Notes on the Poetics of the Acevedo Movement against Torture

Abstract

How can one speak about torture? How can one describe a language that exposes this diabolical act committed in the secrecy of cells, of old kitchens, and with the secret complicity of those who are obeying orders or acting simply for the sadistic pleasure of inflicting hurt on a tortured body? In order to unmask the strategies of torture one must visualize two images: the suffering open body, exposed to the pain caused by the torturer, and the intimacy of the act of torture. The use of language constitutes one of the dynamics of torture because every act of torture presupposes a torturer who uses the language of authority to interrogate the victim. The language of torture represents the stratification of power: the victim is forced to speak by means of his wounded and hurting body, while for the torturer, every electric shock represents one more triumph of his power over the suffering victim. The unrecognizable tortured body becomes the silent voice and in that very silence, it finds the mirror of death. The torturer presupposes that the voiceless body is a dead body. The initial question of language arises once again: How to give visibility to this act that is constantly silenced by those who practice it? In the Chile of today, submerged under the violent years of a dictatorship, a unique movement in the history of nonviolent actions has emerged. I am referring to the Sebastian Acevedo Movement Against Torture-the subject of this meditation on the poetics of torture. Very little has been written on this movement inside Chile and most of the information of this essay comes from direct personal contact with its members-seeing them and talking to them on the streets of Santiago.