INSIDE A BUENOS AIRES 

restaurant named El Cuartito, sky-blue paint covers the

walls, along with photographs and banners from important athletes and teams. In
the center of the largest wall is a shrine to Diego Maradona, the star of the 1986
World Cup. That title is so important that Maradona, a recovering drug addict, still
basks comfortably in a nation's warming love and goodwill. People celebrate the '86
title with vivid street art murals, and with photos and signed jerseys and posters in
nearly every place of business, including El Cuartito. The restaurant celebrates civic
heroes, which is why one particular omission is jarring. Argentina has won two
World Cups, the famous one in 1986 and the other just eight years before, in 1978,
when Argentina played host. That team is barely honored at all inside El Cuartito. In
the back corner of the main room, as far away from the door as you can get, hang two
team photos. That's it. Combined, they're smaller than the Michael Jordan poster on
a nearby wall. This is not an isolated oversight. During a 30th anniversary
celebration of the '78 team, an event that also served as a memorial for victims of the
former military dictatorship's violence, the triple-decked Estadio Monumental
looked barren, wide swaths of empty seats swallowing groups of people. Spinetta,
one of the most famous Argentine rock stars, played for free after the ceremony and
they still couldn't draw a crowd. Nineteen of the 22 players didn't show. It seems odd
to an outsider, a soccer-mad nation trying to erase one of its greatest teams, but in
Argentina, the scrubbing makes sense. The nation has the highest number of
psychologists per capita in the world: This is a country drowning in toxic secrets,
including the one about a World Cup it needs to forget.

THE GUARDS SWITCHED the radio to the 1978 World Cup final, tinny speakers blasting
full volume: Argentina vs. Netherlands. Political prisoners twisted and fidgeted in the
shadows. Norberto Liwski, one of them, struggled to get comfortable. The cells measured 6
feet by 5 feet, each of them holding a half dozen thin, sick people, many of whom wouldn't
live through the week. The air stank. Men and women slumped, shoulder to shoulder, stewing
in their own urine and feces. Infection ravaged their wounds. They ate rotten meat. The
prisoners in the cells were Argentine citizens, tortured by Argentine guards, kidnapped and
hidden in secret Argentine jails, imprisoned by a powerful and cruel dictatorship, which
managed every detail of this soccer tournament. History would reveal the World Cup to be
the apogee of both its power and cruelty.
The national team presented a deep moral conflict. The prisoners argued among themselves,
whispering, since guards punished any communication with savage beatings. Some prisoners
wanted Argentina to win. They'd cheered for the blue-and-white all their lives. Others, like
Liwski, felt rage and sorrow hearing the dictators use the team as another weapon in the war
on their own people.
A strong bond had united the prisoners, all of them kidnapped for their political views, held
secretly without trial. But now the World Cup divided them. Tension filled Liwski's tiny cell.
The game ended, Argentina the winner by a score of 3-1. The guards switched off the radio.
For hours, Norberto Liwski heard the laughter and singing of the fans on the street outside.
The walls of his cell transformed their joy into his horror. It was June 25, 1978.
IN THE SHADOW of another World Cup, a faint uneasiness settles on the city
streets. Nothing about the trip to Norberto Liwski's bland office prepares someone
for his story about torture and how, even three decades after his release from prison,
it leaves a society troubled and raw. He talks about death in a city so defined by its
life. The wide boulevards of Buenos Aires open up like the avenues of Paris, and the
architecture evokes the grandeur of a forgotten century. On every corner, glowing
cafes swirl with urban life. Fancy cocktail drinkers crowd underground speakeasy
bars, hidden beneath flower shops and behind bodega phone booths, the newest
trend in a city obsessed with secrets. Soccer plays on nearly every television: It's that
time again in Argentina. Four years have passed and the country vibrates with World
Cup madness. Maybe this is the year for that elusive third title. In his office, where he
runs a human rights foundation, Liwski shudders. The excitement over the coming
tournament, the first in South America since 1978, makes him remember being
strapped to a metal table with an electrified metal rod stuck up his ass.

Dictator Jorge Videla (center) loved power far more than soccer. AP Photo

Military officers sodomized him in a torture chamber, the hot current burning his
insides, raping him with electricity. He remembers the sharp but manageable pain of
something forcing its way inside you, followed by the fear of what might come next,
then the panic, then the explosion of fire. The right-wing military dictatorship had
arrested him in April 1978 for wanting to help poor people get health care, and for
being a vocal leftist. Officers broke into his house, shot him in the legs and drove him
to the hidden concentration camp in Buenos Aires. They dragged him from the car
straight to the torture room, where sometimes the soldiers played loud recordings of
Hitler. The guards stripped Liwski naked. They wanted names. For the next few days,
they shocked him with a cattle prod, on his gums, on his nipples, on his genitals, on
his stomach and ears.