This LA Poet Survived Torture and Exile. She’s Got Advice for Californians on How to Stay Resilient

Alicia Partnoy survived torture and violence as one of thousands of people who were forcibly “disappeared” during Argentina’s “Dirty War,” a seven-year government campaign to suppress suspected dissidents in the 1970s. Her memoir, The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival, originally published in 1986, is still being used as evidence in ongoing trials to bring perpetrators of torture to justice.

Partnoy, professor emerita at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, spoke with The California Report Magazine host Sasha Khokha as part of a series on Californians and resilience.

Below are excerpts from their conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. For the full interview, listen to the audio linked at the top of this story.

On why she was targeted as a student activist in Argentina in the 1970s

We had many, many years of dictatorships. In fact, since the moment I was born until I turned 18, we had dictatorships. The youth movement was very active in the goal of changing the country. That’s why we were targeted. They disappeared 30,000 people in a country of 30 million. They tried to stop any kind of dissidence.

On her experience being detained

The military men came to my house when I was 21. They took me to a secret detention center, interrogated me, and threatened to kill my little daughter, Ruti, who stayed behind crying while they dragged me into an army truck. They kept me — blindfolded, hands tied, lying on a mattress — for 105 days. They killed my best friends from college, tortured my husband. I disappeared from the world for five months and was held in a detention camp under the constant vigilance of a torturer. Later, I was jailed with no charges for two and a half years. For the past almost 50 years, people have been asking me, “What kept you going?”

“…She walked that room a thousand times from one end to the other until they came to take her. Through a peep hole under her blindfold, she could see her feet on the tiny black and white tiles, the stairs, the corridor. Then came the trip to the Little School.

At the concentration camp kitchen, they made a list of her belongings. “What for, if you’re going to steal them all?” she asked. 

“A wedding ring, a watch … dress … color… bra … she doesn’t wear one … shoes … she doesn’t have any.”

“She doesn’t? It doesn’t matter. She won’t have to walk much.” Loud guffaws.
She was not paying attention to what they were saying. She did try to guess how many of them there were. When she thought the interrogation session was about to begin, they took her to a room. She walked down a tiled corridor, then an old wooden floor. After arriving at the wretched bed assigned to her, she discovered a ragged blanket. She used it to cover her feet and did not feel so helpless. 

The following morning, someone tapped her on the shoulder and made her stand up. Someone had re-tied her blindfold during the night. The peep hole was smaller, but still big enough for her to be able to see the floor: blood on the tiles next to a spot of sky blue. They made her walk on the blood stains; she tried not to avoid them so they would not notice that she could see.” 

— Excerpt from The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival. 

On why she wrote about herself in the third person

The first version of The Little School had very little about myself. And then, the editors told me, “In the States, people cannot relate to a collective tragedy. You have to talk about your individual tragedy.” I felt really awful talking about myself with all the people who had not survived.

But also, it was a defense mechanism. I remembered it as if it were a movie, and it was easier to write in the third person as if it was something that happened to somebody else. The Little School helped [identify the former site of the detention center] even after the military destroyed it and left only the foundations. But they left pieces of the tiles there that were recognized and were evidence for the trials.

On what it took for her to finally be able to cry about her experience

For me to cry, I needed to have my friends close. I started to cry when [after being released] I was in touch with other political prisoners. What helped me was the support — to see the mothers, the grandmothers [Argentina’s well-known citizen-activists “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo”] protesting the disappearance of their loved ones, marching the streets. To see the young people marching in the streets today, protesting and working for human rights organizations. To see that my pain was not vain. There are people that will have a hard time finding a reason for their pain.

The bottom line for me is solidarity. Solidarity is what has kept me going. Solidarity that I feel from people and the solidarity that I can direct to people who are suffering.

It gives me a lot of strength to see all these young students [in the U.S.] walking out of schools in solidarity with the immigrants who are being kicked out of this country or being persecuted today.

On how her experience in Argentina shapes her perspective on political instability in the U.S. today

There are mechanisms in this country that we didn’t have during the dictatorship. I see how organizations — like the ACLU — and how mass demonstrations in the streets produce something. You still have a Congress, which we didn’t have. There are people who are corrupt in the judiciary, but you still have a Supreme Court.

If there is something similar between the dictatorship [in Argentina] and a government that was elected [in the U.S.], it’s that they both try to make you think that the person who is different is not a person. Back in Argentina, they said [protesters] didn’t have a soul, that we didn’t care for our families.

Here, the discourse of Trump against the immigrants is very similar. “These people are useless. These people are stealing our resources here. We need to get rid of them.”

On why ‘healing is overrated’ and how it differs from resilience

With the current trauma here — the fires in Los Angeles — the advice is, “Yes, feel sorry for yourself. It’s fine to cry.” The problem is people want the survivors to heal. They want everybody to feel nice again. But you have to listen. Listen to each person. Listen to their voices and see where they find comfort.

For me, comfort comes from solidarity. It also comes from connecting with other survivors because we speak the same language. It doesn’t matter what trauma you’ve gone through, but if you’ve survived something, you have a bridge to connect. We could talk a long, long time about our experiences, about how our resilience helps us deal with these tragedies with these complications in our life.

On how to stay resilient

For a moment, when justice started to happen in Argentina, in the cases of the people who killed my friends, I said, “Now I can take a break.” But it seems the struggle never ends. We need to be active. We need to be awake. We need to be vigilant.

But we also need to rest. Replenish your energy. Enjoy. Laugh. I rejoice in the company of my friends, my family and how much a little plant on my desk blossoming makes me happy.