Departing at Dawn

5 Listening to the Radio

19 5 Listening to the Radio The bus pulled into Ciudad Loreto, which was nothing more than a group of houses that had kept the name given to it by its first settlers, people who had had to face a harsh climate , whose droughts dashed any hope for industry, gardens, or progress that might justify the name “city.” It was well past daybreak and the driver wanted his breakfast. The sound of a radio brought together drivers, passengers, villagers, and waiters in the snack bar that also served as the bus terminal. A military march was playing. The public was then informed that a military junta had taken over the government, that Mrs. María Estela Martínez de Perón, known as Isabel, was no longer President of the Argentine Republic, and that the three top men of the three respective military branches were now governing the country in the name of national reconstruction. We were told that all across the nation martial law was in effect; all residents were ordered to cooperate fully and obediently with any orders issued from the military authority from then on. The radio resumed its military music and then began to broadcast various communiqués, always identified as “from the ruling military junta” and read by a powerful male voice 20 whose diction, volume, and style reminded people of other coups, which had been announced with other similar decrees that no longer surprised anybody. Some people were delighted and were yelling, “At last!” and, “It’s about time!” They thought this one would be just like all the others and that the military would put things in order the way it had been doing from time to time for at least forty-five years. Once again the black lists would appear: of people, the press, and songs. There would be raids, political prisoners would be taken, congress abolished, political parties outlawed, and some provinces taken over—but not much beyond all that, and in several months or perhaps a few years the next elections would be announced .GeneralVidela,3 consideredbythepressasoneofthe “good” military men, would have the support of the traditional non-Peronist parties and even of some progressive and moderate leftist sectors calling for a “military-civil government.” The public would be in general agreement with that because everything would be taking its normal course, for the glory and wellbeing of the Argentine people, a people every group or party claimed to represent. Yes, they thought, this would be one more chapter, just like the others, in Argentina’s recent history, a stark chapter referred to in school textbooks as la alternancia (the alternation ), the series of civil governments interrupted by military coups beginning in 1930. At Sarmiento School, they called it “the sausage,” a segment of history that the teachers tended to ignore until the very last days of class. The section devoted to that period barely even gave the names of the presidents that 21 the portrait gallery hastily presented, in which each one was pictured with the presidential seal, dates of birth, death, and years of presidency, and party affiliation if there was one. It was a way of thinking that said that particular piece of history was worth just about ten coins or at most one paper bill, blue and worthless except to buy a single pack of unfiltered cigarettes . It always began when General José Uriburu overthrew the elected government of Hipólito Yrigoyen, described even by his own men in the official texts as an old, washed-up hasbeen ; from that point on everything was presented in the briefest paragraphs up until Perón. Why were some governments considered military and some civil? Why were some civil presidents addressed as General and dressed in uniform such as Perón? It seemed that in the first case the military ruled directly and in the second it used force to control the result of elections. The difference was hard to understand and was just one of the many questions you couldn’t ask in class, for your own and other people’s sake, during a dictatorship. You could sometimes debate the answers to these questions behind closed doors with the few teachers who were brave enough to speak up in meetings whose main theme ended up being: who is the owner of the sausage-making machine? A sausage period, in the nation known for its huge coldstorage...