Transcript
>> HINOJOSA: He is called the
hero of Argentine journalism.
As the editor of the Buenos
Aires Herald, during the Dirty
War of the '70s and '80s, he
risked his life to report the
kidnappings, torture, and murder
of thousands of Argentines by
the military government.
Award winning journalist Robert
Cox.
I'm Maria Hinojosa.
This is One on One.
Robert Cox, you were the editor
of the Buenos Aires Herald.
You are considered to be,
really, the person who saved so
many lives in Argentina during
the Dirty War.
Thank you so much for joining us
on our program.
>> COX: Thank you for inviting me
here.
>> HINOJOSA: When you hear that,
though, when people say, "You
know what?
You and your work as a
journalist saved not one or two
or dozens-- maybe hundreds of
lives during the Dirty War,"
how does that sit with you?
>> COX: Difficult to deal with, but
at the same time a satisfying
thing, because that's what I
realized that our journalism was
doing.
It was saving lives.
That's why it was so important
to us.
And to go back now, as I have
been able to go back, and to
live in Argentina or living
there for several months a year,
and to find people who stop me
in the the street and thank me,
and to meet people who were held
in this terrible ESMA, this
awful torture and killing--
how would you call it?--
in the center of Buenos Aires...
>> HINOJOSA: Which is one of the
most extraordinary develop...
And that's one of the things
that, as I was reading for this
interview, you know, you think
of World War II and it was like,
well, that was perhaps a long
time ago.
What happened in Argentina was
happening in the 1970s,
literally historically right
around the corner.
And it's like, "Oh my god, how
could they be torturing, killing
disappearing, people?"
I mean, did you kind of realize
everything that was happening?
>> COX: Yes.
>> HINOJOSA: You did?
>> COX: Not everything, it was
impossible to know everything,
but I was fortunate in that they
arrested me.
Unfortunately for them,
fortunately for me, I wasn't
taken to one of the places where
I would have been tortured
routinely, an appalling torture,
and killed.
But they took me to what was
then the police headquarters, an
annex of the police
headquarters, and I had a chance
to be taken inside, and I saw
their sign.
When I was taken in, stripped,
taken in, the first thing you
see is a huge swastika, enormous
swastika, covering a whole wall.
And there was Nazi nacionalismo.
>> HINOJOSA: What year are we
talking about, when you were
arrested?
>> COX: That was in '78.
>> HINOJOSA: So 1978, in the
capital of Argentina, you know,
an advanced, modernized country,
and in the police headquarters,
you have a swastika and Nazi
nacionalismo.
>> COX: Yes, exactly.
>> HINOJOSA: And you actually
went to the president at that
point.
>> COX: I went to ask to see the
president, and I said he should
go there with a bucket of
whitewash and whitewash that
wall.
If he didn't... well, I
said, "What would you imagine,
how a Jew would feel if he was
taken there, somebody who was
Jewish was taken there and sees
that?
>> HINOJOSA: And what did
he say?
>> COX: Well, he didn't see me that
time.
I saw him on two other
occasions, but that time his
press man, who was a Navy
captain, a high-ranking Naval
officer, just laughed and said,
"He won't do that."
And of course he didn't.
And that was really the problem,
he was a coward.
If he hadn't been a coward, he
could have stopped it.
He could have stopped it.
>> HINOJOSA: This is a time of
military dictatorship in a
country that knew democracy, and
in that time about 30,000 people
disappeared.
Desaparecidos.
And you were living, at that
moment, as a journalist.
What made you, basically, not be
fearful in saying, "This is what
is happening in Argentina,
there is a Dirty War, and this
military government is
disappearing people"?
What made you be able to say
that without fear?
>> COX: Well, I had to find out, to
begin with.
So, I was fortunate.
First of all, I had owners who
were in the United States.
The newspaper, by one of those
strange... was purchased by
the United States.
And they just said, "You do your
job."
And I went up to... the
president of the company said I
could decide to do what needed
to be done, so I became a
reporter again.
I wasn't known at that
time.
The newspaper was not
well-known.
It was a small community
newspaper for the English
speaking...
>> HINOJOSA: And you
were just hearing these stories,
you were hearing stories of...
>> COX: Well, I worked as a
correspondent, too, and so I met
people.
People were so desperate, they
were trying to find somebody who
would help them.
All they wanted to know was,
"Where have they taken my son,
my daughter, my husband, my
wife?"
>> HINOJOSA: But the
government had said, the
military dictatorship had said,
these people were "terrorists"
and therefore they were not
someone's...
>> COX: No, they didn't even do that.
There were just nonpeople.
They were just people who were
taken away at 3:00 in the
morning.
They were taken away in vans.
I remember the Swedish
ambassador said to me, "It's
just like the Soviet Union."
They were taken... there they
were taken away in bread vans,
and here it was a very similar
type of van.
So they were taken to these
places where they were routinely
barbarously tortured, I mean,
obscenely tortured.
I hear things now.
I learned this bit by bit,
parcel by parcel, you know,
the discovery that where the...
you know, this place that
looked like a garage was in fact
a secret prison and a secret
torture chamber.
That this very handsome,
beautiful building in the center
of Buenos Aires, close to the
major football statium in the
middle of what is Buenos Aires'
equivalent of the Bois de
Boulogne, the beautiful Palermo
Gardens, is this horrific place
where they practice mind
control, where they try to...
and where they systematically
murdered people by taking them
away after they had decided that
they were going to kill them.
There was no trial or anything
like that.
And they were taken off in
planes or in helicopters, and
they were doped, stripped, and
thrown into the sea.
>> HINOJOSA: So explain... take
us for a second, Robert, into
Argentina, you know, 1975,
1976, for example.
What... everything looked
normal, right?
But...
>> COX: Well, no, it wasn't normal.
We could tell that things were
building up.
We actually published the
numbers of deaths every so often
on the front page.
It was aware there was a kind
of underground civil war going
on.
>> HINOJOSA: Did people call
it that, though?
>> COX: No, they didn't.
>> HINOJOSA: These terms that,
now that we can use, that you
can use.
>> COX: You had a moment of enormous
exhortation on the part of young
people, and it was partly, you
know, the youth revolution that
erupted in Paris and in the
United States, and a lot of
idealistic young people.
And in Argentina, thousands of
them were led to their deaths by
people who were very, very
determined to take over the
government if they could.
I don't think there was any
chance of that ever happening,
but the military were able to
terrify people so much.
Terrorism does terrible things
to people-- it stops them
thinking.
>> HINOJOSA: Fear does a lot,
right?
>> COX: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I'm going back next month to
give evidence in the trial of
the people at ESMA, which is
this terrible torture chamber.
And in this case, it's because
of two French nuns that were
kidnapped, taken away.
Because we managed to raise an
outrcy about it, the Navy tried
to pretend that they had been
kidnapped by the terrorists, and
they staged a photograph,
which...
The nuns managed... in bad
French, managed to get the
news out that they were, in
fact, kidnapped by the Navy.
And I'm going back to give
evidence in that case.
The problem at that particular
time was that, you know, we knew
what was happening, but we had
to be able to put it in the
paper in a way that the military
couldn't quite say, and use it
as an excuse to close us down or
something like that.
That was the difficult part of
it.
>> HINOJOSA: So you're in
Argentina, you're a journalist
who's basically been trained in
the British school, and suddenly
you have a military government
that is basically saying what
you can and can't write.
And as a journalist you're
saying... you know, there were
many journalists who said,
"Okay, well, that's the rule,
the law of the government."
What did you say?
>> COX: We said to them, when they
called us up and said that from
now on you're not allowed to
report what is being found in
the street, you're not allowed
to report people missing,
you're not allowed to report any
gun battles, we said, "Well,
put it in writing for us."
They sent it to us in writing,
but with no signature or
anything like that.
So we decided that we would go
ahead and report as much as we
could, because nobody else was
doing it.
That was one of the reasons.
It was so important.
From the very start, one
realized the most terrible
things were happening there, and
the Argentine people were not
being informed about it.
And so this small newspaper,
tiny English community
newspaper, English language
community, with lots of
international readers and lots
of Argentine readers, and the
newspaper had a reputation for
telling the truth... they still
say it in Argentina.
They say it's the newspaper
that reports in English
what the other newspapers cover
up in Spanish.
So there was a realization that
this was a tradition that we
were continuing.
And so I went out to become a
reporter again, to find out what
was going... what was actually
happening.
I couldn't send anybody out to
do it.
So I'd go to the funerals.
And my wife came with me.
When we went, we heard things
like that they're burning
bodies at night.
>> HINOJOSA: Oh, you have a
chilling story about that.
There were rumors, as these
things go, that they were
burning bodies at night.
And you did what a good reporter
does, right?
>> COX: My wife came with me, and she
looks back now and she said,
"How could I have done it?
Because I left the children."
You know, she didn't leave the
children, because there was
somebody else in the house too,
but she was with me on this.
It was... you know, it was just
an extraordinary situation to be
in, but it was so important,
because more and more one
realized that if we could get
into the newspaper that somebody
had been taken away at 3:00 in
the morning or something, if we
could get the name in and
if we could establish a
connection that would embarrass
the goverment, that they'd...
you know, they'd gone to school
in New York or something like
that or they'd gone to France or
something like that, that very
thing could save a life.
One would meet the people
afterwards and they wouldn't
dare say anything about it at
that time, but now I can talk to
people about it.
>> HINOJOSA: Did you feel...
when you were making these
decisions to put this in your
newspaper, did you feel at every
turn, "I am making an
important, historical decison
at this moment?"
Or did you just say, "You know
what?
I have a newspaper to run, and
these things are happening, and
I just need to put the
facts out there"?
>> COX: No, I said to myself, "I've
I've got to do my job.
I've got to pretend that
everything is normal."
I didn't keep notes, I reported
what I reported, I tried to
think of as many ways as
possible of getting the truth
out, and also, really, giving
lectures to the military about
what they were doing, and
saying to them, "You can't treat
these wonderfully courageous
women"... and I often wonder
what would have happened if they
hadn't come forward.
You know, the maternal instinct,
I saw this maternal instinct.
They said, "We want to know
where our children are, that's
all we're asking.
Where are they?"
And so I would argue with the
generals about that.
I said, "You're going to lose
against them."
I mean, trying to, you know,
get them to see what they were
up to.
>> HINOJOSA: It was really
extraordinary that you
would actually... because
it's as if you had the highest
beliefs of the military.
That if you said, "Look, people
are worried, they're pointing
their fingers at you," that they
would do the right thing.
It's like you believed that they
would do the right thing.
>> COX: I did, to begin with, because
there had been, you know,
military crews in Argentina from
1930 onwards, and I'd lived in
Argentina since 1959, and I saw
32 attempted coups against
Frondizi, who was finally thrown
out, I think on the 33rd.
Many, many coups.
And the military were looked
upon... there was... you know, I
hesitate to say that to you who
were born in Mexico, but they
would say, you know, an
Argentine revolution is less
violent than a Mexican wedding.
That's what Argentines said to
each other.
Now, at the same time, things
were happening all that time.
There was a really terrible
threat of terrorism.
I mean, there were bombs every
day, there were kidnappings,
there were assassinations.
>> HINOJOSA: And there was
violence from... when you read
about this, it's like, oh my
god, you didn't know if it was
because you were despised and
you were labeled.
>> COX: I was the voice of
imperialism at that time.
>> HINOJOSA: You were seen from
the left and from the right as
somebody who was really an
enemy.
>> COX: Yeah, then I became a
communist, you know, a dangerous
communist.
But, you know, what I take out
of this is the importance of
journalism.
You can't imagine what it's like
to live in a country where
people are not being told what's
happening, because the military,
do you see, could control
television, they could control
radio.
They couldn't control the
newspapers, but the major
newspapers, with some
exceptions, decided to go along
with the military.
And in some cases, to the very
end, believing that what the
military was doing was right.
>> HINOJOSA: This is a term
that, I think now more people in
the United States have come to
understand.
Desaparecidos, the Disappeared.
Tell us what happened, because
you lived through this when all
of a sudden, in your offices of
a newspaper, people are then
showing up.
What happened, what did it look
like?
>> COX: Well, the first thing that
happened was, I didn't realize
to begin with that the
desaparecido, the idea of
disappearing people, I mean,
making them nonpeople, killing
them and then disposing their
body in such a way that they
would no longer exist, taking
away their very existence, their
independ... I didn't realize
that until I... by then I'd
become important in Argentina.
I was no longer a little fly
that you could squash.
You know, I was a bigger fly.
And for some reason or other,
Videla, who was a...
>> HINOJOSA: The president.
>> COX: The president, the dictator.
He was a very shy man, and to
begin with people loved him.
They called him the Pantera
Rosa, you know, the Pink
Panther, because he was a funny,
sort of... you know, like that,
very military, his way.
And for some reason or other, he
invited me, with just three
other journalists, to talk to
him.
Like we're talking now, in an
annex, not in a big office or
anything like that.
We talked, it was very pleasant,
and he wore a civilian suit, and
he was very pleasant, very nice.
And I sat there, and these other
people asked questions, and I
thought, "I just can't go on
anymore."
I said, "But President Videla,
people are still disappearing!"
With that, he changed.
He was furious.
And then, unfortunately, a
most... you know, an admired
journalist broke in and said,
"Well, you have to realize, like
Julius Caesar, there are times
when there are things that you
have to do that you have to do
and you can't talk about them."
So from that moment on, I
realized that this was... it was
a policy of disappearing.
So what we were trying to do was
to break the silence about it,
because people denied it.
I had people who came down from
the United States, people who'd
been living... Argentines who'd
been living abroad.
They'd come to me and say, "I
went to Plaza de Mayo."
And this is true.
It sounds impossible, but
you're in a mad situation in
Argentina at that time.
He said, "Well, I went to the
square, the Plaza de Mayo, and I
asked a policeman, 'Where are
the Madres de Plaza de Mayo?'"
They called them then the locas,
the mad women.
>> HINOJOSA: The crazy women.
>> COX: And he said, "And the
policeman told me there's no
such thing."
He said, "Why are you
publishing all this stuff?"
And we had, you know, readers
who stopped their subscription.
At the same time we built up a
readership of people who
realized that we were the only
newspaper that was consistently
doing its upmost to warn, first
of all, the military that what
they were doing was just
absolutely unacceptable from
every point of view, because
they never thought for a moment
of putting people on trial.
Only recently did I discover
that they never even worked out
exactly what they were going to
do, because they hadn't worked
it out, they just thought you
could dispose of people.
And one of their civilian
advisers told me, "Well, what
you do with terrorists"--
because the word "terrorists,"
they became nonpeople, everybody
became a terrorist who was
opposed to the government--
"What you do with them is,
they're like stones-- you pick
them up and you drop them into a
bottomless well."
It's unbelievable now to believe
that people could think like
that, but very educated people
did think like that, except
of course I now know why
what happened in Germany
happened, because I lived
through a very similar situation
in Argentina.
>> HINOJOSA: And what is it?
I mean, is it that people,
decent, educated people, put
blinders on?
We don't want to see?
>> COX: Yes, exactly that.
Exactly that.
They refuse to see what they
don't want to see.
And if you don't have
newspapers, if you don't have
the media telling you it's
happened, you can believe it's
not happening, even if you see
it with your own eyes.
>> HINOJOSA: What do you think
gave rise to the fact that all
of this could happen?
Was it fear of the other?
Was it the fact that there
seemed to be chaos?
And I'm just wondering, as
you... because now you live here
in this country.
And with all of this
perspective, what kind of stays
with you?
I mean, all of your stories have
stayed with me in a way that is
quite profound, just preparing
for this interview.
But again, you lived through it.
So as somebody who is watching
the world, are there things that
are happening that you're just
saying, "Oh my god," you
know, "This surgence,
resurgence of intolerance, this
language of fear, the language
of war and terrorists"...
>> COX: Yes, very much so.
I mean, one suffers with it.
But at the same time, there is
such a difference.
And I do say this through
Argentine eyes.
In Argentina at that time,
nobody dare talked about it, or
nobody wanted to talk about it,
because there were people who
really believed it doesn't
matter what the military do,
it has to be done.
And they... people were
frightened, and they had every
reason to be frightened, and
also military propaganda was
turning, you know, pretty bad
people into absolute monsters.
And of course, later on, the
funny thing is-- well, it's not
funny, it's just pathetic,
horrific-- that the people who
set out to deal with the
monstrosity of terrorism from
the left became themselves
monsters, tremendous monsters,
who decided that they could
decide who lived and died.
>> HINOJOSA: You know, the use
of the word "courage"... and
people say you were so
courageous in speaking out.
Did you realize... you know, was
every day for you, "I'm going to
do a courageous act," or where
did you find that ability to do
what you had to do?
>> COX: No, I just decided I had to
do my job, unfortunately.
>> HINOJOSA: But you were
afraid, no?
Your family was afraid.
>> COX: Yeah, I was afraid, but I got
over it.
I mean, and this sounds crazy,
because people never believe me,
but it's absolutely true.
I went out every day expecting
to be killed.
And when I got back in the
evening and I wasn't, it was
fine.
And then I went out the next day
expecting to be killed.
And I lived a completely normal
life.
>> HINOJOSA: Did your wife know
this, that you basically were
walking out thinking that you
could be killed?
>> COX: Yeah, I think she did, but
she... it was difficult, because
it wasn't until she herself was
about to be kidnapped that she
realized quite how dangerous...
I think we both made the same
decision that we've got to go
on living... her point
of view was, we look
after the children, we don't let
them know too... that was
why when we got this
threatening letter to my
11-year-old son, it was such a
traumatic thing.
Because we always kept
everything... we lived normal
lives.
I took the bus to work.
They would follow me, like in a
Hitchcock film, and I could
laugh, and my wife could laugh,
and we decided we were going to
live a normal life.
We're going to do this.
Friends deserted us.
We'd see friends and they'd
cross to the other side of the
road.
So everybody kind of knew what
was happening, because you could
see it in the streets.
These thugs would go through the
streets, you know, smashing cars
with the butts of their machine
guns, and then you'd see people
being lifted up from the
streets.
But people managed not to
believe it because they didn't
see it in the newspapers.
Of course, they didn't see it on
television either.
And when you have, you know,
when a government is in power in
that way, they ordered up
documentaries from one of the
people who provide television,
of violence throughout the
world, and they showed those on
the... there was just, you know,
one major channel and it was run
by the military at that time.
And so the idea was to give the
impression that Argentina was an
oasis of tranquility in the
world, in this world, terrible
world that was full of violence.
>> HINOJOSA: Even today in
Argentina, there are people who
don't want to talk about this,
don't want to label it "The
Dirty War," don't want to talk
about torture and desaparecidos,
disappeared.
And you have other people who...
they're still looking for their
children.
So can Argentina heal, in fact?
>> COX: Yes, I think it can.
I think that countries come out
of these appalling situaions,
like Germany, but it takes so
long.
We're now 30 years away from,
you know, the end of... well,
the start of the horror.
It took Germany much longer
than that to come to
terms with it, and Argentina's
now coming to terms with it
because the military are
being put on trial, the people
who ordered this to happen.
And what is horrifying is that
these people still will not
admit what they did.
They still argue as if they were
fighting...
>> HINOJOSA: A just war.
>> COX: A just war, yes, they
actually say that.
A war for Christianity.
The other problem is
anti-communism.
You know, this was... they
believed they were fighting the
third World War against
communism.
And they did not know
themselves, I believe, that they
were Nazis.
The other problem, too...
the Argentine military was
trained by the Germans,
traditionally so.
And so they had this Nazi
mentality and they used Nazi
methods.
>> HINOJOSA: In the year 1976,
'77, '78.
That's pretty horrifying.
>> COX: It's horrifying to know that
it can happen all over again,
that it happened in... Argentina
is a country that is very
similar to the United States
in its... it's an
immigrant country,
there's every nationality in
Argentina, people get on well,
pretty well, and this happened.
And it means it can happen
anywhere.
>> HINOJOSA: So what is the
lesson, Robert Cox, that you
feel all of us need to heed,
again, after you lived through a
Dirty War that actually happened
in front of your face.
What is the message to us?
How should we live our lives?
>> COX: The important thing is honest
journalism, I think.
I mean, in Argentina, you had no
journalism at that time, and to
live in a country without
journalism, without people being
able to talk to each other all
the time...
>> HINOJOSA: So fighting for a
free press.
>> COX: Oh, that's tremendously
important.
>> HINOJOSA: And?
>> COX: And...
Decency.
You know, let's talk about human
rights and human decency.
Because what was lacking in
Argentina was human decency, and
I think we might be losing human
decency in the United States.
By the way people talk, by the
way they characterize people.
I'm all in favor of, you know,
the most strong language that
you can use, but not language
that is... seems to be, you
know, targeted language, where
you realize that people are
being... if somebody's looking
at some of the things they see,
they might feel that, you know,
it's okay to go out and get a
gun.
>> HINOJOSA: Robert Cox,
for all of your work in the name
of journalism, and in the name
of human rights for all, we
really want to thank you for
everything, and we're so glad
that you're here and that your
family is safe.
And thank you for everything
that you have done.
And thanks for joining us
today.
>> COX: Thank you for being here,
it's important, I think, to have
programs like this.
Share
Embed
Transcript
Podcasts
