Remembering

Eduardo José Priotti was 26 years old when he disappeared on November 25, 1976 at the hands of the last Argentine dictatorship, leaving behind his parents, two sisters, and scores of nieces and nephews, some who know him and love him, others who've only heard about him but love him all the same.

The following pieces are small tributes to Eduardo from his sister Faby, who was 13 when her brother disappeared, and her son Simón who has never had the opportunity to meet his beloved uncle. There are some notes and closing remarks at the end.

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De Faby--
25 de noviembre de 1976, nunca llegaste a almorzar a casa. . . Y sin embargo te quedaste para siempre en cada uno de los que te amamos. Hermano querido gracias por tu legado de justicia y dignidad.
Eduardo José Priotti 25-11-1976 desaparecido

November 25, 1976, you never arrived home for lunch... And nevertheless, you remain forever in all of those that love you. My dear brother, thank you for your legacy of justice and dignity.
Eduardo José Priotti, disappeared 11-25-1976

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De Simón--
Tío:
Nunca sé como encabezar las cosas que te escribo, no paro de idealizar en cómo sería nuestra relación, si te diría Dito, si te diría tío, si te diría puto o algo así, sabrás, mi manera de relacionarme con el mundo quizá nunca fue ni es la más correcta, pero me gusta pensar en el cómo hubiera sido, cómo hubiera sido si vivieras y me vieras tripero! Cómo hubieran sido nuestras discusiones de política, de arte, de amor. No paro de imaginarme cosas, y aún más se me vienen a la cabeza.
El otro día hablaba con alguien, que yo corro con un poco de ventaja en el sentido que no te conocí, pero te juro que en estas fechas, duele igual que si te hubiera conocido, quizá porque es otro tipo de compromiso, pero sé que tu lucha vive en mí y tu espíritu guerrero va conmigo a todas partes, sé que te amo, al igual que si te hubiera conocido. Sé que quizá en cierto punto estés leyendo esto, y aunque no me gusta creer en las casualidades, viejo, estoy marcado. Todo el mundo me dice que soy parecido a vos, nací el mismo día que vos, con diferencia de 1 hora y 10 minutos si mal no recuerdo. Eso quiere decir algo, quiere decir, que desde algún lugar viniste a mí e imprimiste sobre mi alma tu espíritu soñador.
En algún lado escribí “Tu lucha no fue en vano, tu espíritu vive en mí” y es así como lo siento.
Te ama
Tu sobrino
Simón.-

Uncle:
I never know how to start off the things that I write to you. I never stop envisioning what our relationship would be like or if I could call you Dito or uncle, or even puto* or something like that. You know that my way of interacting with the world perhaps never was nor is the most appropriate, but I like to think about how it would be-- how it would be if you were alive and saw me as a tripero! Or what our conversations about politics, art, or love would be like. I never stop imagining these things, and even more so, they just pop up in my head. I was talking to someone the other day, and I'm at a bit of an advantage in the fact that I've never known you but I swear to you that in these days that it hurts just as much as if I had, maybe because it's a different situation, but I know that your fight lives in me and that I carry your militant spirit everywhere I go. I know that I love you as much as I would had I known you. Perhaps you are reading this, and although I don't like to believe in coincidences viejo, I can't help it. Everyone says that I look like you; I was born on the same day as you, 1 hour and 10 minutes apart if I remember correctly. That has to say something. It says that from wherever you are, you came and marked my soul with your visionary spirit.
I once wrote, "Your fight was not in vain, your spirit lives in me," and that is how I feel.
Love your nephew,
Simón

---

Everything I know about Eduardo I know through Faby and Simón, but I too always felt like I knew and loved him as much as I knew and loved them. Not only did I stare at his picture every day, I saw him in Simón's face, in Faby´s smile. Faby would painfully recall her memories of him, and sometimes we would cry about it, other times we would laugh, and at the end we would hug and go about living the lives that he fought to make better.

Transmitting and translating memory is an arduous task, and I'm afraid I won't have been able to translate Simón and Faby's memories as gloriously as they deserve, but they're stories need to be told. My translations of them may change, but the motive here is to relay the story of Eduardo's generation--30,000 of them disappeared forever--and the generations they left behind that look towards a brighter future for Argentina while always remembering their dark past.

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<sub>NOTES
*Puto literally means "faggot," but it is not necessarily regarded as offensive in Argentina. Simón likes to call people names and say very absurd or vulgar things. It's not at all ill-willed; in fact, it's the opposite. It's just his way of being, as he states above.

**A tripero is someone who supports the Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata soccer team. Eduardo was an Estudiantes de La Plata fan. Gimnasia and Estudiantes are bitter rivals.</sub>

nostalgia

Argentina, te quiero y te extraño. ¿Cuando volveré? En mis sueños, siempre; en la vida real, no sé.

memoria

The process of a writer in training

How can I write if I don't exactly know what I believe? Sure, I'll tell you what I think, but I'll change my mind in a few months or later that day, or maybe as I blast loads of rhetoric trying to convince you of something I may unsure of. I'd like to think that I have the same general values, though... justice, equality, liberty... the same values most people hold, but also the same values most people speak out against in different words-- fighting a war maintains our freedom while infringing upon the freedoms of others; we all have equal opportunity but the myth of the self-made man overshadows and denies the existence of structural inequality that is pervasive through black America, through the villas and favelas of South America, through the shanty towns of India; we all have justice, justice served on the innocent black man accused of raping a young girl, justice served on the boy who has to steal food and money in order to help his family, justice served on the white-collar executive who steals millions of dollars... hold on, wait...

That's one thing I do believe in... the continuing cycle of dominance that lies, cheats, steals, but does so because it makes the rules, because it makes the game. We all play along because we're the privileged, we're the strong, because the system gave us what we wanted and we didn't ask questions.

That's why I write... I write because there are stories to tell by people who can't tell them. Some can't read, others can't write, the majority of them don't think that people will listen or they themselves don't have the means to place their stories in the mainstream.

Millions and millions of stories and anecdotes are lost each day, because we don't remember them, because we don't write them down.

So from now until I die, I will reconstruct memories, I will write stories, and I will broadcast them to the world in whichever way I have the means, because our stories deserve to be told, our hearts opened, our humanity exposed.

The Story of Pilar

We are vagabonds, we travel without seatbelts on, we live this close to death.

The things we carry

I sometimes wish I was full of cliche yet inspirational quotes that would seem to make life more meaningful.

Anxiety

I'm not sleeping. Only yesterday did I realize how fast Time runs--he's an Olympic sprinter by profession. His long strides are galloping across the spread of seconds, minutes, hours, days, and I need him to slow down, I need to run faster than he does, however misguided or impossible that is.

My dreams laugh haughtily at me, a laugh from the belly that surges out of a fat and demented king: The day will come, and there is nothing you can say or do.

It's wrong to fear the passage of time, each day brings another sun, another breath, another opportunity. But I want to enjoy the Sun of May for a while longer.

Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata

Hoy le cuento al amargo
lo que es tener sentimiento,
que no importan las copas,
que eso son solo momentos,
lo que importa es la gente
y es lo mejor que tenemos
hoy te alentamos en la tierra,
pero tambien desde el cielo,
el basurero provoco hasta terremotos (LOOOOBBOOOOO).
A pesar de los descensos y los garrones (LOOOOBBOOOOO).
La locura, el descontrol y la alegria,
porque La Plata siempre fue tripa
y el sentimiento no se termina!

A simple desire

I want an eloquent garden in a nice Southern home where I can host summer garden parties, drink mint juleps and blueberry martinis, wear seersucker suits and socialize with my closest friends while picking at grapes and cheese slices under the hot sun.

No, this has nothing to do with Argentina.

Eduardo Galeano, pt. 1

Eduardo Galeano, part 1-- part 1 because I assume I will write about him again. He torments my soul, rattles my brains, makes me uncomfortable, yet embraces me all the same. I hate my relationship with this man, only because he makes me see what I did not want to see, feel what in myself had been numbed, hear the voices that have always been shouting but that the rest of the world have crowded out. He peers at me over the patio walls, follows me through the plaza, stares me straight in the face on the city bus. He transforms words into life and life into soul. And embrace after embrace after embrace, he fills my head with thoughts of learning, knowing, and yearning...

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Traditions of the Future

There is just one place where yesterday and today meet, recognize each other, and embrace, and that place is tomorrow.

Certain voices from the American past, long past, sound very futuristic. For example, the ancient voice that still tells us we are children of the earth and that our mother is not for sale or for hire. While dead birds rain on Mexico City and rivers are turned into sewers, oceans into dumps and forests into deserts, this voice, stubbornly refusing to die, heralds another world different from this one that poisons the water, soil, air and soul.

The ancient voice that speaks to us of community heralds another world as well. Community--the communal mode of production and life--is the oldest of American traditions, the most American of all. It belongs to the earliest days and the first people, but it also belongs to the times ahead and anticipates a new New World. For there is nothing less alien to these lands of ours than socialism. Capitalism, on the other hand, is foreign: like smallpox, like the flu, it came from abroad.

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Forgetting

Chicago is full of factories. There are even factories right in the center of the city, around the world's tallest building. Chicago is full of factories. Chicago is full of workers.

Arriving in the Haymarket district, I ask my friends to show me the place where the workers whom the whole world salutes ever May 1st were hanged in 1886.

"It must be around here," they tell me. But nobody knows where.

No statue has been erected in memory of the martyrs of Chicago in the city of Chicago. Not a statue, not a monolith, not a bronze plaque. Nothing.

May 1st is the only truly universal day of all humanity, the only day when all histories and all geographies, all languages and religions and cultures of the world coincide. But in the United States, May 1st is a day like any other. On that day, people work normally and no one, or almost no one, remembers that the rights of the working class did not spring whole from the ears of a goat or from the hand of God or the boss.

After my fruitless exploration of the Haymarket, my friends take me to the largest bookstore in the city. And there, poking around, just by accident, I discover an old poster that seems to be waiting for me, stuck among many movie and rock posters. The poster displays an African proverb: Until lions have their own historians, histories of the hunt will glorify the hunter.

Two months in a cocoon

I'm peaking out my head, slowly prying away this shell, slowly revealing the moth that was always within, but still exhibiting the hardened larvae without. My wings twitch, unable to spread, my eyes hover, unable to see around the corner of my de facto home. I am restless, unaware of how to use this new body I inhabit.

Amanecer

The sun crawls slowly around the curtains of the room, giving just enough light to see the outline of her resting body. Her lips slightly parted, her mind fluttering behind her eyelids, she’s caught in a dream. And I sit up beside her and wonder where she is as she explores a world outside my own.

I place my fingertips on her arms, softly painting invisible lines on her skin. I breathe in the dry air, exhale it slowly just to match the movements of her chest, in and out, in and out. All the while, the seconds, minutes, hours crawl, but time doesn’t exist in this space where we meet, two abstracts, two worlds.

It continues, in and out, in and out, and the light pushes desperately against the curtain, and the curtain fights desperately to keep us safe. And I watch her as she watches the cinema in her head, eyes fluttering, lips parted.

Without the slightest indication, her eyes burst open with a shout of aqua, an exposition of the soul; my world becomes hers and hers mine as the room explodes with a light only we can create.

La Plata

I cross the street with an unnerving audacity, zigzagging between cars at the stoplights, dodging zooming mopeds, playing chicken with the city buses that stop for no one. I step over a stale piece of dog shit and hobble over the uneven sidewalk. The pescaderia is a block away but I can still smell the stench of dead fish.

My skin has turned a darker shade with each passing week as the sun almost always beams down on me as I walk towards the center of the city. One block after another, I stumble forward, looking towards the oncoming traffic, hoping I can cross the street without a vicious Peugeot or run-down Ford cutting my life short.

The houses, offices, and apartment buildings soon enough give way to a plaza: green grass, people sipping mate, a statue commemorating the republic or a founder, a food stand, graffiti accenting the scene.

I'm late. My arm flails in the air as a taxi cab passes. 5 y 54, por favor. The cab jets as the pesos register on his meter. Block after block of city zooms by. The American classic rock softly playing on the radio drowns out the honking of cars, the roaring of motorbikes, the chatter of people on their cell phones. The lack of stop signs in this city of constant four-way intersections is an indication of the ordered chaos that governs it. If he's daring enough, he barrels through, hoping he doesn't get hit. If he's cautious, he'll roll towards the edge and peer over at the intersecting street, then slam the accelerator if he thinks he can make it.

Once pesos, he tells me. I fumble for the change, hand it over, and and step out of the taxi, once again surrounded by the noisy, rag-tag orchestra that is La Plata.

Plaza Dardo Rocha

Meli ayer me preguntó que pensé de los argentinos. Me da pena que no la di una respuesta mejor. Era una pregunta que yo no esperaba.

Fabiana: "Eso es que pasa en el tercer mundo..."

I never really knew what I was getting myself into when I signed up to go to Argentina. I thought it'd be exactly like the United States or Europe-- a modern, well-developed country where I could find the things I wanted or needed easily, where people had their struggles but got by just fine, where political turmoil was limited to the talking heads on the TV screen.

After being here a few days, I'm starting to get the picture. It's nice being an American. Access to cash and credit comes easy, our buildings are air conditioned, our stores are air conditioned, our cars are air conditioned. If one of the tops on the stove breaks, we fix it. If the door breaks, we fix it. If our TV is old, we got a newer and bigger one.

People can't do that here. If a stove top breaks, you use the other ones. If the door breaks, you pray it's not the door to the street. If your TV is old, well, you just watch it anyway. If you need cash, you go from one ATM to another to another until you find one that actually carries it.

What I've seen of Argentina is very much about necessity. If you don't need something, you do without it (usually excluding food and alcohol, mind you). After leaving the hostel, it came to mind that we all probably came off as huge dicks at one point of our stay or another. America this, America that. My iPod cost me $250 here, or AR$946. In most parts of Argentina, that's a relatively high monthly wage. We're completely caught up in our ease of life, our stability. I'm grateful every day for that, but right now, it's hard to take.

I love life in Argentina. The priorities are definitely different, but it's relaxed, it's humble. I appreciate that I can share in this life. I'll probably always be a foreigner here, but I feel at home. The Provincial Commission for the Memory has a Master's in History and Memory. Maybe I'll come back.

Today:

--Walked slowly for an hour to the Commission. Maybe three ATM stops, the first two were out of money.

--Orientation at the Commission.

--Bought film for my toy camera, batteries for my digital camera, AR$45, $11 USD which is cheaper than in the States.

--Walked to the shopping district.

--Sat at a restaurant and split 4 liters of Stella between 6 people, AR$12 each, $3 USD

--Drank mate with Fabiana and her niece

Tolosa

I'm living with Fabiana in what is called Tolosa, a few blocks outside downtown La Plata. It's a lot calmer than el centro, which I enjoy. Less risk of me getting hit by the cars that don't stop for anybody.

Yesterday, I moved in with Fabiana, napped, ate, and crashed hard after talking to Kat. I didn't realize how exhausted I was but I guess that after an 18 hour flight, and a collective 15 hours of sleep since Wednesday morning, it was time for my body to reset.

It's been really hot lately, but the rain cooled things down tremendously last night. I actually had to turn my fan off because I was too cold.

Today, I walked to the kiosk to load my phone up on minutes (thanks to Erin for leaving me her phone!). I also went to the grocery store to buy some Listerine and walked down to the church to see their mass schedule.

Chaco and Jesús rented a house really close to where I am in Tolosa, so we'll hopefully be meeting up soon. Coming down a few days early was one of the best decisions I've made. I'm tremendously grateful to have met such good people so early on. I{m currently waiting on lunch. Fabiana bought some steak and put it in the over with some potatoes. It smells delicious.

first two days

There's a lot to cover, and little time, so I'm going to be quite brief until I can sit and think and read and think and finally write. This little part of Argentina that I know is an amazing place with amazing, concious, friendly, and engaging people. I don´t feel that I'm in a foreign country at all, and despite living out of a suitcase in a hostel, I feel at home with the people I've met. Last night, despite almost 20 hours of travel and very little sleep, I was up until 6:30 in the morning talking to an amazing group of people about life, politics, music, and culture. I'm glad that most of them are seeking apartments and houses in La Plata, and hopefully, after leaving here tomorrow, I´ll have friends to meet up with and talk to during the next five months.

I went to the Provincial Commission for the Memory today. The staff is so accommodating and friendly. This is going to be a really good group of people to have supporting me. I can already tell.

The food has been spectacular. Here's a breakdown of our two meals so far:

Resto Vitaminas
--Pork Chops with potato slices, steak, pasta, three glasses and one bottle of wine, AR$81, AR$100 with tip, divided among three.

DoK
--Milanese con papas, two orders of ravioli, a salad, flan, coffee, and ice cream, AR$115, divided among four people.

Hasta luego,
Alex

hello.chile

Flight leaves Santiago at 11:25 local time. In all honesty, and based solely on the view of the Andes from the terminal windows, I wouldn't mind staying where I am.

snow = bad

Had to cancel my flight, rebook another one. Need to pack!

Wednesday, February 10
Depart: Richmond Intl, Richmond, VA, USA (RIC) 5:15pm
Arrive: Hartsfield-Jackson Intl, Atlanta, GA, USA (ATL) 7:11pm

< < connecting to > >

Wednesday, February 10 - Thursday, February 11
Depart: Hartsfield-Jackson Intl, Atlanta, GA, USA (ATL) 8:20pm
Arrive: Comodoro Arturo Merino Benitez Intl, Santiago, CHL (SCL) 7:50am

< < connecting to > >

Thursday, February 11
Depart: Comodoro Arturo Merino Benitez Intl, Santiago, CHL (SCL) 11:25am
Arrive: Ministro Pistarini, Buenos Aires, ARG (EZE) 1:20pm

reconstructions of my own

For those of you unfamiliar with Argentine history, the period from 1976 to 1983 was known as la Guerra Sucia, the Dirty War; it was an age of state-sponsored violence against the left. Students, activists, political dissenters, innocent bystanders and witnesses were crushed by the hand of the military regime. Depending on who you ask, casualty estimates range from 9,000 to 30,000 people dead or disappeared. The effect of this violence still grips Argentine politics and culture.

An important facet of the healing process since coming out of the Dirty War is the reconstruction of a collective memory. By piecing together the evidence--the accounts, the pictures, the prisons, the DNA--there's this idea that telling this story, reconstructing these events can mobilize the public: "Never again will we let this happen. Forever will these names, these stories, these people live on in the tale of Argentina for the sake of our society and our posterity."

Of course, reconstructing this memory has its own shortcomings. One narrative, the popular narrative, dominates the reconstruction. The other narratives are dumped or are on the fringe. Maybe that's what they deserve. How can you justify the deaths of all these people? It's apparent that most Argentinians have not bought the "security" argument posed by the military rulers of the day and their sympathizers. Why should they after suffering so much?

This is not a post to pass judgment on a society I do not yet fully understand, though I do have my own opinions to be shared at a more appropriate time.

This post is an introduction to my own reconstructions of memory, and in essence, a tribute to the life I live, the people I love, the things I do. How will I remember my narrative?

I'm cutting back on the realism. Creating and recreating artistic, literary, and cultural capital--a piece of you, a piece of me, a piece of the world, a piece of imagination, and my place in a collection of collections. This is as much about me as it is or ever will be about Argentina.Since when has art ever been art for art's sake?

i dream of patagonia

lazy thursday,

A run-down of what's happened since I last posted:

--Kat visited.
--My hours at JC Penney were cut.
--I finished reading The Five People You Meet in Heaven, The Lovely Bones, and Tuesdays with Morrie.
--I've played a lot of video games.
--I visited W&M.
--I've eaten an exorbitant amount of hazelnuts.

All that, of course, coincides with preparing to leave on February 10, which brings up a few issues on its own.

Leaving:
At the end of last semester, I was pretty ready to leave William & Mary behind for a while. Being President of a social fraternity is by no means easy and I wanted so badly for that stress to go away. Letting go, though, is hard. Visiting this past weekend made it even harder. Everyone has some sort of underlying understanding that life goes on whether you're there or not, but actually seeing it happen, seeing everyone prepare for the coming semester is pretty difficult to take. It's harder because I don't know what lies ahead, so I'm actually very ready to get my new life started.

Planning ahead:
As much as I'd like to plan out my whole time in Argentina, I've realized that I'm just going to have to go with the flow when I get there. It's impossible to figure out what my days will be like, how much I'm going to spend on food, bus and train routes for travel. Best I've found are hostel prices in Bariloche. I'm partly concerned because I want to budget my money (or lack thereof) appropriately. So, as a matter of making information more accessible to those that come after me, I'm going to try and provide the following details with every trip or major event that transpires: a simple description of what I did, how much it cost, and how long it took me to travel or do whatever it is I'm doing. I may not stick to it, but I'll try. I know it would help me out a lot now to know what I'm getting myself into, but I guess that's part of the adventure.

Making the most of it:
Kat got me a toy camera for Christmas. I'm determined to take some awesome pictures as soon as I know how to use it properly. I'm also taking my digital camera. I've never been very good about taking pictures of people or what I'm seeing. It's very touristy, makes me feel awkward. I've gotta suck it up. Other goals include drinking less (which will be less money spent, more nights remembered), making friends with the students in our group and people in La Plata, eating a lot of beef, doing community services, traveling, and not blowing all my money.

I promise to be more eloquent, witty, creative, et cetera in future posts. During my visit to Williamsburg, Spencer flushed out his nose with some sort of odd medical contraption. The water rushed up one nostril, and with more force than a jet engine, shot out the other. It looked utterly painful, but Spencer said it felt refreshing. Yeah, I'm just trying to flush out my thoughts the way Spencer flushed out his nasal cavity. Gross.

thinking

The most exciting and the most nerve-racking part of this whole experience is not knowing... not knowing what it's going to be like, not knowing the people, not knowing if I'm actually going to make it there without problems or complications. I suppose that's all part of the adventure, and I'll take advantage of all these new possibilities when I get there, but it's truly agonizing pondering a life I know nothing about. All I have right now are the things others have told me, Google Images, and my sometimes tenuous, inconsistent, and strife-ridden imagination.