Journalist, writer and university professor Eduardo Jozami has died
Eduardo Jozami died this Friday at the age of 84a victim of an illness he had recently been dealing with. Journalist, writer, university professor and officer in the fight for human rights will be held this Saturday at the Legislative Assembly of Buenos Aires between 9:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.
An intellectual, member of Carta Abierta and former director of the Harold Conti Center of Cultural Memory – which operates within the former ESMA – he was also a lawyer and t.He took his last step in public service during the government of Alberto Fernándezin which he served as National Director for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law.
His first arrest during the de facto government was in 1972. A member of the Montoneros since early 1974, Throughout the last military dictatorship, Jozami remained detained. From his arrest a month before the coup until his release a few months before the return of democracy, he went through La Plata, Devoto, Caseros, Rawson and Sierra Chica prisons. Then, until 1985, he went into exile in Mexico.
In his role as a journalist who took him to meet Che Guevara in 1967 in Boliviahe worked for Clarín, Página/12, El Mundo, El Cronista Comercial, Uno más Uno (México) and news agencies Télam and Interpress Service, among others. He also collaborated as a columnist for many other publications during his lifetime. He was also the director of an emblematic magazine Crisis.
From 1964 to 1966, the year the military dictatorship intervened in the trade union groups, he served as general secretary of the Buenos Aires Press Union and deputy secretary of the Argentine Federation of Press Workers.
He was also a columnist for 678an ultra-official program that aired on Public TV during the mandates of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner.
“I had the comfort in 678 that I wish I had in other programs where you feel attacked from the moment you walk in. I’ve spoken my mind everywhere, which doesn’t mean I spend all day playing the truth. The situation of the militant intellectual always implies tension“, Jozami expressed during interview with Infobae in July 2015.
Jozami was a lawmaker in Buenos Aires for the Frente Grande from 1993 to 1997. He was also the Minister of Housing of the City of Buenos Aires during the government of Aníbal Ibarra, and later, from 1997 to 2000, he was representative of the nation.
As a militant partner of Eduardo Luis Duhalde, he also worked for decades as professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aireswork he also did in Tres de Febrero National Universitywhere he was also the director of the Center for the Study of Memory and Contemporary History.
Jozami, the author of more than a dozen books, received several honors during his lifetime. In 1991, he was awarded the Helmann-Hammett Prize, which is awarded by the New York Free Speech Forum to intellectuals who have suffered political persecution. In 2007, the Faculty of Journalism and Social Communication of the University of La Plata awarded him the Rodolfo Walsh Prize for the book Rodolfo Walsh, word and deed.
In 2014, a year in which outstanding people in the field of literature were awarded, Jozami and Konex price.
He published, among other things, books Nothing will ever be the same. Argentina after Menemism (2000), An inglorious end (2004), Rodolfo Walsh, word and deed (2006), Dilemmas of Peronism (2009), 2922 days. Memoirs of a prisoner of the dictatorship (2014) and as a compiler Tradition in conflict. 200 years of Argentine history (2011) and Walter Benjamin in the former ESMA (2013). He presented his work at the last book fair in Buenos Aires From Alfonsín to Milea. A Disturbing Parable (1983-2023).
“Today It is a day of deep pain for all who understand that it is not common that being a noble intellectual and a militant close to the deepest needs of the nation were qualities that come together in one person.. Eduard Jozami has an extraordinary convergence of these two qualities,” said his brother Aníbal, who is UNTREF’s rector emeritus.