Toward the end of the Argentine film “La Historia oficial” (The Official Story, dir. Luis Puenzo), released in 1985 only two years after the end of the last military dictatorship in the country, one of the main characters, Roberto (played by Héctor Alterio) has an argument with his father, José (played by Guillermo Battaglia).
That argument is one of the scenes that has been replaying in my mind for years. I think about the way it revolves around what we tell ourselves, what others tell themselves, to justify not knowing what is plain to see, not knowing, feigning ignorance, of what they have done.
If you haven’t seen the film, it deals with the theft of children during the dictatorship. It dwells on the ‘official’ narrative that demands that people bury their heads in the sand, so the uncomfortable reality of military rule—that there was an ongoing genocide in which 30 thousand people were disappeared), that children were being stolen, that state money was being pilfered by the elite—so that reality was ignored.
Roberto, and men like Roberto, are members of the ascending upper-middle class who ‘adopted’ a child stolen from her mother, who was likely assassinated (disappeared) by the government. His wife, Alicia (played by Norma Aleandro), starts to question the origins of their daughter, whom Roberto had procured and told Alicia not to ask questions.
Back to the argument. It deals not with the sins of the father, but those of the son. Not a repetition, but a reaction, a rejection of the father’s experience in Spain as part of the Spanish Civil War. It is an argument about history—you lost! Roberto chides his father—No soy un perdedor. “I am not a loser”
José is distraught. Roberto cannot understand. No soy un perdedor. This line rings again and again in my head as I see the political context in the United States galloping toward authoritarianism, which is to say, racing to enact the same type of memory politics we see in La Historia Oficial.
I am not a loser, is the justification we see from Trump and his ilk, claiming that the US has to not see what is real. That their authoritarianism is a grift and the people, not them, pay the price.
I am not a loser, is the justification we hear from Zionists who want to claim the two-year long genocide in Gaza is not happening. It cannot be real, to them, because to admit it is to admit the reality of Palestine.
I am not a loser, is the excuse we hear from burgeoning thought police intent on canonizing Charlie Kirk, a man whose public presence was built on demonizing non-white, non-Christian, non-normative people, gaslighting dressed up as political ideology.
Today, we have terms like “fake news” and “gaslighting”. Both return us to the central theme of failing to admit what is real, failing, being incapable, and yet, knowing all along, that what is real is real, that the emperor has no clothes, that the children are being stolen, that you are stealing the children, that you, Roberto, you, Charlie, you, Donald, you, Benjamin, are propping up a version of history that has devastating consequences for everyone, all because you are too afraid to admit that you do not want to fail. And in that failure to admit, that lack of comprehension, a failure that causes thousands upon thousands of deaths, what you are saying is “I am not a loser”. And we all lose because of it.