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CounterPunch
October
15, 2002
Letelier,
Torture, Chile and the CIA
Flesh
by RICHARD THIEME
"I am
obsessed with the body," Isabel
Letelier said. "I turned from painting to sculpture because
I needed to work with something I could feel.. Bodies are so
open, so vulnerable, so easy to abuse."
Isabel Letelier had just read my column
(When Should You Tell the Kids?) about proposals to use torture
to elicit information from suspected terrorists. It recalled
memories that clouded her eyes.
"I was teaching Spanish to English
speakers in Washington," she said. "One morning I
came to work and the elevator didn't work. A sign said that
the U.S.A.I.D. (Agency for International Development) was holding
classes and access was forbidden to unauthorized personnel.
"I went upstairs and the halls were
full of paramilitary in battle dress from Spanish speaking countries,
some from Chile. What are you doing? I asked a young man.
"Learning to fight guerillas,"
he said.
"But we don't have any guerillas
in our country."
"We do, but they are invisible.
The enemy is within."
Isabel noticed diagrams on the walls
identifying points on the human body. "What are those?"
"Sensitive points," he said
with a smile "We are learning how to interrogate guerillas."
"I was so naive," she told
me, " I didn't realize the United States was teaching them
how to torture under the cover of that agency."
Isabel Letelier and I were gathered with
others last week for the twentieth reunion of recipients of
the Gamaliel Chair in Peace and Justice, an annual speaking
opportunity sponsored by the Lutheran Campus Ministry at the
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.
Isabel Letelier learned more about torture
than she ever wanted to know. Her husband, Orlando Letelier,
served as Ambassador to the United States from Chile under the
government of Salvador Allende before being called home to
serve in the cabinet. His expertise in economics was needed
when the Nixon administration, having failed to subvert Allende's
election and inauguration, worked to undermine the Chilean economy.
Because their first attempt to overthrow
the democratically elected government of Chile by a military
coup had failed, Nixon told the CIA, "We will make the
economy scream." .
"They did, too," Isabel said,
"Our major export is copper which moved in American trucks.
Manufacturers refused to give us spare parts. They subverted
the economy every way they could."
A second coup, backed by the CIA, succeeded.
Allende was overthrown by General Augusto Pinochet and the military.
Orlando Letelier was tortured, beaten, his fingers broken.
He was sent to Dawson Island, a concentration camp near Antarctica.
Pressure from friends and colleagues led to Letelier's release
and deportation, first to Venezuela, then to the United States.
In Washington he continued to speak out against the Fascist
regime. He received numerous threats.
Anonymous callers told Isabel she was
not a wife but a widow. When a dead chicken was found in her
front hallway, she called the police.
"It's a chicken," an officer
said. "What do you want us to do?"
"It's a threat," she said.
"They are planning to kill my husband."
"It looks fresh," the officer
said, pointing to the blood pooling from its headless body.
"Maybe you can eat it for dinner."
A bomb planted in Orlando Letelier's
automobile exploded, severing his legs and killing him instantly.
It was revealed later that the killers were part of a cooperative
effort in state terror (under the guise of counter terror) called
Operation Condor carried out by Argentina, Bolivia, Chile,
Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil.
The CIA knew about Condor but did not
prevent the assassinations. After Letelier was killed, the agency
leaked inaccurate information to the press to divert attention.
Terrorism consists of violent illegal
behaviors configured to the contours of perceived political
necessity that justifies that violence and illegality. Terrorism
can be carried out by state or non-state actors. It is a set
of behaviors regardless of who does them.
Isabel Letelier spoke of friends showing
her holes in their breasts where cigarettes had been repeatedly
crushed out during interrogations, damaged legs on which they
had been forced to stand for days, scars from electric shocks
all over their bodies. They spoke of unspeakable indignities
that made the flesh crawl.
"Flesh," she said, "is
so vulnerable. Our bodies are so available."
She became obsessed with bodies.
The only defense of the flesh is the
will and intention of a society not to permit its violation.
It is not what we say that matters but what we do, and what
we have often done is the worst that people can do. The track
record is not good.
When Isabel Letelier was told of her
husband's murder, she gathered her four sons in her arms and
made them swear that they would not hate. They would seek justice,
yes, but they must not hate lest they too fall into the abyss.
I don't know a good definition of spirituality
but I know it when I see it.
That act by Isabel Letelier was the real
thing.
Words in print, words on a monitor, are
easy to mistake for the real thing. But this medium is reality
once removed. It is words about torture, not torture. Words
become real only when they become flesh.
Flesh is a thin envelope that opens to
reveal our real beliefs when it is torn.
There were judges in Chile, the equivalent
of "torture warrants," the consensual fictions of
a lawful society. That did not prevent the society from tumbling
into the abyss.
A nation can not claim the high moral
ground unless its words become flesh. Words read in a vague
disconnected way from a teleprompter, words about meeting terror
with terror ... those words are a means of numbing the moral
sense. They are not the real thing.
The real thing looks like a declaration
on behalf of forgiveness and justice seamlessly fused in the
prayer of a sobbing widow on her knees, holding her sons.
Richard Thieme
speaks, writes and consults on the human dimensions of technology,
work and our lives.
He can be reached at: rthieme@thiemeworks.com
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