Argentine writer, historian Osvaldo Bayer dies at age 91

Argentine writer and historian Osvaldo Bayer died Monday afternoon at his home in Buenos Aires. He was 91.

A self-proclaimed “peaceful Anarchist” and defender of native peoples, Bayer was an emblematic figure in Latin American thought.

Born in the city of Santa Fe, in eastern Argentina, in 1927 to immigrants from Italy's German-speaking Südtirol region, Bayer was a journalist, writer, and historian best known for his historical novel “La Patagonia Rebelde” (Rebellion in Patagonia).

Made into an acclaimed film by director Héctor Olivera in 1974 on a script Bayer himself wrote, it was the story of a 1921 labor uprising by ranch hands in windswept Santa Cruz Province, and how it was crushed by Army forces at the behest of local landowners. Up to 1,500 strikers were killed.

Promoted by the left-leaning Santa Cruz Governor Jorge Cepernic, the film was a critical success in Argentina and abroad, winning the Silver Bear at that year's Berlin International Film Festival.

The film, and its support by leftists, met with disapproval from the repressive Isabel Perón administration however.

Rebellion in Patagonia was banned, Governor Cepernic was removed largely due to his support, and Bayer himself was threatened and persecuted by Argentine Anticommunist Alliance - led by Mrs. Perón's chief adviser, the fascist “Rasputin of the Pampas,” José López Rega.

Bayer managed to escape in 1975 with the help of the German Embassy, whose Cultural Attaché smuggled him out of the country.

He lived in West Berlin until the return of democracy to Argentina in 1983, later writing for the progressive daily Página/12 and teaching until 2006 as Professor of Human Rights at the University of Buenos Aires. He visited Germany regularly and lectured at the German Foundation for Development Policy in Bad Honnef.

Censorship cost Bayer much of the royalties he would have otherwise earned from his numerous books. But far from feeling discouraged, he said it made him stronger.

He had recently lost his wife, Marlies Joos Bayer, in 2015 after 63 years of marriage. “My wife never reproached me for anything; when I was unemployed she went to work in a fair,” he recalled. “She was a great companion.”

Bayer was an outspoken opponent of Argentina's current right-wing president, Mauricio Macri, whom he considered a “representative of the ultra right” - an antagonism emphasized by the fact that Macri's Chief of Staff, Marcos Peña, and his Commerce Secretary, Miguel Braun, are direct descendants of the chief instigator of the 1921 massacre, Mauricio Braun.

“It's a conservative government, for the elite - nothing more,” Bayer noted in 2016. “He cannot think beyond the interests of his class.”

At: http://en.mercopress.com/2018/12/24/writer-historian-osvaldo-bayer-dies-at-age-91

Osvaldo Bayer, 1927-2018.

“I've resolved to be merciless with the merciless,” he once wrote. “By revealing them, leaving them naked before history and society, and vindicating in some way those from below, came out to protest their actions.”