Argentina confronts its past. Can America do the same to its present?

By Mark Drolette

Something I noticed about Argentines while visiting Buenos Aires recently: they seem to have an almost unquenchable thirst for living. Maybe that’s because, a generation ago, successive governments deprived horrifying numbers of them life’s most basic right -- that of continuing it.

Beginning after the May 1969 civil uprising in Córdoba and lasting until 1983, an estimated 30,000 Argentines became desaparecidos, citizens “disappeared” by right-wing dictatorships that ruled Argentina with stinging cruelty. Of particular barbaric note were the “death flights” which entailed flinging Argentines from aircraft to plummet thousands of feet into the Atlantic Ocean or the Río de la Plata, the immense river abutting Buenos Aires.