recognize theindependence of Socialist Angola and, to the astonishment of our own military, one of the first to reestablish diplomatic ties with Communist China.
It was a way for us to retaliate, thought the more naïve among us. Or to delude ourselves, concluded the more realistic. Because even if we could achieve an independent foreign policy, we would be dismissed and jailed, just as one of our colleagues had been, were we to go public regarding the torture and missing persons on the rise in Brazil.
Amid these contradictions, as young apprentices, we also kept a close watch on one another, not knowing if we were sharing an office with some enemy or were “lunchable” for dubious reasons.
Since Max was my friend and, at the time, I knew nothing of his covert dealings, I felt comfortable opening up to him about the widespread mediocrity overtaking the government, particularly in our more restricted environment. He would laugh heartily, agreeing with some of my venting but never failing to tactfully add a few favorable words about the military. Nothing that made me suspect he had an incestuous relationship with them, but his comments always seemed somehow to endorse the regime.
Although I continued to find conversation with him amusing, it pained me, as the intellectual I took myself to be, to imagine that a person I trusted and admired could have become so closely identified with such a system. When I called him to account, he claimed to have reached the conclusion that the populist republic needed to be dismantled so that other realities might now be examined. When I pressed further, condemning the increasing intensity of the military repression, he reminded me of the alternatives proposed by our small, now disbanded group from Urca: take up arms — or work within the system.
“
Within
the system?” I asked. “But
for
or
against
?”
“As if there were a difference …” He laughed in response.
One day, concerned about the activities of a colleague who was deeply entrenched with the right, I asked Max if he thought that
lives
might be at stake as a consequence of the man’s actions. He launched into one of his tirades: “But, my friend, if it were only lives we were dealing with …”
From then on, I felt Max’s integrity was being corrupted by indifference or cynicism. Paradoxically, these attitudes didn’t seem to prevent him from showing a certain aptitude for criticizing the regime. His detractors would later say that he was serving, in this capacity, as an agent provocateur, ferreting out colleagues he could inform on.
Today, I prefer to think that such displays were simply escape valves in which he indulged, so as to keep face among us. These forays in the Legions of Good, as Max called them, allowed him to revisit ideals that had been part of his upbringing, and in which, I want to believe, he still had faith. I’ve come to think that at some level he never stopped seeing himself as a Socialist at heart, although he had given in to the right (as he used to joke)
while it needed him
. This hidden conviction may even have been what enabled him to move toward the left when such shifts became expedient. Undoubtedly, others in our midst had behaved the same way.
What bothered me most about Max at that stage wasn’t so much his defense of the right, no matter how cynical it sounded to me at times. Nor was it his tendency to downplay the abuses committed by the military. (Despite the censorship, we received word of these regularly.) After all, we had met when he was at the secretary-general’s office, working quite closely with those in power. No, what bothered me then, perhaps from what little I knew of him in other contexts, was a more troubling flaw, because it was rooted in one of the most vulnerable aspects of human frailty — flattery. He was a master in the refined art of pleasing those in power by appealing to intellectual qualities they rarely possessed.
Influenced by his readings, he
It was a way for us to retaliate, thought the more naïve among us. Or to delude ourselves, concluded the more realistic. Because even if we could achieve an independent foreign policy, we would be dismissed and jailed, just as one of our colleagues had been, were we to go public regarding the torture and missing persons on the rise in Brazil.
Amid these contradictions, as young apprentices, we also kept a close watch on one another, not knowing if we were sharing an office with some enemy or were “lunchable” for dubious reasons.
Since Max was my friend and, at the time, I knew nothing of his covert dealings, I felt comfortable opening up to him about the widespread mediocrity overtaking the government, particularly in our more restricted environment. He would laugh heartily, agreeing with some of my venting but never failing to tactfully add a few favorable words about the military. Nothing that made me suspect he had an incestuous relationship with them, but his comments always seemed somehow to endorse the regime.
Although I continued to find conversation with him amusing, it pained me, as the intellectual I took myself to be, to imagine that a person I trusted and admired could have become so closely identified with such a system. When I called him to account, he claimed to have reached the conclusion that the populist republic needed to be dismantled so that other realities might now be examined. When I pressed further, condemning the increasing intensity of the military repression, he reminded me of the alternatives proposed by our small, now disbanded group from Urca: take up arms — or work within the system.
“
Within
the system?” I asked. “But
for
or
against
?”
“As if there were a difference …” He laughed in response.
One day, concerned about the activities of a colleague who was deeply entrenched with the right, I asked Max if he thought that
lives
might be at stake as a consequence of the man’s actions. He launched into one of his tirades: “But, my friend, if it were only lives we were dealing with …”
From then on, I felt Max’s integrity was being corrupted by indifference or cynicism. Paradoxically, these attitudes didn’t seem to prevent him from showing a certain aptitude for criticizing the regime. His detractors would later say that he was serving, in this capacity, as an agent provocateur, ferreting out colleagues he could inform on.
Today, I prefer to think that such displays were simply escape valves in which he indulged, so as to keep face among us. These forays in the Legions of Good, as Max called them, allowed him to revisit ideals that had been part of his upbringing, and in which, I want to believe, he still had faith. I’ve come to think that at some level he never stopped seeing himself as a Socialist at heart, although he had given in to the right (as he used to joke)
while it needed him
. This hidden conviction may even have been what enabled him to move toward the left when such shifts became expedient. Undoubtedly, others in our midst had behaved the same way.
What bothered me most about Max at that stage wasn’t so much his defense of the right, no matter how cynical it sounded to me at times. Nor was it his tendency to downplay the abuses committed by the military. (Despite the censorship, we received word of these regularly.) After all, we had met when he was at the secretary-general’s office, working quite closely with those in power. No, what bothered me then, perhaps from what little I knew of him in other contexts, was a more troubling flaw, because it was rooted in one of the most vulnerable aspects of human frailty — flattery. He was a master in the refined art of pleasing those in power by appealing to intellectual qualities they rarely possessed.
Influenced by his readings, he
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