Interesting excerpts from an article in NRC/Handelsblad:
[...]
Jorge Horacio Zorreguieta Stefanini was born in 1928 as a descendant of Spanish-Basque and Italian immigrants and son of a banker. In the Netherlands, he became known as State Secretary (1976-1979) and Minister (1979-1981) of Agriculture and Livestock during the dictatorship of General Videla. This led Zorreguieta to lead Argentina's main export sector (grain, meat) during a black period in the country's history. During the dictatorship, according to human rights organizations, about 30,000 people were killed by the state.
In retrospect, Zorreguieta's influential position in the Argentinian regime contains an important irony, Argentinian journalists Gonzalo Álvarez Guerrero and Soledad Ferrari wrote in their book on the Zorreguieta family history. It was that position that closed the doors of the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam during the Royal Wedding of his fourth daughter and the Prince of Orange in 2002. But thirty years earlier, the same position in Buenos Aires had opened his doors to his distinghuised family-in-law, the Cerruti Carricarts.
Initially, María del Carmen ("Carmenza") Carricart Cieza, Jorge's future mother-in-law, had no good word for Zorreguieta. Someone who did not finish his chemistry study. An insignificant man at a customs office in the port of Buenos Aires. Someone who had "just as much soil as fits in a flower box". A seducer who lived illegally with her beautiful daughter María del Carmen (because Jorge was officially married to his first wife, Marta López Gil). And then: Jorge was sixteen years older than her daughter.
Carmenza's attitude softened considerably when Zorreguieta, in addition to his customs work, became increasingly successful in managing the interests of Argentinean landowners at government agencies in the 1970s. He became involved in this sector by previous business interactions on the estate of his first in-law family. Step-by-step Jorge was allowed to come on ever more posh occasions. The fact that he had a Roman-Catholic baptism for (his officially out-of-wedlock born) daughter Máxima in 1971 did not harm Carmenza's devotion either.
[...]
The former correspondent Jan Thielen, who was the only journalist to talk with Zorreguieta for a biographical sketch, called his role in the dictatorship "essential". Not only did 'El Zorro' ('The Fox') cross the world for grain contracts that gave the military junta the much needed currency for the leaping economy. A fabulous business deal with then-communist Moscow also caused the Russians spoke a few words in favour of the military junta in the UN Human Rights Committee, says Thielen.
According to Zorreguieta's good friend Mario Cadenas Madariaga, Máxima's father worked "very shrewd and smart" in his negotiations and could succeed because he was "so terribly sympathetic." About the repression by the generals he said: "Of course, Jorge Zorreguieta was aware of the disappearances. We all knew it."
[....]
The new social and political status and standing also meant: new schools for to the children. The three daughters of Zorreguieta's first marriage went to normal schools, the successful Zorreguieta spared no expense to deliver his "better I", as he called Máxima, a
jeunesse dorée. It became a posh English-speaking school, Northlands College, in a suburb of Buenos Aires. The choice for this institution was, in retrospect, the most important investment of Zorreguieta in the future of his fourth daughter. During the last year at Northlands Máxima became friends with Cynthia Kaufmann. It was this Kaufmann who presented Máxima to the Prince of Orange, during the Feria de Abril in Sevilla, Spain, in 1999.
[....]
The band between Jorge Zorreguieta and "his favorite", as Argentine journalists Gonzalo Álvarez Guerrero and Soledad Ferrari wrote about Máxima, survived the painful period in the run-up to the Royal Wedding in 2002.
Former Prime Minister Kok told Máxima's parents that they were not welcome at the Wedding. Both have shed tears on hearing a bandoneón playing the sounds of
Adiós Nonino. Father Jorge and mother María del Carmen were in the Ritz Hotel in London, where they saw their daughter Máxima in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, amongst hundreds of guests and watched by millions of television viewers.
Afterwards, father and daughter would see each other regularly, out of the sight of cameras, as if it were a secret relationship. Later it became more relaxed, as in the case of Máxima's 40th birthday or that of Willem-Alexanders 50th birthday in April this year. Also father and mother Zorreguieta occasionally stayed at Villa De Eikenhorst in Wassenaar, to babysit on their royal grandchildren. The dismay that Argentine victims of human rights still showed in 2007 when Zorreguieta appeared in public with Queen Beatrix at the baptism of Princess Ariane, has faded away. Máxima herself took more and more freedom to emphasize the meaning of moments of proximity to her father. During the Christmas holidays at the Argentinian resort of Villa La Angostura in 2014, the Queen called her father's presence there: "My greatest Christmas present".
Link:
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/08/0...eel-te-danken-aan-dictatuur-12448035-a1569359
