Answer to Mrs. Small on
The Whore Maritornes
by Víctor Eduardo OrdóñezThis letter has been translated from Spanish by EIR.
December 10, 2003
Mrs. Small has written a note in the publication of the Schiller Foundation [sic] regarding the magazine Maritornes, whose first issue I had the satisfaction and responsibility of composing, in large part, and directing. Although she does not allude to me in her work—she limits herself to implicating me and other of my collaborators with a certain foolish vehemence—I feel obligated and authorized to intervene in whatever polemic might subsequently develop, following the response of my friend Antonio Caponetto to the offending commentary.
The author enters into—perhaps without realizing it—all of those common (that is to say, vulgar) places, which the left and liberalism (on this point, closer than ever) have been using for decades. She doesn't innovate in the slightest, except for extending her focus to other authors whom she evidently knows by reference only. So, for example, calling the great Chesterton a "British fascist," is as offensive as it is inaccurate, and, definitely, laughable. What, then, does Mrs. Small understand by fascist, and in what part of Chesterton's work does she detect fascist elements? Before resorting to such a generalized and imprecise aggression, wouldn't it be preferable to examine the most basic concepts used, to agree on what we are discussing, and what is meant when specific values and definitions, or certain adjectives and nouns are used? Judgments cannot be made without a minimal scientific agreement, to pose it in this way; or without at least clarifying, what terminology we're dealing with, and whether, when we use a certain word, we are both saying the same thing. If, on the other hand, one puts down on paper anything that pops into one's head, and allows the irrationality of unfounded prejudice to oust intelligence, as the attacker of Maritornes did with a tactlessness bordering on indifference, we can only conclude that the debate will not only be futile, but impossible.
For example, when Mrs. Small pretends to be scandalized (in fact, she seeks to ridicule it) by Professor Calderon Bouchet's article on an eventual monarchy in Argentina, she is demonstrating one of the following three things: that she didn't read it; if she did, she didn't understand it; or that, in any case, she is proceeding with an astonishing hermeneutical bad faith.
Nor does the alleged existence of a "new fascist international between Europe and South America," merit any different evaluation. Of course, rambling as Mrs. Small does—with her intellectual misstatements, her misinformation and axiological rashness—everything is allowed, and any conclusion can be reached. In writing the inaugural editorial of the magazine I ran, I tried, with the approval of my co-workers, to explain as best I possibly could, the purposes which guided the group of friends which took this initiative. Mentioned there, with lavish praise and great satisfaction, are, among others, Ramiro de Maeztu, the martyr of the Spanish Civil War, whose "Defense of Hispanidad" shall remain always the high point of traditionalist thought, put into programmatic action (without detracting from his theoretical contributions and principled assumptions, for which reasons, allow me to recommend his readings to my unknown critic). I was also able to correct the fact that the term "Tradition, Family, and Property"—very meritorious, moreover, although she will likely not even understand it, in all its richness—isn't Carlist, but comes from another organization, with which the majority of Maritornes' officers disagree, and despite its importance, it is unnecessary at this point to rehash this long-standing difference.
It is also worth noting—and I say this at the risk of repeating myself—the method used in the article to which I am responding. It lists, in a tone almost of condemnation, the background and militancy of several collaborators of the magazine I lead. This is almost just a detail, which proves none of the facts presented, but that isn't the interesting part. What is important, is that—and always based on the prejudices which in her mind function as dogmas—she condemns and disqualifies men and movements of which she evidently has no knowledge, or knows of them only remotely, and therefore maintains—and she says so—such puerile and unappealable criteria.
The space dedicated to clarifying the personality and the significance of the poor Maritornes in the [Don] Quijote is similarly irrelevant. As A. Caponnetto explains in his reply, what was proposed with the choice of this name, was a perhaps more poetic, rather than historical or political symbology, in the sense that the desire was to grant the discovering, apostolic, and conquering Spain—if I may say it—a creative and regenerating function, by extracting from the purity of the look, a world for Christ, from the cosmic coarseness of this primitive, terrifying, and unredeemable America. But I understand that from an Anglo-Saxon standpoint, a completely disinterested act of love and beauty [the results of] which we have been living for five centuries, has no explanation or rationale.
However, despite all that, I should thank Mrs. Small—and in this, I believe I speak for many friends and compatriots—for her definition, or, better put, location of issues and values whose presentation, we should admit, awakened in Argentina a certain, although not too great, expectation. Now, with this virtual lifting of the mask, there is no reason to keep kidding ourselves or continue to be confused. Lindon Larrouche's [sic] movement and affiliated organizations, such as the Schiller Institute, are the Trojan Horse in any attempt at Christian reconstruction of the West (and, in this special case of Hispanic America). With its disguised but rejuvenated paganism, its confused programs, its mistaken ideology, its syntheses as simplistic as they are dangerous, with its suspicious programs, this group of agents and operatives of who-knows-what interests (doctrinaire, political, or economic), is definitely not ours. By Mrs. Small's speaking as she has, as a representative of all this witches' sabbath of slogans, projects, and declarations with which these Americans from the North (who never stopped being that, in the worst sense) have been harassing us for a longer than tolerable time, she pulled the veil off the crudest of fictions, which it was urgent to end. And she did it, for which I sincerely thank her.
The myth of a chronic tax evader in his country (where he failed as a candidate to any office), turned without reason into a caudillo of an infantile, pseudo-classical and, now we definitively know, anti-Christian and anti-Hispanic humanism, has now ended. And, all of us here shall feel freer for having discovered the exact thinking and feelings of those who, with such insolence and audacity, presented themselves to the most anguished sons of a glorious Spanish empire (which never was such, in Small's opinion) in dissolution, as a support for their demands.
Let this serve to understand that our destiny is in our own hands, and that there is no rational reason which convinces Catholics who dream of the hispanic world to wait for the solution to come from the North. Once more it is proven that the enemy—the Enemy—comes from there, and to assume the contrary is complicity and treason.
—Víctor Eduardo Ordóñez
P.S. After I sent the previous response, I noticed that I had omitted to include a consideration which I believe is fundamental. "Last but no least" [sic—in English]. I refer to the concept of fascist which Mrs. Small indiscriminately fires in all directions. Applied to people—such as all those who she mentions and to myself as well—it is a lie and a slander. Because all of us, with our imperfections and defects, are Roman Catholics who in no way could commune with a totalitarian philosophy such as the system and doctrine elaborated by Mussolini. An elementary understanding of this policy would have prevented the author from so thoughtlessly characterizing her fellow men, even if they are from the South. If ideologically, totalitarian fascism attempts to include all social, political, economic, juridical, moral, and spiritual reality of a nation within the confines of the state, it is understood that the Church could not accept such an aberration, a mixture of heresy and blasphemy. Because in this conception, the State is not the guarantor and custodian of the law (and of rights), but its source, that which provides legitimacy, its dispensor. Therefore, let the señora reveal the texts in which those included in her charge of fascism, would have made such professions. Should she fail to do so, we can only conclude that she is a slanderer.
