There are words that deceive. Or, better yet: they all deceive, only some do it from the beginning, from their roots; Its very origin is a deception, its content is a deception. The word Argentina It is one of those: original lie. It all started, there was more to go, 500 years ago. Those brave, greedy sailors wanted to reach those coasts overflowing with spices that they diligently sought, but they crashed again and again against that endless land: they were fed up. America crossed his path: it was already beginning to be the obstacle that would later become so much. They did not give up: they continued sailing, further and further south, to see if at some point that stubborn mass of land gave way to them and they managed to leave it behind, finally continuing to Cathay.
There were hopes, moments of hope: several had them. One of them was Juan Díaz de Solís, a confused gentleman who may have been born in Spain or Portugal around 1475 and set out to sail as a young man, perhaps with the Pinzones—who were sailors. He insisted, he learned, and in 1512, upon the death of the great forger Amerigo Vespucci, King Ferdinand appointed him chief pilot to replace him. Then, already a civil servant, he married, had a son and, in October 1515, he left the Guadalquivir with three caravels, 70 sailors and the mission of sailing as far south as possible to find that elusive passage.
They searched, they went down, they went where no European had gone. So many times the estuary of a river or a large bay seemed like the desired passage—and they all discovered that it was not. Until they found a very strange place: a tongue of fresh, muddy water so wide that it could only be a sea, the one that would finally take them to the other side. They called it, without shame, Sweet Sea, and they were so happy that they landed on its right bank to eat and celebrate, and drink if anything.
That land, which seemed so calm, was already beginning to deceive: in minutes, flocks of locals fell on them. The Europeans fled; Solís couldn’t and those charrúas invited him to a barbecue, theirs. Hence those sarcastic verses from the teacher about the day “when Juan Díaz fasted / and the Indians ate.” His companions looked at him, terrified, from their caravels.
That was the first contact of Spaniards with those southern coasts; The memory of anthropophagy made the next one take a while. But starting in 1536, expeditions began to visit them frequently. They already knew that that sea was just a river and did not reach the other side, but their locals told them of incredible riches if they went up it, and they let themselves be dazzled.
It was the Eldorado Trick: “Yes, bwana, There, beyond, there are mountains of gold and princesses bathed in their dust,” they told them, let’s say, so that they would leave. Only the locals on those brown coasts were more modest: they didn’t talk to them about gold but about silver—and many believed them.
And then some greedy person changed the name of Mar Dulce to Río de la Plata and some culterano sculpted it in Latin and said silver, silver. Therefore all those pampas came to be called Argentina, “the lands of silver”. It is clear that there was never a drop of money in those peladales: the locals told them of course, bwana, Don’t be discouraged, it’s a little further away – and they managed to perpetuate the deception and get rid of the troublemakers.
This is how the word was put together Argentina, one of the most false: about the lie that beyond there was that which never was, that will not be either. There is something there that defines a character. “If, as the Greek affirms in the Cratylus, / the name is an archetype of the thing, / in the letters of rose there is the rose, / and the entire Nile in the word Nile,” the teacher insists. “That is why such a tricky word / could only produce that trap / of lying and lying to one another that those pampas / would one day be a lavish nation…”
One of Ricardo Piglia’s best books is called False name. Argentina has it and defines it: a country that convinces you that it can be what it cannot be, that promises money and more money when it has no money. This Sunday that country chooses, once again, its rulers, its destiny. But he can no longer even be faithful to his fallacy: the candidates do not offer happy futures, only fears. They no longer say that the money is up ahead; They say, if anything, that, my opponent, is the one who took it, don’t even think about choosing him. And so we are.
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