[News] Uruguay's Desaparecidos Begin to Appear

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/galeano03172006.html

Uruguay's Desaparecidos Begin to Appear

Abracadabra

By EDUARDO GALEANO

(On March 14, novelist Eduardo Galeano spoke to 
the gathering of thousands in Montevideo to bury 
the remains of the first recovered 
"desaparecidos" (disappeared) victims of the 
Bordaberry dictatorship. The "progressive" 
(neoliberal) government of Tabaré Vázquez still 
hasn't summoned the courage to repeal the "Leye 
de Caducidad" known as the "law of impunity" 
which the dictatorship legislated before leaving 
power, ensuring that none of its members would be 
tried for crimes committed during its reign from 
1973-1985. The speech was published in the weekly 
newspaper, Brecha, March 17, 2006. Translated for 
CounterPunch by Clifton Ross.)

Every 14 of March Uruguayans who were prisoners 
of the dictatorship celebrate the Day of the Liberated.

It's something more than a coincidence.

The disappeared, who are beginning to appear, 
Ubagesner Chaves, Fernando Miranda, call us to 
struggle for the liberation of memory, which continues to be imprisoned.

Our country wants to stop being a sanctuary of 
impunity, the impunity of murderers, the impunity 
of thieves, the impunity of liars, and we're 
turning this direction, at last, after so many years, taking the first steps.

This is not the end of the road. It is the 
beginning. It was costly but we are beginning the 
hard and necessary transit to the liberation of 
memory in a country that seemed to be condemned 
to a state of perpetual amnesia.

All of us who are here share the hope that 
sooner, rather than later, there will be memory 
and there will be justice because history teaches 
us that memory can stubbornly survive all its 
prisons and that justice can be more powerful 
than fear when people give it aid.

The dignity of memory, the memory of dignity.

In the unequal combat against fear, in that 
combat that each one of us fights every day, what 
would become of us without the memory of dignity?

The world is suffering an alarming disparagement 
of dignity. The undignified, those who rule in 
this world, say that the undignified are the 
prehistoric, nostalgic, romantic, those who deny reality.

Every day, everywhere, we hear the eulogy to 
opportunism and the identification of realism 
with cynicism; the realism that requires elbowing 
and forbids the embrace; the realism of screw 
everything and fix it as you can and if not screw you.

The realism, too, of fatalism. This is the worst 
of the many ghosts seen today in our progressive 
government, here in Uruguay, and in other 
progressive governments of Latin America. The 
fatalism, perverse colonial inheritance, which 
forces us to believe that reality can be 
repeated, but it can't be changed, that what was 
is, and will be, that tomorrow is nothing more than another name for today.

But could it be that they weren't real, these men 
and women who have struggled and who struggle to 
change reality, those who have believed and 
believe that reality doesn,t demand obedience? 
Aren't they real, Ubagesner Chaves and Fernando 
Miranda and all the others who are arriving from 
the bottom of the earth and time to testify to 
another possible reality? And all those who hoped 
and wished with them, weren't they, and don't 
they continue to be, real? Were the hangmen not 
real, were the victims not real, were the 
sacrifices of so many people in this country that 
the dictatorship turned into the greatest torture 
chamber of the world not real?

Reality is a challenge.

We are not condemned to choose between the same and the same.

Reality is real because it invites us to change 
it and not because it forces us to accept it. 
Reality opens spaces of freedom and doesn't 
necessarily enclose us in the cages of fatalism.

The poet has well said that a single rooster doesn't weave the morning.

This Creole with a strange name, Ubagesner, 
wasn't alone in life nor is he alone in death; 
today he is a symbol of our land and our people.

This militant worker embodies the sacrifice of 
many compatriots who believed in our country and 
our people and risked their lives for this faith.

We have come to tell them it was worth the effort.

We have come to tell them that, dead, they will never die.

We are gathered today to tell them that the 
tangos we hear tell us that life is short but 
there are lives that are startlingly long because 
they continue in others, in those who will come.

Sooner or later we, walkers, will be walked on by 
the steps of others, just as our steps are taken 
in the footprints other steps left behind.

Now when the owners of the world have forced us 
to repent of all passion, now when style makes 
life so cold and barren, now is a good time to 
recall that little word that we all remember from 
childhood tales, "abracadabra," the magic word 
that opened all the doors, that word, abracadabra 
which meant in ancient Hebrew, "Send your fire to the end."

Today, more than a funeral, this is a 
celebration. We are celebrating the living memory 
of Ubagesner and all those generous men and women 
who, in this country, sent their fire to the end; 
those who continue to help us to not lose our way 
and not to accept the unacceptable and not to 
ever resign ourselves and never to step down from 
the beautiful little horse of dignity.

Because in the most difficult hours, in those 
days of enmity, in the years of the grime and 
fear of the military dictatorship, these people 
knew how to live and give themselves entirely and 
they did so without asking for anything in 
exchange, as if their lives sang that old 
Andalucian copla that said, and still says and 
will always say, "My hands are empty, but they are mine."

Eduardo Galeano is the author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393317730/counterpunchmaga>Memories 
of Fire, 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0853459916/counterpunchmaga>Open 
Veins of Latin America and 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/1583670238/counterpunchmaga>Days 
and Nights of Love and War. His newest book, 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805077677/counterpunchmaga>Voices 
of Time, will be published in English in May.


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