February 14, 2006
On St. Valentine's Day - A letter
A few days ago I received a copy of this letter to include in the page of Berta Perassi, a woman who was "disappeared" in Argentina almost 30 years ago. It's a love letter, and I thought very fitting for this Valentine's Day. Here is my free translation:
For a while I've felt a great need to write to you and tell you about everything I've lived without you through the years.
It was 1973 in the city of Río Cuarto, the university was very young and the winds of revolution surrounded us, captivated us. Both of us studied and started our political activism. When I met you, I liked you right away, not only as a fellow activist but also as a woman. I still remember your blond hair and your whitewashed jeans that made you look like a rebel. Our relationship didn't last very long but it was very intense, as intense as that time in history.
You were always more decisive than I, you wanted there to be no more injustices, you wanted the world to be better... quickly you started working in the barrios on the outskirts of the city, teaching the workers to read and write, those workers who’d sign the labor contracts with their thumb print and didn’t know what it said above, you taught them to respect themselves, to be freer, to fight for their rights.
It was there in the El Acordeón barrio that a para-police squad came to burn you with cigarette butts and threaten your life. You were already a ‘subversive’. There another life began for you, faced with the threat to your life there was no more room for you in Río Cuarto.
At that time I felt impotence and the desire to protect you; I walked with you to your mother’s house in Moldes and I stayed with you two days thinking about what to do, how to continue, how to live with the nightmare of the constant threat.
Finally you decided to go to Córdoba, it was in the middle of ‘74, the right had already started its work of killing activists.
In Córdoba you started once again to discuss, to reflect, to think what to do. The political alternative didn’t convince you; what you wanted to do was continue fighting against the exploitation of workers, against the lack of social rights. You found work in a cookie factory, you wanted to live with the workers, be part of their struggle. That’s where you met members of the Worker’s Revolutionary Party and a few months before the coup d’état you joined their union.
They were difficult times, every day there was more repression.
In 1975, one could no longer breathe in Río Cuarto, they had ransacked my house, the death threats against activists continued. I also went to Córdoba, in part because I wanted to be closer to you... young love. We saw each other, went out for a couple of months, but afterwards we went apart, everything in your life was so intense, your activism a full-time job, seeing each other too much was dangerous.
With time I found out you had another boyfriend, I was very sad, bitter, but finally I accepted it. I’d see you once in a great while, I liked seeing you, you had a lot of strength and it was hard for you to accept that I was no longer an activist, you were always more decisive.
The coup came and the repression worsened, the disappearances of fellow activists were every day more numerous. On May 27th, 1976 they kidnaped me, they took me to the Intelligence Division of the province of Córdoba and tortured me. They didn’t know anything about me so it wasn’t difficult to resist torture, deny that I knew any activists in Córdoba.
That, Berta, is when I started to “forget” you, to erase you from my life, you know? To know you was dangerous for you and for me, it was best for both of us that I erase you from my life.
They took me to Río Cuarto, they continued to torture me and they left me alone in a cell for 71 days. Much later I learned that while I was in that cell isolated from the world an Army squad kidnaped you. It was on July 1st 1976; we still don’t know how they took you. But we do know that they took you to “La Perla,” a monstrous secret detention facility where they savagely tortured you, that they used the picana on you, that one of your torturers was Luis Manzanelli who left your eyes black and blue from all the punches he gave you. A coward, a horrible man who is still free somewhere. What we do know is that you resisted, that you didn’t give anyone’s name, that the torturers of the Third Army Corps declared you “unredeemable” and that twenty days later they “transferred” you. They probably shot you, as they did with so many others, cowardly, hooded and with your hands tied, for the “mistake” of having fought with the people, for being a union activist, for wanting to make a revolution to finish with the exploitation of workers, for wanting a more just society. You were 23 years old, filled with life and hope.
I was luckier than you; I was imprisoned for 3 years and 2 months. It was very hard but I was able to withstand the policies of destruction applied by the people who had killed you. On the way I lost many other friends, 32 of them were killed in the Cordoba jail, Alberto Pinto who worked with us in Río Cuarto was savagely beaten to death in the La Plata jail.
I was telling you that I had erased you from my life, two years into my jail term they took me out again to torture you, again the “fish” until I’d swallow so much water that it seemed like I was dying. In one of those sessions the torturer talked about you, he said you were my girlfriend, and I forgot you again. I denied that you’d been my girlfriend, forgive me, it was an action of self-defense, I know you will understand, in reality I’ve never forgotten you and I will never forgive you. But I didn’t want to admit I knew you to that savage. You know, that has haunted me my whole life. In reality I did the same thing you did, you also “forgot me” when they kidnaped you, when they tortured you savagely. Now I know that if you’d spoken about me I would not be able to write to you, they’d taken me out of the cell and taken me to La Perla. Do you know that you saved my life?
Finally I was freed in July 1979, still with fear as the military were still kidnaping activists. Did you learn that there were 30,000 “disappeared” as you? Those killers destroyed a whole generation, ours, the one that fought for a better world, the best of us like you are no longer here. It’s been horrible, Berta, you can’t imagine the disaster they created. Did you know that if you’d been pregnant they’d have kept you alive to steal your baby? Do you know that they stole 500 children and killed 500 mothers? And all of this, Berta, they did it with the support of the United States and the great international monopolies, the managers of those companies gave lists of union activists like you.
In all these years many times I dreamt awake that I would find you, that I’d see you in the street in the picture of some girl and even though those sons of bitches killed you, I always remember your image, your smile, your pretty eyes, your joy...
Now I say to you simply, “always towards victory, Berta!”
David