Dianna Ortiz
Encyclopedia
Sister Dianna Ortiz is an American
Roman Catholic
Ursuline nun
.
A native of the state of New Mexico
, while serving as a missionary
in Guatemala
in 1989, she was abducted by members of the Guatemalan military and brutally torture
d. Among other torments she states being exposed to were gang-rape and over 100 cigarette burn
s. Sister Ortiz chronicled her experiences and recovery in the book (co-written with Patricia Davis), The Blindfold's Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth. ISBN 1570754357
She founded the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC), the only organization in the United States founded by and for survivors of torture. TASSC's current policy campaign is dedicated to repealing the Military Commissions Act of 2006
, what the survivors of torture at TASSC call the US Torture Law.
In early 1995 Sister Dianna won $5 million in a U.S. civil court case against the former Minister of Defense of Guatemala — General Héctor Gramajo
.http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEEDE143EF930A25757C0A963958260 In its ruling, the judiciary stated that "[Gramajo-Morales]...was aware of and supported widespread acts of brutality committed under his command resulting in thousands of civilian deaths...."
and further noted that Gramajo-Morales “devised...[and] directed...[an] indiscriminate campaign of terror against civilians.”
Five years after Sister Dianna brought her civil suit against Gramajo-Morales in the United States, she won a judgment against the State of Guatemala through the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
where she specified that Gen. Gramajo "made several [official] statements to the effect that Sister Dianna's injuries did not occur or were self-inflicted."
At the time of its introduction Gen. Gramajo was attending Harvard University
by invitation and had just given that year's commencement speech
at the SOA. According to an article in International Socialist Review
, Ortiz stated that she was abducted by police officers and military personnel under Gramajo's command and taken to a secret prison where she was tortured and raped repeatedly. An excerpt from an interview with Sister Ortiz:
Sister Dianna has recounted this same story, in formal testimony, on several occasions but declined to participate in presenting the case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as "testify[ing] about her abduction and torture is a tremendously painful--even terrifying--ordeal."
A 1996 report
by the United States Intelligence Oversight Board reviewed Sister Dianna's case and wrote:
In Raul Molina Mejía's "The Struggle against Impunity in Guatemala", Journal of Social Justice, vol. 26 (1999) describes Sister Dianna's incident as an example of state-sponsored terrorism. He writes: "impunity as concrete legal or de facto actions taken by powerful sectors to prevent investigation or prosecution, such as amnesty laws, pardons, thwarting investigations, the hiding of documents, and tampering with legal samples were abundant in Guatemala. He also mentions the cases of Michael Devine, the El Aguacate massacre, the 1990 surge of killings at the National University of San Carlos
, as well as Sister Dianna. The author explains the "political/psychological" aspect of this impunity, is "a dimension resulting from state terrorism, by which political options in a polity are restricted and controlled through the state's manipulation of fear."
(1989–1992), claimed that Sister Dianna's various claims amounted to an allegation of United States involvement in her rape and torture by right-wing para military forces.
Ortiz suspects the US government of covering up her abduction and torture - much evidence of such a cover up is offered in her book. She also suggests that the man who took her out of the detention center was an American working for the CIA.
In a 1996 interview on "Nightline" with Ortiz, US journalist Cokie Roberts
insisted that Ortiz was lying about her torture and the allegations of US involvement. Roberts' brother, Tom Boggs
, working for the advertising firm of "Patton, Boggs, & Blow,"
was paid by the Guatemalan military to promote a more positive image of the death squads and the military dictatorship in Guatemala.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Roman Catholic
Ursuline nun
Ursulines
The Ursulines are a Roman Catholic religious order for women founded at Brescia, Italy, by Saint Angela de Merici in November 1535, primarily for the education of girls and the care of the sick and needy. Their patron saint is Saint Ursula.-History:St Angela de Merici spent 17 years leading a...
.
A native of the state of New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
, while serving as a missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
in Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
in 1989, she was abducted by members of the Guatemalan military and brutally torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
d. Among other torments she states being exposed to were gang-rape and over 100 cigarette burn
Burn
A burn is an injury to flesh caused by heat, electricity, chemicals, light, radiation, or friction.Burn may also refer to:*Combustion*Burn , type of watercourses so named in Scotland and north-eastern England...
s. Sister Ortiz chronicled her experiences and recovery in the book (co-written with Patricia Davis), The Blindfold's Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth. ISBN 1570754357
She founded the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC), the only organization in the United States founded by and for survivors of torture. TASSC's current policy campaign is dedicated to repealing the Military Commissions Act of 2006
Military Commissions Act of 2006
The United States Military Commissions Act of 2006, also known as HR-6166, was an Act of Congress signed by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006. Drafted in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision on Hamdan v...
, what the survivors of torture at TASSC call the US Torture Law.
In early 1995 Sister Dianna won $5 million in a U.S. civil court case against the former Minister of Defense of Guatemala — General Héctor Gramajo
Hector Gramajo
Héctor Alejandro Gramajo Morales was a general in the Guatemalan Army who served as Defense Minister from 1987 to 1990. He also ran unsuccessfully as the Frente de Unidad Nacional's candidate for the presidency in 1995....
.http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEEDE143EF930A25757C0A963958260 In its ruling, the judiciary stated that "[Gramajo-Morales]...was aware of and supported widespread acts of brutality committed under his command resulting in thousands of civilian deaths...."
and further noted that Gramajo-Morales “devised...[and] directed...[an] indiscriminate campaign of terror against civilians.”
Five years after Sister Dianna brought her civil suit against Gramajo-Morales in the United States, she won a judgment against the State of Guatemala through the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
Inter-American Court of Human Rights
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is an autonomous judicial institution based in the city of San José, Costa Rica. Together with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, it makes up the human rights protection system of the Organization of American States , which serves to uphold and...
where she specified that Gen. Gramajo "made several [official] statements to the effect that Sister Dianna's injuries did not occur or were self-inflicted."
At the time of its introduction Gen. Gramajo was attending Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
by invitation and had just given that year's commencement speech
Commencement speech
A commencement speech or commencement address is a speech given to graduating students, generally at a university, although the term is also used for secondary education institutions. The "commencement" is a ceremony in which degrees or diplomas are conferred upon graduating students...
at the SOA. According to an article in International Socialist Review
International Socialist Review
International Socialist Review may refer to:*International Socialist Review *International Socialist Review *International Socialist Review...
, Ortiz stated that she was abducted by police officers and military personnel under Gramajo's command and taken to a secret prison where she was tortured and raped repeatedly. An excerpt from an interview with Sister Ortiz:
When the men returned, they had a video camera and a still camera. The policeman put a machete into my hands. Thinking it would be used against me, and at that point in my torture wanting to die, I did not resist. But the policeman put his hands onto the handle, on top of mine, and forced me to stab the woman again and again...
The policeman asked me if I was now ready to talk, and one of the other torturers...mentioned that they had just filmed...me stabbing the woman. If I refused to cooperate, their boss, Alejandro, would...turn the videotapes and the photographs over to the press.... This was the first I had heard of Alejandro, the torturers' boss....
The policeman raped me again. Then I was lowered into a pit full of bodies— bodies of children, men, and women, some decapitated, all caked with blood. A few were still alive. I could hear them moaning. Someone was weeping. I didn’t know if it was me or somebody else. A stench of decay rose from the pit. Rats swarmed over the bodies and were dropped onto me as I hung suspended over the pit by the wrists. I passed out and when I came to I was lying on the ground beside the pit, rats all over me.
The nightmare I lived was nothing out of the ordinary. In 1989, under Guatemala’s first civilian president in years, nearly two hundred people were abducted. Unlike me, they were "disappeared, gone forever". The only uncommon element of my ordeal was that I survived, probably because I was a U.S. citizen, and phone calls poured into Congress when I was reported missing. As a U.S. citizen, I had another advantage: I could, in relative safety, reveal afterwards the details of what happened to me in those twenty-four hours. One of those details: an American was in charge of my torturers.
I remember the moment he removed my blindfold. I asked him, "Are you an American?" In poor Spanish and with a heavy American accent, he answered me with a question: "Why do you want to know?" Moments before, after the torturers had blindfolded me again and were getting ready to rape me again, they had called out in Spanish: "Hey, Alejandro, come and have some fun!"
And a voice had responded "Shit!" in perfect American English with no trace of an accent. It was the voice of the tall, fair-skinned man beside me. After swearing, he’d switched to a halting Spanish. "Idiots!" he said. "She’s a North American nun." He added that my disappearance had been made public, and he ran them out of the room.
....He kept telling me he was sorry. The torturers had made a mistake. We came to a parking garage, where he put me into a gray Suzuki jeep and told me he was taking me to a friend of his at the U.S. embassy who would help me leave the country.
For the duration of the trip, I spoke to him in English, which he understood perfectly. He said he was concerned about the people of Guatemala and consequently was working to liberate them from Communism. Alejandro told me to forgive my torturers because they had confused me with Veronica Ortiz Hernandez. It was an honest mistake.
I asked him how they could have mistaken me for a woman who did not resemble me in any way. And why were the threatening letters I had received addressed to Madre Dianna and not to Veronica Ortiz Hernandez? He avoided my questions and insinuated that I was to blame for my torture because I had not heeded the threats that were sent to me.
Sister Dianna has recounted this same story, in formal testimony, on several occasions but declined to participate in presenting the case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as "testify[ing] about her abduction and torture is a tremendously painful--even terrifying--ordeal."
A 1996 report
Intelligence Oversight Board Report on Guatemala
A 1996 report Central Intelligence Agency action in Guatemala by the Intelligence Oversight Board mentioned that the United States helped stop a military coup in 1993, further stating that:The report goes on to state:...
by the United States Intelligence Oversight Board reviewed Sister Dianna's case and wrote:
[T]he IOB believes that Sister Dianna was subjected to horrific abuse on November 2, 1989, but US intelligence reports provide little insight into the details of her plight. Because the Department of Justice is still conducting an extensive reinvestigation of the incident, we do not draw any conclusions on the case at this time.
In Raul Molina Mejía's "The Struggle against Impunity in Guatemala", Journal of Social Justice, vol. 26 (1999) describes Sister Dianna's incident as an example of state-sponsored terrorism. He writes: "impunity as concrete legal or de facto actions taken by powerful sectors to prevent investigation or prosecution, such as amnesty laws, pardons, thwarting investigations, the hiding of documents, and tampering with legal samples were abundant in Guatemala. He also mentions the cases of Michael Devine, the El Aguacate massacre, the 1990 surge of killings at the National University of San Carlos
Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala
The Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala It is the biggest and oldest university of Guatemala, also it is the fourth founded in the Americas....
, as well as Sister Dianna. The author explains the "political/psychological" aspect of this impunity, is "a dimension resulting from state terrorism, by which political options in a polity are restricted and controlled through the state's manipulation of fear."
Allegations of US involvement
According to an article in The Nation, former U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala, Thomas F. StroockThomas F. Stroock
Thomas F. Strook was an American ambassador, politician, and businessman.Born in New York City, Strook attended Yale University alongside future President George H. W. Bush, and was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. After graduating he served in the United States Marine Corps during World War II...
(1989–1992), claimed that Sister Dianna's various claims amounted to an allegation of United States involvement in her rape and torture by right-wing para military forces.
Ortiz suspects the US government of covering up her abduction and torture - much evidence of such a cover up is offered in her book. She also suggests that the man who took her out of the detention center was an American working for the CIA.
In a 1996 interview on "Nightline" with Ortiz, US journalist Cokie Roberts
Cokie Roberts
Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Roberts , best known as Cokie Roberts, is an American Emmy Award-winning journalist and bestselling author. She is a contributing senior news analyst for National Public Radio as well as a regular roundtable analyst for the current This Week with Christiane...
insisted that Ortiz was lying about her torture and the allegations of US involvement. Roberts' brother, Tom Boggs
Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr.
Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr. , is an American lawyer and lobbyist, based in Washington, D.C.Boggs is the son of the late Thomas Hale Boggs , a United States Representative from Louisiana from 1941–43 and again from 1947 until his death in 1972, and Lindy Boggs , a United States Representative from...
, working for the advertising firm of "Patton, Boggs, & Blow,"
Patton Boggs
Patton Boggs is a full service law firm and lobbyist headquartered in Washington, D.C. It has more than 600 lawyers and professionals in nine locations in the United States and the Middle East. Patton Boggs specializes in , , , , international and trade law with over 200 international clients from...
was paid by the Guatemalan military to promote a more positive image of the death squads and the military dictatorship in Guatemala.
Sources
- Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International
- Campaign to Repeal the Military Commissions Act of 2006
- Interview with Dianna Ortiz
- Salon.com review of a book by Dianna Ortiz
- Another interview with Dianna Ortiz (Available in transcript, audio and video)
- Interview with Sister Dianna Ortiz in John Pilger's 2006 documentary "The War on Democracy" starting at 1:06:38