LUIS HAASS
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government). The "institutional process" (or conscious ability to cope
with problems) having broken down, the fight goes on outside the
"system." The known dead or imprisoned ("held at the disposal of the
Executive") are less visible, and far fewer, than the terrifying numbers
(now in the thousands) of shadowy "disappearances." The price of
being "in control" -as paramilitary groups, "civilian" police and hit
gangs of all stripes roam the streets snatching people from their cars,
homes and jobs-is not knowing, not seeing. "The safest streets in the
world," so far as common crime is concerned (what thief or
rapi~t
wants to be shot down as a terrorist?). A nightmarish lottery of life and
death for the suspect or unwary. The official "line": the guilty change
their names, skip the country, manage (one way or another) to get
themselves so bloodied up as to be unrecognizable. Who can keep track
of them all? "Excesses" on the part of the Forces of Order can happen,
but then: "In wartime people get hurt." There was the case of the
protesting mothers with their list of vanished children (of all ages:
there are teenage guerilla girls), gathering daily in front of the
Presidential Palace: the "mad mamas" they were called (and hauled
off). Now and then a High Authority intervenes personally, for some
acquaintance even he may never locate. "Petitions" come and go as in a
Russian novel. An occasional showcase trial for political corruption
(the previous First Lady is still under house arrest for embezzlement of
public funds) proves there is still habeas corpus (if you can find it).
Inquiries pressed too far end with a word
to
the wise: "Ask no more."
In
the mid-sixties, before it caught on (as things will), there was
public outrage (and official censure) over the miniskirt. Buenos Aires
was then "the capital of the Americas."
It
could even afford (in small
doses) pot and beards. But the Crusaders (our local Klan) were already
waving their capes and banners at street corners. A small lunatic fringe,
to be sure (with the haggard look of sexual abstinence), but the only
one allowed to demonstrate publicly at the time. For them (and for
others) President Frei (the Christian Democrat who preceded Allende)
was "the Chilean Kerensky." Their chant and challenge to the sinful
city: "Christ is King." Book burnings, private armies, witch hunts
(from both ends of the political spectrum) were only a step away. I
remember McNamara's visit (around that time) with his Malthusian
message of birth control, which was considered not only an insult to
national pride (already suffering from one of the lowest birth rates in
the world) but imperialist genocide. The "international conspiracy"
that had already begun to take shape included strange bedmates:
Communists, multinational corporations, the World Bank. (More
recently: Chilean exiles, gospel sects-the new Protestant Menace-and
