2023 -> 2024

2023 is gone, long live 2024. The countdown clock has been reset. And because we’ve been good (or maybe because we need extra time to prove our worth as humans) we got an extra day this year 🙂

For the past 2 days I wanted to write a few thoughts on how 2023 was for me and about the 2024 plans.

But everything changed yesterday evening when I decided to watch the movie “Argentina, 1985”. And while watching it, I felt that the moment has come for me to share with you these thoughts that I had for some time.

But let me give you a little bit of context regarding the ideas ahead: 

• I have a passion for history (especially the 20th century one)
• my country, Romania, has been under communism for half a century (from the end of World War 2 until 1989)
• between the ‘60s and the ‘80s many of the countries of South America were ravaged by military dictatorships
• these military dictatorships appeared with the help of USA as a result to the increasing interest for the socialist/communist mentality in the Southern American countries

One of my first stops when I landed in Buenos Aires was “Museo Sitio de Memoria ESMA”. And when I arrived in Santiago de Chile my first stop was at “Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos”.

These museums are dedicated to keeping alive the memory of the victims and to keep alive the discussion about the atrocities committed during the military dictatorships. 

While walking the halls and reading the facts from these museums I realized something: the military juntas were protecting an ideology that was totally opposite from communism, but their means of doing so were the same. 

I’m talking about the secret police, the neighbours turning you in, the ingenious and cruel ways of torture, the disappearance of people etc. 

People were living in fear or in complicity and only a few were brave enough to speak against the regime … just like in Eastern Europe.  

Back to the present day. Many years passed. Democracy (or something like that) is now ruling both in South America and in Eastern Europe.  

But when it comes to condemning these dark times a huge difference appears between these 2 places. 

In Eastern Europe, with 50 dark years of communism, we should be the first ones to keep the flame of remembrance alive. But such a big time under fear and terror, I guess, changes societies from the ground. While in Romania I feel that the discussion is close to inexistent, in Argentina and Chile the following happened:

• there were civilian trials and the dictators were convicted
• museums were built and promoted; I don’t know if it was a coincidence or not, but when I visited them there were a lot of school kids with their teachers looking forward to learning about the past
• 2 well known NGOs in Argentina are “Madres de Plaza de Mayo” and “Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo” (“Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo”) which are working to find out what happened to the sons/daughters and are trying to reunite grandmothers with nephews that they never met (because the regime took the mothers into captivity while they were pregnant) 

Below there is a part from the prosecutor’s final speech in the movie that I was telling you above:

“This process has meant, for those of us who have had the painful privilege of knowing it deeply, a sort of descent into dark areas of the human soul, where misery, abjection and horror reach depths which are hard to imagine in advance, and impossible to understand afterwards.”

For me every visit to a museum or every story that I read about communism means the same: a descent into the dark areas of the human soul. And I’m grateful that I can do this because this way I become aware of the horrors others were capable of.

And it makes me sad when I know for sure that these stories will never reach the great majority of people and that the circle of “not learning from our mistakes” will continue undisturbed. 

Why I am sure? You just need to read the news 😦