HUMUS, Forty years

Each experience lives according to its own time. In each time, the eternal and ephemeral coexist: absolute stillness and sparkle.

Forty years could mean the intensity of an entire life or the intangible moment between two thoughts.

Our first issue of HUMUS was launched in the mid 1980's. It was born as a modest black and white print publication: an offset of five (at most six) letter size sheets, folded in the center. At that time, we were just a group of teens and youths (between 16 and 22 years old), members of the "San Vartan" Scouts Group at Mekhitarist School.

At the beginning Humus circulated exclusively within this small segment of the Armenian community in Buenos Aires. Even though at first, we aimed to launch a bimonthly magazine, its publication was far more sporadic: two, at most three, issues per year.

Roughly speaking, Humus was a self managed community with well distributed tasks among its members: some of us wrote, others drew, others still went out looking for sponsors to finance the printing cost, or we just offered our homes or our typewriters to achieve the project. Once the edition hit the streets, we were also in charge of distribution and sale.

Initially, the editorial line was not clearly defined. It was certainly an eclectic magazine composed of a few poems, one or two book or play reviews, and maybe a short opinion piece accompanied by simple line illustrations: that was all we had. After compiling the articles, the intense work of laying out the publication commenced, which at that time, was nothing short of an epic accomplishment. Each article was typed in columns of a specific size that were later cut and glued onto poster boards. Titles were handmade through Letraset, a dry-transfer lettering, and gluing imperfections were covered with white tempera to make them invisible when we carefully reproduced them. That was Humus, at least between the first and the third issue.

Starting with the 4th issue, we were able to access more advanced editorial tools. The magazine was growing in technology and audience, and we were all growing together with it. By then, we started writing about topics and concerns common to the Armenian youth. Little by little we were broadening the agenda, adding "uncomfortable" subjects that certain people did not like to talk about or even mention. There are a few good stories that illustrate this point.

On the cover of the 5th issue, we had published an illustration of a snake - standing for Turkey - impaled by a spear. The drawing - powerful by the aesthetics of the times, but too naïve by today's standards - had the following heading, written in Armenian: "Soghomon Tehlirian, the Avenger". A "prominent benefactor" of the community tried without success to hide his annoyance concerning that image and offered to purchase all copies from that edition. When we realized that his intention was to prevent its circulation, we refused the sale. Later, we also learned that he had been concerned that our 5th issue would bother the authorities at the Turkish embassy in Argentina, where he had close ties.

Around those years, another well-known incident arose regarding a long article published in Humus, entitled "The Armenian Question Today" which in fact was a Spanish translation of an article that had previously been published in "Critique Socialiste" ("Socialist Criticism") a french Marxist magazine, with the signature of Pierre Terzian. The article, of historical slant, detailed the different turns the main Armenian political parties had taken after the sovietization of Armenia. It also revealed their ties first with Nazism and then with the CIA during the period after the WWII. We will not bring back that old controversy, but we do want to point out its intensity.

By then, Humus had achieved a much more defined profile: it was a publication made by youngsters for youngsters, which offered a cultural agenda designed to think in a new way about the Armenian identity in the diaspora and the Armenian national cause. At that time - starting in 1982 - political conditions in our country were changing rapidly. These changes, including our defeat in the Malvinas Islands and the end of the dictatorship in Argentina, opened the possibility for new topics and discourses. During those same years we became aware that young Armenians like us had chosen the armed struggle to vindicate the Armenian cause. Many had killed, been killed, or were serving long sentences in European prisons.

In 1983 we undertook what at that time was a huge audiovisual project: a documentary called Escenarios (Scenes). It was made of hundreds of slides provided by father Harutiun Bzdikian, a Mekhitarist priest, to which we added music and a script that we wrote ourselves. The story line of Escenarios was about the state of damage of Armenian architectural monuments -mostly churches - in historical territories occupied by Turkey, as well as geographical spots that stood witness to the deportation of Armenians through Der-El-Zor desert.

Escenarios was first presented at the auditorium of Mekhitarist School - before a considerable number of people - and later in different Armenian institutions in Buenos Aires. That gave us the opportunity to contact other youngsters, members of many institutions, to share our work and, in some way, to become a model for them. Considering how polarized the community was during those years, the experience of a self-sufficient group such as ours was unusual and encouraging.

There is no doubt that Escenarios was a successful project. However, we also had other similar projects that either failed or were abandoned, like writing the script and later filming An Historic Process, a book based on Soghomon Tehlirian's trial in Berlin, for the murder of Talaat Pasha, the main political architect of the Armenian genocide. Too often, excess of enthusiasm is not enough to make up for the lack of knowledge in activities as complex as film production.

After forty years, what was Humus? In short, it was a group of Armenian youths united by an unusual enthusiasm and an urgent need to express themselves; sometimes clearly, other times confusingly. With our successes and limitations, we were young Armenians expressing different ideas, and those ideas and expressions inspired others. Until the appearance of Humus, the Armenian youth press operated within boundaries and guidelines of their mother institutions. From Humus, other publications arose that, like ours, dared to write with autonomy.

As every reality, Humus lived according to its time; an extremely different time from the one we live today. Forty years ago, in 1980, the world had a bipolar format. The only Armenia possible was soviet, the nuclear threat was around the corner, and an occasional revolution was wandering around, hoping to achieve its victory. Computers were expensive and rustic. The Internet did not exist nor did mobile phones, much less social media or a digital magazine concept.

Forty years later, the Soviet Union has disappeared, and Armenia finally achieved its independence: it neither was nor is the idyllic place described in our parents and grandparents' tales. It is simply a sovereign country, like many others, that deals with real problems every day.

Each generation dreams about the next one and we are not the exception to this rule. Of those young scouts of 1980's some things remained intact: lessons learned and warm memories of companions no longer with us.

What also remains, nearly intact, is the enthusiasm for publishing this magazine again, to recognize our steps in those footprints. We write because we still can. We publish for those who still want to read. We continue to exist for those who want to continue what was started.

(Traducción: Karina Hovaghimian /Proofreading: Corinne Kevorkian)