I have reasons from the heartwhich I will refer to, to love Minnesota.
Minnesotaand its most populated city, Minneapolishave occupied prominent places in international pages and newscasts in recent weeks. It has been as a result of street confrontations with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of the USA.
Clashes with protesters opposed to politics, and especially to the methods of persecuting illegal immigration ordered by the president Donald Trumpled to two deaths with high political repercussions, those of Renee Good y Alex Pretti. They were American citizens and were the same age: 37 years old.
The victims were killed by federal agents in extremely controversial situations that have led to a series of bitter controversies, apparently now channeled on better terms, between Trump’s federal government and the state government, in the hands of Tim Waltz. Tim was the cheerful companion of Kamala Harris in the formula of Democratic Partyin the last presidential race.
It is possible that the mention of Minnesota, before those episodes, was not able to remove from the memories of some people more than the name of Fargothe celebrated 1996 police thriller drama. William H. Macy He played a car salesman who hires two thugs to kidnap his wife so he can extort money from his father-in-law to ransom his daughter. Fargo It won two Oscars and gave a time of notoriety to Minneapolis, where the action of the drama was mainly located.
Others may remember Minneapolis for a real-life tragic circumstance: the case of George Floydfrom 2020, to whom Dereck Chauvina local police officer, pressed his neck against the ground of one of the streets of Minneapolis with one of his knees. He did this long enough to render him lifeless.
The matter went around the world and popular indignation once again promoted the slogan of Black Lives Matter. He hashtag had prospered worldwide for eight years due to similar episodes that involved people of color as victims. Chauvin was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
Minnesota has traditionally been a state disaffected to the Republican Party. I became familiar with his politics when his two senators, both Democrats, constituted a strong representation in Congress: Hubert Humphreylater vice president with Lyndon Johnsony Eugene McCarthya liberal and Catholic of striking presence who would aspire to reach the White House in 1968.
However, in 1948 some minnesotans notorious had contributed to Harry Trumanwho was acting vice president of the presidency due to the death of Franklin Roosevelt In April 1945, he almost lost his electoral contest against the Republican governor of New York, Thomas Dewey.
Part of the Democrats, like those who were active in a political force with agrarian and populist bases with a strong tradition in that Midwest state, had joined a third candidacy. It was that of Henry Wallacethe wealthy leftist who had been vice president of the United States in Roosevelt’s third presidency (1940-1944).
Dewey’s triumph was so considered inevitable that the Chicago Tribune opened its first edition after the elections at full page width with the famous, and infamous title, Dewey defeats Truman (Dewey defeats Truman). When erroneous conjectures receded in the face of accomplished facts, Truman displayed himself brimming with joyful irony: he had himself photographed, giving rise to one of the most widespread images in the political history of the United States, while reading the cover title of the Chicago Tribune muddied by the final results.
For a handful of Argentinesunited for a long time by the exercise of the journalistic profession, Minnesota represents much more than the sum of all those stories. I’ll start by putting it in personal terms: After weeks of reporting on the violence overwhelming Minnesota, I took an abstraction, wondering where the best people I had ever met were anywhere in the world. To compare is to know, after all.
I told myself that surely I had not met people with more solid moral principles, more compassionate and welcoming to strangers than the minnesotans. The time has come to say it with warm gratitude.
I met them in 1963 by obtaining the open position for an Argentine journalist in the World Press Institutefounded two years earlier by Harry Morgana young journalist from Salinas, Oklaholain order to expand the bases for defending press freedom in the world. Twelve journalists were selected, one per country, from various regions of the planet: four from Latin America, four from Europe, four from Asia-Africa.
Harry had convinced the boards of several companies of the first order of the United States that the objective was worth achieving in the middle of the Cold War, and in a confrontation of values, with the Soviet Union and its allies. They got ready for that purpose Reader’s Digestby its owners, philanthropists DeWitt and Lila Wallace, PanAmerican, Coca-cola, General Mills, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Companyhereinafter 3M, and others.
When I opened a series of consultations with my closest colleagues, among so many Argentines who participated in that program that ran until 2007 in Macalester College -one of the most prestigious houses of humanist studies in the Midwest-, I found the friendly faces of all of them in my own mirror. Andrés Oppenheimerclassic expert on Latin American affairs of the CNN and the Miami Heraldand regular contributor to LA NACION, told me without hesitation: “I absolutely agree with you.”
Andrés remembers the people of the twin cities of Saint Paulwhere Macalester College is located, and Minneapolis, for the peculiarity of having been among the few that surprised him by the fact that everyone greeted everyone, no matter where they passed or where they were. I told him that I am married to Ritaa woman without hidden thought, with roots in Parchment and raised, therefore, in a provincial culture, who is often outraged by the way in which the people of Buenos Aires pass each other like ghosts, ignoring each other.
I told my colleague that some time ago, when entering a pharmacy in Quintana y CallaoRita had said out loud: “Good morning.” As the greeting was followed by the most absolute silence of the group of people waiting to be served, Rita commented to Fanypharmacist and old friend: “I said ‘good morning’ and no one answered.” Little by little, slight, almost embarrassing responses emerged in the room, in a cascading echo: “Good morning,” “Good morning,” and so on.
After narrating the episode happened in one of the stores of the TKL pharmaceutical chain, the response from the natural journalist who is Andrés was immediate: “Here is the title of the note you intend to write: Minnesota is like Parchment“Don’t expect either, Andrés warned, to be greeted easily in Miami o New York. Thank you, Andrés, for relieving me of the task of thinking of a title for this text.
Minnesota is not the place to go to go anywhere glamorous in particular. Their cars carry the legend that it is “The State of Ten Thousand Lakes” and this does not respond to the fantasies of water lunatics. It has, in truth, ten thousand lakes and a temperature in its extremes of winter and summer that makes you think twice about living in those lands that belonged, for hundreds of years, perhaps thousands, to Dakota Indians, of the Sioux lineage, and to Ojibwas.
I remember a title of Minneapolis Starfrom January or February 1964: “Yesterday, Duluththe coldest place on the planet: 47 degrees below zero.” Duluth is a grain port in Minnesota on Lake Superior, 250 kilometers northeast of Minneapolis. It freezes in winter, of course, and suffers from the winds that come down from the Arctic and cross Minnesota, giving it the status of the state with the most inclement climate in the Union. There, in 1941, Robert Allen Zimmermanwhom the whole world would know as Bob Dylan.
In my old days The World Press Institute program included a complete regular cycle in Macalester of studies on North American institutions, a tour of thousands of miles by van to all corners of the country and three months of journalistic internship in a media outlet of the intern’s choice. If there was a scholarship in the world, what is called a scholarship, it was that one.
Out of interest in the survival and adventures of the first wave of Cubans exiles I chose to join the Miami Herald. He had interviewed Fidel Castro at the Alvear Palace Hotel when he traveled to Buenos Aires in May 1959 for an inter-American meeting, four months after having descended triumphantly to Havana from the mountains, and now he sought to write stories about his adversaries in the exodus he had caused.
Antonio Rodríguez Villar“Tonito”, was part of the first cast of WPI scholarship recipients, from 1961-1962. “Tonito” was editor of La Prensa and LA NACION and presided over the National Folklore Academy for many years. When he returned to the United States in 1966, we said goodbye to him in Ezeiza with his mother, a sister and Eduardo Falú, who brought him a guitar as a gift. Upon leaving the airport, Falú told me: “If this boy took up the guitar with the seriousness of the case, he would be a phenomenon.”
At 90 years oldand on his way, he says, towards 91, “Tonito” is enthusiastic about the idea of making public a collective testimony of gratitude to a people as generous as Minnesota. Observe how an idiosyncratic fact of the minnesotans, and actually of Americans in general, the musical meaning of life.
He remembers his first day at Macalester College the welcome of the native students, in which those who received it singing, soon went on to play one or more instruments. It is not a coincidence, says “Tonito”, that Truman y Nixon They will play the piano, and Clinton the saxophone: from an early age people learn music in the United States in a more serious way than in other countries.
I share with the old friend the data from a survey of the Pew Research Center of 2025 that measures solidarity behaviors in the United States. Andrés Oppenheimer had recommended that reading to me.
About the 50 states of the UnionMinnesota is the fourth with the highest average of individual and institutional donations. This occurs in a country where total donations reach a staggering $500 billion a year. The Pew Research Center study not only computes donations in money or other material forms, but also the time and effort that many dedicate to the care and support of people lacking sufficient support.
Ricardo Arriazu He is known as one of the relevant economists in Argentina. His conferences and journalistic articles invariably have a high impact among colleagues and political media. “Economist’s economist”, he is defined with the unique aura that has distinguished a select few, as it was with Julio Oliverathe late rector of the UBA. It is the appropriate way to characterize an unquestionable personality in the discipline in which Arriazu matured in the early sixties at the University of Minnesota.
At that time, this was the third public university in terms of enrollment in the United States. And at that time it constituted a first-class national field in economics studies, Mass Media (journalism) and Philosophy.
Arriazu remembers with emotion the way in which that university was prepared to facilitate the entry of foreign students into a new world of life and studies. He does not forget the rule to which they adjusted the graduation of students from the University of Minnesota: when they left, they left their belongings at the service of whoever arrived.
Patrick Barnabasthe veteran and much beloved editor of Cartas de Lectores and Opinion issues of LA NACION, agrees with Rodríguez Villar regarding the musical sensitivity of the minnesotans. He had arrived in St. Paul in 1984, when the native students there were devouring the music of Purple Rain (Purple Rain), one of the biggest hits in the career of Prince, the son of Minneapolis who would break records with his recordings. Prince Rogers Nelson He was born precisely in Minnesota, and would die there, in 2016.
Patricio fraternized in Macalester with a boy who upon his arrival he had already seen Purple Rainin a film version released in 1984, nine times. “I was impressed – he confesses – by the simplicity and circumspect hospitality of the people of Minnesota towards the foreigner who went to those often frozen lands. To the natural discretion of its inhabitants, among whom the majority were liberals in the North American sense of the word, was added a genuine curiosity to know the history and customs of the country of the foreign visitor.”
Patricio had arrived in St. Paul a day earlier than planned and, as soon as he registered, he was surrounded by students who were doing paid volunteer work in guiding foreign boys and girls who were beginning their studies. That first night they took him to the movies.
Nelson Castroone of the most respected figures in Argentine journalism, was also a WPI fellow (1985). Do not forget the plain treatment of the minnesotans nor the permanent willingness to listen to learn what could be gleaned from other cultures. Remember well the fascination with which minnesotans That year, the alternatives to the trial of the Military Juntas that had governed Argentina and the projection of the sentence in the case as a leading case in the horizon of international criminal law.
In recent decades The “Twins” received large numbers of Asian immigrants. Arriazu provides the information that Minneapolis and St. Paul must be among the cities that have welcomed the largest number of Somalis fleeing from East Africa for years.
In my memory from more than sixty years ago What remains among what I perceived of Minnesota is the image of a Scandinavian culture that stood out everywhere, particularly due to the presence of descendants of those who had arrived from Norway and, to a lesser extent, from Sweden. Surnames of Danish, German and Icelandic origin were also notable. Macalester was of Scottish and Presbyterian origin.
Mississippi Rivera Precozwhich originates not far from the Twins, was one of the favorite places for furtive romance. The Catholic students admired the ability of some Protestant girls to deflect the classic penalties in stoppage time, when the late night made it urgent to return to the school campus: “You are used to going out with girls who confess and are free of sin. But us…?”
People prepared to resist extremely low temperatures. Not so much, however, for the brands that prevented any human being from outdoor activities or the simple act of walking a few blocks with the cap devoid of the vital safe conduct in those circumstances: earmuffs that covered the nerve endings of the lobes, the most sensitive part of the body exposed to the merciless cold.
Our frenetic van tour of the United States as part of the WPI program was during crazy times – well, other times just as crazy – in American life. With the first months of Lyndon Johnson’s Democratic presidency, centuries of racial segregation came to an end, but pockets of the old norms still remained.
In Nashvillecapital of Tennesseethe mayor declared us honorary citizens of the city one afternoon, and in the evening we were rejected out of hand. night club because we refused to enter, leaving outside Ademola James, our colleague from Lagos, Nigeria, who was prevented from entering due to the color of his skin. I still remember the response of a African-American to two of our people to whom in Atlanta, in spontaneous street conversation, he had commented that he was prohibited from entering the restaurant that was behind them.
-Do you struggle to enter that place?
-Yes, I fight.
-And when racial desegregation is really effective, would you enter?
-No.
-And why are you fighting, then?
-So that my children don’t ask me why I can’t enter.
The unforgettable events They happen on a day like any other. On Friday, November 22, 1963, at one-thirty in the afternoon, when late autumn was fading the profuse crowns of the St. Paul trees, I was preparing to cross Summit Avenuean important artery of the city.
There was no one in sight. Suddenly a car that was speeding from the left along that important avenue stopped in front of me. The driver, a stranger, crossed his body over the full seat of the cars of the time, lowered the window and in a shout vented to the person who first encountered the emotion that disturbed him: “They have shot the president!” He continued on without waiting for a response.
They had shot, yes, in Dallas, against President John Kennedy. Minutes later I would know by the voice of Walter Conkritethe great anchor on American television, that Kennedy had been assassinated.
How can we not remember with gratitude to the land where a wonderful time of our youth passed, a time of dreams and hopes, among so many Lutheran temples that we have not seen anywhere else outside of the Scandinavian countries?
How not to evoke with reciprocity of feelings to of Minnesotas in a difficult hour of trial, unimaginable on other days?
How not to look back in recognition towards the hospitable land where Francis Scott Fitzgerald, one of the great novelists of the 20th century, author of The Great Gatsbyand one of the favorite comic artists of my generation, Charles Schulzthe creator of the happy series Peanutswhich was published for half a century in thousands of journalistic publications on the planet?
Thank you, Minnesota.
