I lived in Northern Argentina for two years as a missionary. I learned to love the food and I got to meet a lot of people. On at least one occasion I met someone who had been taken and tortured during the Dirty War, the period of state-sponsored violence in the country lasting roughly from 1976 to 1983. They would speak with such frankness about some of the horrible things that had happened to them. Truly, it's a different country now. Not perfect, no, not by a long shot, but certainly better.
March 24 marks the day when the military junta took power, and as such is a day of remembrance. Though many reparations have been made, there are still many people who don't know what happened to their children and grandchildren during this period of terror. Part of the government's strategy was to kidnap pregnant woman who would give birth in clandestine torture centers. After the baby was born the woman would be murdered, and the child would be adopted by another family. (This is the topic of the Oscar-winning film La Historia Oficial, which besides having some incredibly depressing scenes like the one below, also contains one of the most disturbing and intense scenes of domestic violence imaginable). They call this people los desaparecidos, or simply "the disappeared." Today, the group the Grandmothers of the Plaza del Mayo are still working to get the government to release the names of those who were murdered, as well as help reunite children with their real family (as in the incredibly powerful recent case of Francisco Madariaga Quintela).
I decided to make one of my favorite Argentinean dishes, Ñoquis, which is potato pasta, with the recipe I was taught while living in Jujuy. If you want to make them like I did (which served the two of us and then some), first you'll need to boil 2 1/2 good sized potatoes and mash them in the food processor after they're soft. Then move it all to a bowl, adding an egg and flour to make the dough. Now you don't want too much flour, just enough so that it's not sticky. A pinch of salt and pepper to flavor is recommended. From there I rolled the dough out into snakes on a cutting board covered in flour. Once the snakes are a good size, you want to cut them into little pasta-sized pieces. If you want to be fancy (and I usually do) you'll want to roll them off a fork to put a little crease in them, then set them aside on a cloth until you're ready to cook them. Get a big pot of water boiling, then place the ñoquis in. When they float up to the top, remove them with a slotted spoon. They're ready.
Ñoquis are usually eaten with a tomato sauce and chicken. Nevertheless, my wife had found a good recipe for a sauce with ground beef, so we went with that instead. I'd recommend that you use whatever you like. As we ate the meal, I put on some songs by the Argentine rock legend (and one of my all time favorites), Charly García. During the Dirty War, he wrote a song titled ¿Qué se puede hacer salvo ver peliculas? (What can you do besides watch movies?), a reference to how the most subversive thing the junta would let you do was go to a movie. After the war he wrote a song he's much better known for titled Los Dinosaurios (The Dinosaurs). Check it out on grooveshark.com. The lyrics include the following:
Los amigos del barrio pueden desaparecer,
Los cantores del radio pueden desaparecer,
Los que están en los diarios pueden desaparecer,
La persona que amas puede desaparecer.
Los que están en el aire pueden desaparecer en el aire,
Los que están en la calle pueden desaparecer en la calle.
Los amigos del barrio pueden desaparecer,
Pero los dinosaurios van a desaparacer.
Or in English:
Your friends in the neighborhood may disappear,
The singers on the radio may disappear,
Those in the newspaper may disappear,
The person you love may disappear.
Those who are in the air might disappear in the air,
Those who are in the streets might disappear in the street.
Your friends in the neighborhood may disappear,
But the dinosaurs are going to disappear.
And with that, García is able to poetically and beautifully tell of the struggles of the people, the hope for better times, as well as give the finger to the government.
I'll close with the refrain from Argentina's National Anthem: ¡Libertad! ¡Libertad! ¡Libertad! (Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!)
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