Argentina, 1985: A Film Where Progressives Triumph
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (popularly often called Lula) comes to the White House today (10 February). His victory last year in the presidential election over the far-right Jair Bolsonaro was, in Latin America’s largest country, a great victory for progressive forces. Thus, it seems an appropriate time to comment on the Golden Globe’s choice for last year’s best foreign language film, Argentina, 1985.
It too is a story of progressive triumph—the victory of chief prosecutor Julio Strassera and his young assistants in a 1985 courtroom battle to convict previous leaders of a right-wing military government that kidnapped, tortured, and sometimes killed suspected dissidents. (In the late 1970s and early 1980s, neighboring Brazil and Chile also were ruled by similar right-wing military dictatorships).
All three regimes waged what the Argentinian military government labeled a “dirty war” against domestic opponents, often considered socialists, communists, or leftist sympathizers. At one point in the film Luis, an assistant to chief prosecutor Julio Strassera (more about both men a little later), talks about the middle class’ tendency to justify military coups. And he has a point. One factor helping extreme right-wing forces, whether of the military or not, come to power is the fear of many middle and upper class people of communism or socialism. Such fear helped Mussolini achieve power in Italy in the early 1920s, Hitler in Germany in the early 1930s, and the Greek right-wing military dictatorship of the late 1960s and early 1970s (so powerfully depicted in the film Z).
A similar fear of communism also affected U. S. foreign policy in the Cold-War era. In 2020 an article in the Manchester Guardian declared, “During the 1970s and 80s, eight US-backed military dictatorships [in South America] jointly plotted the cross-border kidnap, torture, rape and murder of hundreds of their political opponents.” This joint program was known as “Operation Condor,” and in Argentina military, police, and right-wing death squads like the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA) unleashed right-wing terror, which included seizing suspected citizens, torturing them, and making some just “disappear.”
A good part of the Guardian article and of Argentina, 1985 relates some of the stories of those seized and tortured. In the film it is usually via courtroom testimony. Take, for example, that of Adriana, a woman in her forties. She testified despite having received numerous death threats.
Here is part of what she told the court: “On the 4th of February, 1977, while at home, I was abducted…I was six and a half months pregnant…They tortured me despite of my condition, they kept me a prisoner for months…On April the 15th I went into labor… I was lying down in the car, blindfolded and with my hands tied behind my back. They insulted me, I told them my child was coming, that I couldn't hold it any longer. I told them to stop…the driver and the one next to him kept laughing… I screamed: 'It's coming, I can't wait anymore'…She [the newborn] was hanging from the umbilical chord. She fell off the seat; she ended up on the car floor. I asked them to please give her to me…My hands were still tied behind my back, and I was blindfolded. They didn't want to give her to me.” (Direct quotes from the film are taken from the screenplay, which may vary slightly, but not substantially, from the film’s English subtitles.)
Public reaction to this 1985 testimony is interesting. That of the mother of Luis is especially so. When the young, upper-class Luis first took the job of assisting chief prosecutor Julio Strassera, she was against it. As Luis tells Julio, he comes from a military family, his uncle is a colonel. His mother goes to church every Sunday at the same church as Jorge Rafael Videla, the former Commander in Chief of the Army and de facto president of Argentina from 1976 to 1981. The mother considers Videla a “good man who did the right thing,”—“surely they [those arrested] did something.”
But after hearing Adriana’s testimony on the radio, Luis’s mom says, “How can someone be so cruel? Showing no mercy to a pregnant woman…making her suffer so much…Not caring even about a baby. Dreadful, honestly…I know I told you ugly things. It's not easy for someone who has her own ideas to see her son doing things she strongly disagrees about…[But] it's the way I've always thought. Because of my education, my religion, the people I know…because I've always respected the Army…But now…I think you're right.”
Part of the time Luis is talking, his boss, Julio, is listening (openly) on an extension. Julio is played by the great Argentinian actor (and also film director and producer) Ricardo Alberto Darín, who I have often seen in other films, most recently in Everybody Knows (2018), still available on Netflix.
Late in the film, in the midst of the trial, Julio’s wife (Silvia) tells him that some people are saying he is a “national hero.” But earlier when first told that he was to prosecute former military government ministers and Silvia asked him what made made him afraid to take on the task, he replied, “Everything.” Some of the military regime’s opponents like the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (more on them later) also thought that as national prosecutor in the late 1970s he should have opposed the junta’s oppressive policies.
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Besides Silvia, who encourages Julio to prosecute the former officials, we also see him interacting with their teen-age daughter and younger son. Both Julio and other members of his family, plus many of his witnesses receive threats if they help to prosecute the former military junta.
Balancing the somewhat cautious and methodical approach of the late-middle-age Julio to this major trial is the youthful exuberance of all the assistants he recruits. There are about eight of them, both young men and women. One scene in particular demonstrates their youthful energy. After several months of work, they approach Julio with a wheelbarrow full of files and paperwork. Luis says to him, “Mr. Prosecutor, here is your evidence: 16 volumes, 4000 pages, 709 cases, more than 800 witnesses.”
As the group walks through the hallways of the Palace of Justice, it encounters some of the attorneys who will defend the former military rulers. One of them makes snide remarks about the inexperienced look of Julio’s assistants, to which the prosecutor answers, “You don't need to worry about the young age of my staff, but the eloquence of the evidence these young people have gathered.”
While the film testifies to the power and energy of youthful idealism—and young idealists should love it—it also highlights the great contribution of women. We have already witnessed the riveting testimony of Adriana, who delivered a baby after being seized by thugs supporting the military government. There were also other women that testified. And we have also seen Silvia’s encouragement of Julio to prosecute the former junta.
In addition there are several appearances of a few of the “Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.” The first is when some of Julio’s team goes to their offices seeking material and one of the “mothers” says, “we will provide you with all the information we have,” and help you contact the people. The second is at the trial when the “mothers” attending were asked to remove their white headscarves, which symbolized their protest against the “disappearance” of their children. Although the mothers complied with the court’s request, near the end of the film, after prosecutor Julio’s closing argument, they put them back on.
Although the film assumes some knowledge of the “mothers’” history, regarding most U.S. viewers this may be an unwarranted assumption. Thus, a few specifics may be helpful. The group of mothers, who feared the military government bore responsibility for the seizure of their grown children for opposing junta policies, began wearing the headscarves (actually converted diapers) in 1977 as part of their protest. The government considered the mothers subversive, and had one of their founders and several other sympathetic women killed in December 1977. Nevertheless, they continued their protests, and in 1985—and long afterwards—sought to hold the junta responsible for their deadly actions.
In 2018 Pope Francis, himself a Jesuit priest in his native Argentina in the late 1970s, praised the “mothers,” claiming that they “fought for justice and they have taught us the way forward.” While some Catholic clergy supported the junta, others opposed it, and whether Father Jorge Bergoglio (later Pope Francis) did enough to help victims of the regime continues to be debated.
Julio’s closing argument against the military junta is one of the film’s most dramatic scenes, and consumes about 10 minutes screen time. He tells the court that the military junta kidnapped, tortured, and killed people “outside the legal system,” in what he labeled the “greatest genocide” in Argentina's history. He asks, “How many of the victims of repression were guilty of illegal activities? How many were innocent?” His answer is, “We will never know…When due process was eliminated, a true juridical subversion took its place: official reports were replaced by denunciations, questionings were replaced by torture…Slowly, almost in such way that we wouldn't notice, a machinery of horror unleashed its iniquity over the unaware and the innocent, amidst the disbelief of some, the complicity of others and the stupefaction of many.”
In conclusion, we might ask what this film set mainly in 1985 in Argentina has to say to us today, especially those of us in the USA. My answer would be that we should be wary of those who justify illegal behavior—like that of the military junta in Argentina—by claiming that such actions were justified in order to fight leftist subversives. From Mussolini’s Fascists to the present, extreme right-wing elements have used such excuses—think, for example, of 6 January 2021 and the Proud Boys.
Secondly, as Hannah Arendt pointed out in her essay “Truth and Politics” (1967), truth possesses a stubborn staying power that lies lack. “This is the reason that consistent lying, metaphorically speaking, pulls the ground from under our feet and provides no other ground on which to stand.” She mentions philosophers, scientists, artists, historians, judges, and reporters among those who often defend truth. In Argentina in 1985, it was prosecutor Julio Strassera, his young team of assistants, and brave women like Adriana and others who testified against the junta, as well as the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.
Finally, as I have argued before, progressive results require passion, patience, and persistence. And as Jesse Jackson used to suggest, “We need to keep hope alive.” Argentina, 1985 encourages us to do just that.
The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the Hollywood Progressive.
