When Torture Becomes an Instrument of The State

From 1973 through 1989, the report concluded, torture was a

policy of the state. It took many forms, both physical and psychological. When

my mother was detained in 1973, she was 32 years old. She was the director of

the school for social work at Catholic University, an institution the military

regarded as a nest of leftist subversives. She was a member of the Socialist

Party, a vocal advocate of Salvador Allende, and the wife of a university

professor who supported the same causes. We learned in the report that the owner

of the bakery on our street reported my mother to the authorities as a

"dangerous subversive."



Naval officers and civilians from the right-wing Homeland

and Liberty brigade surprised her at home one afternoon. They dragged her away

in front of her children, blindfolded her and carried her to an uncertain fate,

only to release her a few days later. The naval officer who let her go, however,

was kind enough to warn her that she and her family would be well advised to

leave the country, because if she were arrested again, she might not be released

so quickly, if at all. A week later, my parents, my grandparents, my brother and

I sat in the French Embassy waiting for asylum. The following week we were in

France, where we remained for 11 years before returning to Chile.



Unlike other Chileans, my mother was not subjected to an

electric cattle prod; she was neither beaten nor raped. For more than two

decades, my mother felt that she did not have the right to demand any kind of

justice because, in the end, her suffering hadn't been all that terrible. She

even thought that maybe she had deserved it when they arrested her, blindfolded

her, and forced her to listen as they tortured her students and

co-workers.



Torture is an act that stems not from savagery but

from extreme cultural and scientific sophistication. It makes the survivors feel

that they are among the privileged, traitors to the cause. It kills people's

spirits but keeps their bodies alive, transforming all those who escape it into

zombies in the service of another despicable torturer: fear. It is a gruesomely

effective tool, for it knows just how to manipulate imagination and paralyze

instincts for rebellion or resistance

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