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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MAY 14, 1982
PAGE 11
BUENOS AIRES,-
Argentina AP -- After decades of studying his com
patriots, the late historian Raul Scalabrini Ortiz said
"Argentines don't think: they feel....They either act or refrain
from acting. But they do not reflect."
The "Argentine paradox"--the emotional core
sophisticated people--has puzzled historians,
students of Latin America for years.
in an outwardly
sociologists and
This character--influenced by religion, culture, language and
even climate and geography--is one reason there are no easy
explanations for the Falkland Islands crisis. Scalabrini Ortiz
wrote extensively on the subject from the 1920s through the
1950s, and his controversial works were frequently banned.
"Argentines want idols--of any �--who polarize their feelings
and before whom they� throw themselves totally and wildly,"
the historian said. "Argentines are not interested in the people
who carry out acts but rather in the moment in which such peo?le
become magnets for Argentine emotions."
Scalabrini Ortiz con
tended that although the millions of Europeans who emigrated here
maintained sophisticated Continental appearances, Argentina
transformed them into ungovernable individualists "who steam
rollered and unhinged all principles of European society."
Before the Falklands war started, North Americans and Europeans
may only have known Argentina as the land of unpredictability and
impulsiveness portrayed in the musical "Evita." The play, a big
hit in London and on Broadway, tells more or less accurately how
in the 1940s and 'SOs, masses of screaming Argentines made
bigger-than-life cult figures of dictator Juan Peron and his
beautiful, ambitious wife Eva.
Scalabrini Ortiz wrote of his countrymen:
"Argentines are the
first children of a father named No One who are immune to any
thing that was not born with them and they are people who ask:
'What's the difference, if we're all going to die anyway?'"
v.s.
Naipaul, the Trinidad-born novelist, made a close study of the
Argentines and their country over a five-year period. The TIMES of London,
on May 4, summarized Naipaul's findings in this manner:
Argentina, Naipaul says, is a nation living a lie, remote from
reality, unwilling to face the truths of its own history.••the
Argentines will be overbearing if they succeed in their present
adventure, but if they fail their response will be a servile
attempt to laugh the whole thing away: "Why £!l earth did you take
� §.2 seriously? You over-reacted. We never meant harm."
It will be impossible, the writer says, to negotiate a solution
without further use of force...."A lot of the trouble is the
language, so crammed with rhetoric," says Naipaul..••"It drives
them into absurd postures. One must not be misled. When they
speak of fighting to the last drop of blood it means: 'We are
almost ready to give up,' and when a military communique says we
are fighting valiantly to defend national sovereignty it means: