Even if you burn in Alonaris... in August you will cool off...".
"August, my good month, be blessed twice a year."
We used to call Alonaris in my hometown, in very hot July.
But for us who were born before the war of '40, July is the most "bitter" month of our lives. And it stayed in our minds with one word: "Ta Iuliana".
And we wonder how they managed, in July, the brightest month of our country, to make it the "blackest" month of our lives.
All the "big" and "small" of the world. With alchemies, challenging collaborations, hard decisions and media that "convinced" us that everything is for our "good".
Let's try to find an answer. Help me with what we have experienced ourselves and what we have read. We start from July 1963, after the murder of Grigoris Lambrakis.
Then when for all the Greeks the glass overflowed and their anger became an uprising. But there was also an "uprising" in the secret services of our great "protectors"... And on a warm evening in July 1963, in a secret "conclave", in some cool embassy gardens, near Mavili Square, they decided on a bloody long-term plan.
July 1963: The first "message" comes from Frederica, when the Greeks in London disapprove of her. July 1964. The "democratic" president Johnson sends us the second "message" about the method of overthrowing Papandreou.
July 1965: The month of "apostasy", as recorded in our History. After this in July politics and politicians lose their credibility.
AND THE TRAGIC July of 1974 The junta discredits Makarios. The Turks "steal" almost half of Cyprus. And the Americans, after the dictators finished their "mission", bring them down as they brought them up and give us our "freedom" again, "restoring" our entire past...
July 1975 Areios Pagos leaves the junta unpunished by deciding the momentary and not the permanent. July 1977. Three days after its end, Makarios dies.
July of the "dirty" 1989. The Tzannetaki co-government. The "colonial" July of 1990. Renewal of the American bases agreement for another 9 years.. Chania is burning.
What curse marked us, perhaps, to have so many Julian nightmares in our heads? Our bitterness and our pain is not only the downfall of our country, it is not only that they destroyed the best years of our lives. It is something more substantial. They clipped the wings of a generation that was ready for the great leap in democracy, culture, economy and sciences.
Of a generation that had the means to make our country equal to the other countries of Europe. To exploit our strengths and reduce our weaknesses.
And now, what do we do now? We don't want to talk about some "grey" Julys that followed until today. This is the work of historians of the future.
It is enough, in these days when we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of our Republic, to remember and exclude these "gray" Julius (and not only..) who blackened our Republic.
And to promise that they will do everything they can, so that they don't come again..
