Journalist Robert Cox Recalls Work During Argentina's Dirty War
Journalist Robert Cox Recalls Work During Argentina's Dirty War
Updated March 25, 2016·6:58 PM ET
Published March 25, 2016·4:26 PM ET
President Obama paid tribute to the Argentines who suffered and died during the "Dirty War" starting in the 1970s. Among those he singled out for praise Thursday was journalist Robert Cox, then editor of the Buenos Aires Herald, who helped to reveal the disappearances, torture, and murder of leftists and others under the military junta. NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Cox about his work during that period.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Argentines are marking the 40th anniversary of the military coup that set off the Dirty War, a seven-year-long wave of political oppression that claimed thousands of lives. President Obama, who's just returned from a visit to Argentina, acknowledged the victims of the Dirty War there earlier this week. And he also acknowledged some of those who stood beside them.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARACK OBAMA: The journalists, like Bob Cox, who bravely reported on human rights abuses despite threats to them and their families.
SIEGEL: Robert Cox edited the English-language Buenos Aires Herald. He ultimately had to leave Argentina. He moved to Charleston, S.C. But at age 82, he now returns regularly to Buenos Aires, and he was with the president there this week. He joins us now from Argentina. Welcome to the program.
BOB COX: Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be here.
SIEGEL: Take us back those days 40 years ago. Political dissidents were, in the phrase of the day, being disappeared. You were a newspaper editor. You faced a choice about how to cover what was going on. What led you to act as you did?
COX: What I realized was is that we could save lives. That sounds extraordinary, but it is what happened. And we had to just find the ways to do it in such ways that the government wouldn't deal with us as they dealt with other people. The point was to get the story out, too, because, with that, we were able to occasionally - well, fairly frequently, really - get the government to release people. I have friends now who survived the torture chambers there because I wrote a story about them. It's an incredible - so many incredible stories like that.
SIEGEL: The way that the Buenos Aires Harold managed to do this was actually quite fascinating. The idea was, if the families of people who had been disappeared filed a writ of habeas corpus, then you could cover a legal action in court - the filing of the writ and report on the content of it- and get away with it.
COX: We decided that's what we would do, and we did get away with it. It was chaos in that time. It was like some vortex of horror in Argentina, but most people managed to not see what was happening. One of the things that I take away with it is the ability of people to compartmentalize everything according to how they want to feel most comfortable.
More:
http://www.npr.org/2016/03/25/471891506/journalist-robert-cox-recalls-work-during-argentinas-dirty-war
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