A Government Of Survivors; 'Our task is to write a new history for Argentina. It won't be easy. These days we are known mostly as a society that does everything wrong.'.

Byline: Hector Timerman (Timerman is Argentina's consul general in New York.)

At 2 a.m. on April 15, 1977, 20 armed men in civilian clothes staged a violent, Gestapo-style assault on our home. My father--the publisher of La Opinion, at the time the most influential paper in Argentina--was forced into one room while the rest of us were herded into another. We waited there, listening for the shots that would end my father's life. Finally, we were ordered out of the room and told to stand staring at a wall. We then heard a door shut and discovered that we were alone. My father had disappeared. Where to? Why? Two days later the military junta declared that my father was being held in jail for "subversive acts."

My family suffered because of its opposition to the military dictatorship that deposed Isabel Peron in 1976. At the time of my father's arrest my older brother, Daniel, was recovering from an illness. My younger brother, Javier, was 16. The imprisonment of my father destroyed my mother's nerves. At age 23, I became the head of the family. I took charge of the newspaper and tried to keep fearful reporters from leaving, but it was soon confiscated and became a government propaganda sheet. My father spent two-and-a-half years either in jail or under "house arrest," but he survived. Many other Argentines caught up in the Dirty War were not as lucky. A year after my father's arrest, the U.S. ambassador told me I was going to be abducted, so I fled first to Brazil and, eventually, the United States.

Since those dramatic years Argentina has, in some ways, come full circle. Many of those who opposed the dictatorship, or were its victims, are now in influential positions. A few weeks ago President Nestor Kirchner appointed me to the post of Argentine consul general in New York. The same day he appointed Carlos Bettini as ambassador to Spain. Seven members of Bettini's family were murdered during the Dirty War. Today, he still does not know the whereabouts of his grandmother, kidnapped by Argentine Army troops when she was 77 years old.

As a young man, President Kirchner was persecuted by the military junta as well, like most of those who make up the current Argentine government. Yes, we can say we are a generation of survivors. But we cannot dwell excessively on the past. Our task, as the new government, is to write a new history for Argentina. It won't be easy. Sadly, these days Argentina is mostly known as a society that does everything the wrong way. We're responsible for the biggest economic default in ...