63.
As she led us through the streets, I asked her a question. “What am I supposed to do about all this misery you’ve been
showing me, be ashamed?”
“What happened to my mother in Chile became an industry in Argentina. Hundreds of women were forced into premature labor then thrown from airplanes into the Rio Plato.”, Claudia winced. “Their children were raised by the people who murdered them. What is the burden a child must bear when he discovers that his parents were murdered by his parents? To not know what has been done in your name is shameful. You will tell your countrymen what you have learned and pray they will believe you.”
We entered a plaza filled with somber women wading silently through a carpet of pigeons rustling and cooing at their feet. When they saw Claudia, they nodded their heads and made room for us in their procession. Claudia spoke in a whisper. “Tens of thousands of people simply disappeared during the Dirty War. These Mothers of the Disappeared will never know what happened to their loved ones. You may look at us as a sad collection of banana republics, but the seeds from which this horror sprang lie in fallow ground in your own country: Extraordinary Rendition, The Patriot Act, The Military Commissions Act, Guantanamo. You think you are immune to fascism and tyranny but how many of you remember the fact that there was a large and powerful Nazi Party in America before World War II? Fascism is a cancer in every country that is never cured. It merely lies dormant waiting to awake and metastasize. That woman over there spent twenty years in prison. That woman lost her entire family, all her friends, all their friends, everyone she ever knew.”
“What happened to my mother in Chile became an industry in Argentina. Hundreds of women were forced into premature labor then thrown from airplanes into the Rio Plato.”, Claudia winced. “Their children were raised by the people who murdered them. What is the burden a child must bear when he discovers that his parents were murdered by his parents? To not know what has been done in your name is shameful. You will tell your countrymen what you have learned and pray they will believe you.”
We entered a plaza filled with somber women wading silently through a carpet of pigeons rustling and cooing at their feet. When they saw Claudia, they nodded their heads and made room for us in their procession. Claudia spoke in a whisper. “Tens of thousands of people simply disappeared during the Dirty War. These Mothers of the Disappeared will never know what happened to their loved ones. You may look at us as a sad collection of banana republics, but the seeds from which this horror sprang lie in fallow ground in your own country: Extraordinary Rendition, The Patriot Act, The Military Commissions Act, Guantanamo. You think you are immune to fascism and tyranny but how many of you remember the fact that there was a large and powerful Nazi Party in America before World War II? Fascism is a cancer in every country that is never cured. It merely lies dormant waiting to awake and metastasize. That woman over there spent twenty years in prison. That woman lost her entire family, all her friends, all their friends, everyone she ever knew.”
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