The dictatorship did not end in Uruguay until 1985. The first time I came here, less than a decade later, there was still a discernible reluctance to talk about it. At the time I was giving Shakespeare workshops. I remember, working through one of the history plays, making a crude but feasible comparison between the reign of one of the kings and the dictatorship. No one took me up on it, no one seemed to keen to seek out comparisons.
Why should they? The older people in my class had lived through years of grim repression, and no matter how keen I was, there was no way that a curious young foreigner could really appreciate what it had meant to them. When I asked Jorge, my flatmate, landlord and friend, he just answered that it had been a ‘terrible, terrible’ time. It was still so recent that most, it seemed to me, were still going through the act of forgetting, something they needed to do before they could begin a process of remembering, and evaluation.
Fifteen years later the situation has changed. Several of the dictatorship’s architects are in prison. A spate of films dealing with the dictatorship is appearing, one of which Matar A Todos, I saw at the weekend. The fear – that they will return – as articulated to me on a few occasions in 1994, has gone. The election of 2004, which saw the socialist coalition elected to power without the drastic consequences that many on both the right and left had anticipated, has helped to establish a more relaxed, contemplative attitude towards the recent past.
Last night I asked Ana, who lived through the latter stages of the dictatorship as a student, about her experiences. She had two stories to tell me.
The first concerned an experience which happened when she was about seventeen, at drama school. She told me how the group she hung out with became accustomed to classmates being absent from one day to the next, either in hiding or under arrest. She talked about how they tried to live as normal a life as possible, remembering one time someone who had just been abused in police cells came out dancing with them, his legs so swollen that all he could do was sit in a corner and get as drunk as possible.
Ana decided she wanted to become more involved. A friend of hers set up a meeting with a radical in an obscure barrio. She arrived at the bar and the man she met there looked so like her friend that she realised straight away they had to be brothers, though this was never mentioned. The man was jumpy and watchful. They talked in vague terms about what she could do. At the end of the meeting he paid for the beer, saying she owed him the next one. She didn’t see the man for several years. The next time they met was on the day the dictatorship ended, as people celebrated in the streets. She ran into him amidst the flags and festivities and he remembered her instantly, telling her she still owed him a beer.
A year or two later, Ana was living in Ciudad Vieja with Horacio, a theatre director, radio host and activist. She became involved with a small group which met once a week in another, distant barrio, an hour’s bus ride from the city centre. Upon arrival at the house where they met they had to check a tree to see whether there was a piece of paper attached. If it was there, it meant they were safe to go in; if it wasn’t they knew they should head back immediately. Once inside they spent all night creating leaflets, going out to paint slogans on walls, drinking mate and discussing politics.
One day she got a message from one of the group, simply saying that the ‘upstairs neighbour’ had been arrested. This seemed like catastrophic news. The whole group might have been given away, and they were all in jeopardy. Ana and her fellow activist decided they had to go to the house where they met and see if they could destroy the evidence. She packed a bag, fearing she’d have to go into hiding or else be arrested, then went to find Horacio and told him the bad news, leaving him without knowing when they would see one another again.
The piece of paper was not attached to the tree when she and her fellow activist arrived at the house. They waited outside, anxiously. When it seemed clear that there was no sign of activity inside, they decided to enter anyway, and set about destroying leaflets and papers that had been stored there. All of a sudden someone walked in. They froze.
It was the upstairs neighbour. Who was not under arrest. Who furthermore was furious when he saw that Ana and her companion had destroyed so much hard work. The upstairs neighbour, who was a part of their group, insisted that the police hadn’t been anywhere near. Amidst all the confusion, Ana realised that she needed to go and tell Horacio she was alright. She took the bus back into town and found him at the theatre. They hid away in a corner as she explained everything was fine, both weeping with relief.
Ana later learnt that her fellow activist had got it all wrong. The upstairs neighbour who’d been arrested existed, but was a completely different upstairs neighbour to the one who lived in the house they used. The words ‘vecino de arriba’ had entered his brain and he’d leapt to the worst possible conclusion. When she finally got back to the home she shared with Horacio, she discovered that he’d stuck up stickers leading from the front door to the bedroom of their tiny apartment. The stickers all had one word written on them, a word which doesn’t really need translation: BOBA!
Ana’s political activism continued through the early years of democracy. She had allegiances with the Communists, without ever feeling as though she belonged to their cause – it was more a case of siding with the opposition. (An example of how the Communist ‘threat’ came to be exaggerated in the cold war.) Nowadays she says she’s less ‘militista’. The blacks and whites of the old days have gone, to be replaced by the more confused shades of democracy; and now the socialists are finally in office, it’s they who are contending with the complexities and disappointments of power.
Nevertheless, the difference between Ana’s political engagement in her lifetime and that of almost anyone I know from a similar generation in the UK is evident. For Ana, and everyone who lived through that time, politics was something real, its implications tangible. To take a political standpoint was non-negotiable, even if that standpoint manifested itself as a refusal to get involved. The shadow of the struggle she lived through, despite its lengthening, is still there, shaping her attitude towards the society she inhabits in a way that our political convictions barely seem to.
Why should they? The older people in my class had lived through years of grim repression, and no matter how keen I was, there was no way that a curious young foreigner could really appreciate what it had meant to them. When I asked Jorge, my flatmate, landlord and friend, he just answered that it had been a ‘terrible, terrible’ time. It was still so recent that most, it seemed to me, were still going through the act of forgetting, something they needed to do before they could begin a process of remembering, and evaluation.
Fifteen years later the situation has changed. Several of the dictatorship’s architects are in prison. A spate of films dealing with the dictatorship is appearing, one of which Matar A Todos, I saw at the weekend. The fear – that they will return – as articulated to me on a few occasions in 1994, has gone. The election of 2004, which saw the socialist coalition elected to power without the drastic consequences that many on both the right and left had anticipated, has helped to establish a more relaxed, contemplative attitude towards the recent past.
Last night I asked Ana, who lived through the latter stages of the dictatorship as a student, about her experiences. She had two stories to tell me.
The first concerned an experience which happened when she was about seventeen, at drama school. She told me how the group she hung out with became accustomed to classmates being absent from one day to the next, either in hiding or under arrest. She talked about how they tried to live as normal a life as possible, remembering one time someone who had just been abused in police cells came out dancing with them, his legs so swollen that all he could do was sit in a corner and get as drunk as possible.
Ana decided she wanted to become more involved. A friend of hers set up a meeting with a radical in an obscure barrio. She arrived at the bar and the man she met there looked so like her friend that she realised straight away they had to be brothers, though this was never mentioned. The man was jumpy and watchful. They talked in vague terms about what she could do. At the end of the meeting he paid for the beer, saying she owed him the next one. She didn’t see the man for several years. The next time they met was on the day the dictatorship ended, as people celebrated in the streets. She ran into him amidst the flags and festivities and he remembered her instantly, telling her she still owed him a beer.
A year or two later, Ana was living in Ciudad Vieja with Horacio, a theatre director, radio host and activist. She became involved with a small group which met once a week in another, distant barrio, an hour’s bus ride from the city centre. Upon arrival at the house where they met they had to check a tree to see whether there was a piece of paper attached. If it was there, it meant they were safe to go in; if it wasn’t they knew they should head back immediately. Once inside they spent all night creating leaflets, going out to paint slogans on walls, drinking mate and discussing politics.
One day she got a message from one of the group, simply saying that the ‘upstairs neighbour’ had been arrested. This seemed like catastrophic news. The whole group might have been given away, and they were all in jeopardy. Ana and her fellow activist decided they had to go to the house where they met and see if they could destroy the evidence. She packed a bag, fearing she’d have to go into hiding or else be arrested, then went to find Horacio and told him the bad news, leaving him without knowing when they would see one another again.
The piece of paper was not attached to the tree when she and her fellow activist arrived at the house. They waited outside, anxiously. When it seemed clear that there was no sign of activity inside, they decided to enter anyway, and set about destroying leaflets and papers that had been stored there. All of a sudden someone walked in. They froze.
It was the upstairs neighbour. Who was not under arrest. Who furthermore was furious when he saw that Ana and her companion had destroyed so much hard work. The upstairs neighbour, who was a part of their group, insisted that the police hadn’t been anywhere near. Amidst all the confusion, Ana realised that she needed to go and tell Horacio she was alright. She took the bus back into town and found him at the theatre. They hid away in a corner as she explained everything was fine, both weeping with relief.
Ana later learnt that her fellow activist had got it all wrong. The upstairs neighbour who’d been arrested existed, but was a completely different upstairs neighbour to the one who lived in the house they used. The words ‘vecino de arriba’ had entered his brain and he’d leapt to the worst possible conclusion. When she finally got back to the home she shared with Horacio, she discovered that he’d stuck up stickers leading from the front door to the bedroom of their tiny apartment. The stickers all had one word written on them, a word which doesn’t really need translation: BOBA!
Ana’s political activism continued through the early years of democracy. She had allegiances with the Communists, without ever feeling as though she belonged to their cause – it was more a case of siding with the opposition. (An example of how the Communist ‘threat’ came to be exaggerated in the cold war.) Nowadays she says she’s less ‘militista’. The blacks and whites of the old days have gone, to be replaced by the more confused shades of democracy; and now the socialists are finally in office, it’s they who are contending with the complexities and disappointments of power.
Nevertheless, the difference between Ana’s political engagement in her lifetime and that of almost anyone I know from a similar generation in the UK is evident. For Ana, and everyone who lived through that time, politics was something real, its implications tangible. To take a political standpoint was non-negotiable, even if that standpoint manifested itself as a refusal to get involved. The shadow of the struggle she lived through, despite its lengthening, is still there, shaping her attitude towards the society she inhabits in a way that our political convictions barely seem to.
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