Journey to the Heart of the Condor Journey to the Heart of the Condor

JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF THE CONDOR JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF THE CONDOR

love, loss, and survival in a south american dictatorship

Emily Creigh Dr. Martìn Almada JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF THE CONDOR: The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. LOVE, LOSS, AND SURVIVAL IN A SOUTH AMERICAN DICTATORSHIP Milan Kundera A Peace Corps Writers Book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting An imprint of Peace Corps Worldwide

In collaboration with Casa Satori Books (www.casasatori.com) and the Celestina Pérez de Almada Foundation (www.fcpa.org.py)

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ISBN 10: 1935925644 ISBN 9781935925644

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015938014 Peace Corps Writers, Oakland, California

First Peace Corps Writers Edition, November 2015 Celestina Pérez de Almada, driving force of liberation education, militant member of the Febrerist Revolutionary Party. Febrerist ideals of justice and solidarity moved her to support movements of social significance. Co-founder of the Juan Bautista Alberdi Institute of San Lorenzo and developer of the campaign “A Roof for Every Paraguayan Educator.” Victim of the Stroessner dictatorship, under Operation Condor, died as a result of the psychological torture she was subjected to during the kidnapping and imprisonment of her husband, Martín Almada, December 5, 1974, in San Lorenzo, Paraguay. Museum of Memories: Dictatorship and Human Rights Dedicated to the memory of Celestina Pérez de Almada, pioneer of Paraguayan educational reform and martyr for freedom— and to everyone engaged in the struggle for truth and justice. Cover design by Kathleen Koopman Cover photo (and most interior photos) by Emily C. Creigh Paraguay map by Wesley Fawcett Creigh Author photo by Rochester Studios, Asunción Preface

To teach is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibility for the production or construction of knowledge…The teacher is no longer merely “the one who teaches,” but one who is himself taught in dialogue with students.

PAULO FREIRE (1921–97)

t is 2011, the first of July, and my life is over. My working life, anyway. I’ve just been laid off from my fourteen-year Idream job with Pima College Adult Education for the third (and final) time in two years, now that funding for the Family Literacy program has dried up for good. It appears that an educated populace is not in the interest of our elected officials. I scrape together a modest pension, take a deep breath, and set out on another dream: the long-awaited journey to my Peace Corps (PC) past and this much-hoped-for book. I have no idea that what I’m about to discover will change my life. A quick Internet search reveals a Paraguayan educator whose name I do not recognize, as I haven’t followed events in that country since I left it thirty- six years ago: Dr. Martín Almada, lawyer, PhD, environmentalist…political prisoner from 1974 to 1977? Excuse me? Those were my years! I am spellbound by his story but devastated to realize that I was in Paraguay as a PC trainee and volunteer for thirty of the thirty-four months that Dr. Almada languished in prison.

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Especially heartbreaking for me is that as a professor and school adminis- are noble and generous.” He invites me to Asunción for a “delicious typical meal trator, Dr. Almada had been a follower of Brazilian liberation educator Paulo made in a solar oven” and, in a postscript, says I am welcome to