2023-08-05 06:19:20
A few days ago, the Municipality of Bariloche received formal authorization from the National Monuments Commission to reform the city’s traditional Civic Center, a reform that includes removing the equestrian monument to Julio Argentino Roca from the center of the square. The news, celebrated by human rights organizations and groups from the aboriginal communities, revived the discussions about the place that the “hero” occupies in the national imagination. Different voices once again accused those who conspired against their procerate with arguments that can be summarized as follows:
that Roca was a founding maker of modern Argentina, or even more “the best president in Argentine history.”
that his figure is unfairly questioned by “ideologized” sectors, with lying stories.
that those who challenge it “look through the lens of the present past events to submit them to an imaginary ethical court.”
that the antiroquista conglomerate is headed or promoted or started with Kirchnerism, with Human Rights organizations and/or with a certain populist left.
Anachronism and stories
History is a battlefield. The need to find references for the present in the past is not new. Not naive. The philosophical discussion about how to see the past goes back practically to Greece: since then, each government creates stories to link illustrious pasts with their own achievements, and the conflicting sectors look in past times for antecedents of what they fight or what they preach.
Thus, and as if Argentine society had no other problems to address, Julio Argentino Roca reappears in public debates. Like any other figure from the past, Roca’s should be approached from the contextual understanding and not from the hates and loves of the disputes of the present. With its lights and shadows, common place, but very descriptive. But when the figures are intended to be enthroned as indisputable, nothing better than helping to lower them from that pedestal: it is a good recipe to mature as a society.
One way to do it is to review what was questioned in their own time, to help determine if, indeed, the current questions are anachronistic. And above all to escape that warning from Epictetus: The old man’s mistake is that he tries to judge today with the criteria of yesterday. With the same emphasis we should avoid the inverse error, judging yesterday with today’s criteria.
The historical truth. It is the subject of debate whether there can be a “historical truth” valid for all. The aspiration of objectivity only refers to the facts, but the interpretations will inevitably differ. The sensible thing, in any case, is to ask each “opinionist” on historical issues to explain from what perspectives he makes his judgment.
In the most flamboyant notes –infobae o The nation they seem to be enrolled in a “militant rockism”– almost any mention of what is being questioned about the “hero” is avoided: the treatment reserved for the aboriginal peoples defeated in the Desert Campaign; and the way in which the enormous conquered territory was distributed to those peoples.
Surely there will be those who hate Roca for what other people consider some of his successes, such as Law 1,420 that universalized primary education, preventing the Catholic Church from meddling in it. In fact, I am sure that most of us who reproach those two points that I marked are open defenders of 1,420. One thing does not remove the other.
But the questions about Roca are neither a Kirchnerist invention nor are they new. Like other figures in history, he questions or claims them from heterogeneous places. For starters, not only conservatives and liberals extol him. They also vindicate Roca from nationalist or Peronist “revisionism”, like Jorge Abelardo Ramos or closer in time, Pacho O’Donnell, for whom “I wish we had a Roca these days.”
It is paradoxical, because those who want to “cancel” Roca (tear down his monuments, change his street name, etc.) are accused of being Peronists, Kirchnerists, populists or something like that. Perhaps they are unaware that Juan Perón himself, upon nationalizing the railways, named one of the most important lines after him: the one that crossed La Pampa, Neuquén and Río Negro, reaching Chubut and Santa Cruz. Precisely the territories that the “campaign to the Desert” incorporated into Argentina at that time.
Or Jorge A. Ramos, a reference to revisionism, for whom Roca is a national liberal leader (as opposed to “anti-national” liberals, such as Sarmiento or Mitre) and “who embodied historical progress”, “created the modern structures of the State, he reestablished protectionist tariffs and promoted the great works that the country still has”. (In “Rock as a caudillo”, in the newspaper Mayoría, July 21, 1974).
Miter and Sarmiento against Roca. It is usual that those who claim Roca at the same time idolize Sarmiento or Mitre. But in the past, one of those who questioned the way in which the rock campaign massacred thousands of people was Sarmiento. Yes, the same Sarmiento who in his writings distilled racist hatred of “those disgusting Indians”, before the news of the massacres by Roca and his army, wrote: “It is a worse policy and iniquitous, moreover, the one whose company is the extermination of the Indians without the pretext of self-defense. They are finally human beings, and there is no right to deny their existence. (…) Even New Zealand’s cannibalistic Maori have been respected by England, as long as they remain still. The United States gives property territories to the tribes that it expels from its borders, in order to assure their existence. Spain itself, and the Argentine Republic up to now little, have recognized the Indians’ right to live, containing them on their excursions, and even giving them mares and cattle for their subsistence on condition that they do not repeat their raids. Where has this right to exterminate and persecute tribes that, like those south of the Río Negro, and those from Limay above, come from now, had not done us harm? But this persecution à outrance is, in addition to being impolitical and absurd, a flagrant violation of the Constitution (…) it is purely a savage act”. (In El Nacional, August 12, 1879).
Another current defender of Roca is usually the newspaper La Nación. That is why it is worth remembering what Miter’s newspaper said at that time: “The Three Line regiment has shot, locked up in a corral, sixty Indian prisoners, a barbaric and cowardly act that shames civilization and makes savages more than others.” the Indians to the forces that make war in such a way, without respecting the laws of humanity or the laws that govern the act of war. (La Nación, November 17, 1878). This massacre was ordered by Commander Rudecindo Roca – Julio’s brother – in the vicinity of Villa Mercedes, San Luis province. The mitrista newspaper was ironic about the explanations of the military party: the Ranquels had been killed in a “confrontation”. “It is strange that fifty Indians fell wounded while shooting and dispersing. Strange that all the shots were used to kill without leaving a single wounded”. (La Nación, November 16, 1878).
Like slaves. Although the Argentine Constitution had abolished slavery thirty years earlier, the captured aborigines were distributed as slave labor, sent to sugar mills in Tucuman (Roca and several of his “contributors” were from there), and a number were driven on foot for leagues. to later ship them to Martín García Island, where an epidemic liquidated them. A plaque on the island reminds him.
Félix Luna, the Argentine historian and popularizer who inaugurated a new way of telling history with his book “Soy Roca”, refers to him as the founder of the Argentine State. He is widely quoted by the “militant rock” media. But –rigorous as it was– let’s see what it says: “In 1879 hundreds of indigenous people defeated and dispossessed of their lands had been imprisoned on Martín García Island. Then the men were distributed among the ranches at the request of their owners, in almost slave-like conditions, and the women delivered by the Sociedad de Beneficencia to wealthy families as domestic workers”. (The time of Roca 1880-1910, edited by La Nación, 2003. P. 85).
Then, speaking of the Chaco, Luna abounds: “The fate of the native Indians was not very different from that of the inhabitants of southern Argentina. After some expeditions, they were cornered and exterminated. Some became part of the army reserve, others joined the hard work of the obrajes”. (Idem, p. 63).
Ignoring these facts is impossible. How they are interpreted is another matter entirely. But it is morally condemnable to avoid talking about it or to relativize it, hiding them under Law 1,420 or the railways.
It hurts humanity. The voices of “militant rockism” say that it is intended to judge the past with today’s eyes. But what will they say when they read that already at that time it was being challenged in the name of humanitarian principles? An editorial in La Nación in 1878 accused the Rock Army of waging war “without respecting the laws of humanity.” It may surprise you: the editorial writer for La Nación (perhaps Miter himself?) says: “Such an assertion is extremely serious, it is a crime against humanity, it is a slap to civilization.” Against humanity, says Miter’s diary in 1878.
The radicals of that time also expressed themselves against Roca in these aspects. Senator Aristóbulo del Valle –founder with Alem, of the UCR– said in the Senate: “Civilized nations conquer savage peoples by introducing civilization by peaceful means, and not using weapons, but only when it is absolutely essential to establish civilization. ”. (Senate Sessions Journal, August 19, 1884).
Another founder of the UCR, Mariano Demaría, denounced the “distribution” of Indians on the streets of Buenos Aires as inhumane: “In no way can we accept events of this nature, and that it is a strict, imperative obligation of humanity not to allow them.” (Diary of Sessions of Deputies, October 30, 1885).
The division of the land. Another aspect of the challenge to Roca has to do with what they did with the lands seized from the “savages.” Alfredo Ebelot accuses Roca and his minions of not having learned anything from Alejo Peyret, the great philosopher (almost unknown today) who in the 19th century described the latifundio as the great evil to be solved for the future of Argentina. According to Ebelot, despite having been his student at the Colegio del Uruguay, Roca was “unable to follow his flight.” He says: “At the decisive moment when they had to proceed with the distribution of the immense extension of public land conquered from the Indians, nothing seemed more obvious to them, due to natural selfishness and mediocrity of spirit, than to legally organize and consecrate the fatal regime of the latifundia”. (Alfredo Ebelot, “Introduction” in Alejo Peyret, Speeches, page 10).
Peyret himself had warned, in 1875, in a series of notes in La República, that “what must be avoided above all is the constitution of large territorial domains, of large properties, which concentrate the land in a reduced number of hands and do not allow the development of the population.
Sarmiento and the verb “atalivar”. Roca’s defenders may admit that this deal was a mistake. But according to Sarmiento, there was no mistake: on the contrary, that was the plan. “(The Campaign) was a pretext to raise a loan alienating the fiscal land at a rate of 400 nationals a league, to whose operation, the Nation has lost 250 million gold pesos won by the Atalivas, Goyos and other stars from the sky of the president Rock. (…) Under what law, does General Roca clandestinely continue to alienate public land at the rate of 400 nationals a league worth 3,000? (…) At the rate we are going, soon we will not have a foot of land left in a condition to give to the immigrant and we are forced to expropriate what we need, for double the value, from the Atalivas”. (In El Censor, December 18, 1885).
Ataliva Roca, mentioned twice in that text, was the brother of Julio Argentino. Sarmiento denounced that he did enormous business with the lands seized from the aborigines. To the point that the man from San Juan invented the verb “atalivar” to refer to those who do business with their relatives in the government.
Cancellation: from heroes to villains. Pluralistic societies like ours can (and should) discuss everything. Nothing worse than trying to ban opinions, even if they are hateful. But I don’t think Roca is being a victim of something like that. On the contrary: I think that (even with the exaggerations of the case) he is placing it in a fairer place than the one assigned to it by traditional historiography. Perhaps it is time that we stop needing great figures of debatable merits, to be able to coexist civilly, equitably and peacefully.
Perhaps it is a social process analogous to the one we go through individually: in childhood we need superheroes, and the first ones we put on that pedestal are mom and dad. In adolescence we began to question them, and many times (most of them) we turned them from heroes into villains: dad, who was Superman, is now Lex Luthor. It seems to be something essential to build our identity. Maturity comes when we manage to see them as people, with successes and mistakes. And the balance that we make goes on to define not only our relationship with them, but also, many times, which of their mistakes we avoid repeating, and which of their successes we incorporate as the main baggage of our own lives.
The culture of cancellation is, perhaps, the adolescence of our societies, and if so, to mature you have to go through it, and not cling stubbornly to the superheroes of childhood.
* Graduate in Philosophy and journalist. He is a member of the journalistic and cultural cooperative El Miércoles, from Entre Ríos.
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