THE OFFICIAL STORY
Argentina, 1985
Director: Luis Puenzo
Screenplay: Puenzo and Aida Bortnik
Executive Producer: Marcelo Pineyro
Photography: Felix Monti
Music: Atilio Stampone
Alicia: Norma Aleandro
Roberto: Hector Alterio
Gaby: Analía Castro
Ana: Chunchuna Villafane
Benitez: Patricio Contreras
Sara Reballo: Chela Ruiz
Students and teachers stand at attention in the rain and sing the Argentine national
anthem.
It’s about freedom, broken chains, "noble equality" enthroned.
Alicia Ibañez begins her history class.
"Our subject is Argentine History."
"No peoples can survive without memory."
"History is the memory of the peoples."
She reads the roster. When she reads "Cullen, Martín,"
his name is met with derision because he
is believed by his classmates to be a homosexual.
Gaby takes a bath, trying to learn a song, "In the Land-of-I-Don't-Remember."
A TV news program is on: "It is too bad some news media abuse their rights. By preaching destabilization, they encourage subversive ideas.... The Army is preparing to confront the infiltrators."
Roberto comes home with a new doll for Gaby.
At a dinner party, someone quotes a Spanish socialist he has been talking to:
"‘We were better off against Franco.’ Now that they’re the
government they don’t know who
to blame."
The wife of a board member makes fun of the North American
husband of an Argentinean woman
because his son is so large, but he isn't.
The same woman says to Alicia: "You’re not very modern, are you?"
The woman is insulting to nearly everyone—except the general!
Benitez teaches a literature class.
The students and Benitez read a play. There is laughter and a generally relaxed
atmosphere.
Alicia’s entrance puts an end to it.
Alicia picks up Gaby at kindergarten.
Alicia attends her high school class reunion.
She is reunited with Ana.
Discussion among the classmates:
When did people leave?
"If they were seized,
surely there was a reason."
— The reason can only be that they are subversives.
A classmate (who clearly favors the junta) says to Ana, "We
can't all choose between the tough
caviar of exile and home. Don't expect us to pity you."
Ana replies that the woman was unforgettable and
hasn't changed, then insults her:
"…contemptible classmate … unforgettable bitch…. Why don’t you
go fuck yourself."
Ana has dinner with Alicia and Roberto.
Roberto: "I never saw you [Ana] in a skirt before. Europe was good for you, eh? It
seems
to have polished up your edges."
Roberto can’t sleep while Ana and Alicia talk into the night. He looks very grim.
Alicia to Ana: "Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? You never wrote….
Why
such a hurry?"
Ana tells about being kidnapped by the police.
The cops ripped up a Gardel poster she had on her door.
[Inappropriate affect: First, laughter. Then tears as she understands what she is
saying
and recalls the terror.]
Alicia does not understand. She thinks it is going to be another of Ana’s
humorous stories.
Ana tells about being tortured.
Water torture: "After seven years I’m still drowning."
She was told she had been tortured for 36 days.
One of the torturers, the only one whose face she saw, saved her from being raped by
the others so that he could rape her himself.
"I’m still terrified I’ll hear his voice on the street, in the
subway…"
Alicia: "But why did they do this to you?"
The torturers repeatedly asked about Pedro, Ana’s lover, whom she had not seen
for two years.
Ana speculates that Pedro
was already dead by the time she was tortured.
Alicia asks if Ana had
reported it. Ana looks quizzical. "To whom would I report it?"
Ana: "That place was so
full. Often I didn't know if the cries were mine or someone else's."
Ana mentions that the babies of torture victims are given away.
Alicia is horrified, as if being accused: "Why tell me that?"
[Or she might be making a sudden and disturbing connection to herself.]
Ana [about her torture]: "I still feel guilty."
Gaby sleeps fitfully in her bedroom while Ana talks about her torture.
[Gaby does not know she has been victimized.]
While Alicia is looking through pictures, reminiscing, Gaby sneaks up behind her.
Alicia is startled and spills eggnog on Gaby’s picture.
In Alicia’s class, there is a discussion of Moreno’s "republican
sentiments" and the manner of his death.
Horacio Costa: "There’s no proof [that Moreno was poisoned] because history
is written by
assassins!"
Alicia dismissed him from the class: "This is a
history class, not a debate....
Without discipline there's no teaching and no
learning."
A birthday party for Gaby:
Roberto’s family is present, except for Roberto and Roberto’s father.
Alicia talks with Roberto’s brother Enrique about the rift between Roberto and his
father.
A magician performs sadistic tricks, frightening
some of the children.
Gaby leaves the party to go to her room.
Gaby’s boy cousins, playing at making a police raid, burst into Gaby’s room.
She becomes hysterical.
[A repressed memory?]
Alicia remembers the day Roberto brought Gaby home.
He doesn’t want to remember.
"We agreed never to talk about it."
"What the hell are you asking me?"
Alicia: "How do I know what I’m asking? I don’t know!"
Alicia’s classroom:
Clippings about missing children are plastered over the blackboard.
A student reads from Moreno’s writings.
Alicia orders the clippings removed.
She sticks them in her briefcase, not the wastebasket!
Benitez rides downtown with Alicia in order to talk with her.
[The scene provides an editorial
comment on the chaos of traffic in Buenos Aires.]
He has removed Costa’s file from the principal’s office, where Alicia had
sent it, complaining of his rowdiness.
He says that Costa deserves another chance … and so does Alicia.
Alicia asks why he was fired from his university position.
Benitez says he wasn’t fired. He tells of having his rooms ransacked and his
papers destroyed.
"I got the message all by myself."
Alicia mentions that her students hung clippings about the disappeared and missing
babies in her classroom. She asks if the reports are true.
Benitez (getting angry): "What do you care whether it’s true? Is it your
problem? It’s always easier to believe it’s impossible, right? Because if it
were possible it would require complicity. Many people can’t believe it even when
they see it."
Benitez returns Costa's file to Alicia.
In the background is a huge demonstration at Plaza de Mayo.
Chants: "It will end! It will end! This habit of killing!"
"Let them tell us where those kidnapped babies are!"
"You ill-begotten military men, what have you done with our missing ones?"
"The foreign debt and the corruption are the worst shit our nation has ever
had!"
"And what about Malvinas? Those boys who never came back!
We must never forget
them! That’s why we must fight!"
Banners: "Return all children born in captivity
to their legitimate families."
"Mother and Grandmothers of the May Plaza."
Alicia goes to Roberto’s office.
Macci [who complained in an earlier scene
that he was only following orders] says, "I won’t go to jail!"
Alicia is curious.
A yanqui flirts with the secretary.
Macci is forced into a room. What happens to him is not clear.
Alicia rides with Roberto to the airport.
[There is more commentary
about the poor driving of Argentineans, as a car slams into the rear
of another car as they arrive at the
airport.]
Roberto is going away on a weeklong trip.
Alicia raises the subject of Gaby’s parents.
Roberto is furious: "Stop thinking!"
Alicia looks through papers concerning Gaby while Rosa (the maid) feeds
Gaby.
Gaby complains about the meat she is eating. She spills
her orange juice.
Alicia finds Gaby’s birth certificate.
She searches through Gaby's baby clothes, recalling the first days of Gaby's
presence in her life.
She ends up fondling the clothes and crying.
Alicia goes to a maternity ward delivery room.
She searches for the doctor who signed the birth certificate.
She learns his name, Jaifer--but also that he's been
missing for three years.
Alicia goes to confession.
She tells the priest about being lied to when her parents were killed in an auto
accident.
"I always believed what anyone told me. Now I know I can’t."
She confronts the confession priest, who was with Roberto when Gaby was picked up.
He refuses to say anything about it.
[This is a veiled reference to the Church’s condoning of the Dirty War.]
Alicia takes Gaby, who has a cold, to a pediatrician.
It is an excuse to find out more about Gaby’s origins.
While the students take a test, Alicia reviews her notes about Gaby and looks at one of Gaby’s drawings.
Alicia tells Ana her problem and asks her to go along to the hospital to ask questions.
Ana does not go with her.
At the hospital registry, Alicia meets a woman who is looking for her family.
The woman thinks Alicia is doing the same.
Alicia lets her think so.
The Ibañez family attends church.
The Ibañez family gathers at Roberto’s parents’ home.
Roberto is the black sheep because he is rich and conservative.
His father is a self-righteous anarchist.
Grandpa to his grandchildren (Enrique’s sons, with Gaby in tow):
"It’s not a shame to be poor, just as it’s not an honor to be
rich."
Boy: "It’s better to be rich!"
Grandpa: "That depends on what you had to do to get there
… and what
you’re willing to go on doing."
Boy: "All right, but if you don’t steal…."
Grandpa: "The thieves on TV aren’t the only thieves, you know."
Boy: "You like being poor, Grandpa?"
Grandpa: "I can’t help it. But I do like having a clean conscience."
Alicia talks to Enrique about missing babies.
Enrique dismisses the possibility that Gaby could
be one of them.
Dinner on the patio:
A discussion about how to predict the weather turns ugly.
Papa to Roberto: You only look up at the
clouds if it’s raining dollars.
Roberto takes exception.
Enrique tries to defend Roberto, but Roberto tells Enrique to stick his defense up his
ass.
Papa to Roberto: "I raised you for something else. Your brother’s too fond of
wine.
And you … you’re too fond of money."
Roberto: "You’d love me if I were a failure."
Papa: "The whole country’s collapsed, except for the sons of bitches, the
thieves, their cohorts,
and my eldest son. They struck it rich!"
Roberto: "The Spanish Civil War is over. And you lost it!" Repeating, leaning
into Papa’s face
and shouting: "You lost it! You want me to feel guilty because
I’m not a loser. I am not a loser!"
Enrique: "And this other war—the war you and your bunch won. You know who
lost it,
brother? The kids. Kids like mine. They’ll be paying for the dollars that
were swiped.
And they’ll repay them by not eating and not studying. Because you
won’t repay them, of course!
Why should you? You’re not a loser!"
Alicia visits the center for mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared.
She looks through notebooks and files.
Roberto entertains his business partners, including a general, at home.
Alicia is not at home.
Gaby tried to teach a yanqui how to pronounce her name.
She takes some medicine, fed to her by Roberto.
The general praises Roberto for learning to cook
gravy, while he himself had only ever cooked
barbecue,
like his father.
Roberto, thinking aloud of his own father, tells
the general that if every son were like his father,
things would
never change.
After the gathering and Alicia’s return, Roberto tells her that he thinks his boss will leave everyone in the lurch, except for "the Yank," who is probably his partner.
Alicia talks to Costa about using references. But she gives him an A-.
[Alicia looks different. She has let her hair down.]
Alicia has tea with Benitez.
Benitez: "I like your hair down.... Are your students still raising hell? If you keep dropping
burning matches, how
can you avoid explosions all around you?"
Alicia: "Everything seems to be falling apart."
Benitez: "Yes, it seems to be. But not everything. We shouldn’t expect too
much…"
"You’re always willing to swallow the bait. And this isn’t the end of
it. You people would
like it to be."
Alicia: "Benitez, who are ‘you people’?"
Benitez: "There’s nothing more touching than a guilty bourgeois lady."
Alicia: "Why don't you fuck off just a little?"
[She is looking
very pleased with herself. There is additional commentary in this
scene.
Alicia has found some freedom
and self confidence in the process of researching
Gaby's past.
She has gained some
independence from Roberto and from her role as mother.]
Alicia picks up Gaby at kindergarten.
Some women gaze at them from across the street.
[At first, Alicia only wondered about Gaby’s background. When she sees the mothers and grandmothers watching them, she realizes that the knowledge could take Gaby away from her.]
Roberto has begun to drink heavily.
Roberto: "What are you up to?"
Alicia: "I’m afraid. Could Gaby be a missing mother’s child?"
Roberto blames Alicia’s questions on Ana.
He reveals that he knew about Ana’s torture and exile.
Alicia asks him how he knew.
Roberto: "Maybe you told me."
[It’s such a blatant lie that Alicia realizes that Roberto has been lying all
along. You can see in her face that she’s beginning to wonder how many lies there
have been.]
Alicia talks with a woman (Sara) whose daughter and son-in-law were kidnapped and
disappeared.
Sara describes her daughter’s courtship and wedding.
She also describes their kidnapping.
She has only four old photos of her daughter and son-in-law.
Sara: "It’s important to remember."
Alicia realizes that Sara is probably Gaby’s grandmother
and begins to cry.
Sara: "Don't cry. Crying doesn't help."
Ana talks to Roberto in the office’s basement garage as Roberto removes his files.
They talk about Pedro, Ana’s former lover.
Ana says that Roberto may have denounced her in order to curry favor.
Roberto: "I would have been glad to do
it!"
Roberto becomes increasingly agitated.
After a telephone call, during which he denies knowing anything, he takes the phone off
the hook.
Alicia sleeps with Gaby in her arms.
Alicia watches a demonstration in May Plaza.
Sara marches with the demonstrators. She
and Alicia catch each other's eye.
Chants: "We want our children. No pardon. No amnesty. We want them alive."
Banner: Families of the Missing and Imprisoned.
Alicia on a train with Sara Reballo:
"If Gaby’s your grandchild, what do we do?"
Sara does not answer.
"I always though I'd do anything to
avoid losing what
I had." Sara is silent.
Alicia introduces Sara to Roberto. It’s a difficult conversation.
Alicia tells Roberto who Sara is: "Sara could be Gaby’s grandmother."
Roberto blows up: "You are completely
crazy. Is this
a trap? In my own house?
... Get this bag lady out of here -- out of my house!"
He stalks away.
Alicia promises to call Sara the next day.
Sara kisses her on the cheek.
Roberto fusses over some papers. He turns to Alicia.
"I don't understand. What's happening to
you? What do you want to do with Gaby?"
Alicia: "I want to know."
Roberto: "To know what?"
Alicia: "Why was she given to you? What did
they do to her mother? Is she alive?"
Roberto: "How do I know? What am I? A
torturer? Why should we care?"
Alicia: "We should care. It concerns us.
You're too scared to face that woman."
Roberto: "I want nothing to do with those people.
Nothing! Do you know who they are?
How could you
know? You don't know what's under your nose!
Of course I'm
scared, you idiot! Some very serious things have happened.
Andrada [the
CEO] has vanished! And I'm in it up to here [tapping his forehead].
The general
israving mad! He says he's going to make them pay for it.
We might lose
everything!"
Alicia: "We might lose Gaby."
Roberto: "You will lose Gaby!
You!"
He continues: "And if it’s true?
If the parents were
... what you said ... would it change
anything? She’s already lost
a mother. Do you want her to lose another one? Is
that what you
want?"
Now Alicia knows for certain.
Roberto: "We’re raising her properly, aren’t we? She’s better off
with us?"
Alicia: "Then it’s true…. You don’t even care if it’s
true! I do care!
I don't want
to do this to Gaby!"
Roberto finds out that Gaby is not at home.
Alicia: "Horrible, isn’t it? Not knowing where your daughter is."
Roberto beats her…. She says that
Gaby is with Roberto's parents....
Her hand in the doorjamb….
Gaby interrupts the beating by telephoning from Roberto’s parents’ house.
She wants to sing for Alicia, but Alicia is treating her hand and can’t come to
the phone.
Gaby sings for Roberto:
In the land of I-don’t-remember, I take three steps and I’m lost.
One step this way. I wonder if I may.
One step over there.
Oh, what a big scare.
In the land of I-don’t-remember, I take three steps and I’m lost.
One step backward fast, and that’ll be my last…
Because I no longer know where my other foot will go.
Oh, what a big scare.
Gaby sends a kiss for Roberto and another one for Alicia.
Roberto hangs up after a tearful goodbye. "Good night, love of my life."
Alicia closes the door behind her. She leaves her keys in the door. (She’s not coming back.)
Gaby sits in her grandmother’s rocking chair, singing the song she has memorized.
The song is sung over the credits.
DISCUSSION
1. What is The Official Story about?
What it’s not about:
a. A depiction of the atrocities or repression of the dictatorship or the "Dirty
War."
The atrocities merely serve as a backdrop.
They are referred to, not shown: there are no scenes of abductions, tortures or
murders,
only descriptions by characters in the movie.
The Argentine audience already knew about that when the film was released in 1985.
b. Missing babies. That is merely the vehicle used to raise the real issues.
What it is about:
a. Costa’s statement—"History is written by assassins"—is the thesis statement of the film.
b. It is not insignificant that a serious, engaged student delivers the line.
c. It is a warning to everyone everywhere, not just to Argentines.
It may have been made for an Argentine audience, but Puenzo knew this story would
resonate with thoughtful citizens of every country.
d. Costa’s statement is loaded with implications.
1) The official or widely believed version of history has been interpreted by those who
were victorious in history’s major conflicts. The losers are either powerless or
dead.
2) The version that might have been presented by the losers might be quite different.
3) Those who won—and hence get to tell the rest of us their
interpretation—were not
the most just or honest or righteous.
4) Indeed, by using the word "assassins," Costa’s (and the movie’s)
implication is that
victory goes to the most ruthless, cunning, conniving, and
unscrupulous—those who
have the most to hide and the power to hide it.
e. There is an entire worldview in Costa’s five-word statement.
1) Do not trust the powerful. They have interests that are not necessarily yours.
2) Be wary of official pronouncements. They are designed to mislead you.
3) At least consider the alternative points of view.
4) Seek to understand the experience of the victims of the powerful.
Their story is as
much a lived experience as that of the powerful and, therefore,
also a real part of
history. Furthermore, they are the true innocents, "the meek"
praised by Jesus
in the Beatitudes.
Cf., Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States.
2. A second major theme: The responsibilities of a citizen.
a. Who are the good citizens in this film?
1) Benitez, because he is an activist who acts to protect fellow citizens like Costa
and to educate people like Alicia.
2) Costa, because he is a serious student intent on exploring alternative
sources of
information and interpretation.
He is also willing to speak truth to power.
— It doesn’t matter that he is naïve about the danger he is in.
3) Alicia—when she begins educating herself.
4) Las Madres y Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo.
They risked their lives to defend their loved ones and each other.
b. Although motivated initially by self-interest, Alicia begins to recognize her
connection with
victims of repression.
c. She does so despite the cost to herself, for the good of the nation as a whole, in
the
interests of the people. The cost of not knowing would be much greater.
Ignorance is not bliss. What you don’t know can hurt you.
d. The film is about what is required of ordinary people when they discover what has
been
happening because they were wrapped up in their own little worlds and not paying
attention
to the lives of people around them.
It is about the consequences of not paying attention.
e. The negative side of this is the complicity of ignorant citizens.
This is Alicia as the film opens: she has been complicit in murder, torture and the
selling of children.
The point is made explicit in the scene in which Benitez hitches a ride downtown with
Alicia in order to talk about Costa’s file.
Alicia asks if the newspaper reports of missing babies are true.
Benitez: "What do you care whether it’s true? Is it your problem?
[He’s clearing inferring that it is, even though he knows nothing
about Alicia’s
concern about Gaby.] Because if it were possible it would
require complicity.
Many people can’t believe it even when they see it."
3. Why is it important to know the truth about what is happening around one, even if one would be happier, perhaps, if one didn’t know?
a. Integrity: how can one know who one really is if one doesn’t inquire into the
circumstances
of one’s life?
b. Our common humanity: we are not merely individuals but also—and more
importantly—fundamentally connected to everyone else.
c. Destiny: we are not the masters of our own fate.
Solipsism: the theory (or belief) that the self can only be aware of its own experience
and conditions; hence, the theory that nothing exists or is real but the self.
"From your point of view, I am only a figment of your imagination. From mine,
you
are merely a (bad) dream."
The reality: what one doesn’t know about will still have consequences in one’s life.
Our fates are intertwined. What happens in Argentina is also important to people in the
U.S. There are no self-made persons. What happened to the real mother of my adopted
daughter is part of my life and has consequences for the way I will live.
4. The children’s song that Gaby learns is a metaphor for the painfully
frightening future into which
Argentina was emerging at that time.
a. It is not a description of life under the junta.
b. It refers to the scary prospect of having to move forward by making one’s own
decisions.
c. Every direction, every step, is fraught with uncertainty and risk.
d. And furthermore, "One step back and then I’m lost!" (We
can’t go back to what was.)
e. It is symbolic that the song is a children’s song.
It represents the fears of people who have allowed the interpretation of events and all important decisions to be made for them (as children do and Alicia has).
They must now reinterpret all they have learned, all they believed to be true, even
their relationships with those closest to them, and they must make decisions for
themselves without being certain about what they think they know or what the result
of their decisions will be.
f. The song’s title is: "The Land of I-Don’t-Remember."
In order to find a basis for decisions and reinterpretations, people will have to
remember!
They will have to coax those whose pain is so great that they don’t want to
remember to
come forward with those repressed memories.
g. Alicia must accept Sara’s memory (her version) of the hidden past despite the
fact that
much of the evidence has been destroyed.
1) Only four bad photographs remain as "hard evidence."
2) Gaby’s parents have been destroyed.
h. "It does no good to cry." What is important is to struggle to
remember—to keep
the repressed memory alive despite official attempts to stamp it
out.
i. The great debate at the time of the release of The Official Story was whether
to seek justice
(not revenge) for the crimes committed by the dictators or to
"forget" what was in the past.
Seeking justice is a matter of remembering, of recording history from the point of view
of the
victims.
The debate continues.
Carlos Menem tried to forget the past, not seek justice and remembrance, by pardoning
the
military.
But he forgot to include one crime in his pardon: selling or giving away the babies.
j. Compare with "Obstinate Memory."
5. Compare with "Missing."
a. Both of these movies are fundamentally about citizenship and the ignorance of
citizens.
b. What is missing in "Missing"?
1) It’s not just Charlie
Horman.
2) What’s missing is the truth.
3)
It is made to go missing because of the interests of the powerful in hiding it
– indeed, in destroying it.
c. What is missing in "The Official Story"?
1) It’s not just some children and the disappeared.
2) Was Moreno buried at sea just because he was dead, or was it because
powerful people
wanted to hide the fact that he had been poisoned?
We don’t know.
What we do know is that the official version of history doesn’t tell us all
we need to know.
3) Was Gaby Sara’s granddaughter?
We don’t know.
The conclusive evidence (Gaby’s parents) has been destroyed.
The evidence was destroyed by the very people who intended to write the history
of
that era.
4)
In this case, as in "Missing," they were prevented from writing an
unchallenged version by a
few
citizens who, at great risk, challenged the powerful.
But it is still true that despite the challenge, the
official story is still the one accepted by
almost
everyone, especially concerning major historical events like wars (Korea,
Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq)
and foreign relations.
d. The moral of both movies: Never believe the version of events provided
by those in power!
They have something to hide.
They also have a vested interest in making you ignorant.
They love your
naïveté, your passive complicity.
Roberto’s admonition to Alicia at the airport: "Don’t think!"
6. How could Alicia have been so naïve?
a. Media censorship during the dictatorship.
b. The wealthy circles in which she socialized.
c. She didn’t "get out much," as her nemesis at the fancy dinner with
Roberto’s colleagues said.
d. She probably didn’t go downtown often.
She is obviously shocked by the demonstration she witnesses when she does.
e. She simply accepted the "official story." She regarded everything else as
unsubstantiated
rumor, not worth considering or following up.
f. The question for you is: how do you stay so ignorant of U.S. atrocities?
How has it come to pass that "politics" has been redefined as the art and
profession of lying,
but we still believe almost everything politicians tell us?
7. Roberto is a crucial element in Puenzo’s message.
a. He’s a normal, respected, (some might say) decent man who loves his wife and
child.
b. But he also cares more about himself than he does about his fellow citizens and the
good
of society in general.
c. He is a danger to everyone, including himself.
He is not a good citizen.
He is not someone in whom citizens should put their trust.
d. "The Spanish Civil War is over, and you lost it!"
Robert shouts at his father.
The Civil War led to nearly 40 years of Spanish decline under Franco’s
dictatorship.
But Roberto is not concerned about that.
He has no respect for the people who fight for democracy and justice: they are
"losers."
All that matters is
his success, regardless of the consequences for the people
around him.
e. He is uneducable.
f. The message: We (Argentina) got into this mess because of selfish people like
Roberto
— And our own complicity through ignorance, of course.
8. Ana’s story reveals the awful repression of the regime.
a. People could be kidnapped and tortured—even killed—for
knowing a
dissident,
even if they were not themselves politically active.
b. This was done to isolate dissidents, to make people afraid even to be seen with
opponents
of the regime.
c. Terrorism works partly because its victims
seem to be random.
It makes people afraid of their own shadows.
d. Most terrorism today is practiced by governments.
The U.S. is the leading terrorist state, but it relies heavily on surrogates.
e. Note: Puenzo uses information and analysis gathered at several torture victim
centers
(the best known are in Montreal and Copenhagen,
but there is one here in Denver) in order
to construct what
happened to Ana and her response to her own torture.
1) "Inappropriate affect."
2) Guilt feelings.
3) Fear of hearing or seeing her tormenters on the street.
4) Reluctance to talk about her experience because of the critical and unbelieving
response of her listeners.
9. The role of the Catholic Church.
a. Liberation Theology is a social movement that arose in Latin America in the 1960s.
It interprets the preferential option for the poor as building the Kingdom of God on
earth.
Catholic theologians,
parish priests and nuns were its primary movers.
b. But Liberation Theology never reached Argentina in any significant way.
As Cockcroft (Latin
America, second edition, 1996) points out, nearly all the radical priests
and nuns
in Argentina were killed or forced
into exile in the early stages of the Dirty War.
c. The hierarchy of the Argentine Church was well aware of what the dictatorship was
doing.
1) Bishops were often present in the torture chambers, not to comfort the
victims but to
assure the torturers that their souls were not in peril.
They were present on some of the planes that dumped prisoners into the Atlantic Ocean.
2) Priests have been implicated in the transfer or sale of babies.
3) Cardinal Pio Laghi, the Papal Pro-Nuncio in Buenos Aires during the Dirty War,
has
admitted that the Church kept lists of the disappeared with a notation of which
ones were
confirmed dead.
Laghi says he knew of 6,000 such cases.
He says he intervened on behalf of a few people from wealthy families.
The Church has not released its lists to this day.
(Laghi is now a cardinal at the Vatican.)
Reference: www.ukinet.com/first/text/bishops.htm
d. That’s what the scene of Alicia going to confession was about.
Revised April 2006