An Ambassador Born of the 'Dirty Wars'

[Judi Lynn]

An Ambassador Born of the 'Dirty Wars'
Argentina's New Envoy Occupies the Office of a Man He Once Openly Fought
By Nora Boustany
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 8, 2008; A08
Outside the office of Hector Timerman, Argentina's new ambassador to Washington, across from an oval ballroom, are photographs of his 50 predecessors.
Jorge A. Aja Espil gazes sternly from one of the chipped, pale green walls. An ambassador during Argentina's military dictatorship, Espil represented and defended the government that went after an outspoken newspaper mogul, Jacobo Timerman. Hector, 54, is his son.
As a human rights activist 20 years ago, Hector Timerman dueled openly with Espil in the American press through fiery letters and indignant rebuttals. Timerman sought to expose in writing, as had his father, the system that abducted, imprisoned, tortured and killed thousands of Argentines.
When Timerman took up his post last month, his first instinct was to tear down Espil's portrait. But as he made courtesy calls to other Latin American ambassadors, he discovered a source of healing in the turmoil that had also shaped their journeys.
Some of his counterparts had also survived coups and despotism. They had suffered grave solitude as outcasts or were the descendants of men persecuted for their principles. Among them were Chilean Ambassador Mariano Fernandez, who as a diplomat in Bonn was exiled in 1973 and then worked as a journalist while fighting the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and Uruguayan Ambassador Carlos Alberto Gianelli, nephew of the late Wilson Ferreira Aldunate, a leading politician who fled his country's military coups.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/07/AR2008040702546.html

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Hector Timerman



Jacobo Timerman, Hector Timerman’s junta-tortured father





Jorge Antonio Aja Espil, on the right, 2nd from the right