[Update below: Sister Diana Ortiz]
Just watched John Pilger's documentary "The War on Democracy." The second part of the film on the history of U.S. involvement in Latin America - while well-known to those of us who study the region - should be part of the basic curriculum in U.S. schools. Then maybe in mainstream America it will begin to be understood that it matters significantly more what the foreign policy of the candidate is than the candidate's bowling score. And maybe unnecessary wars that kill hundreds of thousands can be avoided.
Anyway, one reason I'm mentioning the documentary is to note perhaps one of the greatest wankers of all time, CIA chief of Latin America from 1981-1984 Duane Clarridge.
From the film (one of (the few) survivors of a concentration camp during Pinochet's fascist regime in Chile):
They took me to this room. They were punching me, hitting me, grabbing my nipples, telling me I was a whore, So they asked me to take off my clothes and they tied me up. Then they shocked me with electricity. Now the electricity all the time was inside my vagina, on my breasts and then it was going round my body, my legs, my arms ...
She was pregnant, Cecilia, 3 months pregnant when they took her, and they took another women ... she was 7 months pregnant, she went missing as well...
Sometime I think about what were they feeling, you know, when they were being killed....sometimes I think too much and I start feeling the pain. What do you feel when you are being killed, and in such a way... You wanted to do something for them. Such isolation, you feel ... you feel very much alone.
Now Clarridge talking to Pilger (kudos to Pilger, the interview with this Clarridge was done quite well. For the most part there is no need to excessively challenge a clown like this, just give him the rope, he will hang himself):
Clarridge: Chile, the only reason it exists is because of Pinochet.
Pilger: At a huge human price.
Clarridge: What human price? Gimme a break.
Pilger: The thousands who were disappeared and murdered.
Clarridge: Thousands? You count 'em. What thousands? And don't talk to me about Truth Commissions.
Pilger: I've seen their names in the cemeteries in Santiago.
Clarrdige: I have too. There aren't thousands.
It has been indeed rare when I've seen arrogance and ignorance at the level this gentleman possesses. Watch the film. You will surely be repulsed. He is the epitome of everything that has been wrong with American foreign policy in Latin America - and he tries to justify the most heinous, repugnant acts against humanity one can imagine through inane, erroneous and ethnocentric references which in the end basically turn into, 'yeah and so, what are you going to do about it?"
Yeah, right. Moral clarity.
Watching this fool rant on Chile reminded me of a Chilean student I once taught English to. She was quite obviously from the elite in Chile. Once when the name Allende came up she mentioned how her aunt had told her it was good thing for Chile that Pinochet had come along to save the country from another Castro. The anecdote she recalled was how her aunt had said how Allende was planning on forcing all the lactating women in the country to donate their milk so as to feed the poor. Then she laughed that laugh of relief; Thank god we avoided another Cuba.
Despite my horror at her ignorance and rationalizations there was nothing I could say (in Spanish even) that would have changed her opinion. She is supposed to believe some guy teaching her English over her aunt? But really my point is that she was an incredibly sweet girl, endlessly polite with a constant smile on her face. She was not, in any stretch, a bad person. Initially I am tempted to ask, in situations like this, that if even a person as nice as she is refuses to see the evil in a monster like Pinochet, what hope is there. But in the end I don't see it that way.
In a sense the contradiction between her personality and nature and the defending of indefensible, ie Pincohet's regime, is a positive thing for me. It allows me as a progressive to continue to be on the side of justice and human rights and for the well-being of those who are abused and denied the most basic forms of dignity wihtout declaring the battle futile. Unlike the goon Clarridge who actually lived it and contributed to it then pretends it didn't happen, she really didn't know or under the circumstances was incapable of believing what the reality was. You see, this way I can believe that the fight is fundamentally against ignorance and not human nature. And that gives me some hope.
Update:
Another quote from the doc:
I've heard people say that what happened at Abu Ghraib is an isolated incident. And I have to just shake my head and say, 'Are we on the same planet? Aren't you aware of our history? Is the history taught about the role of the U.S. government in human rights violations?
-American nun Sister Diana Ortiz, who was abducted, raped and tortured in 1989 after speaking out against indigenous oppression by the U.S./Bush supported dictatorship Guatemalan government.
[A statement of hers regarding her torture, from Wiki:
When the men returned, they had a video camera and a still camera. The policeman put a machete into my hands. Thinking it would be used against me, and at that point in my torture wanting to die, I did not resist. But the policeman put his hands onto the handle, on top of mine, and forced me to stab the woman again and again...
The policeman asked me if I was now ready to talk, and one of the other torturers...mentioned that they had just filmed...me stabbing the woman. If I refused to cooperate, their boss, Alejandro, would...turn the videotapes and the photographs over to the press.... This was the first I had heard of Alejandro, the torturers’ boss....
The policeman raped me again. Then I was lowered into a pit full of bodies— bodies of children, men, and women, some decapitated, all caked with blood. A few were still alive. I could hear them moaning. Someone was weeping. I didn’t know if it was me or somebody else. A stench of decay rose from the pit. Rats swarmed over the bodies and were dropped onto me as I hung suspended over the pit by the wrists. I passed out and when I came to I was lying on the ground beside the pit, rats all over me.
Also, regarding the U.S. involvement:
The only uncommon element of my ordeal was that I survived, probably because I was a U.S. citizen, and phone calls poured into Congress when I was reported missing. As a U.S. citizen, I had another advantage: I could, in relative safety, reveal afterwards the details of what happened to me in those twenty-four hours. One of those details: an American was in charge of my torturers
I remember the moment he removed my blindfold. I asked him, "Are you an American?" In poor Spanish and with a heavy American accent, he answered me with a question: "Why do you want to know?" Moments before, after the torturers had blindfolded me again and were getting ready to rape me again, they had called out in Spanish: "Hey, Alejandro, come and have some fun!" And a voice had responded "Shit!" in perfect American English with no trace of an accent. It was the voice of the tall, fair-skinned man beside me. After swearing, he’d switched to a halting Spanish. "Idiots!" he said. "She’s a North American nun." He added that my disappearance had been made public, and he ran them out of the room.
....He kept telling me he was sorry. The torturers had made a mistake. We came to a parking garage, where he put me into a gray Suzuki jeep and told me he was taking me to a friend of his at the U.S. embassy who would help me leave the country. For the duration of the trip, I spoke to him in English, which he understood perfectly. He said he was concerned about the people of Guatemala and consequently was working to liberate them from Communism. Alejandro told me to forgive my torturers because they had confused me with Veronica Ortiz Hernandez. It was an honest mistake.
Also on the issue see this previous post.
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