JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS, VOL.3,NO.4(DECEMBER 2004), 499–502 Book review The Strange Case of Sister Dianna gence, who over the years kidnapped and mur- dered thousands of people, many on the flim- siest evidence of a connection to the guerrillas. TheBlindfold’s Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth That Ortiz was a nun was significant because By DIANNA ORTIZ with PATRICIA DAVIS the army blamed Catholic clergy for spreading (New York: Maryknoll, Orbis Books, 2002) the insurgency to indigenous regions. No priests or nuns had been killed since 1983 but threats On 2 November 1989, an American nun named were still common, and attacks were often di- Darlene Chmielewski telephoned the US em- rected against coworkers of the intended target. bassy in Guatemala City to report that a thirty- Thus two coworkers of Bishop Julio Cabrera one-year-old novice in her charge had just dis- died in street hits in the year-and-half following appeared. Sister Dianna Ortiz was staying with Ortiz’ abduction. A Marist brother was killed Chmielewski at a retreat center in Antigua, a in 1991 and a parish priest three years later. peaceful town of colonial churches and villas Even attacks on ‘little people’ performed at the foot of an immense, dormant volcano. a function, US Ambassador Thomas Stroock Ortiz had been missing for just two hours, but explained: there was a reason her companion called the embassy so quickly. For reasons no one under- That the victims are generally unknown stood, she had been receiving death threats. Less in wider society means a more muted than 24 hours after she vanished, around nine reaction both locally and abroad; it o’clock the next morning, the small and slen- makes the question ‘why?’ more dif- der woman reappeared at a travel agency in ficult to answer and many nonpoliti- downtown Guatemala City. She was obviously cal explanations, e.g., common crime, in a state of shock. The left side of her face was can plausibly be put forward to explain badly bruised and her back proved to be dotted the victimization of a relatively anony- with second-degree burns, 111 of them, accord- mous person. While the victims are not ing to a physician, of a kind that could be made figures of wide renown, they are well byacigarette. known within the small groups compris- Dianna Ortiz was not an obvious target for ing the left. The bolt-from-the-blue strike a death squad. Her parents were from Mexico against one of their members causes a but she was still learning Spanish. For most of ripple of terror...forcing many mem- her two years in Guatemala, she had been work- bers into hiding or exile or at least into ing with children in the Mayan Indian town of abandoning whatever immediate project San Miguel Acat´an. San Miguel had suffered the group had. from army reprisals against a guerrilla move- ment in the early 1980s; but so had many other When Sister Dianna showed up at the indigenous towns: the guerrillas had gone away travel agency, it was in the hope of leaving and army abuses had diminished. If anyone was Guatemala quickly. Sister Darlene and the to run afoul of the Guatemalan army, the two Maryknoll Fathers, an American missionary or- sisters who supervised Ortiz were more likely der, took charge of her and turned away the candidates. Yet it was she who began receiving Guatemalan police. On the grounds that Or- threatening notes in early 1989, such as ‘you are tiz was in no condition to answer questions, going to die in this country’ and ‘do not walk they also shielded her from the US embassy of- alone, someone wants to rape you.’ ficials who mobilized to help. Two days later, Anonymous death threats are a genre in Darlene Chmielewski and another sister flew Guatemala. Some come from personal enemies, Dianna back to the Ursuline mother house in forreasons that have little to do with the pro- Kentucky. It was only in the United States that tracted (1954–1996) civil war between army- her story emerged, and at first only through her dominated governments and a disenfranchized guardians. Unknown men in civilian dress – the Marxist opposition. But threats are also a trade- usual guise of a Guatemalan death squad – had mark of the most violent elements in the gov- kidnapped her from the retreat’s garden. They ernment security forces, often in army intelli- took her to a clandestine prison in Guatemala Journal of Human Rights ISSN 1475-4835 print/ISSN 1475-4843 online C 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/1475483042000299732 500 BOOK REVIEW City where they demanded that she identify gang-raped? Sister Dianna’s guardians also re- people in photographs, burned and raped her. fused to question her about what she had seen One of the three torturers wore a policeman’s on her car ride with Alejandro even though, ac- uniform. Eventually they were joined by a cording to their declarations to the press, she fourth man, to whom the others referred as their had heard the screams of at least two other tor- jefe Alejandro. Suddenly Alejandro said ‘Shit!’ ture victims, who with luck could have been in perfect unaccented English, then switched to traced and rescued. That she was severely trau- heavily accented Spanish to add ‘Idiots, this is matized, and not being very communicative a North American. Leave her alone. She’s all even with her colleagues, could explain both over the television news.’ It was Alejandro who these lapses, but not an odd recurring detail in removed Dianna’s blindfold, helped her dress her story. It is because Alejandro knows of her and put her into a jeep, with the explanation disappearance from television news that he re- that he was taking her to the US embassy where alizes that his prisoner is an American nun. Af- a friend could help her leave Guatemala. Five ter she escapes from Alejandro’s car, an indige- minutes into the ride, as the car stopped for a nous woman gives her shelter after recognizing traffic light, Dianna jumped out and escaped. her, also presumably from TV. It is true that So this was why Sister Dianna’s colleagues the Guatemalan archbishop had given a press suddenly spurned the US embassy’s help. If her conference on her disappearance the previous description of Alejandro was accurate, one of afternoon, so radio and television could have the torturers sounded like a fellow American, reported it that evening. But the archbishop and he said he had a connection to the US em- did not have a photograph of her at the press bassy. Ambassador Thomas Stroock was sud- conference. denly in a very awkward position. Stroock was The Guatemalan interior minister Car- aWyoming oilman, not a foreign service of- los Morales dismissed her story as a ‘self- ficer, who had served in President George H. kidnapping’ – yet another attempt to discredit Bush’s 1988 election campaign. To the sur- the country’s armed forces with a false accu- prise of many,he became very concerned about sation. Another army general, defense minis- human rights violations, including numerous ter Alejandro Gramajo, said that Ortiz had army-style abductions for which the army de- sneaked away from the Antigua retreat for a nied responsibility. In May 1990 army officers lesbian love affair. No evidence about Sister ordered the murder of an ex-Peace Corps volun- Dianna’s sex life ever emerged, but such re- teer and resort owner named Michael Devine. marks made her an object of ridicule on the Stroock made the dead American a test case. Guatemalan right. They also bolstered her cred- Five enlisted men were convicted, then an army ibility in the Catholic Church and the left. captain. Unfortunately, the captain soon es- She became one of a series of army victims, caped, higher-ups were never indicted, and two including disappeared-persons activist Nineth relatives of a key witness were murdered. In re- Montenegro and 1992 Nobel peace laureate sponse, the Bush administration suspended mil- Rigoberta Mench´u, who succeeded in publi- itary aid. But for the claim that his embassy cizing their cases and became leaders of the was connected to a torturer, Stroock had no pa- Guatemalan human rights movement, even as tience. ‘I find the insinuation that US Govern- they were ridiculed as charlatans by the army ment personnel in Guatemala are involved in and its defenders. any kind of human rights violations against any- Back in the United States, unfortunately, one to be insulting, absurd and ridiculous,’ he Ortiz did not recover from her ordeal. Aside wrote Sister Dianna’s lawyer. ‘This charge con- from not remembering her family and col- stitutes a scurrilous smear on the good names leagues, she was disassociational and suicidal, to of the fine Americans who serve their country the point that the Ursulines committed her to in this mission.’ aCatholic psychiatric hospital. Unfortunately, Stroock had no doubt that Ortiz had been Our Lady of Peace and good Dr Snodgrass tortured. He also knew that the army’s kidnap- only reminded her of her torturers, as did any- ping squads were capable of such behavior. But one who grilled her about her story. Her ties he and the embassy were offended by the priests to the Ursulines snapped and she was obsessed and nuns who prevented them from interview- by heretofore-unreported memories of being ing Ortiz while telling US congressmen that the thrown into a pit full of bodies and rats.