I did not know much, perhaps something, about his fight for civil rights in his country. Mom took us to a reminder that was held in the evening at Stella Maris Parish. And I learned a lot from everything he fought for, what he was killed for. They killed people who fought for their principles … Who would have thought that it would happen to us Uruguayans! How rare life is, how stories intersect.
I dedicated myself to reading about his life. Today as I approach 70, (well, I am 68) more than 53,000 biographical books have already been written about his epic. He was born on January 15 but his date is celebrated on the 16th, my birthday. The more I learned about his life, the less I imagined how he was going to cross mine.
In the year 74 a North American Methodist Bishop bequeathed to Buenos Aires. Zelmar (Michelini) suggested to my old man and me that we visit him. He was staying at the Plaza Hotel, his name was James Armstrong, and he was from South Dakota. The State that had produced two very progressive senators that we would soon know: James Abourezk and George Mc Govern (Democratic presidential candidate in 72).
The bishop gives us a telephone number that I write down on a piece of paper – which I keep (1-202 544-8045) – from Rev Joe Eldridge. The Bishop suggests that we see him when we make the planned trip to the United States. That experiment in exile diplomacy was postponed for a few months (until the end of 1975) because I was imprisoned in Montevideo. They released me, I traveled to Buenos Aires and I did not return.
The trip of ’75 was made, we met the “Washington Office for Latin America” (WOLA in its acronym in English). It was a modest two-person office that functioned within the National Council of Churches. Its directors and sole members were Joe Eldridge, recommended months before by the Bishop in Buenos Aires, and Bill Brown. He did not imagine then that he would soon integrate his paintings. Today WOLA is a solidly established institution.
When we said goodbye, we did not imagine that only months later, after the murder of Toba and Zelmar, of Barredo and Whitelaw and the disappearance of Liberoff, we were going to return there, freshly escaped from the death trap that Buenos Aires had become. . They had helped us escape, they had set up the hearings for Wilson in Congress … and after my parents’ trip to London, I stayed to live in Washington and eventually work with them.
When I met Joe (Eldridge), I was the same age as him when Martin Luther King was killed in his home state (Tennessee). In that deep south, when he was 10 years old, a woman (Rosa Parks) was arrested in Alabama, for giving her seat on the bus to a white man. His bravery started the quest for civil rights in the United States. There and thus Eldridge had been formed.
Shortly after, he was my Boss for many years and also my friend, until today. With him I learned, from a vital testimony, the fight of the sixties after Luther King. And thanks to him, I met many of his collaborators. Somehow, I felt that those libertarian winds of more than a decade ago were the warm breeze that welcomed me into my new, albeit temporary, home at last.
This is how I met two extraordinary human beings, close to that fight for the rights of blacks in the 1960s, one white and one black.
Brady Tyson was white. He had been a Methodist missionary in Brazil in the sixties, tragic but struggling years. In those days dreaming of utopia was a duty, not naivety. We need that adrenaline! In 1966 he and his wife were expelled from our neighboring colossus for denouncing that student militants had been tortured by the Brazilian military police.
Brady frequented the WOLA. One day he gave a lecture on Luther King, invited by the University where I was studying (George Washington), given his extensive academic career. By the way, I keep in contact with my Professor Cynthia Mc Clintock, who helped me learn to study so much. In his lecture Tyson believed that he was telling us about the influence of Dr. King (as he is called there) in his generation. I did not know that in reality, what he did was transmit that legacy to mine.
When Carter wins, Brady goes to work with the new President (along with other friends like Prof. Robert Pastor). I think I drove him crazy on orders. Having two friends in the White House, we would say in Uruguay, “it’s not moco ‘e turkey.” One day he took me by the arms and said, “Juan, I still don’t know where the White House phones are when they ring.” It was a grumble that made me happy.
In the successful attempt to cut off military aid to Uruguay (Koch Amendment), a black congressman helped us a lot (they don’t like the term Afro-descendant there), who had been Dr. King’s “secretary and confidant”: Andrew Young. When Carter took office, he named him Ambassador to the United Nations, the position No. 3 in the hierarchy of the State Department.
When he took office at the UN, I not only annoyed him and received his support for Uruguayan issues. For example, in May 1979, I asked him and he received us with Don Vicente Saadi, President of the Argentine Justicialismo, whom I helped to put together his agenda. Saadi was not in exile and his trip required some security for his return to Argentina.
When the 1980 plebiscite was held in Uruguay, the exile celebrated with admiration for those who were fighting within the country. I wrote a letter addressed to Aparicio Méndez, Uruguayan dictator demanding “that the popular mandate be fulfilled.” On December 1, the other day of the plebiscite, Rosa Parks was in Washington, for a few hours, because it was 25 years since her own NO.
The Uruguayan people said NO to the dictatorship 25 years after Rosa had said NO to discrimination, refusing to give her seat to a white man. Eldridge managed to open a gap in the midst of his busy schedule to inquire and stamp his signature to head the letter to the head of the Uruguayan regime on duty.
Many people who come to my desk at home are surprised by what they see there. It is presided over by two giant portraits of Monsignor Romero (today Santo) and Martin Luther King. This is the explanation. I didn’t know him, but I remember the day he was killed. His collaborators and followers were more than friends: they were my refuge in the years of exile in the United States.
On October 24, 2005, I was a director of the Banco de Seguros del Estado. My friend Eldridge calls me from the US. Rosa Parks had died. «Write about my friend, Juan, share her feat with Uruguay. Write, »he insists« about my friend ». I did it and since then I do it every year, as I remember her today rummaging through the archives of my exile.
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