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who taught torture to local police and militaries in both Brazil, then Uruguay, sweeping people off the streets to use as lessons for his torture pupils, having his instruments of torture brought in to him in diplomatic pouches from the embassies. When he was finally murdered (without being tortured, by the way) he was given a hero's funeral by Richard Nixon, who sent his own press secretary and others, as well as his son-in-law, David Eisenhower, and Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis held a benefit to raise money to help his wife with their NINE children. Dan Mitrione, a former police chief in Indiana: Mr. Hevia had served the C.I.A. in Uruguay’s police program. In 1970, his duties brought him in contact with Dan Mitrione, the United States policy adviser who was kidnapped by the Tupamaro revolutionaries later that year and shot to death when the Uruguayan Government refused to save him by yielding up politician prisoners.
Mr. Mitrione has become notorious throughout Latin America. But few men ever had the chance to sit with him and discuss his rationale for torture. Mr. Hevia had once.
Now, reading Mr. Hevia’s version, which I believe to be accurate, I see that I too had resisted acknowledging how drastically a man’s career can deform him. I was aware that Mr. Mitrione knew of the tortures and condoned them. That was bad enough. I could not believe even worse of a family man. A Midwesterner. An American.
Thanks to Mr. Hevia, I was finally hearing Mr. Mitrione’s true voice:
"When you receive a subject, the first thing to do is to determine his physical state, his degree of resistance, through a medical examination. A premature death means a failure by the technician.
"Another important thing to know is exactly how far you can go given the political situation and the personality of the prisoner. It is very important to know beforehand whether we have the luxury of letting the subject die…
"Before all else, you must be efficient. You must cause only the damage that is strictly necessary, not a bit more. We must control our tempers in any case. You have to act with the efficiency and cleanliness of a surgeon and with the perfection of an artist…
A few months later, Mr. Mitrione paid with his life for those excesses. Five years late, thanks to the effort of such men as former Senator James Abourezk, the police advisory program was finally abolished. More: http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/langguthleaf.htmlhttp://web.wm.edu.nyud.net:8090/modlang/hispanic_studies/HS480/usinvolvement/images/mitrione.gif
Dan Mitrione
Uruguay 1964-1970
Torture - as American as apple pie
excerpted from the book
Killing Hope
by William BlumAnd: "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect.''
The words of an instructor in the art of torture. The words of Dan Mitrione, the head of the Office of Public Safety (OPS) mission in Montevideo.
Officially, OPS was a division of the Agency for International Development, but the director of OPS in Washington, Byron Engle, was an old CIA hand. His organization maintained a close working relationship with the CIA, and Agency officers often operated abroad under OPS cover, although Mitrione was not one of them.
OPS had been operating formally in Uruguay since 1965, supplying the police with the equipment, the arms, and the training it was created to do. Four years later, when Mitrione arrived, the Uruguayans had a special need for OPS services. The country was in the midst of a long-running economic decline, its once-heralded prosperity and democracy sinking fast toward the level of its South American neighbors. Labor strikes, student demonstrations, and militant street violence had become normal events during the past year, and, most worrisome to the Uruguayan authorities, there were the revolutionaries who called themselves Tupamaros. Perhaps the cleverest, most resourceful and most sophisticated urban guerrillas the world has ever seen, the Tupamaros had a deft touch for capturing the public's imagination with outrageous actions, and winning sympathizers with their Robin Hood philosophy. Their members and secret partisans held key positions in the government, banks, universities, and the professions, as well as in the military and police.
"Unlike other Latin-American guerrilla groups," the New York Times stated in 1970 "the Tupamaros normally avoid bloodshed when possible. They try instead to create embarrassment for the Government and general disorder." A favorite tactic was to raid the files of a private corporation to expose corruption and deceit in high places, or kidnap a prominent figure and try him before a "People's Court". It was heady stuff to choose a public villain whose acts went uncensored by the legislature, the courts and the press, subject him to an informed and uncompromising interrogation, and then publicize the results of the intriguing dialogue. Once they ransacked an exclusive high-class nightclub and scrawled the walls perhaps their most memorable slogan: "O Bailan Todos O No Baila Nadie -- Either everyone dances or no one dances."
Dan Mitrione did not introduce the practice of torturing political prisoners to Uruguay It had been perpetrated by the police at times from at least the early 1960s. However, in surprising interview given to a leading Brazilian newspaper in 1970, the former Uruguayan Chief of Police Intelligence, Alejandro Otero, declared that US advisers, and in particular Mitrione, had instituted torture as a more routine measure; to the means of inflicting pain they had added scientific refinement; and to that a psychology to create despair, such as playing a tape in the next room of women and children screaming and telling the prisoners that it was his family being tortured. More: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Uruguay_KH.html~~~~~~~~~~~~You are SO RIGHT. It looks as if this has been a tradition with them from a long, LONG time ago, unfortunately. We just didn't know about it. |
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