ARGENTINA : A Prayer for Democracy

BUENOS AIRES â€”  THE RECOLETA CEMETERY, IN THE heart of Buenos Aires, is the Disneyland of Death. A maze of narrow streets connects a jumble of monstrously pompous romantic monuments erected to glorify the military and the oligarchy of Argentina. Angels, trumpets, spires: It is the hallelujah of kitsch. There are a few isolated, populist incursions into this necropolis: The graves of Eva Peron and the boxer Firpo.

But the loneliest mausoleum of all celebrates the failures of democracy in Argentina. There are inscribed the names of Leandro Alem, the Radical Civic Union victim of rigged elections in 1892; Hipolito Irigoyen, the popular but ineffective Radical swept from the presidency by the armed forces in 1930, and Arturo Illia, yet another Radical overthrown by the military in 1966.

Only Arturo Frondizi, the Radical expelled by the army in 1962, is absent from this roll call of Argentina’s collective frustrations. When La Recoleta was built, the blessings poured on this country seemed unique. An immensely rich land, an urban civilization and a highly literate, well-fed, homogenous population. What went wrong? Why couldn’t Argentina put its act together? Looking towards Europe, Argentina, the melting pot of South America, forgot that it was as Latin American as Colombia or Paraguay. The brilliant cosmopolitan facade of Buenos Aires hid the colonial structures prevalent in the interior.

Latin America’s oldest institutions are the army, the church and the Spanish imperial state. When we broke from Spain in 1821, the state went but the church and the army remained, constantly tempted to fill the vacuum of power left by weak national states and even weaker civil societies.

Latin America first tried to respond to this situation by creating viable national states. Whatever their differences, Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico (1934-1940), Getulio Vargas in Brazil (1930-1945) and Juan Peron in Argentina (1946-1955) had this purpose in common. But what Mexico and Brazil consolidated, Argentina dissipated: Material infrastructure and cultural identity. Nevertheless in all three nations (the largest in Latin America), education as well as demagogy, and economic development, no matter how unjustly managed, helped to create modern civil societies. These pluralistic middle forces are now demanding that laws and practice coincide for the first time in Latin America.

This is the urge that one feels so strongly in Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires these days. No wonder that the persistent dead weights of the past irritate us so much, and none more than the anachronistic actions of the military in Argentina. Discredited by their defeats in the Malvinas War and by their conduct of the “dirty war� against terrorism first, but then against the civilian population, the military in 1983 gave way to a civilian government headed by Raul Alfonsin on the Radical ticket. President Alfonsin did something that no one had done before in Latin America: He sent the big guns of the military repression to the dock and, when judged, off to serve time.

But the military not only served time; they marked time, and in April a series of army mutinies were triggered by one Maj. Ernesto Barreiro, fleeing from trial for crimes committed during the dirty war. Alfonsin responded courageously. Millions of men, women and children thronged the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, as well as the principal squares in the country, supporting democracy. Alfonsin flew from the Plaza de Mayo to the mutineers’ camp and was back before the awaiting crowds a few hours later, assuring them that the worst had been averted, arms had been laid down and rebel leaders jailed.

No one who lived through these events fails to express the sweeping emotion that they felt. Yet, as I met Alfonsin in his monastic office at Olivos earlier this month, it was difficult to associate this calm, rumpled, gracious man with emotionalism of any sort. Rather, the twinkle in his eyes seemed the outward greeting of a strong faith in freedom wedded to a foxy knowledge of men and politics.

Alfonsin is proud of his countrymen’s response to the military crisis. He is convinced that it is the expression of something new in Argentina, a strong civil society. So if he has now sent a controversial bill to Congress exempting from prosecution all officers under the rank of lieutenant colonel on grounds of “due obedience,� he can argue that he has done so from a position of strength granted to him by the society as a whole.

He has admitted “disliking� the idea that the material authors of great crimes should go free; but insists, as he has done since his presidential campaign, that it is those who conceived the plan for repression and then ordered its execution who should be held primarily responsible. Alfonsin has personally sent the law to Congress because he hopes that it will help to pacify the country for good, and wants to be held responsible for its success or failure.

His opposition complains that it all smacks too much of a concession, that the Barbies are as guilty as the Hitlers and that the armed forces, far from being placated by Alfonsin’s good will, will only feel authorized to demand more and more. The president again answers that the military’s “Praetorian messianism� arose from a social vacuum that exists no longer. A strong united society can get on with its work, reconciling the armed forces with society, modernizing the military and changing the military’s own conception of its role in society.

Is this only wishful thinking, or part of a cagier strategy on the part of the president? Let me answer the question this way. Alfonsin wants to get on with his urgent program for the modernization of Argentina. Burdened by a $53-billion foreign debt, Argentina must develop its rapidly aging infrastructure, close its technological gap and undo the damage of its brain drain during the military dictatorship; it must overcome protectionist barriers to trade, extend education and social services and promote closer economic integration with Brazil, Uruguay and Mexico, as demonstrated last week when the 1,000-mile Mexican-Argentinian “gasoduct� from the Andes to Buenos Aires was inaugurated.

Along with its president, Argentina is impatient to recover its health and enter the 21st Century without the burdens of the past. This is evident in plays, films, books, journalism and even in wildly exuberant burlesques such as Enrique Pinti’s immensely successful “Salsa Criolla� review. The country now has the ablest president it has had in this century, and knows it. It also has an anachronistic armed force more in need of modernization than the battered telephone system or the dim public lighting in Buenos Aires.

Every time the army staged a coup before, it counted on some measure of public support. Today, no one in Argentine society will follow a military leader. The military know this. They can stage a coup and perhaps win, but they will have no support and thus will not be able to govern at all. The Emperor Montezuma in his theocratic labyrinth or Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness� thought they could rule over nothing; the military in Argentina do not. Alfonsin is offering them a way out of “the horror� and into a new, vital Argentine society.

A Dutch delegate to the annual meeting of the International Press Institute inaugurated by Alfonsin in May said to me after hearing the president: “This was not a speech, it was a prayer.� Alfonsin’s prayer for democracy in Argentina deserves full international support. Washington and London should remind themselves that Argentina, along with Brazil and Mexico, account for three-quarters of the population, the land mass and the resources of Latin America. The real problems are there, not in Central America or the South Atlantic. The excessive debt burden and difficult international situations do not help governments such as Alfonsin’s. Paris and Madrid seem to have understood this better, as signaled by the presence of both Madame Francois Mitterrand of France and Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Alfonso Guerra in Buenos Aires soon after the military crisis. Mikhail S. Gorbachev of the Soviet Union will soon follow suit.

During our talk, Alfonsin expressed his determination to end his mandate in the prescribed time and hand the sash of office to his elected successor. This has not occurred in Argentina for more than 50 years. If Alfonsin succeeds in establishing constitutional continuity, his name will be engraved in the living future and not among the past frustrations of Argentina.