Here is a very interesting column by professional skeptic James Randi on the cruelty of "God". Based on the case of an Oregon teenager whose Christian fundamentalist parents let him die a very painful death, rather than take him to a doctor, the column explores similar themes as those that I touched a couple of weeks ago in my On God posting. Basically, what kind of God would let people die painful deaths and do nothing?

From the column:

I am inclined, when hearing about a story like this, to utter the phrase, "What kind of person...?", but when reading about this one, I instead thought, "What kind of God...?" I'm talking to you, Followers of Christ of Oregon City. I want to know, truly, what kind of God wouldn't want a person to get better. I want to hear, at length, about exactly what kind of God wants people to die in pain. And, before you tell me that this is not God's fault, but the devil's, let me go ahead and say -

It makes exponentially more sense to side with the devil, over and over again, to put your faith in him and believe in him and trust in him, than it does to believe in the kind of God who has the ability to save you and chooses not to do so.

To keep up this fictional argument, I do not want to hear about how death isn't really so bad and God is just calling us all home. Opioid pain medication was not invented because death is such a peaceful journey into the arms of Christ.

Followers of Christ of Oregon City - this one goes out to you. Your God is a sadist and a torturer. And if He really attempted to make you in His image, then he has done a fine job. Because so are you.

Sometimes it's difficult to remember that even the cruelest and most sanguinary of human "monsters", people responsible for the cruelest of crimes against humanity and genocides - have a human side to them as well, albeit not necessarily a pretty one.

The following are excerpts from recorded conversations between Slobodan Milosevic and his son Marko. I find them both incredibly funny in their banality, and yet disturbing at the same time. They were published in Harper's a few years ago, but for some reason I never wrote about them here (hmm, did I even have a blog back then?). Anyway, they are completely worth reading.

--

All in the family

By Tanja Bosak (Trans.)

The following telephone conversations among members of the Milosevic family were recorded in 1997 by Croatian intelligence agents and released in January 2002 to Globus, a weekly newspaper in Zagreb. Prior to his death on March 11, 2006, Slobodan Milosevic was on trial in The Hague for several counts of war crimes, including genocide; Mira Markovic, his wife, and Marko, his son, currently live in Moscow. All three were alleged to have embezzled billions of dollars. Translated from the Serbian by Tanja Bosak.

Slobodan: All right, Pretty. Listen, Marko. I talked to a doctor and I've done some thinking. You don't need surgery on your ears.

Marko: Oh Daddy, I knew you'd do that.

Slobodan: Wait a little, I'll explain something to you. Do you know why you see it that way? You see it that way because you are terribly skinny and every donkey your age looks like that. As soon as you gain a little weight and stabilize, it'll all feel the way it should. I used to look worse when I was skinny.

Marko: See, I agree, but I have no intention of getting more handsome in fifteen years.

Slobodan: Marko, I want to tell you that the consequences of being skinny can't be seen like that. Even a chicken has a little meat behind its ear that one can eat. And all you have is bone, you understand? All violence against nature is stupid. You're handsome like your daddy. Don't you fuck around with me!

Marko: Daddy . . .

Slobodan: I'm against it and I am the parent, see?

Marko: Great. And I am for it and I am an adult.

Slobodan: Well, if you are such an adult, I'll beat you when you show up here.

Marko: Don't worry, Daddy.

Slobodan: I want to tell you that it's all because you're skinny. Your head is pointy and your stomach is like a five-dinar bill. Why don't you add a belt of bacon onto your stomach?

[Milosevic transfers the line to Dojcilo Maslovaric, the Yugoslav ambassador to the Vatican]

Dojcilo: Don't do it. Are you crazy? Which female gave you complexes?

Marko: No one, but I can't drive an expensive car, dress well, and be floppy-eared like cattle at the same time.

Marko: I just want to see whether they have prescription contacts that are colored. That would make me especially happy.

Slobodan: Why colored? Don't pull my leg.

Marko: If I have to wear this shit, I want to get something out of it.

Slobodan: Come on, Marko, why change the color? Which color would you get, please?

Marko: I'll get them in all colors, depending on what I wear.

Slobodan: Come on, Marko.

Marko: If I wear black, I'll put on blue contacts; if I wear something colored, then I don't know, purple or green.

Slobodan: Are you fucking with me?

Marko: No, I'm not fucking with you. Seriously. Get this, Mengele was trying it in the concentration camps. However, Wiesenthal did not understand it.

Slobodan: Marko, don't fuck with me anymore.

Marko: Mom, I'm having all my teeth replaced. There are twenty-nine teeth in my head, and I'm having twenty-nine teeth replaced. I am not having my teeth repaired but replaced.

Mira: Let me tell you something. It is well known that the health care in the West is horrible. Inhuman. They perceive it as a consumable and rip off foreigners terribly. Yugoslavs who work abroad always repent and say that they could have done it for nothing or much cheaper in their own country.

Marko: This is a Croat.

Mira: You're really nuts.

Marko: An ustasha.11. ustasha—Reactionary pro-Nazi forces in Croatia during the Second World War. You know how they talk. I can't understand a thing. Just like Tudjman.22. Tudjman—Franjo Tudjman, president of Croatia from 1990 until his death in 1999. Those tight lips, popping eyes. He's all fascistically feminized. Fuck him.

Marko: Daddy, where's my mom?

Slobodan: What do you need your mom for now that your daddy's here?

Marko: Well, I've got an idea, Daddy.

Slobodan: Let me hear.

Marko: Since you're a conservative guy, I don't want to ask you. I want to ask Mom.

Slobodan: Ask me.

Marko: Ask you?

Slobodan: So?

Marko: I already know your answer.

Slobodan: Say what you want.

Marko: Daddy?

Slobodan: Yes?

Marko: What do you think about me starting a maternity clinic?

Slobodan: What do you mean by a maternity clinic?

Marko: A maternity clinic. You know what a maternity clinic looks like.

Slobodan: I do.

Marko: Here33. Here—Pozarevac, Serbia. they are dying not only of heart disease but of plague too. Imagine if I employed respectable gynecologists, offered agreeable prices, ideal conditions, and special rooms for women with complete amenities.

Slobodan: Don't fuck around. You'd better keep Madona [Marko's discotheque].

Marko: I didn't mean to start a maternity ward in Madona.

Slobodan: So where did you think of starting it?

Marko: I'd start it casually, independently of the discotheque. I've been thinking about activities that are lucrative and good for society at the same time.

Slobodan: Yes, and where would you put it?

Marko: Somewhere close to you by the Cacalica.44. Cacalica—A picnic area near Pozarevac.

Slobodan: By the Cacalica?

Marko: Wonderful greenery, a fenced park, a garden, nice rooms with TV sets, satellite TV, telephones, bathrooms. Visits allowed all the time. Here the doctors are asking for a lot of money just to let the husband be present at the birth.

Slobodan: That's slightly more expensive fun.

Marko: Okay, but generally, I am asking you what you think about it.

Slobodan: Generally speaking, it's not so bad in a humanitarian sense, but in a business sense it's nothing. A flop.

Marko: Daddy, do you know how much abortions cost here in the sheds in Pozarevac?

Slobodan: I don't know.

Marko: 150 marks55. 150 marks—$70..

Slobodan: Marko, abortion is not performed in maternity wards. Children are born there.

Marko: There is a clinic nearby, but imagine, for an abortion that lasts about 3.5 minutes, in pigsties that are called medical offices, they ask for 150 marks!

[Milosevic hands the phone to Mira, who listens to her son briefly.]

Mira: Your idea is superb.

Marko [shouting delightedly]: You're my mom! You're my mom! She said superb. Of course. Isn't it wonderful?

Marko: Do you know that the water in my swimming pool is at 100 degrees?

Slobodan: You're a fool. It's unhealthy. It shouldn't be over 86. Why are you fooling around?

Marko: Why shouldn't that be allowed? I take baths at 104 degrees.

[Slobodan hands the phone to Mira.]

Mira: Honey, my sweet puppy.

Marko: Mommy, I warmed up the water in the swimming pool to 100 degrees. It's wonderful, you know.

Mira: Tell your mom what you're up to.

Marko: Mom, I haven't gone out of the house for seventy-two hours.

Mira: Oh, honey, isn't it wonderful there?

Marko: And you know what? I've come to the conclusion that under such conditions you always have an appetite and you never suffer from insomnia, and these problems are all in my past. First, I'll gain some weight here because I've been eating like an abyss. I can eat whenever. Second, I cannot suffer from insomnia and I cannot be bored because I have so many forms of amusement that it's wonderful. I haven't left the house at all.

Mommy, do you know how pleasant it is to have floor heating in the bathrooms and everywhere? It's not like you step barefoot and your foot sticks to the floor. There isn't any draft; it's not cold; sheer beauty.

Mira [laughing]: Enjoy, honey!

Marko: And I've done one smart thing. Since I don't wear slippers, Ljubisa asked me before New Year's what to buy me and I told him to buy me some beautiful sports shoes that I'd need anyway, both at home and outside. Now I have new sports shoes and I haven't taken their label off, so when I enter the house I take my shoes off immediately, and I wear clean sports shoes at home.

Mira: But, please, wear slippers at home.

Marko: What?

Mira: Wear slippers!

Marko: What do you mean?

Mira: Well, at night when you go to bed, you have to have slippers beside you when you go and pee.

Marko: No I don't, because I have the floor heating, so I can go barefoot.

Mira: Don't, that's impolite. That's hick style. That's doglike.

Marko: Okay, Mom.

Mira: Your mommy loves you.

I'm not a big make-up user, but once in a while I like to prim out. Unfortunately, every time I buy make up my kids get a hold of it, so I don't have it when I "need" it. That was the case yesterday, when I was going out with friends, and decided to make up my face pretty much at the last minute. Without time to go to the drugstore (I'd never buy make up at a department store, I could never pay those prices), my only choice was Grocery Outlet - as it's just across the street from my house. It actually worked very well for me, but they have a dismal selection of make up, so I wouldn't recommend it for anyone looking for something in particular. What they have, however, is both good quality and quite cheap.

I got some Almay Hydracolor Lipstick, which I liked quite a bit. It was very smooth to apply and had just the right amount of sheen for my lips. It also survived the meal. The "rose" color was probably a little bit light for me, but I never know what color to buy. They had about five or six different choices at GO. The lipstick was $2 - but apparently it is (was?) also available at the Dollar Tree for half as much. If I see it there, I'd probably get a couple more colors.

A better bargain was a kit consisting of Physicians Formula Mineral Wear Bronzing Talc-Free Veil and Physicians Formula Mineral Wear Lip Sheen. Separately they'd have cost about $12 online, while the kit was just $4 at GO. Alas, I'm not sure what I'd use the lip sheen for, so perhaps it wasn't such a good bargain after all :-) I did like the "bronzing veil", whatever that means, however. The fine powder worked well to conceal the redness on my face and I think merged well with my skin tone. Alas, they only had one color at GO, light tan - which worked well with my fairly light skin.

The color choices for brand-name eye make up were also limited. I got a kit consisting of Organic Wear Duo Eye Shadow and eyeliner for $4. The products sold separately online (I couldn't find the kit) would have been $16. Alas, they only had the "brown eye kit" (which worked well for me, as I have brown eyes). I also liked these products quite a bit. The eyeliner provided good coverage and was easy to apply. So was the eyeshadow, though it was a bit light in color - wouldn't work for a dramatic look. My only complain is that the kit didn't come with an applicator - as I don't wear make up, I didn't really have any at home (but I found one from Mika's make up kit). I should probably buy my own.

Anyway, after all is said and done - you can find quality make up products at GO, but there is very little selection.

Mika and Camila have just started taking "circus" classes at Trapeze Arts in Oakland (situated near West Oakland BART station). The absolutely LOVE it. The hour-long classes are quite affordable, at $100 for 8 classes (I think that's even cheaper than the classes they've taken from our local Parks & Recreation department), and they even pro-rate for those who start late. And, I'm told, they are super fun.

Camila is taking the pre-school circus class (for kids 3-5), which is of course less challenging than Mika's "Kids' circus" class (for kids 6-8). I thought that I'd describe some of the things that Mika did today, so that people considering taking the class have an idea of what it entails:

-Trampoline: jump backwards, flips, dance. The trampoline is huge, it runs half the length of the building, and the kids thought it was *very* fun.

-Floor Gymnastics: tumbling, cartwheels, summersaults, black flips, jumping, stretching (Mika is super interested in learning how to do splits, and they are teaching her).

-Rope: climbing

-Bunk beads: where a kid is on all fours, belly up and another kid gets on top in the same position

Mika tells me that in the class for older kids they climb on curtains and do dance moves. Apparently nobody is doing the trapeze. They also have stilts, unicycles, and other equipment, and I'll post about it if the kids use it.

Camila hasn't been very good about describing her class, but it seems that a lot of what they do is stretching (in different positions) and doing different jumps in the trampoline. But whatever it is that they do, Camila had a LOT of fun. Apparently the teacher is very funny, because she kept telling me funny things the teacher had said.

Trapeze Arts also offers a summer camp ($300 for a week), we'll see if Mika is still into it by then.

Over a decade ago, on my way back from some activity in some European country, I had laidover at Heathrow, where I chanced about the British Museum Store (which is now online at http://www.britishmuseumshoponline.org/). There I found a a "Fun with Amulet" kit, which allowed you to make all sorts of Egyptian amulets with clay. I got it for my sister, who was then a teenager.

Apparently she didn't like it, because she doesn't seemed to have opened it - but she kept it and this year gave it to Camila for Xmas. We finally opened it today and I'm surprised at how well the clay kept, and how cool the kit was.

In reality, the kit is very simple. It has a mold with different amulet shapes, 3 rather small clay bars, a few backings for the amulets (to make into pins, earrings, etc.) and a little booklet. But the girls had fun making the amulets (though I had to help, specially with the smaller ones) and I think they may even wear them. Well, maybe (Mika doesn't believe in magic or amulets, and thus sees no point in having them, or so she said today).

In all, I'm quite happy that I bought the kit and that my sister kept it all these years :-)

BTW, the kit is available through some sellers at Amazon, but at very high prices.

I have been using Facebook quite a bit in the last year or so (it's simple enough to have a window open with my facebook page), but I haven't really gotten into twitter, though I have personal account and one for Derechos, the organization I run. To make things easier I wanted to be able to get my Facebook status to be automatically twitted out. That way I don't have to tweet it as well. But doing so proved MUCH more difficult than I expected. The problem is that Facebook has now hidden your status RSS (as well as your link rss) and without it, it isn't really possible to integrate it with twitter. The only way I've found out to do this integration is by a "hack" that involves creating a second account. This is how you do it:

- Create a new account on facebook.

- Friend yourself (and only yourself) from that account.

- While signed-in to your new account, go to http://www.facebook.com/posted.php

- On the right hand margin, look for "Subscribe to Links". Underneath that you will find a link that says: "My Friend's Links" - right click on it and copy the link. This will give you the RSS link to the links you post from your main account (the one you friended from the one you are currently using).

- Post the url (it'll look something like this: http://www.facebook.com/feeds/share_friends_posts.php?id=100000716076162&key=2f5385ddb9&format=rss20) to a word processor.

If you would like your links to be twitted, keep this url.

If you'd like your status to be twitted replace "share_friends_posts.php" with "friends_status.php" so that you end up with a url that looks like this:

"http://www.facebook.com/feeds/friends_status.php?id=100000716076162&key=2f5385ddb9&format=rss20"

- Now that you have an RSS feed for your links and/or status, go to http://twitterfeed.com/ and create an account. Follow the instructions, entering the facebook urls for the feed that you want to send directly to twitter. Note that in the second step you will have to select "twitter" as the place you want your status/links to go to. You will also have to authenticate your twitter account with your e-mail address and password, so that twitterfeed can connect to it.

And that's it. This hack works now (January 2010) and I hope it continues working - but Facebook likes to be sneaky and disable access to RSS feeds, so I can't guarantee it'll work forever.

As anyone who knows me knows, I'm a die-heart atheist. I was *very* religious as a child (I grew up as a Methodist, but my faith was actually based on the biblical stories I read), but eventually I realized that I could not be a thinking person and have blind faith at the same time. When I started questioning my faith, I could not reconcile the fact that it was too much of a coincidence that I would have been born to the one "true" religion. Had I been born in Saudi Arabia, I would be a Muslim, had it been India, I would have been a Hindu, and if those religions were not "true", what was to say that Christianity was? Then there was the factor of the Old Testament. For years, I had been very interested in ancient civilizations, to the point that I had decided to become an archaeologist when I "grew up". Ironically, that interest have been sparked by my reading of the Old Testament. But when I started reading on Sumerian and Akkadian civilizations, I could not but notice that many of their creation myths were *very* similar to those of the Bible. Abraham, the founder of the Jewish faith, had himself come from Ur, a Mesopotamian city. It made sense that he had brought those creation stories with him, and that that's how they made their way to the Bible. BUT, the myths were similar, but not identical. Given that Sumerian civilization preceded Jewish civilization, Sumerian myths were older and therefore had to be closer to the "truth". And yet, when I read them I was reading them as myths and not as "history" - the way I was reading the Bible. This was only a problem because I had always taken the Bible literally, believed not just in the essence of the "message" but in the accuracy of its historical accounts. As I delved more into ancient history, it became clearer and clearer than the biblical accounts were inconsistent with archaeological and historical evidence and were, therefore, false. So the seeds of doubt were there.

During my freshman year in college, I was first exposed and first learned about the "scientific method", at the same time than I was learning about evolution. The scientific method made absolutely sense to me - in particular the very simple and elemental notion that a theory needed to have evidence to back it up. What was the evidence that there was a god? Human life? But that could be and to me was convincingly accounted by the theory of evolution.

Richard Dawkins is considered nowadays one of the biggest atheist thinkers because of his book The God Delusion, but in reality his seminal work was one of his first, The Selfish Gene. This book explains evolutionary theory so well, so clearly and concisely that it's impossible for any thinking person to not take it seriously.

I read the Selfish Gene in my Anthropology 1 class my freshman year in college. The class was taught by Vincent Sarich, one of the discoverers of the molecular clock. Vince (as I came to call him) was, at the time, the most intelligent man I had ever met and among the most inquisitive. He was also a terrific teacher and a man not unwilling to challenge PC notions and let science guide him where it did. Twenty two years after that Anthro class in Berkeley, I can still say he was one of the two most important influences in my life (the other one is probably my friend and co-worker Gregorio Dionis, the architect of the criminal procedures in Spain against Pinochet, and the other most intelligent man I've ever met). Vince did not only introduce me to the scientific method and the theory of evolution by natural selection (which is really the crux of the theory), but he also introduced me to the concept of parsimony, the concept that the simplest explanation, the one that would take the least steps, was the most likely to be true. That also made a lot of sense to me. Even if I needed to postulate a god as the ultimate creator of the universe, the question was, how did god came into being? I ended up at the same place, not knowing, so I might as well reject the concept for which there was no evidence, god.

So I did, and by the end of my freshman year in college, I'd become an atheist. I haven't looked back since.

For many years, I found people's belief in God to be quaint and perhaps necessary for their emotional health. It's hard to give up on the idea that we are alone, purposeless, and that when we die, we die. And as Marx said, "religion is the opium of the masses". But in recent years, I've become offended by the notion of the Christian god. Offended because that god, said by Christians to be omnipotent, would be, if real, so cruel and even "evil", that, in my mind, worshiping him, much less wanting to be like him, is in itself an evil act. This is a god, after all, who stands by while he sees babies being raped to deathby some crazy notion that sex with them will cure AIDS (a disease, btw, that has not only disseminated African populations, but has left millions of orphans who now live in squalor and hunger). A god that allows genocides to be committed, torture to go on, children to be turned into drug-mad soldiers, millions to die of hunger and disease. And yes, a god that sent (or at least allowed) a devastating earthquake to one of the poorest and most miserable countries in the world. Why would a god do that?

If you talk to christians, they will tell you that people do horrible things because god gives them a "choice" (but what choice do those babies have to be raped?). That doesn't explain earthquakes, however. It doesn't explain why children, little children who have not had a chance to live, and therefore sin, need to die through painful deaths. It doesn't explain why millions of children worldwide are not given a chance to be loved and fed, why they are turned into monsters or killing machines.

How could a god that cruel invite worshiping? How could anyone worship that god and keep their integrity?

1. Stop all executions. Our government should not use death as a
punishment.

2. Provide health care to everyone. Access to health care is a fundamental human right. We sent people to the moon more than 40 years ago. We can figure out to do this.

3. Restore habeas corpus. No country, especially the U.S., should
engage in the practice of forced disappearances.

4. Overhaul copyright laws to restore some common sense to our legal
system. Listen to Lawrence Lessig.

5. Stop annoying travelers with ineffective regulations that make us
nearly as angry at Homeland Security as the people who try to attack
planes.

6. Get rid of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." If gay people want to protect
our country, we should let them.

7. Legalize marijuana. The criminalization of marijuana use is
wasting money in our courts and prisons. It's also killing thousands
in Mexico.

8. Stop treating corporations like citizens. Corporations can't vote
in elections and shouldn't be permitted to influence them with money.

9. Treat climate change seriously. Sure there are skeptics and there
will always be, but we can take actions now that future generations
will be grateful for.

10. Spend less money on the military and more on research and
development that will benefit all of humanity.

I was just cleaning (really, I promise) when El Abuelo, a beautiful song by Argentine singer/songwriter Alberto Cortez came on my playlist. My mind was fully somewhere else, but it's impossible to listen to that song and not shed at least a tear. At least for those of us who were born in countries made out of immigrants - or who are immigrants ourselves.

In the song, Cortez sings about his grandfather who left Spain for Argentina to look for a better life - he never was able to return. Cortez, meanwhile, would go on to reside in Spain himself.

My story is a little bit similar. My grandmother (Granny) was born in Albany, NY and grew up in Schenectady. At 21 she married my grandfather, who was in the Argentine Navy, and moved to Argentina. Despite time and space, she never thought of herself as anything but an American, and loved America until she died. She would also tell me about America all the time, to the point that I grew up to love it as she did, the two were so associated together in my mind. She did get to go and visit her family several times in her life - for which I'm very glad.

And so are the turns of life that, after she died, my family (parents and siblings) moved to the US. Not to NY state, but California - to an America that was probably quite different from the one she knew, but America nonetheless. And who knows? Perhaps one day, my own grandchildren will move back to Argentina and repeat the cycle.

Here is my free translation of the song "El Abuelo".

Grandfather one day
when he was very young
over there in his Galicia,
looked at the horizon
and thought that another road
perhaps existed.
And to the Northern wind,
who was an old friend,
he spoke of his hurry,
he showed him his hands,
that tame and strong,
were empty.
And the wind said:
"Build your life,
behind the seas,
beyond Galicia."

And grandfather one day
in an old ship
left Spain.
Grandfather one day,
as so many others,
with so much hope.
The loved image
of his old village
and of his mountains
he took with him, engraved
very deep in his soul,
when the old ship,
took him away from Spain.

Grandfather one day
got on the wagon
of raising life.
He pushed the plough
fertilized the dirt
and time ran by.
And he quietly struggled
to plant the tree
that he loved so much.
And grandfather one day
cried under the tree
which was finally flowering,
he cried of happiness
when he saw that his hands,
a little bit older,
were no longer empty.

And grandfather then,
when I was a child,
talked to me of Spain,
of the Northern wind,
of the old village
and of his mountains.
He liked it so much
to remember the things
that he carried engraved
very deep in his soul,
that sometimes silent,
without saying a word,
he talked to me of Spain.

Grandfather one day,
when he was very old,
beyond Galicia.
He took my hand
and I realized
that he was dying.
And he told me then,
with very little strength
and with even less hurry,
"promise me, son,
that to the old village
you will go one day,
and to the Northern wind,
you will tell that his friend
to a new land
gave his life.

And grandfather one day
fell asleep
without having returned to Spain.
Grandfather one day,
as so many others,
with so much hope.
And later grandfather,
I saw him in the villages
I saw him in the mountains
and in each morning
and in each legend,
through all the roads
that I took in Spain.

Continue reading "El Abuelo (Grandfather) by Alberto Cortez" »

I just published in our Project Disappeared blog an interview with Analía Verónica, the daughter of accused torturer Eduardo Kalinec. The interview is in Spanish. One of the issues she touches on is the impossibility of reconciling a man who was sweet and loving to her, and a monster on his day job. "It's very hard to know that my father held a picana with the same hands with which he touched me". A picana is an instrument that delivers electricity, similar to a cattle prod, but which allows the torturer some degree of control as to the voltage applied. The picana, developed my the Argentine police, was the favorite instrument of torture in Argentina.

Analías words touched me because I also have problems reconciling memories of people who seemed so nice and gentle to me, but who might directly or indirectly been involved in the repression. Among this is an uncle, a very soft and sweet man, who was pediatrician for the Argentine Navy during the repression. As a pediatrician it's unlikely that he participated in the repression, but he could not have not known what was happening and yet he stayed in the institution. Of course, he never talked about it - but he did want to make sure that his connection to me wasn't made public :-)

Another person was the father of an elementary school mate - a police officer. His name doesn't appear in any lists, so I don't have strong bases to conclude that he was involved in the repression - but then again, the lists are utterly incomplete. The names in them are those of people who were identified by the survivors - but the disappeared were usually kept hooded so they couldn't see their tormentors. This man, in particular, was really nice and I loved going to my friend's house to play after school - but I remember a few things about him that make me suspicious.

In a greater sense, I have real problems reconciling a childhood that was quite pleasant all in all, with the horrors that were going on around me - of which I only learned after democracy had returned to Argentina (when I was 14). I've gone back on my memory to trying to look for clues of what had been going on. I remember, for example, that pink house close to ours in City Bell. The house was perhaps a hundred meters away. Nobody occupied it throughout all the time we owned our country house - nobody even visited it. For some reason, my parents forbade us to go there - and we mostly obeyed. I remember going there once, however, looking through a window and seeing a mess of clothing and objects all over the floor. I don't think we tried the door. Today I wonder if its owners were disappeared.

In any case, the interview is in Spanish, but it's well worth reading.