At the opening of Pensarlo bien, Jorge Fernández Díaz read an article by the writer Marcelo Gioffré who warns that the cracks within the government respond, among other things, to populism’s refusal to order public accounts.
José María Borghello, a writer as secret as he is exquisite, lived for many years in Mendoza, where he struck up a rich friendship with Antonio Di Benedetto. On March 24, 1976, they received the news of the military coup together in the editorial office of Diario Los Andes, of which Di Benedetto was director and where he had published highly critical notes on the Triple A crimes.
The climate of the time was such that the news was received with joy and they even opened a bottle of champagne to toast the end of what they considered a dreadful government.
They could not imagine at that time that something worse would come, much less that a few hours later Di Benedetto would be arrested by the dictatorship within the newspaper itself.
They sneaked him out a back door to prevent the bystanders, who were crowded reading the latest news on the blackboards in the street, from noticing that they were taking the director prisoner.
In the months that he was illegally detained, hundreds of letters arrived from all over the world asking for his release. At the lunch that Borges and Sabato had on May 19 at the Casa Rosada, they pleaded with Videla for Di Benedetto’s freedom.
He was perplexed because he did not understand the reason for his arrest and the military were puzzled because they did not know that the prisoner was so famous. They finally released him and went into exile in Madrid, from where he only returned in 1984. It was then that the publisher Poldy Bird invited him to a meal at his house, along with the Tucuman writer Juan José Hernández and his friend José María Borghello.
Read the full article by writer and lawyer Marcelo Gioffré on Kirchnerist populism at The nation
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