Is Regeneration Possible?

Tino in Boston 1976.

I write these lines not with bitterness, but with affection and concern. The United States shaped part of my outlook on life, its energy, entrepreneurship, civic spirit, and sense of community. That is precisely why its current inward turn, its fear of difference, feels so painful to witness. For those of us who grew up believing in its best version, silence would be a form of complicity.

I was born in 1958 in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

British influence, due to family ties, had long expressed itself through music, fashion, cinema and art. But then came a wave of imagery and propaganda from the United States, which, combined with the arrival of U.S. expatriates in my neighborhood, became a new cultural beacon. Their clothing, culinary habits, magazines, backpedal bicycles, records, chewing gum and a certain freedom in how they related to one another made the “Yankees” seem fascinating to me. By the mid-1970s, in my household, we had shifted from European to U.S. cultural influences.

My curiosity grew so much that I decided my first solo trip abroad, right after finishing high school, would be to travel across the United States for three months with an Amtrak rail pass, hitchhiking where the train wouldn’t take me. One great surprise was being welcomed into the homes of complete strangers. I discovered a world of opportunity and unparalleled freedom. I felt the pulse of a youth driven by the desire to experiment with liberty, creativity, rebellion and innovation. That energy completely absorbed me.

At the same time, I found a society celebrating its first 200 years as a nation, even though the country was, at the moment, led by Gerald Ford, a president who had never been elected by popular vote, either as vice president or as president. I understood that diversity in every sense was the country’ strength, and that the American Dream was indeed real, despite its restless urge to intervene, often imprudently and clumsily, in other countries, particularly in Latin America. I always found that foreign policy, often supportive of dictatorships around the world, was a striking contradiction for a country whose democracy I admired.

I returned several more times, drawn by that entrepreneurial adrenaline I had been cultivating since my university years in Argentina. In the mid-1980s, thanks to a professional opportunity on Wall Street, I moved with my wife to New York City, which was just emerging from one of its worst financial crises, exposing me to a different set of red flags than those of my own country. Some of these included people sleeping on the streets, neighborhoods unsafe to walk through, widespread vandalism and the very real fear of being mugged.

I experienced what it meant to be a young professional in a foreign country and was able to spread my wings thanks to certain advantages, speaking the language and having a green card. I remain deeply grateful for that experience, which soon allowed me to become independent, start my own projects, exercise my rights and responsibilities and embrace multiculturalism. In particular, I came to value the immense economic and social wealth contributed by immigrants from all over the world, especially by Latin Americans and other minority communities.

I also came to understand and practice the power of grassroots movements and civic organizations, joining environmental causes, especially those focused on the protection and enhancement of water resources, which was inspired by the Earth Day Network and the Water Environment Federation. Many of those lessons and capacities returned with me to Argentina, along with two beloved daughters.

Today at 67, I ask myself how a country whose historical biases toward immigrants and minorities were no secret, could nevertheless have reached a moment of unprecedented and once unimaginable severity, where many immigrants now fear leaving their homes or speaking their own language in public for fear of deportation. It also pains me to see those great cathedrals of knowledge, their universities, foundations and think tanks, losing the resources that once enabled them not only to educate foreigners but also to learn from them.

My early admiration for the United States gradually evolved over the years. What once felt like an unshakable model of possibility slowly revealed its own fragilities, fragilities that now leave me wondering whether the country will be able to reinvent itself in a world where hegemonic power is increasingly questioned and steadily losing legitimacy. What we are seeing, I fear, are the final attempts of those who still hold power, or desperately cling to it, to impose conditions that no longer resonate with the times nor with the aspirations of the societies they claim to lead.

As a Latin American, I still believe in the United States’ capacity to regenerate istself. But that renewal, something I learned during my years living there, will not come from its elites. It will come from its communities, its immigrants, its young people who continue to believe that freedom is something to be shared rather than imposed, and from a worldview that is less authoritarian and more empathetic, one that finally acknowledges the capacities that other nations and peoples bring, and that the United States must now embrace if it hopes to evolve.