Historians will normally agree that history is best written by those who are not nationals of the country they are writing about. So it is not surprising that when The New York Times sent a journalist to cover the Southern Cone, once said that Argentina was like a five-star hotel in which all the guests were complaining about the room service. His metaphor had a message: that those fractious hotel guests had no reason to complain about the room service. They merely had to stop bickering and recognise what they…