In 1972, around the time I turned 16, we woke up one morning to an extra-large headline: “16 TERRORISTS DIE DURING FRUSTRATED ESCAPE FROM NAVY BASE IN TRELEW.” During the morning break at school, everyone was talking about it. Right before class, the teacher pulled me aside and said, “I overheard you and your classmates. Matalon, don’t always believe what you read in the newspaper. These people were murdered.”
My country, Argentina, was under military dictatorship, and the “Trelew Massacre,” as it became known much later, was the cold-blooded murder of 16 political prisoners who had surrendered before a judge and the press after an attempted escape in Patagonia. A week later, the prisoners were removed from their cells in the middle of the night and gunned down.
I had been a good boy, rather credulous and obedient.
That day I grew up. I learned to be skeptical, to doubt, and to question. In time, I learned about official stories, alternative stories, and counter narratives. By the time a much more vicious military junta took over in 1976, I was already vaccinated against unquestioning belief in what the government and the papers said, and I learned what can happen to those who challenge the official narrative.
What lies beneath the surface of the self-approved stories we tell ourselves about ourselves? What is beneath the surface of the official story of our family? The Jewish people? Our country? Israel? What are the parts of those stories that we don’t want to hear?
Only if we have the courage to embrace each of the stories of which we are a part in their fullness, will we be able to take responsibility, to turn, to change, and to continue to grow.
J. Rolando “Roly” Matalon is a social activist, musician, and Rabbi of B’nai Jeshurun in New York. www.bj.org
