Jannis & Martine

Since we arrived in South America almost 4 months ago, we spent most of the time in Argentina, so by now I understand much more of its moving history.

While travelling trough Argentina we came across all sorts of little monuments, signs and pictures of disappeared people. For instance in front of the hotel we´re staying in now is a little sign in the pavement saying:
Here used to live Maria such and such who disappeared on 23-12-1977.

A few years ago Argenina´s government has created a day off, as a memorial day for when the military took control of the country in 1976. Within a period of 5 years over 30.000 people disappeared without a trace. Some weeks ago an Argentinian student explained us about this day and he said he wasn´t too happy with it. He told us you should not look back at history….
But last week we were in Cordoba at this memorial day and there we saw this impressive huge demonstration, and lots of people were carrying pictures from their lost loved ones. Then we realised it is still very much alive with the people over here.

It showed again when a few days ago Raul Alfonso died. He was the first democratic president of Argentina following the departure of the military junta (after Argentina lost the Falklands war). On the day of his funeral it was very quiet in the streets, more quiet than when Argentina has to play soccer (they lost with 6-1 from Bolivia last week with Maradonna as coach). I guess in such a soccer-minded country that means something……

The military junta is the government of which Maxima´s father was part of. I was too young back then, but since Maxima came in the picture, everybody knows. So before I went to Argentina I knew about these disappeared people. But now for me it became more than just another story in the news: the story has names, the names have faces, the faces had a life and family, etcetera.

All of this has changed my opinion. I still think Maxima comes across as this charming and very nice woman, and she´s not responsible at all for her fathers acts. But I feel she definitely should distance herself from what her father did. As she never did before, I feel Holland is now respresented by somebody that might not disapprove of the murders her father was responsible for.

Is it that I am feeling to strongly about this, now I´m close to where it all happened, or did I just ignore it before?

Love, Martine.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.