THE OFFICIAL STORY

Last fall, I travelled with my wife Luisa to Chile, her native country.  Although she has visited there every other year or so, I had not been there since January 2002, primarily because of my back and the difficulty of long plane rides.

Chile—like every other country—has changed over 17 years; some good, some bad.  There is more acceptance for LGBTQ people, there is more homelessness and a growing inequality.  One of the profound changes is simply due to the passage of time: today, most people in Chile have no first-hand memory of the military dictatorship, because they were born in the last couple years of Pinochet, or after democracy was restored in 1990.

But thank God, Chile has not allowed that memory to disappear.  Some, who still admire the dictatorship, continue to try to sweep it under the carpet or try to rewrite history, casting military rule as some kind of strict but benevolent parent that was needed to straighten out its misled child.  But memory is not that easy to bury.

We went to two places where that memory is guarded.  One was Villa Grimaldi, a secret detention center in Santiago, where at least 4,500 people were tortured, and at least 240 were killed or were disappeared.  This torture site has now been converted into “El Parque Por La Paz”—the Park for Peace.  It is a peaceful place, in one sense, because of the flowers and trees that have been re-established.  But it is also a place of peace in a more difficult way: where the memory of those who were victimized helps keep history alive, and (we hope) prevent a military coup from happening again.  As Chile Today puts it, it is “Peace In Memory”.

https://www.chiletoday.cl/villa-grimaldi-how-a-torture-center-turned-into-a-place-for-reconciliation/

We also went to the Museo de la Memoria, built so that the memory of those who suffered will not disappear.  One part that impacted me fiercely was the wall with photos of all those who are known to have been killed or who were disappeared.  In the 1960’s and 1970’s, “to disappear someone” became a verb in the lexicon of the military regimes of Latin America, implemented by military and secret paramilitary officials, many of whom were trained by the United States.  It happened in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, El Salvador, Guatemala and other places.

“To be disappeared” means that your family and friends may never find out what happened to you.  Often, you were kidnapped at night, taken to a secret location.  Maybe you were tortured there for weeks or months.  Maybe you were thrown—alive—from a helicopter into the ocean, or buried in a mass, unmarked grave.  When your family went to look for you, there was no record of you ever having been taken.  No file on your arrest, no help from any agency.

One of the most cruel aspect of intentional disappearing was the taking of babies born to women who were being held as political prisoners.  After they had given birth, their children were given to officials in the military, or sold to wealthy families connected to the regime.  Usually, the mother was killed or disappeared afterwards.  There is a powerful movie, made in Argentina, called “La Historia Oficial” or “The Official Story”:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089276/

The title is in itself a macabre play on words of how truth is silenced, even disappeared under dictatorship.  The official story given to the families of the disappeared in Chile and elsewhere was that the government and the military knew nothing about their loved one.  The real story, uncovered by courageous family members and journalists, who fought for decades to bring the truth to light, can bring healing and a recommitment to fight for justice.

I write this because of my love for my adopted country, which is suffering through one of the hottest summers ever, while I gaze out at mountains of snow (clearly nothing like Chile’s mountains!).

I also write this because of my love for the country I was born in.  For we are, once again, intentionally disappearing people.  In this case, children of migrants coming here to seek asylum or a better life.  Our government has flatly stated that it doesn’t know where thousands of these children are, and that it may never be able to find them.  Some parents of these separated children have had their parental rights terminated, because they failed to show up at the court hearing.  Failed to show up, because they were deported (a “softer” kind of disappearing) without knowing what was happening to their children.

We shouldn’t be surprised at this.  We have a long history of disappearing children: children of slaves sold away from their parents; Native American children forcibly adopted and robbed of their language and culture; a disproportionate number of children of color today being labelled as deviant in schools and as criminals by the society.  We shouldn’t be surprised, but we should be angry.  And we should keep their memory alive. 

How can do that as a people?  How can we make our history—especially the parts we want to stay hidden—present before our daily lives in such a way that produces real peace?

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be skeptical of the official story.

Patrick

WHAT WELCOMES US TO QUIET AND FRUITFULLNESS?

When Pr. Luisa and I were on sabbatical in the last part of 2018, we had the privilege to spend three weeks at the La Muse Artist Retreat in Labastide Esparbairenque, a small village (83 people) in the mountains in the south of France.

Many mornings, I would walk about a quarter mile up a hill to an old church, with a churchyard and cemetery.  I would sit in the churchyard, meditate, listen and write.  We later found out that the church had one Mass per year!  As I entered the churchyard, I first passed through a bower of cypress trees. I could see the trees as I walked up the path, and I came to feel that they were welcoming me to that quiet, and fruitful space.  My mind, my spirit and my body felt their welcome, and their invitation to not worry, but trust. Some days, it felt like a lovely serenade.

Most of the time, I was alone for the hours that I spent there.  A few times, Lupi, the mayor’s dog came to visit, and a couple of times, the mayor—a man in his seventies—came with Lupi and his other dog.  The mayor would greet me heartily with a “Bon Jour!”; I would respond in kind, and soon say to him “I don’t really speak much French.”  That was his signal to keep talking in French!  The few things I did understand was that he always inquired about how I was, and wished me well.  And one day, he told me about the wrought iron cross in the churchyard—what I understood was that there was a priest of the parish buried under there.  I heard the word “ans”—years—but missed the number that came before it.

So I added the priest to the “great cloud of witnesses” who were with me at the lovely garden where I prayed, listened and wrote.  The young man whose gravestone said he “died for his homeland” 101 years before.  The women who had lived well into their nineties, and the children who had died so young.  And so many people who passed over that hill, for so many years.  Though I was almost always alone, I was part of a beloved community, stretching way back, and stretching forward.

I asked the host of the retreat center how old the church was.  She said she wasn’t sure, but that the trees were 900 years old!  How many people, dogs, wild boars, deer and winged creatures had passed through those arboreal arches and found peace there?  How many still linger in that sacred space?

I wonder how many times we have been welcomed by the trees around our spaces, and we didn’t realize it, or stop to wonder at their music.  I’m looking out the window at home at the neighbors tree, which is surrounded by a tree house built many years ago.  It is covered in a cloak of beautiful fresh snow. When we first moved here almost ten years ago, we would see the two children and their friends playing there.  They are now older teens, and so the lure of that special space has faded for them.  But it’s not hard to imagine them dancing and laughing up there, their happy minds, bodies and spirits welcomed by this beautiful tree I’ve so often overlooked.

Be beauty.  Be justice.  Be welcomed by the patient, loving trees.

Patrick