2024-09-17 12:18:42
Speaking of freedom was that Mariano Hamilton He decided to stick his pen into the wound. And boy did he sink it, given the intense tone of the historical period chosen to populate Cursed dayshis tenth book to date. It is about almost 500 pages aimed at unraveling what happened during 110 key days in the Argentine history of the 20th century. Those that go from June 10, 1955 (preliminary of the bombings from the 16th) and the 27th of September of the same year, with the coup d’état of the Liberating Revolution recently completed. “There are many coincidences with the present,” says the journalist and writer Regarding the concept of “misused” freedom, which runs through the entire book.
Hamilton’s extended response comes in response to a question about two introductory passages from Cursed days. One on page 74, when the writer recalls a speech given by Lieutenant Commander Guillermo Sánchez Sabarots, during a meeting at the Punta Indio Base, hours before the bombings on Plaza de Mayo and other sites in the city, which would cause more than 300 deaths. “Those who are on the side of freedom, raise your hand,” said one of the captains of the coup. Another is the thought that the author attributes to midshipman Eduardo Bisso, when he imagines that what he is about to do – before climbing into one of the Texan bombers and surrendering to the forces of heaven – is precisely “fight for freedom.”
Cursed dayswith a prologue by the Peronist leader Anibal Fernandez and published by Planeta, began to be written as a response to another question that “tormented” the author: why is June 16, 1955 a forgotten date? “With good reason, dozens of tragedies are remembered: the Israeli embassy, AMIA, Cromañón, and there are even chronicles in newspapers, magazines and websites about what happened with the Twin Towers on September 11, when an anniversary is celebrated. Now, the bombings by the naval aviation on the Casa Rosada, the CGT building, the Police Department and the Unzué Palace, which left 303 dead and more than 3,000 wounded, do they not deserve at least some mention in the history books? In the newspapers on an anniversary? A little photo with a caption? It seems not. Nor does it deserve to be remembered that the coup carried out by the Liberating Revolution –which is 69 years old today- left a balance of 85 dead, many of them civilians, after four days of fighting throughout the country,” says Hamilton, who took three years to put the book together.
That is, to bring -necessarily- to the present those 400 deaths between both events, produced precisely in the name of a freedom abstract, deviated, biased and false. “Those 110 days of Argentina, in my modest opinion, were the beginning of the end of a country project that today would place us among the top twenty powers in the world,” says the journalist. “And to those who tell me I am crazy, I suggest they read the first and second Five-Year Plan to understand the country that had been achieved with great sacrifice, and what we Argentines intended to do for the next decade. I am not talking about Peronism but about Argentines, because beyond the fact that the quarry that generated this project was the government and more precisely President Perón, the successes obtained were the product of the work of each one of the inhabitants of this country. Also in those years the concept that says that the country is the other was defended.”
-Was the initial motivation for the book ideological, affective, emotional, militant?
-The driving force was an intellectual concern, which was later impregnated by the ideological, the affective and the emotional, but never by the militant. And I don’t say this because I don’t believe in militancy but because I don’t consider myself part of it, perhaps because of a question of age. To be a militant you have to dedicate time to politics and put your body on the line. And that is not my case. I contribute from another place: that of intellectual concern, from the ideological, the affective and the emotional.
–In the prologue, Aníbal Fernández talks about the book as a “revealing text” and about the “device of fictionalizing historical events” that you use. Does this express exactly the way you intended to recount these cursed days?
-Yes, because it is a non-fiction novel. I wanted to tell a story and after trying out three different versions I settled on this format. What was difficult was finding the tone. At first I thought I could tell it from the voice of a pilot who made up a bombing and I failed after writing 50 pages. Then I tried narrating in the present tense, Mario Wainfeld style, and I couldn’t hold it together after writing 200 pages. Finally I settled on this format, which satisfied me.
-One aspect – to choose one among many – of the meticulous work you undertook can be directed in the sense of a tribute or recognition to those loyal military men that you mention in the book, who were in tune with the three flags of the national movement. Among them, Ernesto Adradas, Franklin Lucero, Juan José Valle, etc. appear; clearly in contrast with those other military sectors that defended the reverse of those flags of sovereignty, independence and social justice. The same thing arises with civilians, but in reverse: the radical-socialist-conservative triumvirate (Zavala Ortiz-Ghioldi-Vicchi) that was going to take charge of the government if the bombings “won” is key in this regard.
-It is difficult to think of explicit claims or tributes when writing a book. That is revealed as the story progresses. The book tells of a tremendous period of history, but at the same time it is full of very intimate situations, of dialogues between Perón and his people. And one of the things I like most is that, except for three characters whom I treat very badly, the rest have lights and shadows, even those who end up overthrowing him. And those three are Aramburu, Rojas and Alfredo Palacios.
-You are a Peronist and from San Lorenzo. Have you been both since you were in the cradle?
-(Laughter) Well, I am from San Lorenzo, absolutely. As the song says, since I was in the cradle. I am also a Peronist, but with bumps and contradictions in all the years I spent there. In the 90s, for example, I was expelled from Peronism and I looked into other directions: Trotskyism with Pablo Llonto and then the Alliance with Chacho Álvarez, which ended as it did. At that moment, I told myself that I had to stop messing around with my whims and I should always vote for Peronism, because it was the only political force that met two conditions that for me are decisive: it wants to improve people’s lives and promote happiness. And for a society there is not much more than that: working to be better and to be happy.