At the end of the 80s of the twentieth century, a lawyer of some political fame, member of one of the groups of the Peronist left who sympathized – rather than participated – in the armed struggle, close to Montoneros, the FAP, the FAR., with all the chain of acronyms, Ignacio “Chiche” Gopo, comfortably exiled in Paris, had published a book against “artistic and intellectual collaborationism” during the dictatorship of 76/83.
Gopo had edited magazines celebrating or calling for the deaths of trade unionists or priests during the first half of the 1970s, he likely would have directly collaborated in some of the murders. But after exile in Paris, he had become a solemn version of Pepe Curdele -Biondi’s character-: jurist and paper-eater. Like Curdele, Gopo hit red, scotch, whatever was available, preferably Garrón’s.
It is not clear whether his exile was motivated precisely by the Videla dictatorship or by a sector of the Peronist right that sought an eye for an eye. But they protected him as a hero in Paris. Mitterrand’s wife received him at her meetings with macarons, along with leaders of international terrorism, child murderers and bomb planters in public places. He soon took up the position of jurist at the ANU High Commission for war crimes investigations in the “prosecutor’s civil dispute” (sic). Something related to Haiti, Honduras, Martinique… even he didn’t know what it was.
He never managed to decipher the term: “procutor”. Would that be a name? A category of the Social Sciences? A phonetic translation from Flemish or French? Or maybe a typo? Gopo – he declared himself to be more “avoidant than Peronist” – had found the reason for his life. They paid him in dollars, he saw photos of corpses. It was enough to speak out against the elected governments and defend the insurgents.
Once they took him by ambulance to the border between El Salvador and Guatemala. For a few moments he feared that they would make him work seriously, but soon colleagues from another self-help group arrived, full of Chilean communists financed by what remained of Soviet East Germany, and the supposed moment of risk ended in the residence of a left-wing Guatemalan, coffee landowner, in a luxury whiskey cellar, until the early hours of the morning.
As if this completely unjustified position were not enough for him to live well and unpunished for his crimes, Gopo wanted to resume his publishing activity in Argentina, which was abruptly interrupted during his escape into golden exile.
With the collaboration – never a term was used better – of two young local journalists – who paid with the simple mention of their name on the inside flap -, Gopo discovered accusations against practically any individual who had developed any kind of culture or art between 1976 and 1983. Not even the sound engineers were spared.
Among his victims – first they had been victims of his violent proclamations, now of his accusations – there was a soap opera author. His name was Patricio Leporo and he had achieved success with only one of his fiction works: The door ajar. Although the telenovela featured actors of rising fame, and the theme had its flaws – for the first time it played sideways with the attraction between men, in a subtle but unmistakable way -, it reached memorable peaks in ratings.
For some reason, Gopo thought that Leporo had “collaborated” with the dictatorship. In one of the broadcasts a police officer appeared, in civilian clothes. That policeman aroused a certain hidden attraction in one of the protagonists. The event, just a couple of minutes into the episode, was enough, according to Gopo, to condemn Leporo. The insolvency of the accusation was so evident that it would have been enough to let it pass, but on the eve of democratic recovery, this type of accusation, coming above all from the exiles of the “divine clumsy”, was growing in fertile ground.
Leporo suffered from the ubiquity of the accusation. Soon he fell ill. In 1987 he died. In 1989, Javier Mossen was contacted by the Leporo family – daughters, aunt, nephews – to publish a book in defense of him, to redeem his memory. Mossen soon found himself in Paris, interviewing Gopo, from whose merciless pen the accusation had first emerged. Rereading Gopo’s defamation – practically the entire volume was made up of insults and defamations, but the chapter against Leporo qualified as defamation -, Mossen discovered in the attack edges of homophobia, then very widespread in the revolutionary left, which considered homosexuality a imperialist disease. The Cuban Castro regime locked them up in re-education camps, while Guevara’s delegate in Argentina, the Nazi Jorge Ricardo Masetti, sentenced them to death by firing squad.
In the office of the ANU High Commissioner, three images stood out: a framed photo of a smiling Gopo shaking hands with Yasser Arafat, a drawing of Gopo embracing an ETA leader, and Gopo’s face on the desk, one of precursors of the gray goatee.
-I have read and studied Leporo’s screenplay, The door ajar, broadcast on television in mid-1976 -Mossen explained-. And I have come to an indisputable conclusion: it was written in its entirety in 1974, and was not altered during filming. It is impossible that it has any connection with the 1976 dictatorship.
“You have to read between the lines,” Gopo replied.
“I’m telling you it was written in ’74 and they didn’t change it,” Mossen reiterated.
“What is important is the date it was released,” Gopo pointed out. He could have prevented it.
“I can’t think of any reason why Leporo would want to prevent his telenovela from being shown,” Mossen reflects. But he still wouldn’t have succeeded: he had sold it.
“Many of us had to go into exile while your soap opera was being shown,” Gopo sighed solemnly.
“Many others couldn’t go into exile because you killed them,” Mossen commented. In any case, that soap opera had no relation to any support for any dictatorship, regardless of whether it was broadcast in the year it was broadcast. The family demands that you include a public apology, in my book or in any other form.
“Impossible,” Gopo said. I will not give up my principles.
And wearing fake glasses for the first time, raising them to look at Mossen ambiguously, he revealed:
-I can ruin your life too if necessary.
Mossen ended the interview and left without saying goodbye. Not even the secretary of the ANU High Command, with ritual earrings, political hairstyle and revolutionary clothes, fired him. In the first months of Menemism the book of Leporo’s rescue was published. By now the fame of the author of the soap opera had completely vanished, as had the insult.
Gopo had just taken on a new role, this time in the service of the Argentine president, in full Indulgence – Gopo collaborated in the drafting, adding huge salaries -, without giving up his position at the ANU, from which he continued to earn dollars until night of his discreet cirrhotic death, after having served as High Ladero of the third Kirchnerist government.
Source: Clarin
