An Anniversary of Atrocities

Today is the 50^th anniversary of Argentina’s most brutal military dictatorship ever but, in the beginning, it was a bloodless displacement of President Isabel Martínez de Perón, widow of the famous caudillo Juan Domingo Perón. It soon devolved, though, into a bloodbath of some 30,000 Argentines—among them María Eugenía Sanllorenti de Massolo, my brother-in-law’s first wife.

                                               Maru Sanllorenti, mother of Manuel Massolo

A student activist, “Maru” was abducted on the street in the city of La Plata, about 50 km southeast of Buenos Aires, but by good fortune her husband Carlos Massolo, her infant son Manuel, and my wife María Laura (Manuel’s aunt) escaped that fate because they were at home in a house near the city’s hippodrome. Given that many babies and infants were abducted and gifted to military families, we are fortunate that Manuel is still with us.

 

                                              Poster for Manuel's Exhibition in Buenos Aires

Today Manuel is an occupational therapist and a painter, whose artistic reflections on the coup and its aftermath—Dictadura a Diario (Dictatorship Day by Day)— are on display this month at the Casa de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, a short walk from the Congreso Nacional (National Congress Building). In addition to his day job and painting, Manuel also speaks to visiting overseas tour groups at the Parque de la Memoria, which features a wall with names of all those who disappeared under the dictatorship, in northern Buenos Aires barrio of Núñez.

                               Manuel points out Maru's name to his son at the Parque de la Memoria.

In recent years, the coup’s anniversary has been marked by solemn ceremonies attended by the country’s highest authorities. That’s not the case this year, as “libertarian” President Javier Milei, elected in 2024, is a coup denialist who has gone about dismantling these events and sabotaging institutions and groups that held the coupmongers to account. That said, Argentine courts have recently ruled against appeals from pilots who threw prisoners from helicopters into the ocean, and others who aided illegal adoptions of kidnapped children.

 

President Milei’s political party goes by the name of La Libertad Avanza (“Freedom Moves Forward”), and it has taken credit for reducing inflation and encouraging foreign investment (at the expense of skyrocketing unemployment). Nevertheless, that seems an odd moniker for an entity that declines to address the issue of Argentina’s human rights violations—the President’s only observations on massive demonstrations taking place today were that it didn’t tell the whole story. It’s perhaps noteworthy that new colloquialisms now describe Milei’s fanatical followers as libertarados (roughly translatable at “liberdimwits”) and libervirgos (‘liberincels”). There are probably many others even less complimentary.

Baseball v. Fascism? From Argentina to the United States

 I have always been a baseball fan and, in the course of my guidebook-writing career in the Southern Cone countries, I would often say that I left home when the World Series ended and returned for Opening Day. This wasn’t quite literally true, but it did mean that I had something to occupy my time in the Northern Hemisphere when nothing was happening on the diamond (a truly appropriate description of any baseball field, including this unexpected gem in the Argentine city of Salta).

The Argentine city of Salta has a new baseball stadium, but this older diamond was still a gem.

In mid-1981, when my wife first arrived in the United States from Argentina—a country in which baseball is still a fringe sport—she immediately took to Fernando Valenzuela, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Mexican pitcher who served as a symbol of inclusion in her new home country. It helped, of course, that I was a Dodgers fan since my childhood—since the early Jackie Robinson years—and we have maintained that loyalty toward what has long been baseball’s most admirable franchise. By signing Robinson, the Dodgers had led the way in crossing the “color line” that had excluded black players from Major League Baseball.

 

Dodger Stadium, where the legendary Fernando Valenzuela began his career.

That progress, however, hasn’t been without setbacks. The Dodgers won the World Series in 2024, and that victory came with an invitation to visit the White House that has been traditional since 1924. Many of us hoped that the team would decline the invitation to interact with an occupant (who shall remain nameless here) whose loathsome public persona, including overt racism, was unpleasant at best. Then, however, we could at least rationalize that the visit was part of a longstanding apolitical tradition.

 

Argentina's military dictatorship kidnapped and murdered my future brother-in-law's first wife in 1976.

That rationalization is no longer tenable, if it ever was. It’s truly disheartening, in face of this regime’s assault on civil liberties—resorting to widespread kidnapping, prison camps, and even summary public executions—to think that the Dodgers would once again honor the current occupant with their presence. It’s worth adding here that my future brother-in-law’s first wife, María Eugenia Sanllorenti, was kidnapped in the Argentine city of La Plata and then murdered. It was more than three decades before forensic experts identified her remains.

 

The Argentine dictatorship abducted Maru from this apartment in the city of La Plata in 1976.

The last straw, here, should be the White House’s grotesque caricature of former President Barack Obama (this country’s first black President) and his wife Michelle as apes in the jungle. What would Jackie Robinson say? Perhaps someone in the Dodgers ownership should ask Rachel Robinson, Jackie’s 103-year-old widow and head of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, her opinion.

 

At the very least, the Dodgers could decline the invitation with a statement saying “We did that last year, thank you.” Then we could wholeheartedly cheer for the Dodgers’ third consecutive championship—a three-peat—in 2026.

 

Should the Dodgers decline the invitation, they could face backlash from a vengeful White House that went ballistic over Bad Bunny's Super Bowl half-time show, which celebrated the culture of Puerto Rico—a territory whose inhabitants are US citizens—and other Latin American peoples. There's at least one Dodger who would almost certainly boycott an invitation—the charismatic utility infielder/outfielder Enrique (Kiké) Hernández is a Boricua who was an enthusiastic presence at Sunday's game and halftime show. Relief pitcher Edwin Díaz is also Puerto Rican.

As US citizens, both of them would have little to risk by declining the invitation. However, the Dodgers also have players from Cuba, the Dominican Republic Venezuela, Japan, and South Korea who could conceivably have their work visas revoked by a vengeful White House. There are many more in the Dodgers' minor league system, so this could wreak true havoc.

Post-Script: I just realized this is my first blog entry in more than three years. I'm not traveling quite so much now, though there is a new edition of Moon Handbooks Patagonia, and I'll try offer my insights a bit more frequently.