Politics can have a devastating effect on a country and its people, as I discovered during a recent trip to Argentina.
I stayed at the Buenos Aires apartment of a relative by marriage, university professor Felix Eduardo Herrera, who died there in 2007; the apartment had been empty since then. He had been a noted mathematician in Tucuman, a city in northern Argentina. Much respected by his students, to whom he dedicated his life and work, he was married to Leonor Herrera and raised two boys, Abel and Claudio, and a girl, Leonor Ines.
I met the Herreras in Tucuman in the 1960s when my wife, their niece, studied at the university where professor Herrera taught. When I met them, they had an active social life managed by Leonor. Their house was a place of lively intellectual gatherings, frequently visited by out-of-town scientists and researchers.