ARGENTINA-
The Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winner, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, sent a letter to the North American President and Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obama, on the ocassion of his trip to Argentina on March 24, National Day of Memory for the truth and for Justice.
Underscoring his interest in the positive developments with reference to the reestablishment of dialogue and cooperation with Cuba, with the aid of Pope Francis, he also expressed concern about the intentions of the visit in Argentina: “You will be coming to my country on the same day of the 40th anniversary of the last genocidal dictatorship in Argentina, and on the 200th anniversary of our national independence. Certainly, you cannot deny that your country has many pending debts with our country and with many others.”
In his letter formally filed yesterday, the President of the Service for Peace and Justice reminded him that “in 1976, while you were only 14 years old, and your country was celebrating two centuries of independence, we were starting the most tragic period of our history, with the implementation of a state terrorism which subjected our people to prosecution, torture, death, and forced disappearance of persons in order to deny them their rights to freedom, independence and sovereignty”, adding, “I am writing as a survivor of this horror [which included]financing, training, and coordination by the United States.” And also reminding him that his collective struggle against Latin American dictatorships, was the reason he was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980 and assumed on behalf of the peoples of Latin America.
Referring to the letter that Barack Obama sent him in 2015, noted favorably compared to previous presidents, “unlike your predecessors, you have acknowledged that your country does violate human rights, and you mentioned your intention of ‘bringing that chapter of American history to an end’.”
In this sense, Pérez Esquivel conveyed that Obama will be welcome any day to Argentina if his intentions are to come to recognize that the US “was an accomplice of ‘coups d’état’ in this region, in the past and currently”, to announce that his country “will sign and ratify the Statute of Rome and be subject to the International Criminal Court; and to stop being the only American country which does not ratify the American Convention on Human Rights”, as well as announce the closing of the current School of the Americas (WHINSEC and ILEA), and the military bases the US has in Latin America.
But at the same time warned that most Argentines may understand his visit as a provocation if it is not to announce any repairs, and POTUS travels “with the intention of forcing Free Trade Agreements”, “endorsing the illegal claims of ‘vulture funds’” or “recommend the failed recipe of intervention by Armed Forces in matters of internal security fighting against drug trafficking.”
With clear reference to the meeting to be with the Argentine President, Mauricio Macri, Pérez Esquivel informed in his message that “is important for you to know that on day March 24, no president nor any leader represents the Argentine people, who, with all their diversity, are always representing themselves, through slogans and through peaceful demonstrations all over the streets and squares of the country.”
In this regard, he recalled the words of Pope Francis in the Meeting of Social Movements in Bolivia: “’the future of humanity is not only in the hands of the great leaders, of the great powers, and of the elites. It is mainly in the hands of the Peoples’. Therefore, if you choose not to postpone your visit for another date, you shall hear what the Argentine people has to say to the world.”