Abel Posse
Abel Parentini Posse, best known as Abel Posse (Córdoba, Argentina, January 7, 1934), is an Argentine novelist, essayist, poet, career diplomat and politician.
Abel Posse
Buenos Aires (since 2004)
After his retirement, Posse's commitment to the anti-Kirchner opposition increased. In very critical and controversial newspaper columns he linked the president and his supporters to extreme left wing militant movements of the 1970s, and he also opposed the restart of trials against the military, and the government's policy of collective memory which he labelled as incomplete. He increased his round of conferences on the state of the nation, and he supported the presidential candidacy of Eduardo Duhalde in 2007, when he was also senate candidate for the City of Buenos Aires in Roberto Lavagna's ticket. In 2005 his published En letra grande, a collection of literary essays and reflections on intellectuals close to him and who he considers as influential. He also published in 2006 a series of political essays under the title, La santa locura de los argentinos, which was a best-seller, where he attempts to map the Argentine question by focusing his analysis from colonial times to the last century in order to make a call for a citizen lead national consensus. In October 2009 he published Cuando muere el hijo, a testimonial novel where the narrators A and S experience the suicide of Ivan, and they try to come to terms with their son's decision. Later they undertake a journey of internal and external initiation when they travel from Paris to Tel-Aviv, and make a stop-over in Miletus, the city of the pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximander of Miletus. 
Toward the end of 2009 Posse accepted the appointment of Minister of Education of the City of Buenos Aires offered by Mauricio Macri, which had been left vacant by Mariano Narodowski. Posse took office a day after having published a controversial article in the daily La Nación, titled “Criminality and cowardice”, where he declared that rock music dumbed down the young, and he judged as ineffective law and order measures of the President, while demanding stronger measures against criminals. He also rejected the reopening of trials against members of the military regime, and reiterated his accusations against Kirchner for his ideological proximity to the 1970s militant left-wing movements. (40) His appointment and this opinion piece triggered a wave of protests by unions and students, from the rock-music scene and web based social networks, to sections of the media, such as Página 12, who accused Posse of having had close ties with previous dictatorship and of asserting that most of his diplomatic career had taken place during the last military junta, which had been first aired by Miguel Bonasso in his 2003 column referred to earlier. In fact, one of the most notorious henchmen of the military who coincidentally was on trial during those days, Benjamin Menendez, paraphrased a few sentences from Posse's article which was taken up by the media tarnishing Posse's image even further. Given such circumstances, Posse resigned 11 days into his new posting.
In 2011 he published Noche de lobos, based on the written account of a Montonero female leader who had been held captive and tortured at the ESMA (Navy School of Mechanics) and who had fallen in love with her torturer. This work delves into the conflicts between the urban guerrillas and the military, and both are portrayed as the protagonists of murderous acts of savagery. It recounts the acts of torture suffered by this woman in this clandestine detention centre, and how she falls prey to the so-called “Stockholm syndrome”, where tortured and torturer fall in love with each other. This novel also has an autobiographical focus, as it reveals how this female guerrilla fighter while she was a captive at the hands of the military had given her typed account to Posse of her story in the early 1980s while he was in the Argentine embassy in Paris. (42)
Since his resignation as Minister of Education of Buenos Aires, Abel Posse continues to live in this city, where he gives conferences, especially on Sarmiento's education legacy, and where he publishes frequently in Perfil and La Nación. He remains critical of the Kirchner policies and concerned about the future of the country. Since November 2012, Abel Posse is an elected numbered member of the Argentine Academy of Letters (43), having taken the place of the late Rafael Obligado. In May 2014 he became an elected numbered member of the National Academy of Education taking the numbered chair Bartolome Mitre.