8/18/2019 Franco. Killing Priests, Nuns, Women, Children

1/4

 

Killing Priests Nuns

Women

Children

Jean

ranco

The murder

of

three American

nuns

in El Salvador

in

December

1980, the

murder

of priests in Brazil

and Argentina, the torture of pregnant women in

Uruguay, the farming

our of

terrorists ' children

to military families in the southern cone, the ad

monitory raping of women

in front

of

their families

in several Latin American countries, the l'vlexican

army's

attack on unarmed

male and female stu

dents in Tlatelolco in 1968, the recent kidnapping

in broad daylight

of

a well-known writer, univer

sity teacher, and feminist, Alaide Foppa, in Guate

mala,

the dislodging of Indian communities from

traditional lands, plus countless other incidents, all

appear more and

more

to

be

the

well-thought-out

atrocities

of

a concerted offensive. It is

part of

a

war

that has pitted unequal forces against one

another-

on

the one hand, the overarmed military

who

have become instruments

of

rhe latest stage

of

capitalist development and,

on

the other, not only

the left but also certain

traditional

institutions, the

Indian

community, rhe family, and the Church

(which still provide sanctuary

and

refuge for resist

ance). These institutions owe their effectiveness as

refuges to historically based moral rights and trad

itions,

rather like the immunities

which

(before the

recent attack on the Spanish embassy in Guate

mala) had accrued to diplomatic space.

Homes

were, of course, never immune from entry and

search, but until recentlv, it was generally males

who were

rounded

up and taken away, often leav

ing women to carry on

and

even transmit resistance

from one generation

to

another. Families thus in

herited

opposition

as others inherited positions in

the government and bureaucracy.

Bur

what is novv at

stake

is

the assault on such

formerly

immune

territories. The attack

on

the

Cathedral in

El

Salvador in 1980 and the assassin

ation of

Archbishop

Romero,

for instance, showed

how

little the Church could now claim

to

be a

sanctuary. The resettlement of Indians in Guate

mala,

of

working-class families from militant

sectors of Buenos Aires, the destruction of

the

immunirv formerly accorded to wives, mothers,

children, nuns,

and

priests have all taken away

every immune space. This assault

is

not as incom

patible as it

might

at first seem

with

the military

government's organization

of

its discourse around

the sanctity of

Church and

family. Indeed these

corwenient abstractions, which once referred t

well-defined physical spaces, have subtly shifted

their range

of

meaning. Thus, for instance, the

saucepan

demonstrations

of

Chilean women

during the last

months

of the Allende regime

plainly indicated the emergence of the family as

consumer in a society which, under Pinochet,

was

to acquire its s y m ~ l i c monument - the spiral

shaped

tower

of the new labyrinthine shopping

centre. The

Church,

once clearly identified

as

rhe

Catholic Church,

and

the pari sh as its territory, has

now been replaced by a rather more flexible notion

of religion. The conversion of massive sectors of

the population all over Lat in America to one

form

or another of Protestantism, the endorsement by

Rios Montt, vvhen President of Guatemala, of

born-again Christianity, and the active encourage

ment,

in

other

countries,

of

fundamenta-list

seers,

all indicate a

profound

transformation which,

until recently, had gone almost unnoticed.

RadiO

. ..-.._]

and television

now

p

yatized religious expe

t be anchored in the

and in the

continuity

This process can be

zation,

although

I u

different from

that

us

In

their \ iew (see Gille

Anti Oedipus: Capi

:.Jew York, 1

377),

pri

chine) does

not

disting

the rest of

the social

a

are inscribed on the s

chine that distinguish

and affiliations). In th

the mother

earth.

\Xl

scribe is a process

of

a

with the emergence

o

inscribes people accor

doing so

divides the

men to a new imperia

to

the

abstract

unity

pseudo-territoriality

tion of abstract signs

the earth and a priva

state or private pro

carries this abstractio

sons and making re

exercised not only in

but within the family

ism where desire can

(as

with Oedipus).

What seems uns

Guattari's descriptio

though, reading thes

the

family's restrictiv

do not recognize the

refuge and shelter.

home (and what s

the convent)

is

that it

one's back

on

the w

(albeit in an idealiz

c ~ u l d nourish subjec

italism. (Thomas

M

good example

of

t

mother inculcating i

~ i m

incapable of rep

Latin America, this s

ness that attaches

to

c

the virgin, the

nun,

greater significance,

the home retained a

8/18/2019 Franco. Killing Priests, Nuns, Women, Children

2/4

stake is the assault on

such

-ontlle

1980

and the

assassin

showed

now claim to

be

a

of

Indians in G-;;;rte

the

~ o t h e r s ,

riests have all

t k ~ ~ y

sault

is

not

as incom-

first seem with the -J11ilitary

of its discourse around

and family. Indeed

h e s e

to

shifted

the

women

of the Allende regime

of the family as

was

monument

- the spiral

new

labyrinthine shopping

as

the

s i t s

territory,

has

rather more flexible notion

of

massive sectors

of

to one form

by

of

of fundamentalist sects,

transformation which,

Radio

KILLING

PRIESTS

NUNS

WOMEN

CHILDREN

97

d television now

promote

a serialized and pri

an

· ed

re io-ious

experience which no longer needs

vanz

"'

. . . .

to be anchored in the phys1cal reality

ot

the

pansh

din the continuity of family hfe.

a\his

process can be described as deter ritori ali-

tl

on

; although I use this term in a sense

rather

D ' .

different from that used

by

Deleuze and

Guattan.

r n t h e l r ~ i e w (see Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,

;:;;t;Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

New

York,

1977), primitive society (the social ma

chine) does not distinguish between the family and

t11efestof the social and political field, all

of

which

are

inscribed on the socius (that is, the social ma

  ~ t h ~ t

distinguishes people according to status

and

affiliations). In the primitive tribe,

the

socius

is

rhe mother earth.

What

Deleuze and Guattari de

scribe

is

a process

of

abstraction which takes place

with the emergence of the despotic state

that now

inscribes

people according

to

their residence, and in

doing

so divides the

earth

as an object an d subjects

men

to a new imperial inscription, in other words

to the abstract unity of the State. This they call

pseudo-territoriality,

and

see it as the substitu

tion of abstract signs (e.g. money) for the signs

of

the

earth and a privatization

of

the earth itself (as

state or private property). Advanced capitalism

carries this abstraction much further, recoding per

sons and making repression into self-repression,

exercised not only in the vvorkplace

and

the streets

but within the family, the one place under capital

ism

where desire can be coded and territorialized

(as

with Oedipus).

What seems unsatisfactory in Deleuze

and

Guattari's description of the family is that even

t ~ ? _ i ~ g _ l l ~

reading these authors, we may recognize

t ~ - ~ a J 1 1 i l y s restrictive and repressive qualities, we

?_o not recognize the family's

power

as a space of

refuge -and shelter.

What

seduces us

about

the

home- (and

what

seduces some people

about

the

convent) is that it is_a refuge, a place for turning

~ c k on the world. Max Horkheimer

saw

( ~ i t _ . i n an idealized fashion)

that

the family

~ o u r i s h

subjectivities

that

were alien to cap

i.t< lli_;n. (Thomas

Mann's Buddenbrooks is

a

g??d example of the subversive effects of the

mother inculcating into her son all

that

will make

i n ~ a p a b l e of reproducing the

work

ethic.) In

~ n A m e r i c a

this sense of refuge and the sacred

~ h t

attaches to certain figures like the mother,

~ i r g i n

the nun,

and

the priest acquire even

g r ~ t ~ r _ s i g n i f i c a n c e , both because the Church

and

~ ~ : _ h o m e retained a traditional topography and

traditional practices over a very long period, and

also because during periods when the state was

relatively weak these institutions were the only

functioning social organizations. They were states

within the state, or even counterstates, since there

are certain

p ~ r i s h e s and

certain families which

have nourished traditions of resistance to the

state

and

hold

on

to concepts

of

moral right

(E.

P Thompson's term), which account for their op-

position to

modernization

(i.e. integration into

capitalism). This

is not

to say that the patriarchal

and hierarchical family, whose priority was the

reproduction of the social order, has

not

rooted

itself in Latin American soil. But the family has

been a powerful rival to the state, somehow more

real, often the source

of

a maternal

power

which

is

by no means to be despised, particularly when, as

in contemporary Latin America, the disappear

ance of political spaces has turned the family

(and the mother, in particular) into a major

insti

tution

of

resistance.

It is only by recognizing the traditional power of

the family

and

the Church

and

the association

of

this power with a particular space (the home, the

Church building)

that

we can begin to understand

the significance of recent events in Latin America.

Beginning in the fifties

and

early sixties, develop

ment brought new sectors of the population,

including women, into the labour force. The ex

pansion of transnational companies into Latin

America depended on

the pool of cheap

labour

formed from the uprooted peasantry and the

ever-growing sector

of urban

underclasses.

The

smooth functioning of this new industrial revolu

tion was imperilled by the guerrilla movements

and movements of national liberation which, in

turn, confronted the counterinsurgency campaigns

of the sixties

that

modernized the armies

of

Latin America, making them pioneers in the

newest

of

torture methods and inventive masters

of

the

art of

disappearance. It

is

this counter

insurgency movement which has destroyed both

the notion

of

sacred space and the immunity

which, in theory if

not

in practice, belonged to

nuns, priests, women

and

children.

Though women have never enjoyed complete

immunity from state terror - indeed rape has

been the casually employed resource of forces of

law and order since the Conquest - the rapidity

with which the new governments have been able to

take immunity away from the traditional institu

tions

of

Church and family calls for explanation.

8/18/2019 Franco. Killing Priests, Nuns, Women, Children

3/4

198 JE N FR NCO

Such

an explanation

\\·ould i1woh·e

understanding

not

only the

particular

incidents

mentioned at the

beginning

of

this essay,

but

the profound conse

quences

of

destroying

what Bachehrd,

in

he

Poetics

ol

Space,

called the '·images

of

felicitous

spaces:'

or topophilia.

Bachelard's investigations

·'seek

to determine

the

human

,·alue

of

the sorts

of

space that may be

grasped, that

may be defended

against adverse forces,

the

space we lo,·e.

For

di

verse reasons, and

with

the differences entailed by

poetic shadings, thi, is eulogized space.

Attached

to

irs protecti\·e \·alue,

which can

be a positive one,

are also

imagined

values. which soon become

dom-

inant.

In this essay, I

want

to give these felicitous

spaces a

more concrete and

historical existence

than

Bachelard's

phenomenology

allows, for

onlv in this

wav

can

we understand the

really

extraordinary sacrilege

that

we are

now

witness-

1ng

Although

it is impossible to

separate

the literary

from the social,

literature is

a

good

place

to

begin

to

understand

this Latin American

imaginan· with

its clearly demarcated spaces. In common with

vlediterranean countries, public space in

Latin

America

was

strictly

sep;uated

from the

private

space

of

the

house

(brorhel), home,

and convent,

that

is, spaces

which

were clearly

marked

as "femi

nine. These spaces gave

women

a certain territor

ial

but restricted power

base

and

at

the same

time

offered

the

"felicitous'' spaces for the repose

of

the

warrior. [ ]

The

\'ery

structure of

the

Hispanic

house em

phasized

that

it

was

a private

world, shut off from

public activity. It was traditionally constructed

around two or more patios,

the

windows

onto

the street being shuttered or barred. Inside, the

patios with their

plants

and

singing birds

repre-

sented

an

oasis, a

domestic

replica

of the perfumed

garden. Respectable

women

only emerged from

the house when

accompanied

and when necessarv.

Their

lives

were almost

as enclosed as those

of

their counterparts, the brothel whore and

the

nun. In the fifties, I lived in such a house

where

windows

onto

the outside were felt to

mark

the

beginning of

danger

as indeed, after curfew, the\·

did. A

prison

yes, bur

one

that

could

easily be

idealized as a

sanctuary

given the violence

of

pol

itical life.

The convent was also a

sanctuary

of sorts,

one

that gathered into

itself

the

old, the homeless,

and

the

dedicated

t God. In Jose

Donoso's

nm·el he

Obscene Bird olNight,

the

convent has

become

an

extended

building housing the archaic,

the

mvthic

and

the

hallucinating

desires which are outlawed

from the rest

of

societv. It is this

aspect

o the

Hispanic"

imaginary which

Buiiuel's films also cap

ture. Archaic in

topograplw,

its huge, empt1·, de

crepit rooms not

only sealed

it off

entireh- from the

outside

world

but

made

it into a

taboo

territon:

the

violation

of

which tempted and terrorized t l ~

male

imagination.

Finally there

was

the

brothel,

the

house

whose

topograph,· mimed that of

the convent, with

irs

small cell-like

rooms Jnd which,

as described bv

. \hrio

Vargas Llosa in his novel he

Green H ( J I S ~ ,

w::1s another 1·ersion

of the

oasis. As

the

cotwen

gathered to

itself rhe

women who

were

no

longer

sexu::1l objects,

the

green

house

offered

them

as the

common

recepwcles of ::

male

seed

b s o l n ~ d

from

the strict social rules

th::Jt gm·erned

reproduction.

Blacks, mulattoes, mixtures of all kinds, drunks, som-

nolent

or

frightened half-breeds, skinm· Chinese, old

men, small groups of young Spaniards and Italians

walking through rhe patios our of curiosity. Thev

walked

ro

and fro passing the open doors of the

bedrooms, stopping

to

look in from rime to time

The prostitutes, dressed

in

cotton dresses were seated

at the back of the rooms on low boxes. i\'lost of them

sat with their legs apart showing their sex, the "fox"

which was sometimes sha,·ed and sometimes not.

(Jose .\Luia Arguedas,

The Fox Abrwe

and

the ox

Beloll )

In describing these spaces, I

am not

describing

categories

of

women

but

an imaginary topogra

phy in

which

the

feminine was

rigidly compart

mentalized and assigned particular territories.

Individual

women constantly

transgressed these

boundaries but the

territOries themselves were

loaded with

significance

and so

inextricably

bound

to

the sacred that they were

often raken

for

spaces

of

immunity.

With

the increJse in stare

terrorism

in the sixties,

mothers

used this trad

itional

immunity to protest, abandoning

rhe

shelter

of homes

for the public square, raking

charge

of

the

dead

and

the disappeared

and the

prisoners whose

existence

no

one else wished ro

acknowledge.

\Xlith the seizure

of power

lw the

militarY,

the dismantling of

political parties and

trade unions,

this activity

acquired

a special

im-

portance.

Homes

became

hiding places,

bomb fac-

tories, escape

hatches,

people's prisons.

from

rhe

signifier

of

passivitv and peace,

mother

became

8/18/2019 Franco. Killing Priests, Nuns, Women, Children

4/4

e archaic the

·-

h ' l ' mythic

esues w Ic

1

are

.

our

awed

It S this aspect of h

Buiiuel's

films 1 t e

a so cap

1 ~ , i t ~ huge, empt}S d e ~

It ott enrirelv fro

-h

. . .

mr e

mto a taboo t . -  

erntorv

t e r r o r i z e d · ; ~

b r ~ t h e l the

house

whose

ot the convent

..

h .

, It Its

which,

as described

bv

novel The Green H

·

ouse

the oasis. As the conven;

were

no

onger

house

offered

them

as the

male seed absolved from

governed reproduction.

of

all kinds, drunks, som

skinny Chinese, old

Spaniards

and Italians

of curiositY. Thev

open doors. of t h ~

in from time to time.

dresses

were

seared

low

boxes.

;\lost

of them

their

sex, the ' fox

and sometimes

not.

Fox Abot•e

,md

the ox

am not describina

.

Imaginary topogra-

Vias rigidly compart

territories.

transgressed these

themselves were

and so

inextricablv

r a k e ~

the increase in state

used this trad

the

souare takin

l

'

'

disappeared

and the

one

else

wished

r

of power

b1·

the

political partie; and

a special im

places, bomb hc

prisons.

From the

mother became

KILLING PRIESTS, NUNS WOMEN

CHILDREN

199

T ~ n i f i e r

of

resistance. ;\;othing illustrates this in

as '

· · h · l l

1·

more dramatic tash10n t an an arne e w Rodo to

\ ( ~ { 1 5 1 1 (an Argentine writer who would himselt

·'disappear shortly

after

1niting

this

piece). His

daughter, who was the mother of a small child and

whose lcJ\·er had

already disappeared,

was

one

ot a

group of munto leros killed in the army attack

on

a

house, an attack which deployed 150 men, tanks

;nd helicopters. A

soldier who

had participated in

rhis

battle

described the girl's

final

moments.

The battle lasted

more

than an hour

and

a half. A

man and woman

were

shooting from upstairs. The girl

caught

our

attention because eyery ti me she fired and

we

dodged

out

of the wc1y she laughed. All at

once

rhere was silence.

The

girl let go of the machine gun,

stood up on the

parapet and

opened her arms. \