{"id":39207,"date":"2021-05-27T19:38:40","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T17:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/?page_id=39207"},"modified":"2021-05-27T19:40:05","modified_gmt":"2021-05-27T17:40:05","slug":"sample-translation-maxima","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/foreignrights\/authors\/marcia-luyten\/marcia-luyten-maxima-zorreguieta\/sample-translation-maxima\/","title":{"rendered":"Sample translation – M\u00e1xima Zorreguieta, Motherland\u00a0<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marcia Luyten – M\u00e1xima Zorreguieta, Motherland<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Preface<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When Queen Juliana\u2019s fiftieth birthday was approaching, Henri\u00ebtte de Beaufort was asked by her publisher, De Bezige Bij, to write a biography of the monarch. After \u2018some serious heart searching\u2019 she told them she couldn\u2019t accept the assignment. \u2018Anyone seeking to write a biography that gets to the heart of their subject must delve deep into that person\u2019s innermost world,\u2019 she said later. \u2018Without being grossly indiscreet, a biographer can never conjure up a still living human being, least of all a reigning sovereign.\u2019 You might call it the first law of biography: your subject should be well and truly dead. The turbulence of that existence has died down, the lives most closest entwined with it have become more loosely connected, and the stories that are told no longer affect personal ties with the subject. That law applies even more when the subject is a king or queen. The monarchy might have undergone some changes over the past two centuries, but discretion continues to exist and the prestige of a connection with the royal couple is as great as ever. When, in late 2016, my publisher proposed that I write a biography of Queen M\u00e1xima, I had never heard of Henri\u00ebtte de Beaufort. At the time, there were still five years to go before M\u00e1xima would turn fifty. I didn\u2019t have to think long. I wasn\u2019t interested. Royals weren\u2019t my thing. I\u2019d never filled albums with clippings about them or collected commemorative biscuit tins. Had never bought gossip magazines to read about the Oranges. And, most importantly, I didn\u2019t see myself lurking in the bushes in the palace grounds, notebook in hand. Because if the Dutch royals make one thing clear it\u2019s this: their privacy is sacred. Without access to primary sources, you couldn\u2019t write a book like that. So I said thanks but no thanks. But Francien Schuursma didn\u2019t give up just like that. Suppose we could talk to people in the Queen\u2019s circle? Suppose the royal family didn\u2019t object to a book about M\u00e1xima\u2019s life, as long as it was good and as accurate as possible? After all, there was a special birthday coming up.<\/p>\n

The arrival from New York of the Argentine M\u00e1xima Zorreguieta in 1999 changed the Dutch royal family. The partner of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander mingled with all levels of society, with apparent ease and visible pleasure. She made the royal house livelier, jollier and more urbane. But to what extent did M\u00e1xima also change the monarchy? What influence did she have on the way the royal family functions? And what did she achieve with her work in the international arena? Past experience has taught that the life of a monarch\u2019s partner isn\u2019t easy, but Prince Willem-Alexander\u2019s spouse seemed unbothered by that law of nature. Which immediately prompts the question: How did Queen M\u00e1xima become who she is? In what kind of environment was she raised, 12,000 kilometres away, in a Latin American country? Who influenced her? What values did she grow up with? Which characteristics from her youth can we see in today\u2019s queen, and which did she have to unlearn? What gave her pleasure? And where did life put her to the test? De Bezige Bij felt this portrait should be painted by a contemporary of M\u00e1xima\u2019s. A person of the same age, an economist who, like her, had travelled around Africa, someone who was also a working mother of three and a keen party-goer. Francien peered at me enquiringly. I promised to look into the possibilities.<\/p>\n

Around six months later, the Dutch Government Information Service (RVD) let it be known that there was no objection to the proposed book. I would be allowed to interview relatives, friends, fellow students and ex-colleagues, if they were willing. The scope of the book was limited by two conditions. First: as a writer I would be independent, and free to talk to whoever I liked. Second: the book would not be authorised. That meant I would have no access to members of the royal family, as they fell under ministerial responsibility, which would make authorisation necessary. The royal household and the RVD would not see the manuscript in advance. That was the formal framework, the parameters of this project. Once inside the inner circle, I soon realised that Henri\u00ebtte de Beaufort had been right. Even with this unique access to primary sources, the information was limited. I was now playing with a double handicap. First of all, people who were prepared to be interviewed were very cautious. Their loyalty lay \u2013 understandably \u2013 with their daughter, sister, friend, colleague or employer. As a female friend put it: \u2018Why should we risk a friendship of almost fifty years for a journalist from whom we have nothing to expect?\u2019 And that was in Argentina, where there was much more openness than in the Netherlands. There, family ties and old friendships are for life, irrespective of job or rank. Moreover, those conversations were about ancient history, about a period of M\u00e1xima\u2019s life that lies in the past. In the Netherlands, everyone took account of the subject\u2019s social position. For one thing because associating with the royal family confers social prestige. Take the story about friends of Willem-Alexander and M\u00e1xima who thought they hadn\u2019t been invited to the royal wedding, and quickly booked a holiday in a distant location for the date in question. (The invitation arrived later.) That prestige breeds discretion. Another reason why close friends were tight-lipped was the knowledge that revelations about the royal couple\u2019s private life would expose them to the public gaze. That made the conditions under which a book like this could be written very clear. During my research I was able to interview 132 people, of whom 89 specifically for Motherland<\/em>, all on the basis of confidentiality. This meant that they couldn\u2019t be quoted and would remain anonymous. For my part, I seek to be open and accountable about the sources of my material. In an age of fake news it is important that the author of a biography can answer to their readers \u2013 especially in the case of royal families, about whom much is claimed and invented. It is in my interest to differentiate this book from gossip, rumour and fiction, so the text features notes. In the book, all references to conversations are reduced in these notes to \u2018Interview\u2019. However, in order to be able to account for my sources, my full notes have been deposited with De Bezige Bij. They are not to be made public. They may only be consulted in exceptional cases of uncertainty about interpretation.<\/p>\n

This working method made it possible for me to speak to M\u00e1xima\u2019s best friends and members of her family. To do so I made various trips, including three to Argentina. In this way I was able to get very close to the young M\u00e1xima. I am grateful for the trust placed in me by those who spoke to me despite their initial unease. The second handicap was the restricted availability of written sources. The portion of the Royal Archives that is devoted to Queen M\u00e1xima is still closed to public access, as are her personal archives. I didn\u2019t get to see the sources dearest to a biographer \u2013 ego documents like diaries and letters. This limited my ability to enter the subject\u2019s \u2018innermost world\u2019. For that reason, this book cannot be a fully-fledged biography. In the case of a queen in the bloom of her life, a biographical portrait is the most that can be achieved.<\/p>\n

On 31 August 1999, a newspaper report that she was the girlfriend of the Dutch crown prince changed M\u00e1xima Zorreguieta\u2019s life dramatically. There is a life before and a life after the telephoto lens. The fact that she has been screened off since then was also reflected in the material for this book. There are fewer anecdotes about the period after 1998, people spoke less freely. That made a stylistic shift inevitable. For that reason, it was decided to tell the story of Queen M\u00e1xima\u2019s life in two books: the first is set in her motherland, the country of her birth and upbringing. The second is set in the country where she found a new home, in line with the Latin saying: Ubi bene, ibi patria<\/em>: \u2018The land where I prosper is my fatherland\u2019. M\u00e1xima Zorreguieta grew up in a country that was experiencing its most turbulent years. After the loss of a glorious future, in the early 1970s Argentina was heading for financial and moral bankruptcy. The Zorreguieta family found itself in the eye of the storm. Thus, the private domain of M\u00e1xima\u2019s youth is intertwined with Argentina\u2019s history. The first book shows how much M\u00e1xima the queen was formed by her motherland. By the mentality of Italian and Basque migrants. By a longing for Europe. By family and close friendships. By a deep-rooted wish to do something meaningful with her life.<\/p>\n

Enough fairy-tales have been told about an ordinary girl who becomes queen. This history is not romanticised or dramatised. It contains no dialogue that has been invented or padded out. Each scene really happened. Sometimes, as in all works of non-fiction, a grainy image had to be cautiously brought into sharper focus. But only in order to sketch a portrait of a complete individual. Of a life as it is lived.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In 1965, Jorge Zorreguieta had become a father for the third time. He and Marta L\u00f3pez Gil now had three daughters. But their marriage was struggling. Their lives had developed in opposite directions. After obtaining a PhD in philosophy, Marta was teaching at the university and researching the position of women. She would publish a series of books and become a well-known progressive philosopher. Jorge Zorreguieta, by contrast, had never shown any real intellectual curiosity. He was not a reader but a talker, a born diplomat. And he thrived in Argentina\u2019s most conservative circles. Not long after the birth of their third child, Dolores, he and Marta separated.<\/p>\n

Mar\u00eda Pame was an excellent manager, running the office with scrupulous efficiency. For her, order was as natural as breathing. She was professional in every way \u2013 except that she fell in love with her boss. Between the business of import and export, a romance began that was more than just a passing affair. Jorge Zorreguieta discovered that he had not married the love of his life. Divorce was not an option, though, at least not officially. Besides being strongly condemned in Catholic Argentina, it simply wasn\u2019t legally possible, nor was it recognised by the church. But the lovers were in no doubt. Mar\u00eda Pame knew exactly how her parents would react. Her younger sister, Mar\u00eda Rita, had set a precedent. She had fallen for a man she met in Buenos Aires and was adamant that she could never love anyone else. He was a divorc\u00e9, 22 years her senior. When Mar\u00eda Rita had gone to Pergamino to introduce him to her mother and father, all hell broke loose. Tata had told her: \u2018Never ask me to love him. I will hate this man for the rest of my life!\u2019 Mar\u00eda Pame\u2019s lover was also much older than her \u2013 sixteen years to be precise \u2013 and the fact that Tata knew him very well was not a mitigating factor. On the contrary. His good friend and polo buddy, the very man he\u2019d asked to give his daughter a job, had gone off with that daughter. Coqui had betrayed their friendship. Worst of all: he was married and the father of three children. It prompted Tata and Carmenza to reach once again for the nuclear option of southern European family culture, the ultimate sanction that hurt everybody involved. When Mar\u00eda Pame and Coqui announced their engagement, her parents said: \u2018If you get married, we never want to see you again.\u2019 For a time, things were very difficult. Mar\u00eda Pame and Jorge stopped paying weekend visits to Pergamino. In April 1970 they travelled to Paraguay to marry there. Their marriage might be unlawful in Argentina, but it sealed their love. They bought a modest apartment in Recoleta and for the next 48 years would rejoice every day that they had defied the law and Carmenza.<\/p>\n

Eventually the dust settled in the Cerruti family. Tata and Carmenza had banished two of their daughters because of their choice of partner, only to clasp them in their arms again after tempers cooled and the pain of separation became too great. Although Tata had vowed to hate Mar\u00eda Rita\u2019s husband until he died, twenty years later he stood at his grave in tears. His daughter was 42 and a widow. The rift healed much sooner in Mar\u00eda Pame\u2019s case. Four months after their secret marriage, she came to tell her parents that she was pregnant.<\/p>\n

Any child born out of clandestine, hard-won love was blessed. That was the firm belief of Leonardo da Vinci, himself a bastard and a love child. In one of the little notebooks in which he recorded his observations in mirror writing (left-handedly from right to left) he wrote: \u2018The man who has intercourse aggressively and awkwardly will produce children who are irritable and untrustworthy, but if intercourse is had with great love and desire on both sides, the child will be highly intelligent, witty, lively, and lovable.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Argentine autumn of 1971, on the early evening of 17 May, the girl was born who would mend the cracks in the Cerruti family bastion. As if scripted by a film director, she arrived on Carmenza\u2019s birthday. It was one of those evenings of golden twilight and an early chill in the air; a time when Argentines look forward to a mug of hot chocolate with churros, fried sugary sticks of dough that stand up in the thick drink. The birth wasn\u2019t easy. Jorge Zorreguieta sat, stood, paced about and waited for long hours in the clinic\u2019s corridors. Fathers were not allowed in the delivery room. Mar\u00eda Pame\u2019s first baby was big, weighing in at 4,100 grams, but at twenty to eight in the evening the little girl finally arrived. If Da Vinci was right, this child was blessed. The family tree and naming customs dictated that the baby be called Mar\u00eda del Carmen. Many of her friends would bear the names of their fathers or mothers, but M\u00e1xima\u2019s parents had already defied every convention with their love. Coqui wanted to name her after the grandmother who had shaped him. The woman who in less emancipated times had decided to bring up her children by herself, and who had taught him patriotism and discipline. He believed that he owed his success to her. Much has been written and speculated about M\u00e1xima Bonorino\u2019s ancestry. Her mother, M\u00e1xima Gonz\u00e1lez y de Islas, \u00a0was said to be related to Don Justo Jos\u00e9 de Urquiza, President of the Argentine Federation. A pedigree that would automatically give Jorge Zorreguieta and his children a place in Argentine history, as belonging to the dynasties that produced presidents. Another claim is that one of M\u00e1xima Gonz\u00e1lez y de Islas\u2019 distant ancestors \u2013 born in 1668 \u2013 was a man called Peter Halbach. Peter\u2019s brother, Gaspar Halbach, was an ancestor of Prince Bernhard. That would mean that King Willem-Alexander and Queen M\u00e1xima were distantly related. But both assertions are wrong. The Halbach and Bonorino family trees do intersect, but in a different way. The brother of M\u00e1xima Bonorino\u2019s grandfather (Martiniano Bonorino y Barbachano) had a daughter called Robustiana. In 1883, in Buenos Aires, she married Pablo Halbach, a distant descendant of Peter Halbach. In other words, it was M\u00e1xima\u2019s great-great-grandmother\u2019s cousin who had children with a Halbach. So there is absolutely no bloodline between the Dutch king and his wife.<\/p>\n

In early June 1971 M\u00e1xima Zorreguieta was baptised in the Bas\u00edlica de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora del Socorro (Our Lady of Perpetual Help), just outside Recoleta in the centre of Buenos Aires. It was a festival of reconciliation. M\u00e1xima wore the christening robe that her mother and all of Carmenza\u2019s other children had worn before her. Her mother\u2019s second sister, the talented polo player Marcela Cerruti, had been asked to be her godmother. Coqui chose his good friend Roberto Favelevic as godfather. They had both studied chemistry and spent many evenings together enjoying food, music and good company. Favelevic was a jazz aficionado who liked to drum along to the records he played. Years later, he and Coqui would also encounter each other through their work: he as the boss of the country\u2019s largest employers\u2019 association, Coqui as representative of the sugar industry. The priest who poured the baptismal water over the baby\u2019s head was a friend of Tata\u2019s. Somewhere during their history of migration, Argentine Catholics had dropped the custom of naming a child after its godparents. Until the beginning of the previous century, ancestry was expressed by placing the mother\u2019s surname after that of the father, as in the case of Jorge Horacio Zorreguieta Stefanini and Mar\u00eda del Carmen Cerruti Carricart. M\u00e1xima Zorreguieta was not given a baptismal name, nor was Cerruti added to her father\u2019s name. M\u00e1xima Zorreguieta, that was it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Chapter 7<\/p>\n

Plata<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is a word that wasn\u2019t often mentioned in Zorreguieta circles: plata<\/em>. Dinero<\/em>, money \u2013 it just wasn\u2019t done to speak of it in the upper echelons of Buenos Aires society. You could fret about whom to invite, what to wear, where to find new staff or a suitable marriage partner, but not about something as banal as money. It was just there. Argentina owes its name and its existence to its supposed wealth. Argentina is Italian for \u2018land of silver\u2019 and R\u00edo de la Plata is named after the Spanish word for the precious metal. Around 1900, Buenos Aires owed its glory to wealth that was not based on silver, but on grain and beef. But its steady economic growth came to a halt in the mid-twentieth century, after which Argentina plunged into one crisis after another, culminating in the dramatic nadir of Videla\u2019s military junta. At that point, the country was not only financially but also morally bankrupt. After Jorge Zorreguieta stepped down as Secretary of Agriculture, the family income came largely from the Cabanillas-Zorreguieta customs office, supplemented with the money Coqui received for his board positions and his share in in Las Escobas. Sometimes they had a bit more to spend, sometimes a bit less. Nevertheless, M\u00e1xima\u2019s parents moved in circles where luxury was the norm. Their outgoings were high \u2013 fees for exclusive schools, a month\u2019s summer holiday by the sea, skiing every winter, the opera subscription. So money needed to be managed prudently.<\/p>\n

Mar\u00eda Pame, the capable organiser of the family, ruled over the household budget with a firm hand. When Coqui finally got his wish to have a private cabin built in the mountains, construction had to be halted. The two youngest children were sent to a less expensive private school in the neighbourhood. Juan had just started at St Andrews, following in the footsteps of his older brother, but after the second year, when In\u00e9s started school too, he switched to Palermo Chico. It was a school with a good reputation, but the fees were only half those of Northlands and St Andrews. Once In\u00e9s was going to school full time, M\u00e1xima\u2019s mother could go back to work again. Not for a museum or a charity \u2013 Mar\u00eda Pame needed to earn good money. Now in her mid-40s, she got a job with La An\u00f3nima, a supermarket chain belonging to the Braun family, who were friends of the Zorreguietas. She worked in the procurement division, overseeing the purchase of such items as work clothing. Which led to her asking the fashion designer Graciela Naum to create new uniforms for the shop staff. Some of the family\u2019s best friends had money worries. In August 1984, not long after skiing together on Cerro Catedral, M\u00e1xima and her best friend were told that Valeria would have to leave Northlands. After the summer holiday, in March \u2013 the start of the next academic year \u2013 she would go to another school. Now that they were divorced, the school fees had become too expensive for Valeria\u2019s parents. Thus, at a young age, M\u00e1xima became aware that a lot depends on money. And how great the consequences of a lack of it can be.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the twentieth century Argentina\u2019s finances grew erratic. Initially there was enough in the state coffers for President Juan Per\u00f3n; he and Evita won undying popularity by giving workers better wages and pensions, and distributing valuables in the form of shoes and sewing machines. In the years of Per\u00f3n\u2019s first presidency, wages rose by 30% between 1946 and 1955. Per\u00f3n introduced a minimum wage, regulated food prices and made affordable housing available. It was a period in which wealth was distributed more fairly. Yet at the same time Per\u00f3n was quietly poisoning politics and the economy. He made access to social amenities dependent on support for his person. His party got into trouble when the economy faltered \u2013 Argentina had become cut off from world trade after the Second World War, causing it to miss the boat \u2013 and there was less plata<\/em> to buy the goodwill of the electorate. Determined nevertheless to continue providing the same amenities, the state entered into debt, destabilising the Argentine economy. Whether or not the resources were there, those in power allowed the budgetary deficit to increase or resorted to printing money. The danger of inflation was ever present, the value of plata<\/em> could evaporate just like that. And so rich Argentines preferred to invest in America rather than in their own country. As political analyst Sergio Berensztein asked, rhetorically: \u2018Can you have a stable political system with that kind of macroeconomic pattern?\u2019<\/p>\n

When it came to managing the treasury, the regime of Jorge Videla turned out to be illusionists. Because the military enjoyed international confidence, they could borrow large amounts of dollars. The economy might be failing and industries languishing, but dollars flowed copiously \u2013 towards the powerful upper class. In those days, wealthy Argentines liked to go shopping in the US. They would fly to Miami with empty suitcases and return with full ones, because they could acquire Western luxury goods for a trifle. The practice was known as \u2018el deme dos\u2019<\/em>: give me two. Finally they were once again riche comme un Argentin<\/em>. The Argentines had always loved dulce de leche<\/em>, now the upper class was enjoying la plata dulce<\/em>. With that \u2018sweet money\u2019 the junta incurred loans that would be a millstone round the economy\u2019s neck for decades to come. The democratic governments after the junta wrestled with an unprecedented debt crisis. Foreign investors departed, production plummeted, prices rose and scarcely any tax was collected. As a result, public institutions and the central government went broke. The latter asked the central bank to print extra money. This move, coupled with the towering debt, led in 1989 to an inflation rate of almost three thousand per cent. A quarter of the nation\u2019s civil servants were made redundant. All 56 state secretaries lost their jobs, along with 80 under secretaries of state. The nation\u2019s foreign debt had reached mountainous proportions and Argentina had not paid its creditors any interest in a year. A country in that position is tottering towards bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

The hyperinflation of 1989 was the next trauma for the Argentines. An episode that M\u00e1xima and her friends experienced more consciously than the violence and human rights violations under the military junta. Back then, they were children. And once they were older, the state terror was like an ugly, bloody accident that people were anxious to skirt round. To the extent that anything was said at home about the military dictatorship, it was that the army had needed to take control in order to combat terrorism and prevent the creation of a communist state. In 1984 CONADEP, the national commission set up to investigate the fate of victims of forced disappearance, recorded almost 9,000 such victims in its report Nunca M\u00e1s <\/em>(Never Again). A year later, the Alfons\u00edn government put the leaders of the junta on trial. But despite all the media attention focused on the report and the legal proceedings, little was said about these matters at home. Only that M\u00e1xima\u2019s father had acted patriotically by working so hard to promote export. Otherwise, the adults at Calle Uriburu were silent about those years. The girls were eighteen when an invisible storm wiped out Argentines\u2019 savings like a chalk sum from a blackboard. It was a surreal, frightening experience that money could lose its value just like that. People everywhere lost their jobs. Even people with<\/em> a job became poor; the moment their wages were paid, the money became worthless. The worst hit were the small savers, people who lost their jobs, people who saw their salaries evaporate in front of their eyes. Supermarket shelves were empty. Furious Argentines took to the streets. There were protests and looting. It was the year in which the upper class saw the thing it feared most approaching: social chaos. Paradoxically, the wealth of the richest Argentines had increased as a result of hyperinflation; they had stashed their money away safely in dollars, in foreign bank accounts. By all accounts, it seems that Jorge Zorreguieta and his family were exposed to both threats of hyperinflation. A man without a great deal of capital, he had his own modest business and drew a salary from the Centro Azucarero<\/em>, an advisory body for sugar producers. So he was hard hit by the currency devaluation. At the same time he had a lot to lose from social chaos and a Peronist revolution. His fate was intricately bound up with that of the large landowners. He had even been part of a government that had caused this economic catastrophe. M\u00e1xima was eighteen and had just started at university. She would have known how matters stood at home.<\/p>\n

Long before M\u00e1xima got her diploma at Northlands, she knew what she wanted to study. Art history, ancient history or French \u2013 subjects that were popular among girls from wealthy families \u2013 were not an option as far as she was concerned. Both at school and at home she had been taught that she should contribute to society. She wanted to do something meaningful, like her father, like grandpa Cerruti and like her great-grandfathers, a doctor and an administrator. From the smallest to the biggest entity of which M\u00e1xima was part, from family to state, finances were a tricky issue. \u2018The economy\u2019 became synonymous with a dangerous kind of unpredictability. And if there was one thing M\u00e1xima Zorreguieta couldn\u2019t bear, it was insecurity. Her mother had taught her and Mart\u00edn to be prudent with money, to save. In a social environment in which pesos seemed to flow from a natural source, they were made conscious of the value of money. As soon as M\u00e1xima heard about a course of study that focused on how money was earned and spent, it was clear where her future lay. The best weapon against the capriciousness of money is to understand the nature of the beast. M\u00e1xima was determined to become an economist. Her parents approved of her choice. It didn\u2019t need to be stated because it was obvious: coming from a traditional family that went to traditional schools, M\u00e1xima and Mart\u00edn were expected to follow traditional careers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Manhattan<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018Laura\u2019s Angels\u2019 is what the Argentine business periodical Apertura has dubbed them: the nine young women in the photo, all but one dressed in white. They are the team that has been specially set up by Boston Securities in Buenos Aires to analyse securities and advise clients on investment. Female financial specialists, in a male-dominated banking world. That\u2019s how they got that name, a reference to the trio of gun-toting girls, the private detectives from the American TV series Charlie\u2019s Angels<\/em> in the early 1980s. \u2018Charlie\u2019 in this case being Mar\u00eda Laura Tramezzani, the team\u2019s leader. The viewer\u2019s eye is immediately drawn to the woman in the centre, the tallest, with wind-tousled blonde hair, the only one who doesn\u2019t look conventionally angelic. She\u2019s not dressed in white, but in a dark sleeveless dress, made bohemian chic with long bead necklaces that would not look out of place on Ibiza. She also stands out from the group because of her pose, a model in a photo shoot, the only one wearing make-up, her thoughts somewhere else entirely. Her appearance is not the only thing that makes M\u00e1xima Zorreguieta the most striking member of the Boston Securities team of analysts. It is the early 90s. Banks are sexy. Argentina is recovering from the dramatic crash that followed the hyperinflation of 1989. Now that it is called an \u2018emerging market\u2019 it is gradually regaining access to the international capital market. It is a time when investors with a cowboy mentality \u2013 somewhere between smart and reckless \u2013 are investing in economies whose growth is uncertain. All over the world, banks are floating ever higher on the thermals of liberalisation initiated in the 1980s. Under the influence of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the state itself had been labelled a problem \u2013 from now on salvation lay in market forces. And the banks are the heart of that new order. It is they who pump oxygen through the system.<\/p>\n

In early 1993, M\u00e1xima gets her foot in the door at Boston Securities, the investment bank of the Bank of Boston. A young female professor has given her a leg-up. Alicia Caballero is in her early thirties, petite as a Parisienne, with fierce, sparkling\u00a0 eyes. Like M\u00e1xima she wears accessories that express her character: cheerful, quirky earrings and high heels. In the early 1990s, Alfonso Prat Gay was one of her colleagues. Caballero teaches at the Universidad Cat\u00f3lica de Argentina while also working for the Bank of Boston. (In Argentina, two jobs is a sign of healthy ambition.) She heads the department that supervises privatisations, listings, mergers and takeovers. She encourages her female students to get jobs during the course of their study. At her request, the Bank of Boston has created work training placements for her students. She urges M\u00e1xima and other female students to apply.<\/p>\n

M\u00e1xima has seen something of the financial world at Mercado Abierto, so Mario Rossi, the director of Boston Securities, offers her a job. She starts as a junior member of staff, with a three-month induction period. First as assistant to a trader, then she\u2019s given her own clients, for whom she buys and sells securities. M\u00e1xima finds this much more interesting than her work at Mercado Abierto. There she\u2019d worked on software, here she\u2019ll become a banker. The Bank of Boston might be a modest institution in a global context, but in 1992 in Argentina it\u2019s one of the major foreign banks. Anyone wanting to work in finance tries to get a foot in the door at JPMorgan or at the Bank of Boston.<\/p>\n

Mario Rossi is charmed by M\u00e1xima. He finds her relaxed and unusually direct, also where her emotions are concerned. He can tell straight away how she is just by looking at her. It\u2019s plain to see whether she\u2019s happy, angry or sad: usually she looks happy. Unfortunately she hasn\u2019t quite mastered the task she\u2019s been hired for. When it comes to dealing with clients, she\u2019s excellent \u2013 she can chat to anyone, whatever their job, interests or background. According to Rossi she can easily put herself in the shoes of people in all walks of life. She can explain to them why one company is doing well and another isn\u2019t, what the stock markets trends have been and what the forecasts are. But when it comes to giving clear advice, M\u00e1xima is more restrained. Investments can go up in value, but they can also go down. And it\u2019s the latter that makes M\u00e1xima unhappy. She can\u2019t bear the idea of someone losing their money because of her. Which is why she winds up with Laura and her Angels.<\/p>\n

Mar\u00eda Laura Tramezzani is a tall, blonde, elegantly dressed 34-year-old economist whom the Bank of Boston had sent to the Mecca of Wall Street for four months, to learn how to conquer this rapidly growing market. The Bank set up a brand-new department in New York, where analysts assessed the political and economic prospects of different countries, looking at currencies and government bonds, and screening listed companies to see what shares to invest in. That research would enable them to advise their clients better. Mar\u00eda Laura Tramezzani has been tasked with setting up such a department for South America in Buenos Aires. She hires six analysts. If Boston Securities can produce good analyses, clients will be more likely to buy their stocks from Mario Rossi\u2019s traders. But Mar\u00eda Laura still lacks the right person to sell those findings. In 1993, Mario Rossi recommends M\u00e1xima Zorreguieta for that crucial role. He believes she\u2019s perfect for the job. Whereas in her first role at Boston Securities her colleagues had nearly all been men, Mar\u00eda Laura\u2019s department is staffed almost entirely by women. Besides Mar\u00eda Laura, they are Fatima Gobbi, Florencia Greco, Gabriela Ridelener, Mar\u00eda\u2019s assistant Laura Ford and the American trainee Tabitha Nash \u2013 with two lone men: Santiago Murtagh and Manuel Mart\u00ednez. M\u00e1xima becomes the representative, ambassador, hostess, poster girl and above all the saleswoman of the work done by Laura\u2019s analysts for Boston Securities.<\/p>\n

Everyone notices that M\u00e1xima is the last to arrive each morning, but no one minds. It means they can spend the first two hours reading and calculating in peace and quiet. The reason M\u00e1xima is late is because after classes she often parties to the small hours with Tiziano Iachetti, her Italian boyfriend. She comes in during the course of the morning, her eyes sometimes stilled ringed with last night\u2019s mascara. She boils water and digs sachets of instant soup out of her desk drawer. Worried about putting on weight, after breakfasting on coffee and a slice of toast she lives mainly on a diet of soup and yoghurt. She\u2019s generous with her soup sachets, handing them out to her colleagues. Then, armed with piles of paper, she installs herself next to the phone. The peace and quiet is over.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Jane Hedley Prole<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marcia Luyten – M\u00e1xima Zorreguieta, Motherland   Preface   When Queen Juliana\u2019s fiftieth birthday was approaching, Henri\u00ebtte de Beaufort was asked by her publisher, De Bezige Bij, to write a biography of the monarch. After \u2018some serious heart searching\u2019 she told them she couldn\u2019t accept the assignment. \u2018Anyone seeking to write a biography that gets…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3251,"featured_media":0,"parent":39197,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-39207","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/39207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/3251"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/39207\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/39197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}