Friday, January 16, 2015

Argentina



The land of Jorge Luis Borges, which is worth 10 marks on its own on the "For" side. 

The land of Juan Peron and General Galtiere, the land to which more senior Nazis escaped than any other, the land of Carlos Menem’s bankrupt economic strategy and the wars over Las Malvinas – all of which remove the marks scored by Borges and may even leave a deficit. 

And then there are the Desaparecidos, the "disappeared" or "vanished ones", about which there is no need for me to write; I simply encourage you to go to "The Vanished Gallery", the most comprehensive encyclopaedia available of this particular human calumny.

In the last few years, under Nestor Kirchner and then his wife Cristina Fernandez, economic and social stability have returned, and no sign of the generals. And it isn’t just Borges, but also three Nobel Prize laureates for science (you’ve never heard of any of them unless you’re an Argentine, but they are Bernardo Houssay, who worked out how pituitary hormones can regulate glucose in animals, with obvious human potentials by consequence; César Milstein for his work on antibodies; and Luis Leloir for discovering how organisms store energy by converting glucose into glycogen.) The first artificial heart implanted in a human being was also developed in Argentina, and the techniques of coronary bypass surgery were developed there. Add Osvaldo Ardiles, but minus him because of Maradona, and marks are awarded accordingly. Plus one extra mark for Buenos Aires, not just for being a sophisticatedly cultured European capital that just happens not to be in Europe, but for being able to produce houses that make parrots and toucans look like ravens.

 




Marks For: 6 

Marks Against: 8



Copyright © 2015 David Prashker
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The Argaman Press


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