Extremes Meet / Regina Coyula

I am not Argentinian nor did I lose someone during that country’s military dictatorship, but I am appalled to learn about the agreement between Jorge Videla and Fidel Castro as well as by the selective memory of the mothers and grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. What would Stella Caloni, someone always in the Cuban media, say about this? Or the current Argentinian president, Cristina Fernandez, in her crusade for human rights?*

On Telesur last night I saw Juan Carlos Monedero, one of the leaders of the new left-wing Spanish political party Podemos (We Can), demanding to know what Spain’s democratic leaders had done to counter the excesses of Latin American dictatorships while showing a photo of none other than King Juan Carlos together with Videla.

Fidel Castro seems to be in no position to explain anything. Emilio Aragonés, Cuba’s ambassador to Argentina at the time, died incognito years ago. (His death did not merit even a brief obituary on page 2 of Granma.) One of our shrewd journalists should get to the bottom of this.

And I personally believe someone from the government should provide an explanation and issue an apology.

*Translator’s note: The author is referring to recently released secret cables indicating that in 1977 Cuba asked Argentina’s right-wing military government, then led by Jorge Rafael Videla, to support its admission to Executive Council of the UN World Health Organization in exchange for the Cuba’s support of Argentina’s continued membership in the UN Social and Economic Council. 

Stella Caloni is an Argentinian journalist and writer. In an introduction to a recently published biography, Fidel Castro described her as “a recognized expert in communication” who “untangles the objectives in the counterinsurgency’s media war.”
24 November 2014