2023-12-13 08:30:00
He December 13, 1979, 44 years ago, on a day like today, the country was going through the worst dictatorship in its history. The de facto president was a general called Jorge Rafael Videla. As he had assumed three years earlier, saying that politicians were to blame for everything, most of them were in hiding, detained, exiled, dead or had dedicated themselves to something else.
Although the media did not report it, there were clandestine detention centers in the country and there were thousands of people whose whereregardings were unknown. Were “missing”, a forbidden word.
At the beginning of that year, the founder of this publishing house, Jorge Fontevecchiahad been one of them, while he remained detained in one of those camps, El Olimpoin the heart of the city of Buenos Aires. He survived because a journalist, Bob Coxdirector of a newspaper written in English, El Buenos Aires Herald, had dared to break the news that immediately had international resonance.
At the same time as this repression, the government promoted an economic model that was said to be inspired by the ultra-orthodoxy of Milton Friedman, who had just won the Nobel Prize in Economics. However, following his advice, the dictatorship was never able to lower inflation or achieve growth in the Gross Product.
It was the same Friedman in whose honor Javier Milei named one of his cloned dogs “Milton”. “Milton”, according to the esoteric interpretation of the President, is in charge of show you the future (each mastiff has its specialtyaccording to your belief).
A very particular day
But that December 13, in the middle of those dark days in which it was not good to give bad news, two strange things happened. One was that Videla gave a press conference. The other is that a journalist dared to ask him a serious question.
The journalist was Jose Ignatius “Nacho” Lopez. And he asked him the following: “On the last Sunday of October, Pope John Paul II referred to Argentina in different ways and, among other things, he spoke regarding the disappeared and those detained without cause, without trial. “I want to ask you if you have responded reservedly to the Pope and if there are some measures under study.”
In the archive images you can see that Videla cannot come out of his astonishment at what he had just heard, but he improvises a response so as not to respond: “The Pope speaks to the world, not to Argentina. To defend the dignity of man, Argentina had to face this war, we Argentines have nothing to hide nor anything to be ashamed of…”
Videla continued with her non-response for a few more moments, assuming that López had understood the message.. He did not tell him, “Mr. journalist, this is a dictatorship, dozens of journalists have already disappeared, I imagine you don’t want to be the next, let’s move on to another topic.” She didn’t tell him that, but it was clear that he intended that.
He The problem is that on December 13, 1979, Videla met a journalist. Nacho did what journalists usually do when they are committed to their profession. Repreguntó:
- I asked him if there were other measures that the government might be studying. Because the Pope made a request to solve this serious problem…
So, that soldier who headed a government that decided on the life and death of people, had no choice but to respond. He did so with his well-known argumentative turn that over the years would become a sign of that tragic time: “In the face of the missing person, as long as he remains as such, the missing person is a mystery. If the man appeared he would have an X treatment. And if disappearance became a certainty of his death, he would have a zeta treatment. But As long as he is a missing person, he cannot have any special treatment, he is a mystery, he is a missing person, he has no entity, he is not there, neither dead nor alive. is missing“.
New day
Until now, Journalist’s Day is celebrated on June 7, remembering the release of the first issue of La Gazeta de Buenos Aires, the official newspaper of the First Government Board. A medium that today we would call pro-government militancy, although it would be a historiographic error to see the past with the eyes of the present.
For some time now, in the National Academy of Journalism (of which Nacho López is a member) and in other journalistic fields, we have been raising the need to vindicate that moment of greatness of our colleague.
We believe that the best way to do this is for the new celebration date for Argentine journalists is every December 13. With the aim of reminding us, society and us journalists, that this profession has the obligation to always maintain a critical and independent view of the powers in power. Even in the most difficult moments. Even once morest the grain of what the audiences may want.
Notice its importance.
The day following December 13, 44 years ago, no media mentioned on the cover the issue of the missing that was discussed at that press conference. Barely any mention in his notes, but without mentioning the dialogue between Videla and López. Only the newspaper La Prensa from the city of Buenos Aires and, perhaps, some others from the interior of the country, mentioned the exchange between the dictator and the journalist.
But two days later, on December 15, the newspapers did have to carry the topic of the disappeared on their covers. Because the Argentine Catholic Church, which had never been critical of that dictatorship, had no choice but to echo the journalist’s question that brought up the voice of the Pope.
For the first time, the word “disappeared” reached the front pages of the mainstream media. And it was a man’s responsibility to make that happen. A journalist who is alive and is a source of pride for all of us who practice this profession.
That’s why, Today, December 13, happy Journalist’s Day!
Gustavo González, President of Perfil publishing house and member of the National Academy of Journalism.
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