A Dirty War
Where were you from 1976 to 1983? What did you know, in those years, about the “war on terror?” This was a war, its leaders said, to protect homeland security; a war for family values, Christian values, and clean-living innocent people, against enemy insurgents, terrorists, subversives, non-believers, homosexuals, Jews, Communists, union organizers, and radicals in universities and the arts.
In that war on terror, “safety and security” justified secret detention centers. Suspected terrorists were arrested, interrogated, stripped naked and threatened by dogs, dunking, rape, electric prods and probes in every orifice, rape, guns placed in their mouths, and unspeakable physical and psychological torment. In the name of homeland security, 30,000 “subversives” were starved, tormented to death, shot and tossed into mass graves, or thrown out of planes over the ocean. Young children of disappeared women also disappeared—killed? “reassigned” to “good” families? Over 500 pregnant women gave birth in custody to children who were taken from them to be reared by “good families” with “family values” instead of “subversive values.” This was Argentina’s “Dirty War,” a term borrowed from Charles de Gaulle, who coined it to describe France’s war with Algeria. Until Friday, I hardly knew a thing about it.
I was in my thirties in those years. I thought of myself as politically aware and politically active (“the personal is political”) in movements for civil rights, peace, and gay rights. I declared, “If we’re not part of the solution, we’re part of the problem.” I marched, wrote and toured a one-woman-play telling women’s stories. I lavished love on my second son, born in 1973. I held two or three jobs at a time, traveled Europe for six months, fell in and out of love, sang “political” songs, worked with prisoners and juvenile delinquents in Louisiana, and in 1982, started work on my Ph.D. All that time, I thought I was relatively aware, politically. Yet there was this horror going on in Argentina, and I didn’t pay attention. How was this possible?
Friday night I started my campaign to educate myself about Argentina’s Dirty War, and all day yesterday I read, took notes, tore through a stack of books, studied photographs, and felt as though the top of my head would blow off, or my heart would explode, holding so much horror. I kept hearing echoes: rhetoric of the Bush administration is uncannily similar to the rhetoric of the Argentine government in that era. With shame, I remember snippets of news about “The Disappeared,” and in the early 80s, the “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo,” although I thought they were in Chile, something to do with Pinochet. I was busy living and didn’t make an effort to learn more.
All I can do is redress that now, and so far, the book that most clearly puts it all together for me is A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, by Marguerite Feitlowitz (1998). I started Friday with Alicia Partnoy’s Little School: Tales of Disappearance & Survival in Argentina (1986). That shocked me awake with voices, names, images, and stories of people imprisoned, tortured, and murdered, told by a woman who was imprisoned with them. Partnoy is a poet; her mother, a visual artist, illustrated the book. Partnoy’s stories are a mosaic of pain, tenderness, undaunted spirit. Feitlowitz is absolutely necessary, because she explains the context and the language, which is oddly familiar. When I can’t breathe because of the horror of the story Feitlowitz tells, amplified by the voices in Partnoy’s account, I open Rita Arditti’s Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina. It, too, is full of horror; it tells the same stories, but it offers some hope—some (88 of the 500-1000 children) have been found and restored to their biological families. I have three more books that I haven’t yet started: Nunca Mas: A Report by Argentina’s National Commission on Disappeared People (1986), Jo Fisher’s Mothers of the Disappeared (1989), and Diana Taylor’s Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War” (1997). I’m still waiting for Jacobo Timerman’s Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number (1981, paperback English edition 2002). The rest of this posting will be a summary of the “story” as I am assembling it from Partnoy, Feitlowitz, and Arditti, and quotes from Feitlowitz—because I need to put it together for myself, and maybe others are similarly ignorant. Some who are reading this may have been there; may know much more. Feel free to chime in. This is what I have, after about 36 hours of study, and my mind and heart are reeling from the horror of it, so don’t trust me. Trust Partnoy, Arditti, Feitlowitz. Trust Paula Luttringer, who woke me up. Trust others who lived it and/or have devoted years to studying it. Ignorance of something this big, this horrible, this close to home, and this similar to the present moment—just won’t do.
There was not a single figurehead with a stated ideology: no Hitler, Stalin, Hussein, bin Laden, or Bush. Instead there was a “government of national unity” composed of leaders of the Argentine military branches—a group, or junta united in what they said was a desire to make the country “safe” from a terrorist or “leftist” threat. The first group was composed of men named Massera, Videla, and Agosti, but over the years others rose to power or fell: what held the various leaders together was an ideology that they claimed was Christian, patriotic, and motivated by love of the nation. There was no single inciting incident, like 9/11. Instead, Feitlowitz explains, “At their height in 1975-77, these leftist groups totaled no more than 2000 individuals, of whom only 400 had access to arms” (6). The junta used a campaign of fear to exaggerate the numbers and the danger to the public of the leftists. “Over the entire decade of the 1970s, the leftist groups carried out a total of 697 assassinations, killing 400 policemen, 143 members of the military, and 54 civilians, mostly industrialists”(6). In its campaign against the “leftists,” the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance or Triple A (Partnoy was in a AAA camp) said it was trying to bring security to the country, to protect the country from terrorism, to defend human rights, and to do anything necessary to make everyone safe.
First the government pursued a campaign of fear, to keep everyone terrified of “subversives” in their midst. (I think of “Code Orange” and duct tape.) Then the government promised to protect the homeland. This would, of course, take money and “sacrifices” from citizens, but it would be worth it, for the sake of safety.
Feitlowitz explains, “…many of the most promising Argentine officers were rewarded with special training at the U.S. Army School of the Americas [SOA]…. In September, 1996, the Pentagon itself finally admitted that [SOA] students were taught torture, murder, sabotage, bribery, blackmail, and extortion for the achievement of political aims; that hypnosis and truth serum were recommended for use in interrogations; and that the parents of captives be arrested as an inducement for the prisoner to talk” (9).
Describing the dismemberment and scattering of body parts of people tortured and killed, Feitlowitz quotes a lawyer, Dr. Juan Carlos Adrover: “…I have the feeling that this whole country is a graveyard, and that we are all constantly walking on the bones” (18).
The propaganda campaign was wide and deep: all the media, including women’s magazines, were commandeered for the national security. Women were seen as particularly valuable because they could indoctrinate their children to be “on the side of life” (38) while the government, claiming to be defending liberty, democracy, and justice built 360 secret detention centers to imprison, torture, and exterminate suspected terrorists. The worst of the centers was called ESMA (the Navy Mechanics School) and is sometimes called the Argentine Auschwitz.
Feitlowitz writes, “The accounts are harrowing. But testimony fulfills the sacred obligation to bear witness, and however discomfiting it may be for us, our pain, though great, is minor compared with that of the victims. We lack the right to turn away” (50).
I see that the current Argentine government has rescinded the amnesty for the perpetrators of the dirty war, including Isabel Peron, who made the news here and here.
I’m going back to the books now.
Tags: Books and Movies, Politics, Prisons and Prisoners, What does it mean?
Kendall
I could not even bear to read till the end. Sigh.
I remember the time well. I was cheering on Margaret Thatcher and Ron Reagan in the Falklands war which defeated the Generals and brought down their Government.
Kendall,nrOne worthwhile film you’ve probably already seen is “Historia Oficial”nrhttp://www.film.u-net.com/Movies/Reviews/Official_Story.htmlnrI’m thinking you can watch it in Spanish (with English subtitles) in preparation for this trip.
I have an 85 year old neighbor who claims to have been an AF officer in Argentina, a member of Peron’s SS, and has admitted to me that he had personally killed two human beings in a public square, by shooting them in the back of the head with a silenced .45. He also admitted to going on an overnight patrol in a navy boat, to kill people. He is very proud of his military service in Argentina, and claims to have come to the USA as a refugee, and is now a US citizen. In confidence, he has also told me that he is scared to death to travel anywhere by plane, because the USA requires ID and because he was born in Argentina, he fears being sent back there. He even told me that he was part of the group of Argentine military officers who plotted to blow up the Queen Elizabeth as it came within the straights, during the Faulkland war. He spends every day of his life, as my neighbor, belittling the American people and insulting our president. Recently, due to the increase in medicare premium payments required by SSA, his SS payment has decreased, and he is very upset. He says his son sends him spending money each month, and from what I have overheard him speaking, sounds like he has never worked a day in his life while in the USA. Is this man a liar, or a braggert? I don’t know. But, I do know that the USA gave citizenship to many Nazis after WWII, and it is of no doubt to me that this man is for real. I am scared to death that this person is real, but I don’t know what to do or who to report it to. Any suggestions?
Interesting creepy story, Dusted Eagle. The guy could be what he says he is, but U.S. citizens, wherever they were born, are not “sent back” to where they came from. If he gets SS and Medicare, he has the necessary ID to fly wherever he wants to go. If I were in your place, I would let it go. The guy is 85. He probably can’t shoot anything any more. His memories may be the real reason why he’s afraid to fly, and living with those memories is all the punishment I can imagine. On the other hand, it doesn’t take much ingenuity to belittle the US president; he gives people more material than they can work with every time he opens his mouth IMO.
My complaint wasn’t because he insulted our president, but because he had the gall to insult the country (and its leader) who actually gave him refuge. I don’t ever bite the hand that feeds me. Something to note. Rodolfo Almiron, another scuz from this conflict, was recently arrested in Spain, who, thru Interpol paid out a US$130,000 reward! So, I’ll ask again, can anbody help me out with this!?
I have investigated my neighbor’s claims on the Internet, and he appears to be (even uses the name) General Ernesto Trotz, wanted for crimes against humanity by Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, England and Isreal. Although I cannot find a photo of him to clinch his identity, I did find a photo of Lieutenant Alredo Astiz, who bears my neighbor’s likeness. This is one of the men who kidnapped one of the French nuns. I find it quite amazing that the USA would give this man refuge, just like they did for so many Nazi’s after WWII. For those who wonder where this man is, he is alive and well, living off of a USA government retirement check, at an old-age apartment complex in Las Vegas. How appropriate. He is spending his last years in Sin City!