INNOCENT ABROAD
By Rosa Jordan
The
Progressive, August
1989
Visually,
the
Argentine pampa is a lot like the American Middle West. Apart from
the province of Buenos Aires, where the occasional pink flamingo
mingles with cattle in rain-soaked fields, the land and sky seem
empty for mile after interminable mile. But travel is comfortable
because the bus is a Mercedes, staffed by smiling stewardesses who
constantly offer pillows, blankets, snacks, and “café,
te, o whiskee?”
Entering
the
province of San Luis, the bus passes under an arch decorated with a
picture of a gaucho
(cowboy) on horseback trampling an Indian underfoot. However, it had
taken some centuries for the gauchos to accomplish this. It is said
that when the conquistadors first came to claim the pampas, the
Indians ate them.
I
was making this
trip in September 1973, and it was meant to be a skiing vacation in
Chile. But when we arrived in Santiago, we had found closed shops,
gasoline stations guarded by men with machine guns, a scarcity of
food, and truck drivers on strike. A taxi driver told us that with US
dollars he could get enough gasoline to take us to the ski area of
Portillo; from there, he advised us, we should go on over the Andes
to Argentina.
Outside
Santiago we
passed trucks parked in the fields, circled in caravans. The taxi
driver slowed and we saw the festive atmosphere: steaks being
barbecued, wine flowing. No shortages here. “They used to work for
Chile,” said the driver. “Now they work for the CIA.”
Some
progressive
Americans must have known what was happening in Chile when it was
happening, but I didn’t. My companion and I were still focused on
Southeast Asia and knew only that a Marxist president had been
elected in Chile. We were interested to see how his brand of
socialism would work out in the context of their democracy, but for
the most part our attention was elsewhere. The Vietnam war was still
on. The Watergate affair was unfolding. This trip had been motivated
in part by a need to escape the barrage of political insanities
emanating from Washington.
Portillo’s
snow-covered
slopes were unparalleled for scenic beauty and skiing those spring
days. I would have loved to stay longer, soaking up its physical
magnificence and air of isolation. But the once-a-day train was no
longer bringing food. A coup, they said over fruit juice in the bar
(there was nothing else to drink), was imminent. So we took the train
to Argentina. After a few days on a ranch outside Buenos Aires, we
headed for San Carlos de Bariloche to ski the Argentine side of the
Andes.
The
bus driver made
an announcement I didn’t completely understand. We were discussing
it when an Argentine woman across the aisle addressed us in English.
“He said that dinner will be served at the next stop. It is
included in your fare.”
I fell
into conversation
with the woman, whose name was Maria Elena. She was also going to San
Carlos de Bariloche, but not to ski. She was an atomic physicist;
there was a research center there, she said, where she and her
husband worked. She asked where else we had traveled. We said we had
been in Chile and told her how things were.
She
looked angry,
frustrated. “It was so important to us to have a model of social
justice without revolution! We were hoping Allende could make it.”
“Are
you certain he will
lose the next election?” I asked.
“But
you were
there. You saw
how the CIA has undermined him!” Her low-piched voice shook.
“Allende will be dead within a week.”
I was
swept by a sudden
sense of shame. Back home I counted myself part of an articulate,
educated, politically-savvy elite. Yet here was a woman on a bus in
the middle of nowhere looking at me as if I were hopelessly (or
deliberately) ignorant. What did she think of the callousness of an
American who had chosen to go on a ski trip in a country where the
United States was engaged in the overthrow of a 187-year-old
democracy?
I
closed my eyes and let
the big Mercedes bus lull me to sleep.
By
morning we had
reached the edge of the pampas and were climbing into the mountains.
At last we reached Bariloche, an alpine village perched on the edge
of a lake, and climbed out, stiff-jointed from two days on the bus.
Maria
Elena’s husband
was there to meet her. She wrote down their address and invited us to
visit, but her husband’s eyes were cold. “Americans?” he said,
in a way that made me feel that he saw me as I had been seeing
myself: a tourist from a bullying nation, either callously
indifferent or incredibly ignorant.
“Thank
you,” I said to
Maria Elena, too embarrassed to accept the hospitality she offered.
We
skied the snows
of Bariloche in t-shirt-warm, September spring sunshine. Below us lay
deep, dazzling Lake Nahuel Huapi, in the center of which is a
forested island where the book Bambi
was written. Evenings we spent walking the streets of Bariloche, a
village as Swiss as the Swiss who had settled it, all wooden chalets
and shops selling chocolates and handmade sweaters. There was only
the flow of Spanish to remind us that this was Argentina.
Then
it rained and
that was the end of skiing. In the evening we caught another Mercedes
bus, northeast and back into the pampas.
I woke
up when we stopped
in a small town—an Indian reservation, judging by the faces and the
poverty. There was, incongruously, a larger-than-life statue of John
F. Kennedy.
A
boy came onto the
bus selling newspapers. He looked at the round-faced man across the
aisle, and then at me, and said, “Salvador
esta muerto.”
Because
I was sleepy, and
because “salvador” translates as “savior,” I didn’t quite
understand. “The Savior is dead?” I repeated in halting Spanish.
The
round-faced man, whose
features I had come to associate with Chileans more than Argentines,
looked directly at me, dark eyes wide, not blinking as a wash of
tears spilled over.
“Yes,”
the boy said in
Spanish. “The soldiers, or the Americans—they have killed him.”