Sparks, counterpoints, applause, and shouts in the final debate of the Book Fair dedicated to freedom

At the Closing Debate of the 49th Buenos Aires International Book Fair , philosopher Tomás Abraham yelled at writers Claudia Piñeiro and Dolores Reyes to stop playing the victim, and the author of Las viudas de los jueves retorted by asking if complaining about not being invited as often as the creator of Cometierra wasn't also playing the victim. In the Debate, writer Marcelo Birmajer asserted that the planet is experiencing a world war between fundamentalism and liberal democracies, and Abraham responded: "There is another extremely dangerous fundamentalism, the Jewish one." And that's just to name a few .

For the second consecutive year , the country's most popular cultural event organized a closing debate among writers on a current topic. This afternoon, the theme was "Culture in the Land of Freedom," and the Victoria Ocampo Hall was packed with an audience eager to follow the counterpoints between the guests. Journalist and writer Hinde Pomeraniec , with skill, a sense of timing, and, above all, her extensive knowledge, guided them to raise or lower the temperature of the exchange, delve deeper into certain aspects, avoid booing, and create a dialogue that, at times, was truly spic and span .

The organizers of the meeting were journalists Gabriela Saidón and Marisol Alonso , who proposed two themes for the discussion: Why has the word censorship returned to the cultural agenda? And what are the new models of digital censorship? In any case, the topics intersected, intertwined, and overlapped in the interventions and counterpoints over the course of 90 passionate minutes.

The first to speak was the writer and screenwriter Marcelo Birmajer , columnist for Clarín and author of A Secondary Crime, The Soul to the Devil, Three Musketeers, The Farewell, The Obituary Club , among many other books.

“ I remember an episode of censorship in 2011, when Cristina Kirchner was in power, and the truck drivers' union prevented newspapers from being published. Nothing like this had happened since 1983. At that time, I was scheduled to give a couple of talks in Santa Cruz, and they were canceled after I told him the incident was due to state censorship,” he recalled.

Birmajer then went on to frame the issue more globally , asserting that " the World War we are experiencing is that of fundamentalism against liberal democracies . A fundamentalism that has a precise name: the Islamic fundamentalist organization Hamas, which attacked our country twice and which has a clear leadership in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This organization is transversal and has the idea of ​​exterminating liberal democracies, exterminating equal rights between men and women, exterminating freedom of expression, and coincidentally, also exterminating the Jewish people," he denounced.

Regarding the Argentine reality, Birmajer considered “unacceptable the persecution of journalists, intellectuals, writers , who express themselves both through the president's words and through social networks with huge numbers of fanatical, vulgar, rude followers who persecute freedom of expression and which has an inescapable gravity .”

And for this reason, he asserted, "any defender of freedom is obliged to sleep soundly and to remain alert to the multitude of dangers that threaten freedom."

The second speaker was Dolores Reyes , author of the novels Cometierra and Miseria , as well as a teacher and workshop facilitator. “Nothing connects with freedom and its borders like literature,” she said, citing some authors who sparked her passion for reading: “ Libertad Demitrópulos, Juan José Saer, Antonio Di Benedetto, Sara Gallardo, Héctor Germán Oesterheld, Rodolfo Walsh, ” she listed, sparking the first spontaneous applause. She wouldn't be the only one.

Of them, he recognized “ their conditions of production , because perhaps they do not only leave us books as a legacy, but ways of writing that resist” and recalled the case of Di Benedetto, who was “imprisoned the same night of the military coup of March 24, 1976, kidnapped from the editorial offices of the newspaper El País and then placed at the disposal of the National Executive Power, a condition that did not liberate or exempt from actions, but that was in the hell of the chupaderos, salvation itself,” he explained.

“During his 19 months of captivity, Antonio was isolated, tortured, subjected to mock executions, and not allowed to write fiction ,” he listed. He recounted the tricks the author developed to jot down stories in correspondence with a friend introduced with the same formula: “Last night I had a strange dream. I dreamed that…” and then he began to write a story.

Therefore, she concluded: “ In every writing context, there flickers a glimmer of that freedom that connects us to the human condition. And listening to Marcelo, I wonder what country men and women are equal in, because in mine, a woman is still killed every day,” she concluded. Another round of applause, formal but also supportive and assenting.

Claudia Piñeiro took the floor and, in the allotted minutes, traced a path that touched on the central themes of freedom of expression and censorship: “It’s very difficult to talk about all these issues without first saying that we live somewhat suspended in unreality . This means that not everything we read and not everything we see is as we read it or as we see it,” she began.

Piñeiro, who presented his new novel, La muerte ajena , at the Fair, stated that direct application of censorship was unthinkable because it is not permitted: “But there can be indirect censorship,” he clarified, recalling how the book Cometierra , by Reyes, as well as three others by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Sol Fantin, and Aurora Venturini, were reported for corruption of minors.

“That's why I say it's difficult to discuss this issue on a factual basis, because if a parent is led to believe by the media or by those in power that an elementary school child is taking a pornographic book from their school library, that parent becomes concerned, and that's understandable, but they become concerned based on a lie, and that's what's so disturbing . That's what happened with these books,” he explained.

Piñeiro insisted that these censorship mechanisms remain in place every time Reyes, or she herself, opens her social media and receives insults and death threats that include references to the military dictatorship or even photographs of her children with captions promising to kill them .

"Censorship ends up being exercised in this way, and it creates discomfort ," he explained. He linked these actions to legal complaints against journalists or attacks on actors or a singer intended to ultimately force them to remain silent.

“Regarding attacks on social media, people often say, 'Well, it's social media, it's not reality.' It all goes from social media to reality pretty quickly,” he said.

The Romanian-born Argentine philosopher and writer, Tomás Abraham , made a U-turn when his turn came: “I don't see a censorship problem in our society,” he read to a silent audience. “There isn't one in parliamentary regimes or in a democracy with alternating power. There are no accredited observers, book burnings, or author bans. We say what we want,” he added.

Abraham cited “ new forms of exclusion currently in force, which have been called cancellation and which are also carried out by public opinion makers belonging to the cultural power. Artists, scientists, journalists, actors, writers, educators, influencers, dictate from their authority sustained by some prestige what should not be read, who should not be named, which books do not deserve any review in any cultural supplement, to which universities one will not be invited. White lists. Black lists. Imposed by a hegemony , which manages to establish itself with the help of the State in the so-called cultural battles and which not only bullies, but intimidates, defames, segregates for sin or for ideological crime, for not being part of an official cast,” he described.

However, the philosopher, author of books such as The Denied Slaughter (Autobiography of My Parents) and Diary of a Savage Grandfather , to mention the most recent of some thirty titles, considered that these mechanisms are “the price of freedom, which does not frighten or depress those they are directed at because they encourage them to say what they want out loud, even in solitude.”

From that moment on, a heated exchange ensued. Abraham and Birmajer debated the idea of ​​an ongoing World War . Abraham and the Reyes-Piñeiro duo disagreed on how much censorship currently exists .

The philosopher criticized the persistent insistence on interpreting the present through the lens of the dictatorship , and Piñero reminded him that he receives threats with photos of a green Ford Falcon every day, even in the present. "Get off social media," Abraham replied.

The thinker also considered that female writers play the victim and seek easy applause when defending public education. "At my age, I am a professor at a public university. I worked my ass off at a public university, and what matters to me is doing it, not seeking applause ," he emphasized.

And to point out the “place of power” from which Reyes speaks, he asked him: “How do you manage to get invited to so many places?”

Before the writer could begin to answer, Piñeiro interrupted: “ Ask yourself why they don't invite you, instead of asking her why they invite her. Ask yourself what you do or what you don't do. Maybe she has a well-written book, that people are interested in reading it, that she's a good writer, that students ask me to go to her, that readers ask me to go to her, that people abroad ask me to go to her.”

There was applause of support. A few voices of disapproval. A woman stood up, desperate to intervene, and shouted a little , even though the exchange on the platform continued unabated. In the end, the "contenders" greeted each other cordially until next time . If voices were raised a little, if there were grimaces or awkwardness typical of a defiant exchange, it was within the framework of that civic exercise of dissenting without violence, insults, or vulgarity.