The Power of Doublespeak

Welcome to the Flying Monkey Palace

This last election, while still dealing with the insanity on both the far left and right, I was driven to pull out my copies of the works of Hannah Arendt, George Orwell and others. The following property had been obious in the ideology of the GOP for years:

"It is this freedom from the content of their own ideologies which characterizes the highest rank of the totalitarian hierarchy. These men consider everything and everybody in terms of organization, and this includes the Leader who to them is neither an inspired talisman nor the one who is infallibly right, but the simple consequence of this type of organization; he is needed, not as a person, but as a function, and as such he is indispensable to the movement. In contrast, however, to other despotic forms of government, where frequently a clique rules and the despot plays only the representative role of a puppet ruler, totalitarian leaders are actually free to do whatever they please and can count on the loyalty of their entourage even if they choose to murder them."

Daniel Schávelzon Buenos Aires Negros, Jews and Nazis

I got to meet Daniel Schávelzon a few years ago when my wife was bringing his archeology to Howard University through the Spanish Department. He is an urbane, intelligent and wise person. And he was a friend of my wife. She had even interviewed him on one of our trips to Argentina! I had put his works on the back burner when I moved out here to Brunswick as they'd gotten packed up into Boxes, and as I'm not as connected to Howard as I was while my wife was alive. So it was a shock this week when I was sitting in my living room half awake and recovering from a broken leg. And they did an episode of "Hunting Hitler" -- and who was one of the archeologists helping them?! Daniel Schávelzon!

Argentina is one of my favorite countries. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a sanguinary past. On the contrary Buenos Aires and Montevideo both have a history that is as dark as any Southern City in North America. When we toured some of the archeology sites featured in "Buenos Aires Negro" -- they were exactly like what is in the basements of old houses in Alexandria or Georgetown. Shackles, private prison rooms, torture tools, used to subjugate and control slaves; all in the basements of upscale walk up townhomes (row houses) in fancy neighborhoods. At least places like "La Boca" were painted really pretty. The tourist traps focus on tourism, industry, and Tango. Daniel Schávelzon dug into some of these houses and found evidence of Argentina's past as a majority black city. Argentina, unlike Maryland or Virginia, freed it's slaves 5 or six times before civil wars and new methods of slavery made black chattel slavery uneconomic. The two cities were transhipment points to mines in the West of the country and plantations all over. The origins of Tango were in mulatto communities combining half remembered African religion and dances with European music traditions. Jaz, Tango and most of the really good dance music of the world, were invented by people who would die without the outlet of music and singing.

And so it is that oppressed people who weren't allowed into the USA wound up in Argentina. Jews, Syrians (including what are now known as palestinians), Italians, Spaniards,... We should have sent a copy of the statue of Liberty to Argentina; except many of the immigrants never could "rise" out of poverty.

And Racism has been part of the equation since the beginning. The racist leaders of Argentina tried to deal with their "negro problem" by drafting black folks. The civil wars and regional wars between provinces or between countries like Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina etc... were fought with drafted immigrants and former slaves. The women were left behind and scrambled for a living.

Jews fleeing the Holocaust, some of them, arrived in Argentina. They were followed by Nazis. Maybe even Hitler! The children of those Nazis would run the Argentine Military in the 70s and 80s.

Further Reading

Daniel Schávelzon

https://www.vice.com/read/archaeologists-might-have-just-excavated-a-secret-nazi-hideout-in-argentina-901

Patagonia: http://www.patagonia-argentina.com/en/nazi-submarines-in-caleta-de-los-loros

http://www.danielschavelzon.com.ar/

Archaeology and architecture prehispanico Ecuador. National Autonomous University of Mexico; 1981. ISBN 968-5800-20-0

Conservation of Cultural Heritage in Latin America. Restoration of pre-Hispanic buildings in Mesoamerica: 1750-1980 Studies in Conservation, Vol 37, No. 4 (Nov. 1992), pp.. 285-286.

Archaeology of Buenos Aires. Editors Emecé. 1999. ISBN 950-04-2044-9

Stories of eating and drinking in Buenos Aires. Editorial Alfaguara Argentina. 2000. ISBN 950-511-659-4

I believe I have a copy of the following:

Black Buenos Aires - Historical Archaeology of a city silenced. Editors Emecé. 2003. ISBN 950-04-2459-2

Tunnels of Buenos Aires, stories, myths and truths of the American Buenos Aires underground. 2005. ISBN 950-07-2701-3 Tourist tenements of Buenos Aires; 2005. ISBN 987-9473-54-X

Innocence is no reason to stay the noose

Today was a report in Slate about corrupt crime labs which reminded me that one of the lousiest Supreme Court decisions I've seen in recent years which was Herrera Versus Collins.

Dookhan & Farak Frauds

Our System that is supposed to be about Justice is corrupt and inept (and thus unjust) when it allows evidence from sloppy crime labs to stand as reported in the slate article concerning the Dookhan scandal up in Boston:

"Over her nine-year career, Dookhan tested about 60,000 samples involved in roughly 34,000 criminal cases." [Slate]

This is pretty awful, but what is really galling is the comment in the slate article:

"despite the fact that there were between 20,000-40,000 so-called “Dookhan defendants” (depending on whether you accept the state’s numbers or the American Civil Liberties Union’s), fewer than 1,200 had filed for postconviction relief.*" [Slate]

Most of these defendants remain jailed because despite their tainted evidence, prosecutorial power is so strong that they fear prosecutorial retaliation!: