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 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 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 who serve their country the point that the 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. She embassy was involved in her torture. If her care- now also remembered being put in a room with takers found a dermatologist to treat the burns a tortured woman under a sheet who told her on her back, why didn’t they ask a physician to to have courage, and who the policeman then treat her for the painful consequences of being forced her to stab with a machete. She also BOOK REVIEW 501 remembered being videotaped as she was forced money. When Ambassador Stroock asked the to stab the woman, a videotape that Alejandro CIA station chief if any of his assets were in- indicated would be released if she were to tell volved in the Devine and B´amaca cases, the her story, so that everyone would know she was station chief lied and said ‘no.’ amurderer. Thanks to the impetus provided by Har- Sister Dianna was convinced that she had bury and the CIA scandal, Ortiz and her sup- been tortured at the Old Polytechnic School, a porters mounted a vigil in front of the White faux-medieval castle that is one of Guatemala House. They met with Hillary Clinton and ob- City’s most distinctive landmarks. It has long tained an official investigation, but the Justice figured in human rights reports because it is an Department quickly focused on Sister Dianna’s army installation. When she identified the Poly- credibility rather than on who might have tor- technic as the torture site, the army was proba- tured her. Once investigators learned that her bly all too happy to cooperate with a search war- return from Guatemala had been followed by rant for two reasons. First, Ortiz was certain she an abortion – a fact she had withheld from her had been tortured in a basement but no one has many right-to-life supporters – she refused to ever confirmed the existence of a subterranean grant access to her medical records. The of- Polytechnic. Second, Ortiz said that the pit of ficial conclusion was that she had been ‘sub- bodies into which she had been thrown was in jected to horrific abuse’ but that ‘US intelli- an open courtyard, but the Polytechnic is near gence reports provide little insight into the de- the flight path of the national airport two kilo- tails.’ Ortiz decided against pursuing the case meters to the south, which would make a pit with the Inter-American Court because it would easy to detect. The Polytechnic is also visited have required submitting to interrogation by by military and civilian personnel who do not Guatemalan investigators. Instead, she formed belong to the army’s intelligence branch and the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support who could not be trusted to keep quiet about Coalition (TASSC), which occupies her to this an atrocity. During a fruitless judicial search of day, and awaits documents under the Freedom the Polytechnic in January 1994, Sister Dianna of Information Act. was overcome by her memories and fled. Because of the problems with Sister By this point, she was all too easy to dis- Dianna’s story, this is a subject I have long miss in Guatemala. But in the United States, avoided. The accusation against the US em- journalists did not think that the limitations of bassy and the embassy’s brusque denials led to her case were significant and a federal judge in amutual credibility meltdown, and her unfold- Boston ordered ex-defense minister Gramajo ing account of what happened has always bifur- to pay $47.5 million to Ortiz and nine other cated her audience into sceptics and believers. victims of the army under his command. Her The only reason I am writing about Ortiz’ case case also impressed the Inter-American Com- now is that, with the help of the film-maker Pa- mission on Human Rights, which forwarded it tricia Davis, she has published her own account. to the Inter-American Court. But what really I was not expecting The Blindfold’s Eyes: My Jour- bolstered Sister Dianna’s credibility was the case ney from Torture to Truth to be very convincing. of another American. Jennifer Harbury was To my surprise, I now believe Sister Dianna. a Harvard-trained immigration lawyer who, No one would publish so much embarrassing in the course of solidarity activism for the information about herself – interviews which Guatemalan guerrillas, met and married a co- end with her running out of the room, psychi- mandante. Only months later, in March 1992, atric committals, suicide attempts, secrecy and Comandante Everardo, also known as Efra´ın hypervigilance that drive away her closest sup- B´amaca, walked into an army ambush. The porters – unless she was sincere. Every chap- army said he died of wounds, but Harbury had ter seems to end with Ortiz feeling that she evidence that he was being held secretly and has betrayed someone – her colleagues, God, tortured for information. Her campaign to find or Guatemalans she could have protected from her husband eventually led to leaks from the the torturers if she had been stronger. If there is Clinton administration and a scandal for the an argument against publishing this book, it is CIA, which had continued to pay informants in that it shows torturers that what they do works. the Guatemalan officer corps even after Wash- Thereason for being confident that Ortiz ington cut off military aid. One officer remained was tortured is not that all the details of her on the CIA payroll after becoming involved in story can be corroborated. Instead, it is all those the murder of Michael Devine as well as Har- cigarette burns on her back. But her book also bury’s husband. A generous severance payment suggests that her story was never robust enough of $44 000 in 1992 looked suspiciously like hush to become a test case. That a victim’s story does 502 BOOK REVIEW not come out in a way that investigators can tified another of her torturers as a Guatemalan pursue does not mean that the victim is fake; it navy officer named Guillermo Fuentes Arag´on. means that the case will never be solved or pros- Unfortunately, the Ortiz case forces us to ecuted. Just in terms of when Ortiz provided in- choose between benign and malign interpreta- formation to investigators, she never did so in a tions of the relationship between the US and timely manner because protecting herself from the Guatemalan security forces. According to further trauma always took precedence. But the the US government, national interests justify reason Ortiz found it so hard to cooperate with relationships with criminals who are valuable Guatemalan and US authorities is an unavoid- sources of information, just as the FBI has in- able conundrum for many torture survivors. As formants in an organization such as the Ku amatter of law, before appealing to an interna- Klux Klan. But the analogy falls short be- tional body, they must first seek justice from the cause the US government is subverting the Ku same government that tortured them. Ortiz was Klux Klan in a way that it is not subverting supposed to believe that the Guatemalan justice the Guatemalan army. ‘The CIA’s relationship system has the capacity to investigate and pun- with the Guatemalan security forces would be ish members of the Guatemalan security forces. more analogous to the FBI paying Ku Klux She was also supposed to believe that the US Klan members...forinformation about blacks government had the will to investigate its own whowere organizing politically,’ argues Ortiz. clandestine networks. ‘The FBI and the Klan would share a common That neither could do so in a convinc- goal and a common foe, as the CIA and the ing manner is the theme of The Blindfold’s Eyes. Guatemalan security forces did. And if the FBI She feels particularly betrayed by Ambassador regularly paid Klan members for information Thomas Stroock, whose job required him to be on black leaders and their plans, knowing that both sympathetic and sceptical. Torture is in- the KKK derived that information by torturing herently a polarizing phenomenon. It is a sub- blacks and then murdering them . . . [then] this ject about which even conscientious, knowlege- scenario...describes...torture and murder by able people do not want to spend much time proxy’ (431–432). thinking, because the very idea destabilizes our Why would a death squad invest time and wish to trust duly constituted authorities. Be- personnel in threatening, abducting and tortur- cause torture is now usually hidden and de- ing a novice nun? According to Sister Dianna, nied, accusations raise the question of who to her captors interrogated her about a couple believe – a person who could be imagining part with whom she had stayed and who belonged of her story or a government that we would pre- to an organization, the Mutual Support Group fer to trust. (GAM), for relatives of people whom the se- Why an American would be supervising a curity forces had kidnapped. The army re- Guatemalan death squad is beyond me. I do garded GAM as a guerrilla front. Ortiz’ tor- not believe the Guatemalan security forces re- turers also wanted her to admit that her real quire instruction by American agents to vio- name was Ver´onica Ortiz Hern´andez, appar- late human rights. In Freedom of Information ently an actual guerrilla who was later killed. Act releases, Sister Dianna’s legal team found a In other words, her torturers were looking for CIA draft cable reporting a source’s belief that a link between rural guerrillas and the urban she was kidnapped by the S-2 of military zone left. Identifying her as a suspect required only 302 headquartered in Chimaltenango. From a the malice or stupidity that has fed so many vic- photograph and other sources she has decided tims into the Guatemalan army’s clandestine that ‘Alejandro’ could be a CIA officer named machinery. Randy Capister. She has also tentatively iden- David Stoll