The Cathedrals of South America

While in South America this month, I first visited the main cathedral in Santiago, Chile, and then I saw the main cathedral in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They were both highly lovely. And they both featured a multitude of paintings, murals and statues that glorified the strong physical and emotional bond that exists between adults and children. There were many statues depicting St. Mary nurturing and protecting the baby Jesus. Then there was St. Christopher, helping the young Jesus to safely cross a river. And of course there was St. Anthony. And I forget who all else. In the Buenos Aires cathedral especially, almost every icon there emphasized and illuminated the loving and protective nature of this strong protective adult-child bond.

There was also a bunch of artwork portraying the protective and nurturing bond that is supposed to exist between God the Son and all the rest of us poor lost sheep, God’s children.

The artwork in both churches made this very meaningful, holy and protective relationship absolutely jump out at me. “Adults are SUPPOSED to protect and nurture children,” these statues practically screamed. “There is a sacred and profound nature that exists within the parent-child bond.”

And face it, guys. The archetype of a benevolent god is based on the protective nature of adults toward children.

I bet that you know what is coming up next, right? The world’s adults today are NOT doing a good job of protecting their children. Napalm, white phosphorus, drones, Shock and Awe, child pornography, “spare the rod and spoil the child,” child prostitution, child slavery, child molestation, children soldiers, you name it. “How could ANYONE stoop so low as to hurt a child?” you might ask. And yet children’s trust in their adult protectors is violated daily and routinely at least a million times a day. Nothing justifies that. End of lecture.

Another thing about Chile and Argentina that almost blew my mind is that both countries used to be democracies and then both countries were seized by brutal dictatorships — dictatorships that involved torture, death squads, disappearances, concentration camps, assassinations and all that other messy stuff. Full-out dictatorships. No holds barred. CIA advisors in the background. Knocks on the door at midnight. Krystallnachts. Cattle prods. The whole nine yards.

And yet today both Chile and Argentina are democracies again. Go figure. It gives one pause. Perhaps this means that if the USA is ever taken over by dictators too, then we too might be able to find our way back. And I’m even going to go out on a limb here and suggest that had America and Britain not battled Hitler to the teeth, then sooner or later the German people would have given him the boot too. Look what happened in the Soviet Union. Eventually people do tend to speak up.

Maybe there is hope for the human race yet.

And maybe, just maybe, adults and governments will finally stop creating “collateral damage” that involves barbecuing babies — like what has happened or is still happening in places like Auschwitz, Rwanda, Baghdad and Gaza.

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I just got some interesting information regarding Eva Peron from someone named Ivan Guarneti, stuff that I didn’t know. Apparently Eva was one of the first people to do battle with the IMF, among other things:

Unfortunately [many people] keep repeating all the arguments, word by word, that the Argentine oligarchy used between 1954-1983 to destroy my country and to commit the second genocide in our history, after the one perpetrated against our native nations. Juan Peron won free and democratic elections three times in Argentina. During none of those three times were there any claims of fraud, not even from the vicious pro-American opposition.

During his second presidency, Peron was kicked out of office by a military coup supported by the IMF and Washington.
The government which took office after mass-murdering unarmed civilians in Plaza de Mayo by bombing them from the air, went on to install firing squads as the new justice system — to such a point, that the popular imaginary named this new government la “Revolucion Fusiladora” (the way we all remember it nowadays) by twisting the self-denomination of “Revolucion Libertadora” given by the oligarchy.

They got Argentina immediately into signing agreements with the IMF (which Peron rejected in the 1950s) and into privitizing (of course, to American and British companies) the new exploration for oil fields. The process of murdering, torturing and encarcerating poltical opponents opened in June 1955, a few months after the bombing of Plaza de Mayo, and only ended in October 1983, after the whole country’s industrial base and a whole generation had been destroyed and disappeared.

Peron wasn’t either a socialist revolutionary, or a convinced democrat, nor a fascist, much less a dictator. Peron was an extremly ecclectic and pragmatic leader who saw an amazing opportunity to industrialize a rich but semi-feudal country. He was a man who understood that only the working class goes all the way although unfortunatly, himself didn’t want to go all the way.
Argentine women were able to vote for the first time because Peron and Evita legalized the female vote after Peron took office.
Millions of argentine workers bought the first homes in generations thanks to the Peron-Evita credit policies of buy today, pay when you can (if you ever can), no interest at all.

Workers for the first time in the history of Argentina had the right to eight-hour days, vacations, free health care for all, high salaries, and the right to free education for all, from elementary school all the way to university, Masters Degrees and PHDs — without paying a penny.

In only a decade, Argentina went froma stuck in the middle ages to having a home-grown aero-space industry, automobile industry, shipyards, oil industry, biochemistry industry, railways and highways all across the country, hopitals, schools, universities, etc, etc. And the same thing happened in culture and the arts: film, theatre, radio plays, literature, etc, (also sports). They all flourished during the late 40s.

Last, Argentine workers of that era had a very similar standard of life to the American workers, and way above European workers. No other country in Latin America to this day has ever built an equal-opportunity society with such levels of high salaries, such a volume of unionization and workers qualification and education as was had in Argentina of late 40s an early 50s.

That was the reason that Argentina got almost 30 years of “on and off” dictatorship between 1955-1983. The West (USA and Europe) needed to destroy the Argentine industrial base and the unionization of its working class — in order to integrate Argentina into their “International Division of Labor” design. Back then, there was no room in the world for an industrialized Latin American country.