opinion

Forget about forgetting
by Miguel Antonio Bernal

This December 19 marked 29 years since my savage beating by agents of the military government. I can't and I mustn't avoid that experience that takes hold of my memory, my heart and my body. At four in the afternoon on that Wednesday, December 19, 1979, we congregated at the Don Bosco Church to protest against the arrival of the Shah of Iran. Jimmy Carter sent the Shah to Panama, so that it could be what it today continues to be without a military dictatorship: a dump for non-recyclable political trash.

Two Guardia Nacional officers threatened: "you can't have a march, by orders from above." We decided to start our peaceful protest. In a matter of minutes dozens of uniformed and motorcycle cops and G-2 agents arrived en masse. More than 40 motocycle cops took a position 20 meters from where we were. I walked toward them, alone, megaphone in hand. I thought they wanted to talk. I hadn't gotten to them when the head of the motorcycle units, Tomás Herron De Diego, rushed up and started hitting me. Punches and kicks rained down on me. The tenebrous G-2 agent, Fritz Gibson Parrish, alias "Sangre," shouted "Here's Bernal." A cloudburst of nightsticks, rubber hoses, blows of all sorts from all sides, rained down on my body. I resisted. They dragged me. They threw me on the ground and kicked me. Doña Elvia Lefevre, Víctor Navas King and a woman who remains unknown to me moved into the middle of the beating in a desperate effort to impede the savage public torture. I have never stopped believing that the blows that they took saved my life.

That savage public beating lasted an eternity. It's a persistent memory. First they took me to the Central Barracks, and when they saw that I would die they took me to Santo Tomas --- in convulsions. In an aggravated, intentional, premeditated fashion I was physically mistreated, in a cruel, inhuman and degrading act. It mattered little to the intellectual and physical authors because they knew that their acts would find "justification" given the reigning corruption and the mantle of impunity that they always wore. The case would never be duly examined by competent government authorities.

After the invasion, I vainly asked for the start of a criminal process against those allegedly responsible. Everything was left untouched and they continue unpunished.

We bear in mind what Galeano said: "... An awakened memory is contradictory, like us; it's never quiet, and it changes with us. It wasn't born to be anchored. It's more like a catapult. It wants to be a point of departure, not of arrival. It doesn't renege on nostalgia, but it prefers hope, with its dangers and its rough times. The Greeks believed that memory is sister to the seasons and to the sea, and they weren't wrong."