History in the Making: The What-Ifs and Their Significances
A brief reflection on the assassination attempt of Argentine vice-president CFK and its deeper general and personal meanings
You may know that I’m from Brazil, but I’m also from Argentina. And while I didn’t grow up there, thanks to my dad, I have grown up with that country very present in my household and in my heart. Because of that, Argentina holds a dear place in my life, and how I perceive and navigate my Argentine identity is still something I am grasping and maturing on.
That said, today I want to take some time to acknowledge what happened there a few days ago. The current vice-president and former president of Argentina experienced an assassination attempt. Yes — someone pointed a gun at her, and just a few centimeters away from her face. And while the gun was loaded, it mysteriously misfired. Regardless of CFK’s and Peronism politics in Argentina, this news should shock us all as humans. We can never forget that the people elected to government, as much as we may disagree with their agenda, are human beings. In an increasingly polarized world, we must seek to find ways to actively defend the democratic system.
Waking up to this news today left me stumped. Argentina was one of many Latin American countries to endure one of the most brutal and horrific military dictatorships during the 1970s. My dad lived through it. He has told me multiple anecdotes about that time, and they are the scary type. And ever since the return of democracy over thirty years ago, the country has faced countless other challenges, including the infamous political divide known in Spanish as “la grieta” and economic instability (most notably, increasingly alarming inflation rates). This assassination attempt is the culmination of other judiciary investigations and sociopolitical contextual factors that are too nuanced to discuss here. I genuinely could not grasp how this could have happened. And I had to go on with my day, tempted not to read the headlines because I had work to do.
But what I want to emphasize is we are daily navigating new current events — worrisome floods in Pakistan, devastating war in Ukraine (and countless other countries), and the ongoing catastrophic events of the COVID pandemic are just a few. When talking to my dad earlier today about this event in particular — coming from the place we both call home in different ways — he shared insight that not only finally helped me grasp why I was intellectually in shock, but also added the emotional layer that I was yet to embrace. He said how it only took the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as the catalyst for WWI.
I had a History teacher in middle school who always remind us of the following — there are no ifs in History. But I feel deeply that today was an exception. This unfathomable event invites me, especially as an Argentine-Brazilian, to imagine what would have happened if that bullet had actually fired. Right now, a lot of news channels are seeming to want to frame this incident through a questionable lens, highlighting that the gunman was Brazilian. While I’m not sure if journalists are doing this for xenophobic or political reasons, this, for me, brings to light other suppressed issues I’ve had to navigate as a bicultural citizen, especially where both countries share such an acute rivalry. While it mostly happens within the soccer field — involving the names of Neymar and Messi, Pelé and Maradona — this rivalry is culturally entrenched. And I can attest that it causes subtle yet pernicious hurt to those, like me, who were born into both, feeling like they have to pick sides and suppress the other part of themselves that doesn’t belong to the ‘dominant’ one.
The point of this short piece is to highlight how layered the living experience is. The social fabric of society in Argentina can be described as very fragile, especially more recently, and these days must be remembered as the “what if” in Argentina’s history. While I can’t possibly equate the significance of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to the attempted assassination of CFK, the comparison still stands. If the bullet had actually been fired, would there have been social outbursts in the streets now? Would my friends and family be witnessing unimaginable violence and horrors in the streets they call home? Would Argentina dramatically transform into another reality within just 24 hours?
I haven’t lived in Argentina long enough to be familiar with all the nuance —both past and present — of the situation there. More updates are to come about this incident, but for now, I share these thoughts. I hope we, as a collective and regardless of our nationalities and places of residency, can always strive to exchange our impressions and ideas from current events so we learn from each other. The more I live, the more I come to learn how powerful the human experience is. Don’t underestimate the power of storytelling. And don’t underestimate the importance of peace, freedom, and democracy. Ever.
