Dark Memories of the Dirty War

Chronicle of a valient journalist during the painful emergence of the Argentine dictatorship

“ Dirty Secrets, Dirty War: The Exile of Robert J. Cox (Buenos Aires, Argentina: 1976-1983)” by David Cox, Evening Post Publishing, June 2009

David Cox is the Robert Cox’s son, former editor of the Buenos Aires Herald and one of the few journalists courageous enough to report on the many disappearances and horrific violence that took place during Argentina’s Dirty War. David, 13 years old when his father and the rest of the family finally fled Argentina after years of close scrapes and tears, here presents the memoir of his father, writing in the foreword, admits that he still finds too painful to author himself. Punctuating his historical narrative of the escalating conflict with affectionate anecdotes about his large, tight-knit, and literary family, Cox the son wavers between nostalgia for the Buenos Aires of his childhood and flashbacks of the terrifying episodes that ultimately pressed the family to leave. But this book’s true focus is Cox the father, who emerges as an emblem of journalistic courage, suffering anxiety and asthma with silent tenacity while reporting on human-rights violations (and in some cases, causing the disappeared to be freed). An important primary source for Latin American recent history and an inspiring account to prevent future opportunists to take over again.

Robert Cox has risked his life to chronicling the early years of the Dirty War in Argentina (1976-1983), which has caused thousands of deaths. A few decades later he still can not write his own history or describe how he experienced this deadly junta. Now his son David does so, revealing how an editor of a small English-daily in South America, the Buenos Aires Herald, has courageously covered the kidnapping and murder that took place there when most his colleagues were silent.

Evolved into the race leading to the military coup of 1976 and in the chaos that has reigned later in Argentina, the book tells what led David’s father to write about the atrocities that were rampant. “This is the book that I never managed to write,” says the man 75 years in the preface. “Wounds are too deep so that I can write on this dark period.”  A plan backed by the military junta indeed encouraged people to silence real or perceived enemies, and caused that thousands of people were left in clandestine torture centers. Official figures set to have 13 000 people disappeared; groups working for human rights relate more 30 000 people killed instead. “Our family lives with this story for years,” said David Cox, 42, who spent his childhood in Argentina. “We all want my father to write his story because it affected us all one way.”

The Herald has been a pioneer in spreading the alarm. The military “issued him a warning to convince him to rally, but he continued to publish lists providing the names of the disappeared,” reminds F. Allen “Tex” Harris, an American diplomat who was in Argentina at that time. The Argentines went to the Herald when the authorities refused to provide information on their missing relatives, as the newspaper tried to lobby the government on them. There were very few people in the country who dared to speak. But the stories of Cox caught the world’s attention after he became a recognized journalist in the New York Times and The Washington Post.

For some time yet, the junta let Cox and The Herald go on practice their valiant journalism. “He printed a newspaper in English and as few Argentines knew that language, the military could not see him as someone threatening,” [...] “If someone criticized the lack of press freedom, he could always point to Cox,” added Harris. Cox was finally shut up in prison for a day after writing editorials urging the government to release imprisoned journalists. In 1979 he found himself forced to leave Argentina because of death threats against his family. David Cox describes, among other things, that he took different ways to get the school and that his family was traveling in an old Peugeot to avoid attracting police attention. “The feeling of terror now seems remote, but it is still in me.”

Despite all the risks he was taking, Robert remained “a very humble man” who simply reported what was happening in Argentina when others have refused to do so. “In his right mind, he did his job as a journalist.”

A concise, objective and engaging report on a very dark period in Argentine history. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in understanding this very complex yet so attractive country. A first class journalistic job, and homage to Robert Cox, an unrelenting and solitary fighter for freedom and the rule of law when people most needed someone like him.

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