Past & Present

I just had a nice visit with a woman who was an exchange student in East Germany. Here is an insightful essay from a man comparing his time in Hungary before the fall of the Soviet Union with the Hungary of today.

When I first visited, as an exchange student in January 1989, Budapest was the capital of Communist Hungary. And despite the moroseness that hung over the city like a cloud, it held a certain charm beneath layers of dirt and gloom. When I returned last month, a journalist on vacation, Budapest was Europe, as European as Paris or Barcelona, and as dazzling.

 

A massive U.N. sponsored digital library has come on line, according to the Washington Post. I haven’t taken the time to explore, but it looks terrific.

A campaign rally in 1983 for Raul Alfonsin attracted over a million.

The death last Tuesday of former president Raúl Alfonsín from lung cancer has provoked sincere and large-scale signs of grief. Although not as massive as when Evita Perón died in 1952, the public displays of mourning have included lines waiting to view the body of Mr. Alfonsín extending for 6 blocks.

Alexei Barrionuevo, the Latin American correspondent for the New York Times, reports that the reputation of Mr. Alfonsín has only grown since he left office in 1989. Barrionuevo writes:

He launched a truth commission to investigate the disappearance or outright killing of thousands of people during the dictatorship. He also set in motion investigations and trials that led to the jailing of military leaders and some leftists for crimes during the “dirty war” of the 1970s.

 

I have to think the nostalgia for that man’s term draws from the excitement of the times, when the country’s military dictatorship, and with it the infamous dirty war, were coming to an end.