Who cares about Argentinean politics? Anyone? I would be surprised if there was even one student here at Oakland who gives a snap of their fingers about the subject. Good grief, I can hardly get you all to care about American politics, let alone Argentinean.

Sarcasm aside, a recent development has given us all reason to pay very close attention to what is happening in that narrow triangle of land stretching from the Amazon to Tierra del Fuego. Here’s the story:

For the past ten years, according to the New York Times, an Argentinian prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, had been investigating his country’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, about the mysterious circumstances surrounding a 1994 terror attack. The investigation centered on whether or not Kirchner and her government had “conspired with Iran to cover up responsibility for the bombing as part of a deal that would supply Iranian oil to Argentina.” (Before reading any further, such activities are not unknown in scandal- and corruption-ridden South America. And you thought our government was bad.)

Nisman is dead. He was found shot through the head in his apartment a couple of weeks ago, a pistol lying next to him. There was no suicide note, although Kirchner’s government quickly blamed suicide. The government has since shifted its position, as the fact that Nisman was shot point-blank through the forehead (not to mention the suspicious timing) practically rules out suicide.

Those are the facts. Why do they matter? Well, in the U.S., such actions would be met with absolute outrage, riots even. A journalist is shot dead right before releasing a damaging story on the government? Unbelievable.

And yet, you ask, why should we care? What does it matter to us? We don’t have journalists dying in America.

But it does matter, very much—because free speech matters. Because the ability to sit down and write a column such as this or speak out for your beliefs is not to be lightly taken for granted. Because we in America are among a privileged, envied few who still have this right. We have a hard time envisioning this idea because we have never lived through true, crushing oppression of our right to free speech. But the tragedy in Argentina is merely the next-to-final step in a road that many countries have traveled: the road that starts at gentle disagreement, continues through overt favoritism, heads towards stern censorship and culminates in complete brutal crackdown. Let us pay attention to the warning of Argentina and not travel down that road.