During long sleepless nights and days of depression, a fly buzzes and buzzes around the head:' Writing, is it worth it?' In the midst of the farewells and the crimes, will words survive? Does this profession, which one has chosen or which has been chosen for one, make any sense? I am South American. In Montevideo, where I was born, I edited some newspapers and journals; one after the other they were closed down, by the government or by the creditors. I wrote several books: they are all banned. At the beginning of ‘73, my exile began. In Buenos Aires, we founded Crisis. It was a cultural journal with the biggest circulation in the history of the Spanish language. In August of last year its last number appeared. It could not continue. When words can be no worthier than silence, it is better to say nothing. And to hope. Where are the writers and journalists who produced the journal? Almost all have left Argentina, Some are dead. Others, imprisoned or disappeared. The novelist Haroldo Conti, or what remained of him, was seen for the last time in the middle of May 1976. Broken by torture. Nothing more has been heard of him. Officially, he was not detained. The government washes its hands. The poet Miguel Angel Bustos was taken from his home and has disappeared. The poet Paco Urondo was killed in Mendoza. The writers Paoletti and Di Benedetto are in prison: As is Luis Sabini, the journal's head of production: he is accused of possessing arms because he had a bullet to make himself a key ring. Our editor, Carlos Villar Arauja, was the first to go. In July 1975 he had to leave the country. He had published a courageous work, with documentary evidence, on oil in Argentina. That edition of Crisis was put on sale in the kiosks and, six evenings later, Carlos did not come home to sleep. They interrogated him with his eyes covered. The police denied holding him. Two days later he was flung, by a miracle still alive, into the woods of Ezeiza. The police said they had arrested him by mistake. They circulated lists of those condemned to death. The poet, Juan Gelman, editor in chief, had to take a plane. Some time later, they came looking for him in his home in Buenos Aires. As he was not there, they took his children away. The daughter turned up alive. Of the son and daughter-in-law, seven months pregnant, nothing is known. Unofficial government information indicated that they had been in prison and had been set free. The earth has swallowed them up. In such stormy times, the profession of writing is dangerous. In such circumstances, one recovers pride and joy in words, or loses respect for them for ever.
XIII. On the precession of a viscous spheroid, and on the remote history of the Earth
