ImaginingArgentinabyLawrence Thornton

Lawrence Thornton (1937- ) earned hisPh.D. at the University of California andwas a visiting professor at its Santa Bar-

bara and Los Angeles campuses from 1984 to1988 when he wrote his first novel, ImaginingArgentina. Thornton, an English professor, be-came interested in a story he saw on the CBStelevision news magazine 60 Minutes about Ar-gentina's "dirty war." From 1976 to 1983, Ar-gentina was ruled by a group of generals whotargeted thousands of their own citizens, at-tempting to snuff out political opposition andfree speech by kidnapping, torturing, and mur-dering any Argentines suspected of liberal orantigovernment views. Thornton's novel tells thestory of the victims of this dirty war—known asdesaparecidos, or "disappeared ones"—throughthe eyes of a fictional journalist, Martin Benn,and his friend Carlos Rueda, whose wife isamong the desaparecidos.

Events in History at the Time the NovelTakes Place

A century of chaos. From 1930 to 1983, Ar-gentines lived in a continual state of political in-stability. The army's 1930 overthrow of PresidentHipolito Yrigoyen set a pattern that was to be re-peated incessantly throughout the followingdecades. Leaders replaced one another some-times as often as every few months, and elec-tions, if held, were as likely to be fixed as fair.In 1946, in a rare, relatively clean election, armycolonel Juan Peron was elected; his stint in of-

THi LITERARY WORKA novel set In Argentina in the late 1970s andearly 1980s; published in 1987,

SYNOPSISAfter his wife suddenly disappears one day,Carlos Rueda discovers that he can use hispowerful imagination to learn the truth aboutthe Argentine government's kidnapping,torture, and murder of thousands of its owncitizens.

fice would last nearly ten years. His second wife,Eva Duarte de Peron, won for him enormouspopular support among the working classes; shealso solidified his ties to the country's powerfultrade unions. This unusually long regime cameto an abrupt end, however, when Peron resignedrather than wage a civil war against the group ofmilitary officials who challenged his rule. Be-tween Peron's resignation in 1955 and the de-mocratic election of Raul Alfonsin in 1983, Ar-gentina was ruled by sixteen differentgovernments—an average of one new govern-ment every eighteen months.

Fake war, real violence. Juan Peron spent mostof those intervening years in exile, but returnedin 1971 and won Argentina's 1973 presidentialelection. Unfortunately the aged Peron died thefollowing year, and presidential duties weretaken over by his third wife, Maria Estela "1s-

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abel" Peron. During her reign, terrorist activityincreased. In March 1976, she was forced outof power by a group of Argentine generals. Jus-tifying their takeover as an attempt to rescue Ar-gentina from impending civil war, the generalsquickly dismissed the congress, replaced otherelected officials and judges with military offi-cers, and, ignoring the Argentine constitution,declared that the death penalty could be usedin sentencing crimes against the state. Therewere two leftist rebel groups who appeared tothreaten the junta's hold on the country, theMontoneros and the ERP (People's Revolution-ary Army); both were actively working to seizecontrol of the government. Yet the generalsthemselves were well aware that such a coupwould be extremely unlikely—the rebel groupswere too small and too weak to be a real threat.In fact, to convince the public that a militarygovernment was necessary in Argentina, thegenerals actually faked hundreds of terroristacts—acts that they then said were committedby the rebels.

The real goal of these Argentine generals wasmuch bigger than winning a war against disor-ganized, relatively powerless rebel groups. Whatthey attempted to do in the years between 1976and 1983 was create a country in which any aber-rant political or social views were eliminated. Al-though their major targets were labor unions, lib-eral priests, and politically active students andintellectuals, the ultra-conservative generalscould easily become suspicious of almost any-one, from the distant cousin of a labor leader tothe teenage son of a nosy reporter. These suspi-cions alone were often enough for innocent Ar-gentines to become desaparecidos.

What happened to every desaparecido is notknown, but the cases that have come to light areshocking. One victim of the dirty war, PabloDiaz, was sixteen when he was kidnapped forprotesting a rise in student bus fares. Suspectingthat he and his fellow protesters might have linksto the rebel Montoneros, military authoritiesbrought them to what they called the "truth ma-chine," an electric prod used for torture. "Theygave it to me in the mouth, on my gums and onthe genitals," Diaz said later.

They even pulled out a toenail with a tweezers.Often we were hit with billyclubs, fists andkicked. . . . They asked all of us about the schoolfare, why we participated, what motivated us toask for the reduction, who was guiding us. ...We had to sleep on the floor. Us guys were inour underwear, because they had taken our

clothes from us. Almost all of us ended up inrags, almost nude.

(Diaz in Andersen, p. 201)

This was only the beginning of months of tor-ture for Pablo Diaz and his classmates. When itwas finally over, only three of the fifteen kid-napped students had survived.

The brutal treatment of these students forsuch a seemingly innocent act was not unusualin the days of Argentina's dirty war. It was notunusual for Argentine citizens to disappear forcommitting such "subversive" acts as teachingmodern math or setting up cooperative farms forpoor peasants. As more and more people van-ished, a feeling of great fear swept over the coun-try, and most Argentines felt powerless to stopthe horrors that they suspected (or knew) theirgovernment was responsible for.

ImaginingArgentina

A PHONY BATTLE

Acommon practice of the Argentine military during the dirtywar was to stage phony battles between their forces and

communist rebels. One former U.S. intelligence agent tells thestory of "having arrived at the scene of a supposed 'shoot-out'between the security forces and leftist guerrillas in 1976 to findthe former splashing chickens' blood around the locale beforeadmitting local reporters and photographers" (Andersen, p. 3),

Government news vs. real news. Journalistswere equally at risk during the years of repres-sion between 1976 and 1983. When the militaryseized power, it also seized control over the Ar-gentine press, torturing or killing writers like thenovel's fictional Cecilia, who tried to report onstories independent of the official governmentnews agencies. Such control of the press was nec-essary for the junta to protect the basic lie of itsregime—the fagade that it was fighting a waragainst terrorist rebels, not innocent citizens.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Despitetheir fears of retaliation, one group of Argentinecitizens managed to protest the government'sbrutality throughout the dirty war. This group,the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, staged its firstdemonstration in front of the government head-quarters (at the Plaza de Mayo) in April 1977 todemand that their "disappeared" children,friends, and relatives be returned alive. EveryThursday afternoon for the next ten years, the

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Mothers returned to the Plaza de Mayo carryingpictures of their kidnapped loved ones and de-manding information about their whereabouts.They also made lists of the disappeared, the mostrecent numbering over eight thousand. AlthoughArgentina's military government sent a spy to in-vestigate the Mothers and kidnapped and killeda number of them, the group stayed intact wellinto the 1980s, working to insure that those re-sponsible for the disappearances were identifiedand punished.

Nazis in Argentina. After the defeat of Germanyin World War II, a number of key Nazi figuresescaped from Europe and the subsequent warcrimes trials. Most settled in somewhere in SouthAmerica under an assumed name. In the late1940s and early 1950s, Argentina's PresidentPeron welcomed thousands of Nazi war crimi-nals, issuing fake passports that protected theidentities of these new immigrants. One suchbeneficiary was Adolf Eichmann, who headed theJewish section of the Gestapo and thus oversawthe murder of millions of Jews in Europe's con-centration camps during the war years. Peronclaimed that he was most interested in the tech-nical skills of these Nazi immigrants, whichwould help him build new factories and improveArgentina's military hardware. What he wel-comed to Argentina, however, was more than

technological know-how. Many of the sameNazis listed by the U.S. Army as war criminalsbegan serving in the Argentine military, leadingone Nazi immigrant to comment: "There are nowso many former Gestapo men in the intelligenceservice here that it is riskier to tell a joke aboutArgentine Government personages in Germanthan in Spanish" (Hunt, p. 148).

The mingling of exiled Nazis with Argentinemilitary and government officials in the decadesfollowing World War II may also have resultedin a fusion of harmful ideas and practices. ManyJewish Argentines—especially those who had im-migrated after surviving Hitler's concentrationcamps—noticed the similarities between theNazi past and the Argentine dirty war. One suchArgentine explained, "I was held in Germany'sconcentration camps, I was persecuted duringthe [military regime], and my daughter was kid-napped here. The only difference was that therethey cremated people and here they threw themin the river" (Andersen, p. 205).

The Novel in Focus

The plot. Carlos Rueda's life as playwright for achildren's theater in Buenos Aires is suddenly in-terrupted one afternoon when his wife, Cecilia,disappears. A journalist, Cecilia has written one

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too many editorials critical of Argentina's mili-tary government; her husband and daughter,Teresa, assume that she has been taken on theorders of government officials.

Soon after Cecilia's abduction, Carlos discov-ers that he has a strange new ability: after hear-ing the stories of other desaparecidos from theirloved ones, he can imagine where they are, whathas happened to them, and what is still in storefor them—and these imaginings turn out to betrue. Deciding to use this gift of extrasensory per-ception to combat the lies told by the govern-ment about the desaparecidos, Carlos begins hold-ing sessions in his garden with the mothers hemeets in the Plaza de Mayo to hear their storiesand to tell how they end.

Although Carlos is able to bring comfort to anumber of families with his gift, he cannot useit to find his wife; he sees passing images of herbut none that tell him where she is or whethershe is alive. These images lead Carlos to the pam-pas, or grasslands, of southern Argentina. Therehe finds an old Jewish couple, the Sternbergs,who survived a Nazi concentration camp andgive him this advice: "If you are forced to live ina nightmare, you survive by realizing that youcan reimagine it, that some day you can returnto reality" (Thornton, Imagining Argentina, p. 79).

After his visit to the pampas, Carlos completesa play for his theater called The Names. This play,about the erased names of the disappeared, isperformed to a packed audience that includesgovernment officials. In retaliation for what theysee as an act of subversion, the officials board upthe theater, knock Carlos unconscious, and kid-nap Teresa. Dizzy but enraged, Carlos followsone of the generals home from his governmentoffice with a gun, but when he sees him with hisfamily he is not able to pull the trigger.

Left now without his wife or daughter, Car-los continues searching his imagination fortraces of both. In one of his garden sessions, hedescribes the images of Teresa that come to him,but when his vision ends in a blinding light, hebelieves that she is dead—a belief that is con-firmed later in the novel. Unable to tell any morestories and unable to stop reliving Teresa'sdeath, Carlos leaves Buenos Aires. For a fewweeks, he lives on a beach, uncertain of whetherCecilia is alive or whether he should go on liv-ing. By the end of his stay, though, he is able tosense her presence and returns to Buenos Airesto tell her story.

In his garden, Carlos tells of how Cecilia wastaken from home and moved from place to

place, always blindfolded. He tells of how even-tually she was kept in the same building asTeresa and, as part of a soldiers' game, wasforced to choose her daughter's rapists. Then hetells of how she survived by writing in her headand how she memorized her words by match-ing each thought to a place on her cell's wall.Finally, he describes how she escaped by killinga guard. This story and the images that followgradually lead Carlos to discover Cecilia's where-abouts; she has been hiding with a family in thepampas since her escape. It is not until Ar-gentina's generals themselves start disappearingand the dirty war reaches its end that Cecilia re-turns to Buenos Aires and is reunited with herhusband. There they watch the trial of the gen-erals who brutalized their country, and therethey both return to the reality that was inter-rupted by a true nightmare.

ImaginingArgentina

A WORD ABOUT LATIN AMERICAN FICTION

I

n an essay called ''Latin America: Fiction and Reality/' thePeruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa argues that Latin Ameri-

cans have a hard time differentiating between fiction and re-ality, and this difficulty can be traced to the days of Spanishcolonization. Because novels were forbidden in the Spanishcolonies of Latin America by the strict Spanish Inquisition, thenatural human "appetite for lies" emerged in other parts of life.As Vargas Llosa explains, "the inquisitors achieved the exactopposite of their intentions: a world without novels, yes, but aworld into which fiction had spread and contaminated practi-cally everything: history, religion, poetry, science, art,speeches, journalism, and the daily habits of people" (VargasLlosa, p. 5). This theory perhaps sheds some light on how aregime based on lies and terror could last so long in Ar-gentina—and why it took so much time for the truth about thedirty war to emerge.

The uses of imagination. Imagining Argentinatells the story of a government that has takencontrol of almost everything in the country, evendeciding what constitutes truth. One of the onlythings beyond its reach is the imagination of itscitizens. For the "disappeared" characters in thenovel, imagination provides an escape from thenightmare of torture, as it had for the Sternbergsduring the Holocaust. For Carlos Rueda, how-ever, imagination assumes even greater meaning.

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It is both an escape from a painful reality of un-certainty as well as a window into the truth. Itenables him to sense true stories that otherwisemight never be heard.

Although Carlos is used to writing fictionalplays for children, he discovers after his wife'sdisappearance that to help his community andhimself, he must also start dealing in facts—thefacts that have been distorted by Argentina'smilitary government. Through his imagination,Carlos gains access not only to informationabout the desaparecidos, but to the feeling ofpower that comes from knowing things for cer-tain—a rare feeling during the fearful and un-predictable era of the dirty war. In Imagining Ar-gentina, Carlos shows that imagination is notjust the tool of an artist, but a necessity for sur-viving these times. "We have to believe in thepower of imagination," Carlos says, "because itis all we have, and ours is stronger than theirs[the generals']" (Imagining Argentina, p. 65). Ina country ruled by terror, suspicion, and lies,imagination ends up being a powerful weaponfor self-defense.

Sources. Lawrence Thornton had never been toArgentina when he began writing his first novel.He had been following the disturbing news re-ports about Argentina's dirty war and was es-pecially moved by a 60 Minutes television in-

terview with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayoin the early 1980s. This interview promptedhim to think about the word "disappeared," andhis thoughts led to the writing of Imagining Ar-gentina.

The novel borrows heavily from the real his-tory of Argentina's dirty war. For example, Ce-cilia works at a real Buenos Aires newspaper, LaOpinion, whose publisher, Jacobo Timmerman,was abducted during the dirty war. Other detailsfrom the novel are also taken straight from his-tory: the green Ford Falcons used as getaway carsduring kidnappings were a common sight in Ar-gentina at that time. Listed below are a few ofthe most shocking events from the novel, eventsthat actually happened in Argentina between1976 and 1983:

• Fifteen high school students are abductedand tortured, most eventually killed, forprotesting high bus fares.

• A government spy, disguised as the mourningbrother of a desaparecido, infiltrates theMothers of the Plaza de Mayo, planning theabduction of some key members. In the novel,the spy's plan is foiled by Carlos, who senseshis dishonesty. In reality, the plan succeeded.

• In the Naval Mechanics School and in otherfacilities used for torture around the country,innocent victims of a suspicious government,

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like Carlos's friend Silvio, endure weeks ormonths of electric shocks and beatings, finallybeing thrown out of helicopters and into thesea, where they disappear forever.

Events in History at the Time the NovelWas Written

A final injustice. Economic trouble and a failedattempt to win back control of the British-heldMalvinas (Falkland) Islands finally ended the ruleof the generals in 1983. Sensing their loss of anypopular support—their lies had become lesscredible after the lost war with Britain—and theirinability to solve the economic problems broughton by high military spending and financial mis-management, the generals yielded power to civil-ians, scheduling a presidential election for Octo-ber 1983.

A month before their planned departure, thegenerals passed a law protecting all military per-sonnel from being prosecuted for acts commit-ted during the dirty war. This attempt at pro-tecting themselves failed, however, when newlyelected president Raul Alfonsin nullified the lawsoon after taking office. Two years later, afterdozens of unmarked mass graves had been dis-covered and torture had been declared a crimeequivalent to murder, the nine generals whohad run the country from 1976 to 1983 wereput on trial for genocide. However, despite thestirring words of their prosecutor, who claimedto be working in the name of "10,000 desa-parecidos" (Andersen, p. 11), many of the gen-erals received light sentences, with four ac-quitted and only two sentenced to lifeimprisonment. In 1990 the three generals stillin prison and all others convicted for partici-pating in the dirty war were pardoned by Pres-ident Carlos Menem.

Reception. Imagining Argentina won numerousbook awards and received praise from reviewersfor its powerful storytelling and effective blend-ing of the supernatural with the realistic—a styleknown as "magical realism," popular among LatinAmerican writers. It inspired a number of screen-plays and a flamenco production called "Gardenof Names." Criticism of the novel focused on itsunconvincing portrayal of Argentina, noting signsof Thornton's unfamiliarity with the look and feelof Buenos Aires and the pampas. Thornton him-self dismisses these criticisms, explaining thatwriting novels is not just about telling or re-tellingstories but changing reality. "I believe," he says,"that fiction plays an important social function,and while novelists can't expect their works tochange the world, we have to believe it's possi-ble" (Thornton in Trosky, p. 421).

For More Information

Andersen, Martin Edwin. Dossier Secreto: Argentina'sDesaparecidos and the Myth of the "Dirty War."Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993.

Hodges, Donald C. Argentina's "Dirty War": AnIntellectual Biography. Austin: University of TexasPress, 1991.

Hunt, Linda. Secret Agenda: The United StatesGovernment, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip,1945 to 1990. New York: St. Martin's, 1991.

Levy, Alan. The Wiesenthal File. Grand Rapids,Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1993.

Rock, David. Argentina, 1516-1982: From SpanishColonization to the Falklands War. Berkeley:University of California Press, 1985.

Thornton, Lawrence. Imagining Argentina. NewYork: Doubleday, 1987.

Trosky, Susan M., ed. Contemporary Authors. Vol.132. Detroit: Gale Research, 1991.

Vargas Llosa, Mario. "Latin America: Fiction andReality." In Modern Latin American Fiction. Editedby John King. London: Faber & Faber, 1987.

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