From 1971 to 2024

The above article was originally published in the Seminole Sentinel in Seminole, Texas in the Fall of 1971. The handwritten comment at the top of the page is from Lucy Mae Archer, my proud mother.

I was involved in frequent political discussions while I was in Argentina—with everyone! Here are a few examples of the kinds of things I recorded in my trip book.

Mar del Plata

At the hotel, Norberto, Mario and I stay up late, drinking mate and talking about many things.  Norberto asks me if it is true that Cassius Clay really does say bad things about the USA in public?  I tell him yes.  He just smiles and that that if anyone in Argentina does that, they just disappear.

The leaders of Argentina in 1971

Bariloche

Juan and Eva Peron

Had dinner with the couple from California, Helen and Juan.  He is originally from Argentina and she is American.  Both are anti-Peron and anti-communist. He says that when he lived in Argentina, he had a bus company (this was during the time that Peron was in power) and the government told him to fire a bunch of employees because of their politics. He refused and his buses started getting 20-25 tickets a day.  And then day, suddenly, his lease was cancelled for no reason.  He also told me that he has a magazine which is banned in Argentina because it had photos of people that Peron had had killed.  He also said that Peron killed Eva’s brother.  I feel really uneasy about all of this.

Spent afternoon with Graciela, a doctor from Peru.  She says that an abortion costs $3 in Peru; she also says that in Peru there are only 30 beds for people with T.B.  So they are used only for the dying.  The rest of T.B. patients are turned away to infect the other members of their family.  Graciela likes Castro.

Rosario

Saturday, Lili and I go downtown and suddenly a police truck rushes by—two girls are frightened staring and saying, “Let’s go home.”  The truck stops and the police roughly force a man off the sidewalk into the van.  Lili says they are there every Saturday.  Gustavo (Lili and Milko’s friend) says some students threw a bomb last night.  Sirens and police racing up and down the streets.  People go home earlier than usual.  Lili says last year the people were so frightened they sometimes ran through the streets.  Police also use tear gas and water hoses. Police wear blue uniforms like a trooper with helmets, machine guns and a white bandana-like thing around their necks.  I am scared.  They just give me the chills.  I think this must have been the way people felt in the 3rd Reich.  I think I will carry my passport with me from now on on Saturdays.  

A riot in March of 1971 in Cordoba

LOOKING BACK

PRESENT DAY REFLECTIONS

The Vietnam war was the main topic of conversation when politics were discussed…and politics were discussed all the time. Lili and Milko’s bookstore was a gathering place for people to talk and visit. I was really torn because I personally had a lot of reservations about our involvement in Vietnam but my nephews, Derral and Richard, were drafted. And I was always conscious of the reality of their lives and possible deaths. So the way Argentines talked about American soldiers was hard to hear. I also had never considered myself as an AMERICAN—I really did (and do) consider myself as a Texan…and American too. So this was my first experience of being lumped into that category. I would later go on to Guatemala and Algeria and experience being categorized again from those countries perspectives. Later my life’s work has been with people from all over the globe as well as Americans going to other countries. So these experiences have been critical in expanding my consciousness.

Two years later, I would study for a Master’s s Degree in Comparative Education with Latin America. My research focus was on Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico. Paulo Freire was a major influence. These foundational experiences fed my later work with Culture Bump and my lifelong (which continues today) fascination with why we are different and even more so, how we are the same.

Because so much of my study and teaching has focused on connecting beyond differences, I have learned that I am still as ethnocentric as I was in Rosario but today, I have added many other layers of lenses with which to see myself and others. So my politics today reflect the decades of seeing myself and my people through the eyes of others and that sometimes painful awareness of how fragile our entanglements with one another are.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls

It tolls for thee.