The Bark Paintings of the Balsas River
Before the rains, in the season of the new moon, they strip off the bark of the amate tree. The stripped tree dies. On its skin the Mexican Indians of the Balsas River region paint flowers and fantasies, radiant mountain birds and monsters lying in wait, or they paint the daily round of events in communities which greet the Virgin in devout procession and summon the rain in secret ceremonies.
Before the European conquest, other Indians had painted on amate bark the codices that told of people’s lives and of the stars. When the conquistadors imposed their paper and their images, amates disappeared. For more than four centuries no one in the land of Mexico painted on this forbidden paper. Not long ago, in the middle of our century, amates returned: “All the people are painters. All. Everyone.”
Ancient life breathes through these amates, which come from afar, from so very far away, but never arrive tired.
(57)
The Arpilleras of Santiago
The children, sleeping three to a bed, stretch out their arms toward a flying cow. Santa Claus has a bag of bread, not toys, slung over his shoulder. At the foot of a tree a woman begs. Under the red sun a skeleton drives a garbage cart. On endless roads go men without faces. An enormous eye watches. At the center of the silence and the fear steams the communal stewpot.
Chile is this world of colored rags against a background of flour sacks. With scraps of wool and old cloth, women from Santiago’s wretched slums embroider arpilleras. The arpilleras are sold in churches. That anyone buys them is incredible. The women are amazed: “We embroider our problems, and our problems are ugly.”
This was first done by the wives of prisoners. Then others took it up—for money, which is a help, but not just for money. Embroidering arpilleras brings the women together, eases their loneliness and sadness, and for a few short hours breaks the routine of obedience to husband, father, macho son, and General Pinochet.
The Little Devils of Ocumicho
Like the Chilean arpilleras, the little clay devils of the Mexican village of Ocumicho are the creations of women. These devils make love, in pairs or in groups, go to school, drive motorcycles or airplanes, sneak into Noah’s Ark, hide among the rays of the moon-loving sun, and intrude into Christmas nativity scenes. They lie in wait under the table at the Last Supper, while Jesus Christ, nailed to the cross, shares a meal of Patzcuaro lakefish with his Indian disciples. Eating, Christ laughs from ear to ear as if he had suddenly discovered that this world is more easily redeemed by pleasure than by pain.
In dark, windowless houses the Ocumicho potters model these luminous figures. Women tied to an endless chain of children, prisoners of drunken husbands who beat them, practice a new free-style art. Condemned to submission, destined for sadness, they create each day a new rebellion.
On Private Property and the Right of Creation
Buyers want the Ocumicho potters to sign their works, so they use stamps to engrave their names at the foot of their little devils. But often they forget, or use a neighbor’s stamp if their own isn’t handy, so that María comes out as the artist of a work by Nicolasa, or vice versa.
They don’t understand this business of solitary glory. In their Tarascan Indian community, all are one when it comes to this sort of thing. Outside the community, like the tooth that falls from a mouth, one is nobody.
(183)
1975: Cabimas
Vargas
Oil, passing along the banks of Lake Maracaibo, has taken away the colors. In this Venezuelan garbage dump of sordid streets, dirty air, and oily waters, Rafael Vargas lives and paints.
Grass does not grow in Cabimas, dead city, emptied land, nor do fish remain in its waters, nor birds in its air, nor roosters in its dawns; but in Vargas’s paintings the world is in fiesta, the earth breathes at the top of its lungs, the greenest of trees burst with fruit and flowers, and prodigious fish, birds, and roosters jostle one another like people.
Vargas hardly knows how to read or write. He does know how to earn a living as a carpenter, and how as a painter to earn the clean light of his days: His is the revenge, the prophecy of one who paints not the reality he knows but the reality he needs.
1975: Salta
Happy Colors of Change
As in a painting by the Venezuelan Vargas, in the Argentine province of Salta police patrol cars were painted yellow and orange. Instead of sirens, they had music, and instead of prisoners, children: Patrol cars rolled along filled with children who came and went from remote shacks to the city’s schools. Punishment cells and torture chambers were demolished. The police withdrew from soccer games and demonstrations. The tortured went free and the torturers, officers who specialized in breaking bones with hammers, disappeared behind bars. Police dogs, which once had terrorized the poor, began giving acrobatic performances in the slums.
This happened a couple of years ago, when Rubén Fortuny was Salta’s chief of police. Fortuny didn’t last long. While he did what he did, though, other men like him were committing similar insanities throughout Argentina, as if the whole country were clasped in some euphoric embrace.
Sad epilogue to this newest Peronist episode: Perón, having returned to power, has died, and the hangmen are once again free and busy.
They kill Fortuny with a bullet in the heart. Then they kidnap the governor who appointed him, Miguel Ragone. All they leave of Ragone is a bloodstain and a shoe.
1975: Buenos Aires
Against the Children of Evita and Marx
But for Argentines the dangerous wind of change refuses to die down. The military see the threat of social revolution peeking out of every door and prepare to save the nation. They have been saving the nation for nearly half a century; and more recently, in courses in Panama, have found support in the Doctrine of National Security, which confirms for them that the enemy is within. Certain finishing touches are added to the next coup d’état. The program of national purification will be applied by every means: This is a war, a war against the children of Evita and Marx, and in war the only sin is inefficiency.
(106, 107, and 134)
1976: Madrid
Onetti
He doesn’t expect to find any messages in any bottles in any sea. But the despairing Juan Carlos Onetti refuses to be alone. He would be alone, of course, if it weren’t for the inhabitants of the town of Santa María, sad like himself, invented by him to keep him company.
Onetti has lived in Madrid since he came out of prison. The military rulers of Uruguay had jailed him because a story to which he had given a prize in a competition he was judging was not to their liking.
Hands clasped behind his neck, the exile contemplates the damp stains on the ceiling of his room in Santa María or Madrid or Montevideo or who knows where. From time to time he picks himself up and writes shouts that only seem like whispers.
1976: San José
A Country Stripped of Words
President Aparicio Méndez declares that the Democratic Party of the United States and the Kennedy family are sedition’s best partners in Uruguay. A journalist tapes this sensational revelation, in the presence of the bishop of the city of San José and other witnesses.
Aparicio Méndez was chosen president in an election in which twenty-two citizens voted: fourteen generals, five brigadiers, and three admirals. The military have forbidden their president to talk to journalists, to anyone, in fact, except his wife. For this particular indiscretion they punish the newspaper that publishes his declaration with two days’ suspension; and the journalist is fired.
Before silencing their president, the military took the reasonable precaution of silencing the rest of Uruguay. Every word that is not a lie is subversive. No one may mention any of the thousands of politicians, trade unionists, artists, and scientists who have been placed outside the law. The word guerrilla is officially banned; instead, one must say lowlife, criminal, delinquent, or evildoer. Carnival musicians, typically cheeky and disrespectful, may not sing the word
s agrarian reform, sovereignty, hunger, clandestine, dove, green, summer, or contracanto. Nor may they sing the word pueblo, even when it means a small city.
In the kingdom of silence the chief jail for political prisoners is called Liberty. The prisoners, held in isolation, invent codes to speak without voices, knocking on the walls from cell to cell to form letters and words so they can continue liking and teasing each other.
(124 and 235)
A Uruguayan Political Prisoner, Mauricio Rosencof, Says His Piece
It is like the struggle of a man who resists being turned into a cow. Because they put us in a cow-making machine and told us that instead of talking we should moo. And that is the question: How a prisoner can resist being animalized in such a situation. It is a battle for dignity … There was one compañero who got hold of a bit of sugarcane, bored a hole in it with his fingernail, and made a flute. And this clumsy, rudimentary thing stammers a sort of music …
(394)
1976: Liberty
Forbidden Birds
The Uruguayan political prisoners may not talk without permission, or whistle, smile, sing, walk fast, or greet other prisoners; nor may they make or receive drawings of pregnant women, couples, butterflies, stars, or birds.
One Sunday, Didaskó Pérez, school teacher, tortured and jailed for having ideological ideas, is visited by his daughter Milay, age five. She brings him a drawing of birds. The guards destroy it at the entrance to the jail.
On the following Sunday, Milay brings him a drawing of trees. Trees are not forbidden, and the drawing gets through. Didaskó praises her work and asks about the colored circles scattered in the treetops, many small circles half-hidden among the branches: “Are they oranges? What fruit is it?”
The child puts a finger on his mouth. “Ssssshhh.”
And she whispers in his ear: “Silly. Don’t you see they’re eyes? They’re the eyes of the birds that I’ve smuggled in for you.”
(204 and 459)
1976: Montevideo
Seventy-Five Methods of Torture,
some copied, others invented thanks to the creativity of the Uruguayan military, punish solidarity. Anyone doubting property rights or the law of obedience ends up in jail, grave, or exile. The danger-meter classifies citizens in three categories, A, B, or C, according to whether they are “dangerous,” “potentially dangerous,” or “not dangerous.” Trade unions become police stations, and wages are cut in half. Whoever thinks or has ever thought loses his or her job. In primary schools, high schools, even the university, speaking of José Artigas’s agrarian reform program is prohibited. Who cares if it was the first in America? Nothing is allowed to contradict this order of the deaf and dumb. Obligatory new texts impose military pedagogy on the students.
(235)
1976: Montevideo
“One Must Obey,” the New Official Texts Teach Uruguayan Students
The existence of political parties is not essential for a democracy. We have the clear example of the Vatican, where political parties do not exist and nevertheless there is a real democracy …
The equality of women, badly interpreted, means stimulating her sex and her intellectuality, while postponing her mission as mother and wife. If from the juridical standpoint man and woman are evidently equal, such is not the case from the biological standpoint. The woman as such is subject to her husband and hence owes him obedience. It is necessary that in any society there be a head who serves as guide, and the family is a society …
It is necessary for some to obey in order that others may exercise command. If no one obeyed, it would be impossible to rule …
(76)
1976: Montevideo
The Head Shrinkers
Dedicated to the prohibition of reality and the arson of memory, the Uruguayan military have beaten the world record for newspaper closures.
The weekly Marcha, after a long life, has ceased to be. One of its editors, Julio Castro, has been tortured to death, then disappeared—a dead man without a corpse. The other editors have been sentenced to prison, exile, or silence.
One night Hugo Alfaro, a movie critic condemned to wordlessness, sees a film that excites him. As soon as it ends he runs home and types a few pages, in a big hurry because it’s late and Marcha closes its entertainment pages in the early hours. As he pecks out the last period, Alfaro suddenly realizes that Marcha hasn’t existed for two years. Ashamed, he drops his review in a desk drawer.
This review, written for no one, deals with a Joseph Losey film set during the Nazi occupation of France, a film which shows how the machinery of repression grinds up not just the persecuted but also those who think they are safe, those who know what is happening, and even those who prefer not to know.
Meanwhile, on the River Plata’s other bank, the Argentine military make their own coup d’état. One of the heads of the new dictatorship, General Ibérico Saint-Jean, clarifies things: “First we’ll kill all the subversives. Then we’ll kill the collaborators. Then the sympathizers. Then the undecided. And finally, we’ll kill the indifferent.”
(13 and 106)
1976: La Perla
The Third World War
From the top of a hill, on a chestnut mount, an Argentine gaucho looks on. José Julián Solanille sees a long military caravan approaching. He recognizes General Ménendez dismounting from a Ford Falcon. Out of trucks, shoved by clubs, tumble men and women, hoods over their heads, hands tied behind their backs. The gaucho sees one of the hooded ones make a break for it. He hears the shots. The fugitive falls, gets up, and falls, several times before falling for the last time. When the fusillade begins, men and women collapse like rag dolls. The gaucho spurs his horse and takes off. Behind him black smoke rises.
This valley, in the first undulations of the Córdoba sierra, is one of the many dumps for corpses. When it rains, smoke drifts up from the pits because of the quicklime they throw on the bodies.
In this holy war, the victims disappear. Those not swallowed by the earth are devoured by fish at the bottoms of rivers or the sea. Many have committed no greater crimes than appearing on a list of phone numbers. They march into nothingness, into the fog, into death, after torture in the barracks. No one is innocent, says Monseñor Plaza, bishop of La Plata, and General Camps says it is right to liquidate a hundred suspects if only five of them turn out to be guilty. Guilty of terrorism.
Terrorists, explains General Videla, are not only those who plant bombs, but also those who act with ideas contrary to our Western and Christian civilization. This is vengeance for the defeat of the West in Vietnam:
“We are winning the Third World War,” crows General Menéndez.
(100, 107, and 134)
1976: Buenos Aires
The Choice
One prisoner, pregnant, is offered the choice between rape or the electric prod. She chooses the prod, but after an hour can no longer endure the pain. They all rape her. As they rape her, they sing the Wedding March.
“Well, this is war,” says Monseñor Gracelli.
The men who burn breasts with blowtorches in the barracks wear scapulars and take communion every Sunday.
“Above us all is God,” says General Videla.
Monseñor Tortolo, president of the Episcopate, compares General Videla with Jesus Christ, and the military dictatorship with the Easter Resurrection. In the name of the Holy Father, nuncio Pío Laghi visits the extermination camps, exalts the military’s love of God, Fatherland, and Family, and justifies state terrorism on the grounds that civilization has the right to defend itself.
(106, 107, and 134)
1976: La Plata
Bent over the Ruins, a Woman Looks
for something in her home that has not been destroyed. The forces of order have shattered María Isabel de Mariani’s home, and she pokes through the remains in vain. What they have not stolen, they have pulverized. Only one record, Verdi’s Requiem, is intact.
María Isabel would like to find in the litter some memento of her
children and of her granddaughter, a photo or toy, book, ashtray, anything. Her children, suspected of running a clandestine press, have been gunned down. Her three-month-old granddaughter has been given away or sold as war booty by the officers.
It is summer, and the smell of gunpowder mixes with the aroma of flowering lindens. That aroma will forever be unbearable. María Isabel has no one to be with. She is the mother of subversives. Seeing her coming, her friends cross the street or avert their eyes. Her telephone is silent. No one tells her anything, even lies. Without help she proceeds to put the shreds of her destroyed home in boxes. Well after nightfall she pulls the boxes onto the sidewalk. Very early in the morning the garbage men collect the boxes, one by one, gently, without knocking them over. The garbage men treat the boxes with great care, as if aware they are full of the bits of a broken life. Silently peering through the remains of a venetian blind, María Isabel thanks them for this caress, the only one she has had since the sorrow began.
(317)
1976: Forest of Zinica
Carlos
He criticized you to your face, praised you behind your back.
He had the myopic, fanatical gaze of an angry rooster, sharp brown eyes from which he saw farther than others, a man of all or nothing; but moments of joy made him jump like a small child, and when he gave orders he seemed to be asking favors.