A letter to my date.

Cheap living in a dorm hostel in Bariloche a good one called El Gaucho, very clean, excellent kitchen — at $13.50 Cdn per night, with breakfast thrown in. Not many people about at this time of year. It is in between seasons and now is considered prime hiking time. I was heading off this morning for a two day hike but got the bus stop mixed-up — must learn some Spanish - so will go tomorrow and will do e-mails and business stuff today instead. How lovely not 'having' to be in an actual office and I still have to get used to it.

Wonderful place Argentina but a truly 'odd' country it is, with all its wealth, small population (39M) largely well educated and immense size of liveable area. Lost, is the word I would describe it as. I think because it is in S. America and tucked so far away from media attention, the world thinks, oh just another Latin American country with the usual troubles, but in reality it is a country with very much a European feel about it, with none of the indigenous issues of the other S. American countries or the big populations either. Argentina killed off most of its natives in the 1870s, except for those in the North-West. I suppose one could say, perhaps fairly reasonably, that the greed that condoned that genocide (it took quite a long time to kill them all) is still endemic and might have really messed up any moral and ethical code the country should have and needs, for it to be a leader and looking at the wealth of this land, one just wonders why it isn't a leader. They say Patagonia is a sad land because of the genocide. If one fast forwards a hundred years to the 1970s and early '80's, the then junta practised another genocide, this time on Argentinean citizens. The strange thing that I think sets this apart is not the genocide but that the approximately 1,200 torturers/killers are mostly walking about BA today and only now, thirty plus years later, and that tepidly, is the country beginning to think of bringing them to justice. Yesterday was a national holiday, the day of Memory for Truth and Justice. In the civic square and all civc squares across the country, there were long lists of the names of all the people that the organisers of this day want brought to justice. It was quite creepy — the word fits I think — to look down the lists and imagine if you saw your own name on it or a brother,etc., what would you do, where would go or where would your eyes be looking in a conversation with a neighbour, friend and so on? So, like the economy here, justice as well seems to stall and not just for a bit but for a generation, a country in a sort of permanent stasis. It is the justice or lack of it that is at the root of all the trouble I think and without real justice there is no hope for any sustainable democracy here.

Big news this morning about all this in the papers and there are prosecutions starting and some now well under way - about sixty people so far. But, it is being fought by the powerful here at every step and some people now screaming for justice were actually mixed-up in the whole 70s/80s mess on the wrong side. The rich who are very rich seem untouchable but Argentina still seems so........well normal otherwise, which is the strangest thing about it. I felt the same thing in the early 80s when I first visited. Perhaps a comment a very well educated young man made to me in BA the other day sheds a bit of light - he has a Masters degree from a major Australian University. He said, "Alejandro, Argentineans do not have what it takes to run a country." That, to a greater or lesser degree is a feeling here amongst many Argentineans and that is sad because there is so much going for it in resources, infrastructure, etc.

That all said, I love this place and it is very hard not to. It is wonderful to be amongst kind, generous and cultured people — art everywhere — in a completely amazing landscape and not just here in Bariloche. One finds evil in some form or other wherever one looks, if one wants to look for it. Better to support what is good and hope that eventually human goodness will bring the other to 'heel' at some point.