  Ríos Montt was eventually convicted of genocide but was not sentenced due to his poor health.

 

In the infamous El Mozote massacre of 1981, Colonel Monterrosa and his troops mistook nearly one thousand campesinos for FMLN guerrilla–sympathizing civilians and slaughtered them. Investigations by forensic specialists have revealed that many of the victims were women and children. Of those killed, 553 were minors, 477 of whom were under twelve. The majority of the children were six years old or younger. 

 

The US supported the right wing military dictatorships of El Salvador and gave counter insurgency training in the School of the Americas to Salvadorian and other Latin American military officers. Of the twelve accused in the El Mozote massacre, by the UN Truth Commission report, ten, including Monterrosa, were graduates of the School of Americas. Counterinsurgency is a multi-billion-dollar industry for US arms dealers and military contractors who supply weapons, helicopters and other equipments to Latin America. The guns used by the Salvadorian gangs are illegally supplied from US.

 

Those killed in the massacres were buried in mass graves throughout the country. The cruelty of this can be seen from a letter from the country’s director of public health,who advised the governors and mayors “to take necessary sanitary measures in the face of reports of growing numbers of unburied bodies and mass graves. It is necessary to make the dimensions [of the mass graves] uniform for reasons of health. The accumulation of no more than fifty corpses in a single grave allows for better decomposition and less absorption into the soil. Even better would be isolated graves, in which no more than eight to ten corpses would be placed”.  The land of El Salvador made fertile by a natural mix of volcanic ash and minerals, there is a new fertilizer, the decomposed bodies of thousands of indigenous people.

 

Lovato falls in love with a FMLN guerrilla fighter and diplomat who comes to LA to work with the Salvadorean community. Born to a poor Indian family she studied to become a nun. But when her family was killed by the army, she joins the guerrillas. She surprises Roberto saying that she loves operas and her favourite one is ‘O Fortuna’ from Carmina Burana,”. She says calls it as her ‘música de combate’, the music she listened in times of personal and political combat. She says, “Whenever we would march in protest against the government policies and death-squad killings, they would often kill many protesters. And then, to make things worse, they would play opera music in the government radio to mock us. So it became the music for us to remember our martyrs, our música de combate”.

 

After all these adventures, Lovato is now settled in his postwar identity as a writer, journalist and human rights activist. He has finally found peace after almost twenty-five years of clandestinity, secrets, and fear. He is critical of the US police which treats all the Central Americans and Mexicans as gangsters and drug traffickers and harasses the whole community. 

  

Lovato says, “Throughout my life, our family has been divided by the border between memory and forgetting. Where most see the refugee crisis as “new,” I see the longue durée of history and memory. Where many see the story beginning at the border, I see the time-space continuum of violence, migration, and forgetting that extends far beyond and below the US-Mexico border. Where others see mine as a Central American story, I see it as a story about the United States”. True. It was the genocide and atrocities of the US-supported right wing Salvadorian military dictatorships which made people flee to US in the beginning. The US trained the Salvadorian military in counter insurgency and also sent its own advisors to guide and observe some of the operations. The US gave billions of dollars of military assistance which was used by the Salvadorean dictatorships to fight its own people. Young Salvadoreans in US were forced into gang culture by the US drug gangs. The notorious MS 13 and Barrio 18 gangs of El Salvador were originally formed in Los Angeles. When US deported the Salvadorean gangsters back to their home country, they formed bigger gangs and caused mayhem with more deadly US weapons. This has made more Salvadoreans flee and seek asylum in US. It is a vicious cycle with clear US complicity and culpability as the exporter of gang culture and illegal weapons to El Salvador. 

 

Lovato ends the book saying, “My Salvadorean journey from being half dead to more fully alive has begun”. He quotes the poignant lines of the famous Salvadorean poet Roque Dalton who also took up guns as a guerilla fighter and took bullets becoming a martyr in 1975.

 

Ser salvadoreño es ser medio muerto

Sobrevivimos pero medio vivos

 

To be a Salvadorean is half dead

We survive but only with half living

 

Nothing by Accident : Brazil On The Edge – book by Damian Platt

Brazil excites one’s mind with images of football, carnival, samba and copacabana. The world sees Brazilians as cheerful, lively and joyous people. The tourists are swept off their feet by the picturesque beaches and the spectacular sugarloaf mountain view of the marvellous city of Rio. But, later in the night when they switch on the TV channels, they are shocked by the gruesome images of violence, gang wars, police and ambulance sirens and pile of dead bodies in the favelas (slums), which are not far from the hotels and beaches. More shock follows with the statistics of murders and deaths in police encounters which make Rio as one of the most dangerous cities in the world. According to the Brazilian Forum for Public Security, there were 65,602 violent killings in the country during 2017. In 2018, killings by police in Brazil stood at 6,220—in Rio alone that year. Brazil has one of the highest murder rates with firearms in the world.

So one starts wondering how so much violence has come to coexist with the carioca (resident of Rio) happy- go- lucky spirit. According to Damian Platt, the author of the book (published in August 2020), the crime and violence are not accidental but are designed and perpetuated by the deadly combination of criminal gangs, rogue police and military officials and their political patrons.

 

Platt explains the origin and evolution of the violence in Rio and Brazil. He traces the origin to the illegal lottery sytem called as ‘jogos de bichos’ (animal games) run by bicheiros (lottery operators). It is based on a sequence of 25 numbers with pictures of animals which allows you to bet as much or as little as you wish on any combination of numbers you choose. This lottery system was invented by a flamboyant entrepreneur Baron de Drummond in 1892 . He had opened a zoo in a new residential neighbourhood ‘Vila Isabel’ he had developed on the northern edges of Rio. In order to attract visitors to the zoo, he started a raffle with the entrance tickets which carried the pictures of animals. Winners earned a cash prize twenty times the value of the entrance fee. Visitors to the zoo multiplied and Vila Isabel flourished. Police were deployed to maintain order on the overcrowded trams transporting the public to the zoo. People visited the zoo to bet on the jogo de bicho, rather than look at animals. With a view to save gamblers from the trip, the Baron organised ticket sales in the centre of town. The innocent raffle had quickly outstripped its original purpose and became wildly popular. The government imposed ban on the jogo as an anti-gambling moral policy. This forced the lottery to go underground. Individual entrepreneurs got into the operation of the illegal lottery which became even more popular. The law considered the illegal lottery as a simple misdemeanour and there was no serious prosecution or punishment. The lottery operators resorted to bribery, favours and alliances with political leaders and security forces, to guarantee their business. Newspapers published daily results, both explicitly and covertly, while individuals within the police force and the local authorities developed an interest in maintaining the lottery for their illicit personal financial gain. The bicheiros became the patrons of samba groups participating in the carnival. In their VIP boxes, they entertained presidents, ministers, governors, generals, chiefs of police, celebrities and television stars. Later in the seventies, the bicheiros got into drug distribution when cocaine arrived at Rio on transit to Europe. The bicheiros used their underground lottery network for drug distribution to the thrill-seeking local jetset. They took the help of off-duty and retired police and military men for protection. In Rio de Janeiro and across Brazil, most military police work on a shift basis, often with 48 hour breaks between police duties. Consequently, it is standard practice to take second jobs as security guards, as they have the right to carry weapons. Most of the private security firms are owned and staffed by off-duty or former police and military officers. 

 

The military dictatorship from 1964 to 1983 added a new dimension to the illegal lottery racket. The military intelligence used the bicheiro network to collect information and infiltrate the underground leftist groups. As a quid pro quo, the military officers gave protection and immunity to the bicheiros. Some of the officers joined the illegal lottery network and made personal fortunes. 

 

The criminal military and police elements who flourished during the dictatorship did not like the return to democracy in 1985. Some of them formed secret groups and tried to sabotage democratization through terrorist actions, but without success. Some others formed militias which ran rackets of protection, extortion and contract killings. The militias succeeded in finding new patrons among civilian politicians such as Jair Bolsonaro and his sons. The militias finance election campaigns and help politicians to get votes. In return, the elected leaders provide political cover to the militias. Fabricio Queiroz , a militia member on the run from prosecution was arrested eventually from the beach house of the family lawyer of Bolsonaro. When a journalist asked Bolsonaro why Queiroz paid money into the personal accounts of the wife of Bolsonaro, the president threatened to punch the face of the journalist. Queiroz was chief of staff of Flavio Bolsonaro from 2007 to 2018. The alleged assassins of Marielle Franco, a popular political activist of Rio were reported to have had links to the Bolsonaro family. The Justice Minister Sergio Moro resigned earlier this year protesting against the interference of President Bolsonaro in these investigations to protect his family. 

 

In 2008, a then-obscure Rio politician and former army captain, Jair Bolsonaro, defended militias in a BBC interview, claiming they provided security, order and discipline for poor communities. In 2005, Flavio Bolsonaro successfully petitioned to award a police officer turned militiaman Adriano da Nobrega the state of Rio’s highest honour, the Tiradentes medal, which he delivered personally to the disgraced policeman – inside prison. 

 

In other Latin American countries, the military men who committed atrocities during dictatorships were brought before justice and convicted. But the Brazilian military torturers and killers got away  with their crimes. The impunity has encouraged the criminal captains and colonels to continue to undermine democracy even now. Bolsonaro had dedicated his vote for impeachment of President Dilma Rouseff to the notorious Colonel Ustra who tortured her when she was caught as a leftwing guerilla fighter. He called Ustra as a national hero. During his first official visit to Chile, President Bolsonaro praised Pinochet dictatorship causing embarrassment to the democratic citizens and politicians of Chile. Bolsonaro keeps repeating his statements for killing of communists and maintains that not enough were killed during the dictatorship. In a TV interview in 1999, Congress member Bolsonaro said that the only way of "changing" Brazil was by "killing thirty thousand people, beginning with Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the President of Brazil at that time.  These have encouraged right wing extremists to  demonstrate in front of the army headquarters calling for the return of military dictatorship and closure of the Congress and Supreme Court while President Bolsonaro, their patron smiles and cheers the crowds. Flavio Bolsonaro made a statement threatening that the supreme court could be closed just with a soldier and a corporal. In July 2019 a Brazilian Air Force Sergeant, on a special flight accompanying President Bolsonaro to a G20 meeting, tried to wheel a suitcase containing 39kg of cocaine through Spanish customs. He told officials who opened his suitcase that he was bringing cheese to a cousin. The Sergeant, Manoel Silva Rodrigues, had made 30 national and international trips for the Brazilian Air Force in five years. This is just an example of how the criminals are feeling free to commit crimes with impunity since the election of the extremist Bolsonaro. 

 

The security forces make money by selling weapons illegally to the criminals. Theft and “losses” of registered police, military and private security arms are routine. A 2011 state legislative enquiry into weapons found that 8,912 guns were “lost” or stolen from police stocks between 2000–2010. A follow-up enquiry in 2016 found that that 17.662 weapons (30 per cent of these companies’ total supply) were “lost” or stolen in the period 2005-15 from Rio’s private security firms most of which are owned by active and retired police and military personnel. 

 

The security forces conduct raids and make drug busts in the favelas in front of TV cameras basically as a show to divert attention and stigmatise the poor black residents of favelas. This is done to generate and sustain the atmosphere of fear and hate. The violence is used to generate insecurity which means money for the private security companies owned by high-ranking police and their political patrons. President Bolsonaro is openly encouraging the police to shoot first and ask questions later. He said criminals should “die in the streets like cockroaches”. He wants the killer cops to be decorated and not investigated for killing suspects. 

President Bolsonaro has loosened gun control to make more firearms available easily to more people. More guns mean more crime and more business for the militias which run protectionist rackets. Gun ownership rocketed by 98% during Bolsonaro’s first year as President. Sale of guns increased to 105,603 in the first eight months of 2020. This is more than the 94,000 sold in the whole year of 2019.  Weapons newly available to the public now include semi-automatic rifles, previously only available to the army. In April 2020, Bolsonaro revoked decrees that existed to facilitate the tracing and identification of weapons and ammunition. One week later, he tripled the quantity of ammunition available for purchase by civilians, saying on record in a ministerial meeting, that he wanted “everyone” to carry guns. His political philosophy, wrote Fernando de Barros e Silva, editor of the respected Piauí current affairs magazine, represented “the victory of the militia model of management of Brazilian violence”. 

Bolsonaro's signature favorite pose is shooting gesture with the thumb combined with the index and middle finger, mimicking a gun as in the picture below

This gun gesture has spread among his supporters across the country who show it in every pro-Bolsonaro street demonstration. During a campaign rally in the northwestern state of Acre, Bolsonaro picked up a tripod, put it on his chest to simulate a machine gun, and yelled: “let’s shoot this petralhada (a derogative nickname that the right wing created to their opponents, the workers’ party’s supporters) here in Acre!”

President Jair Bolsonaro has galvanized a new gun culture in Brazil. His three oldest  sons, politicians themselves, have been fierce proponents of expanding gun ownership through policy proposals and social media posts. Eduardo Bolsonaro has spoken admiringly of the Second Amendment in the United States. He has lobbied to make the Brazilian market more attractive to foreign arms manufacturers, which he says would lower prices and provide gun enthusiasts with more choices. Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator, made the promotion of gun manufacturing in Brazil the focus of his first project in the legislature last year. 

 

The rule of Bolsonaro and bullets condemns Brazil to suffer more violence and bloodshed in the coming years.

 

The Divine Boys – Colombian novel by Laura Restrepo

The Divine Boys (Los Divinos in Spanish) is the story of five boys who form a brotherhood gang called as Tutti Frutti in school. These are Muñeco, Tarabeo, Duque, Pildora and Hobbo. They are into pranks, games, alcohol, drugs, girls, and the night life of Bogota. Inspired by “One for all and all for one” they have a pact “ One for Tutti and Tutti for Frutti”. Their common code: worship of drink, dominance of females and scorn for the weak. They carry on their boyhood bonding even in their thirties by getting together to relive the nostalgia and push the social boundaries.

 

The hero of the gang is Muñeco, also known as Mi-Lindo, Ken and Baby-Boy. He is handsome, wealthy, athletic, stylish, charmer, talker and party animal. He is short fused, prone to rages and gets into brawls ending up sometimes with black eyes and broken bones. His appetites grow wild and twisted. After having exhausted a vast repertoire of sexual deviations and perversions, he goes after a little girl, rapes and kills her. He seeks the help of his brotherhood to help him out after the crime. But he is caught and convicted. 

 

The other four members of the brotherhood are: Tarabeo (aka Dino-rex, Rexona, Taras Bulba) is a playboy and master of the art of seduction. He makes plans and decisions for the group. He and Muñeco  are known as the Divine boys; Duque (aka Nobleza, Dux) is a perfectionist. He is the wealthiest and has a country home where the Tutti Frutis meet for poker and drinking binges; Pildora (aka Pildo, Pilulo, Dorila) is the errand boy. He does whatever he is asked to do: shopping, driving, picking up things for others and supplying party drugs to the gang from his mother’s pharmacy; Hobbit (aka Hobbo, Bobbi and Job) is an introvert who is into literature and has a phobia against physical touch by others. He does not belong to the rich class of the other four. But the others take him in for his complementary qualities missing among themselves.There is a girl who joins the boys group occasionally. She is Alicia (aka Malicia), the girl friend of Duque but she has a secret affair with Tarebeo and flirts with Hobbit.

 

Laura Restrepo, the author makes the characters come alive with her graphic descriptions and elaborate narratives. She develops each character with their own phobias and fetishes, craziness and creative talents, inner demons and outer appearances. She describes how an individual is shaped as a monster in brotherhood gangs. She gives a glimpse of the Colombian society through the adventures and circumstances of the characters. Hobbit exclaims, “This country of ours has had so much war—so very much, borne for too long a time—that we the living have grown inured to it”. Colombia has suffered so much violence and death from ideological conflicts, guerilla wars and drug trafficking. Much more than any other Latin American country.

 

The only disappointment is that after building up the characters and the story so steadily and elaborately, the author finishes the novel fast at the end.  The reader who is settled in for a long journey is woken up and asked to get off the train before the imagined destination. But I had enjoyed long fantastic journeys in her other novels such as “ Leopard in the Sun” “Delirium”, “ The angel of Galilea”, “ The dark bride” and “Too many  heroes”.

Laura Restrepo is a gifted writer and guide to Colombian and Latin American society. Her works are not just pure imagination. Some of them are based on her own political experience and personal witness to violence, crime and wars. She combines the facts and fiction seamlessly and creatively in her novels. Her life is as interesting as her fiction. She has seen life from different angles as an academic, journalist, political leader, member of guerrilla movement, writer and novelist. As a journalist, she was in the frontlines covering the US invasion of Grenada and the Contra war in Nicaragua. 

When she was working for a Colombian TV channel, she wrote script for a miniseries on the theme of a deadly feud between two families involved in drug trafficking. But the Channel did not air it since they received the visit of a lawyer who " mentioned about blowing up the office building of the TV channel"

In1982, President Betancur of Colombia nominated Restrepo as member of the commission to negotiate peace with the M-19 guerrillas. She received death threats after voicing her loud opinions and comments on the peace negotiations and the guerrillas. She was forced to go on exile to Mexico for six years. During this time she wrote the novel " Isle of Passion" about Mexican revolution after which an army group is stuck in an island off Mexico.

She started her career as a professor of literature at the National University of Colombia. She worked as editor of the popular magazine " Semana" for twelve years. Later she got involved in the politics of Colombia and was a member of the Trotskyite party. She became a member of the Socialist Workers Party of Spain where she lived for three years. She was in Argentina for four years as part of the underground resistance fighting against the military dictatorship. This experience comes out in her novel,"No place for heroes". She was briefly married to an Argentine politician with whom she had a son.