ARGENTINA: In a Son’s Name

High-minded José de San Martín, the good soldier who liberated Argentina and Chile (with the aid of Bernardo O’Higgins) from the yoke of Spain, died 97 years ago in poverty and self-imposed exile. Argentines have been trying to make up for it ever since; equestrian statues of him stand in almost every plaza. In 1880 his body was brought back from France, where he had gone in bitter disillusionment over political wrangling, and entombed in Buenos Aires Cathedral. From Spain last week, in two finely worked caskets, came the bones of his father & mother, Juan and Gregoria Matorras de San Martín, who had lived briefly in Argentina, then had gone home to Spain.

In Buenos Aires, as the caskets were landed from a navy ship, flags flew at half-staff. Street lamps were draped in black. Along the route, as the bones of the San Martins were borne to the cathedral, thousands of schoolchildren lined the curbs. Whispered one to a neighbor: “Did you hear, pibe [chum], that next year they are going to bring back his horse?”