“I know what few U.S. citizens know: what it is to be an innocent civilian, and to be accused, interrogated, and tortured, to have my own government eschew my claims for justice and actively destroy my character because my case causes political problems for them. I know what it is to wait in the dark for torture, and what it is to wait in the dark for the truth. I am still waiting.”
–Dianna Ortiz
Recently, a report on the United States government’s use of torture was released, as well as earlier documents outlining the incidents of torture. I have learned a reliable method for accessing facts rather than propaganda: notice who is allowed to speak and what is allowed to be heard through the media. It seems these days the media rarely allows the public to become aware of facts that reflect poorly on the U.S. government:
This is not a patriotic act.
Most of us in the U.S. will help each other to thrive, if we can. And we will stand up against wrongs, if we can. We will change our own behavior when we learn of our mistakes, if we can. But if we are not aware of the acts carried out in our name, there is very little we are able to do.
In the videos above and elsewhere in this post, an American nun, sister Dianna Ortiz, describes her experience of being tortured in Guatemala on November 2, 1989, after being kidnapped by members of the Guatemalan Security Force. You will only read partial accounts of her experience in mainstream media reports. Her torturers were overseen by members of the American CIA, provided with American personnel, weapons, money and torture manuals which outlined techniques she experienced that were nearly identical to those used in Vietnam by U.S. Special Forces. She says her torturers called an American she later met, who walked into her torture cell, “boss”.
Few Americans, including myself, (before my current research, which I found unexpectedly overlapping with this history), are aware of the role the American CIA and military played in training and overseeing the military and “security forces” in Guatemala, during the 30 year war, from 1960 to 1996. It is a war which has been described as carrying out a genocide against the indigenous people of Guatemala.
Dianna escaped her torturers and survived. She survived so she could provide witness to what she had observed, not only in her own torture but in the torture of many others. She was warned and cruelly reminded by the American “Boss” of her torturers, and later other Americans in the U.S. that images of her had been taken during the most humiliating part of her ordeal and if she mentioned that Americans were involved in her torture these images could be released to the press and sent to her colleagues and family. And later, she was smeared in an American effort and her history of torture was re-framed as she began speaking about her experience.
Threatening a torture victim and telling them to omit details in order to hide U.S. involvement is not a patriotic act and there is no way to re-frame it to be so.
Further reading and information
I also came across a 2006 report submitted to the UN by a colleague of Ortiz, regarding the widespread U.S. Torture in Guatemala. I doubt many of us knew of this history either.
You can find Ortiz’ book on Amazon.
In her 2007 lecture below, Sister Dianna Ortiz discusses her ordeal in more detail, as she shares it with an audience of her colleagues. She also discusses in more detail, the extent the U.S. government went to in order to smear her.
Below is another talk she gave, in 2005.
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