Domingo Cavallo described Botero Montoya as a “legendary” former Colombian finance minister who was also the creator of Fedesarrollo, the think tank that “did and continues to do the most to introduce rationality and continuity” into Colombia’s economic policy. “I was inspired by that institution, which dates back to 1970, when in 1977, I promoted the creation of the IERAL of the Mediterranean Foundation”, he claimed.
The former minister said that Botero Montoya highlighted “all the contributions he made and that Colombians fortunately recognize him” and advised reading his monthly columns, which he considered “unmissable.”
Autocracy and Historical Revisionism
By Rodrigo Botero Montoya
A common denominator of the authoritarian procedure is the construction of myths to create an accommodating version of the past. In some cases, it is about inventing admirable facts that did not exist. In others, the aim is to make the collective memory of reprehensible actions disappear. The attempt to modify and even falsify history serves a precise political purpose. British writer George Orwell stated that: ‘Whoever controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.’
Thus, for example, the Chinese government has suppressed any reference to the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989, in which several thousand students who promoted democracy were killed. Likewise, the official version of the history of the People’s Republic of China omits the abuses of human rights during the Cultural Revolution of the sixties or the humanitarian catastrophe caused by The Great Leap Forward, (1958-1962). The purpose of these omissions is to consolidate the legitimacy of the Communist Party and its right to rule.
Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia ignores the crimes committed during Stalin’s dictatorship while valuing the role of the Soviet Union as a world superpower. In the United States, Donald Trump and his allies promote the lie that President Joe Biden won the election by fraud. With the complicity of the Republican party, they justify the assault on Congress on January 6, 2021 as a legitimate expression of political dissent.
In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, a coup colonel, dedicated his skills as a mass communicator to persuading his followers that the country’s forty years of democratic rule in the 20th century were a failure. Today, the dictatorial regime of his successor, Nicolás Maduro, celebrates the date of his bloody coup against a democratic government, February 4, 1992, as the glorious beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution.
In Argentina, the Kirchnerist regime managed to overshadow the civil heroes of the 19th century, to exalt Che Guevara and the Montoneros. What is considered valuable in the national trajectory are the figures of Juan Domingo and Evita Perón, as precursors of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner.
In recent statements, a leader of the Colombian authoritarian left attributes the cause of the Venezuelan catastrophe to oil, from which he now needs to distance himself due to his electoral aspirations. It is the attempt to exempt Chavez from any responsibility for the Venezuelan tragedy. Venezuela’s current doom occurred despite having oil, not because of it. Norway and Canada are exemplary democracies despite having abundant oil.
At the present juncture, it becomes important to understand that this distortion of historical reality has a clear political purpose. As the Spanish philosopher Jorge Santayana warned, ‘Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.’
Source: Ambito
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