[-empyre-] introducing week 3

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

My awareness of the history of Argentina is so much in clash with my direct
experience of the country when I visited it last year. To every single
person, the people I encountered were gentle, absolutely lovely. In fact
that gentleness, in addition to the beauty of the country, were my total
impression. On the other hand, from the corner of my mind so to speak, I
saw mothers and abuelas demonstrating at the plaza de Mayo just in front of
the modest apartment where the present pope used to live when he was the
archbishop. Giving the children of the killed to the families of the
perpetrators of violence to be raised is itself such a jarring act. Was it
a new wrinkle of violence or cruelty (punishment!) itself (like the Romans
turning the cities that resisted them into ploughing fields, the children
of victims into executioner's) or were the adoptions odd attempts at
atonement in a Catholic country? I also was told, by a Brazilian I was
chatting with, the reason for the total absence of non-whites in the
country. Unlike in Brazil, the indigenous population was exterminated by
the Europeans.

Ana, my question is: was the epic violence the history shows perpetrated by
the same kind of gentle people I encountered or was it done by "another"
separate people I never came across?

On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 9:26 AM, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Yes Murat the Mothers still demonstrate walking around the Plaza de
> Mayo, as the Abuelas (the Grandmothers) do. The grandmothers has
> recovered 130 kids who were kidnapped by the military and given to the
> families of the executors who killed their parents. One of them,
> Macarena Gelman, grandchild of Juan Gelman, one of Argrentinas
> greatest poets, grew up in Uruguay, in the house of a police
> headmaster. She is now elected as deputy/representative in the
> Parliament in Uruguay.
> But many of the grandchildren are still unrecovered and their true
> identity identity hidden.
> Ana
>
> On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 5:02 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <muratnn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> > I was in Buenos Aires last year. I think there were still family members
> demonstrating at the plaza de <Mayo.
> >
> > On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Ana Valdes <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> >> The Mothers of May started to walk round the plaza de Mayo, in Buenos
> Aires, silent, with huckles in their heads, carrying posters with the
> images of their missing children. It was in the 70:s. More than 30000
> people dissapeared in Argentina and Uruguay. Many were buried alive. Many
> were drugged and thrown from airplanes to río de la Plata.
> >> We are still finding old bones in hidden graves.
> >> Ana
> >>
> >>
> >> Enviado desde Samsung Mobile
> >>
> >>
> >> -------- Mensaje original --------
> >> De: Murat Nemet-Nejat
> >> Fecha:23/11/2014 02:42 (GMT-03:00)
> >> A: christina.spiesel at yale.edu,soft_skinned_space
> >> Asunto: Re: [-empyre-] introducing week 3
> >>
> >> Perhaps the most powerful form of symbolic space is the plaza, from
> Tienanmen Square to Tahir Square to Maidan (which is a Turkish word) to
> Damascus to Taksim Square in Istanbul, to cite a few relatively recent
> examples, the symbolic action most feared by governments. I wrote a poem
> about thirty years ago "Fatima's Winter" exactly on the idea of the square
> (attached to a tool) as a potentially revolutionary space. Participants to
> our dialogue at Empyre may be interested in it. Though published, the poem
> is not on line. I don't know whether I can include it within the the post
> or attach is as a document. The poem is a few pages.
> >>
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> empyre forum
> >> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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>
>
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>
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> will always long to return.
> — Leonardo da Vinci
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