There is a hidden global superpower that dominates all our lives. It does not reside inside any government building or military base, but instead, rests snug as a bug within each and every one of us – the brain. In centuries past, it was widely believed that human consciousness was located somewhere between the heart and the gut. This medieval mindset meant people’s everyday awareness of life, and their surrounding relationships were a lot more visceral and emotional than our own. However, with the Age of Enlightenment the old world of deep feeling awareness was transformed into a more detached and reasoned approach to human cognizance. Over the years, neuroscientists have slowly revealed how the brain reigns supreme over every function of the human body, and all our everyday interactions with the world outside. It is both a living matrix of layered complexity, and a biochemical organ through which consciousness has become both self-reflective and ordered. As a result, our brain is viewed by many as the most fascinating and complex structure in the known universe.
Sadly, the brain also harbours the greatest everyday threat to all humanity. This threat comes from something that is often far more insidious and widespread than inequality, poverty and even climate disaster – our dreams. Not long ago, dreams were primary seen by psychoanalysts as the early alarm bells of emotional and psychological tensions which, left unchecked, could fester into a multitude of mental health disorders such as neurosis, psychosis, phobias etc.
Today, however, neuroscientists and psychologists have discarded this psycho-drama interpretation of dreams, preferring instead to see them as the unintended outcome of the brain simply undertaking much needed housekeeping while we sleep. Dreams emerge as a direct result of the brain recharging important memories that would otherwise be wiped clean by time. It is the arbitrariness of these memories being triggered that shape the ensuing drama of our dreams. Unfortunately, alongside the recharging of memories comes the unleashing of various electro-chemical and emotional reactions tied up with them.
Upon waking, these emotional and electrochemical disturbances permeate our everyday existence. This process can be both positive and sublime as witnessed in the form of the mysterious muse who, darkly veiled, imbues life and inspiration into poetry, literature, music and art.
In addition, there are the eureka moments experienced by scientists, mathematicians and various pioneers who following months and even years of grappling with a problem suddenly, after a peaceful sleep, experience the realisation of something that was always knowingly obvious. On a more intimate level, there is the heightened sexual arousal felt by millions of people as they emerge from their dreams drowsy, half asleep and half awake, delicately exploring the sensual surge towards climax. Lastly, and most significant of all, there is the emotional, psychological and social impact of dreams on our everyday wellbeing and relationship with others. How often have you heard someone claim that they are not a morning person, but instead are grumpy, bad tempered and full of resentment? It is these negative moods and feelings that become engrained within a person’s sense of being, as well as their everyday relationship with the world around them.
In essence, dreams are not the play ground of wishful illusions or the expression of deep seated mental health disorders, but accidents caused by one of our brain’s basic functions – the maintenance of important memories that could aid our survival. Amongst all its sublime riches, by randomly triggering our memories in the form of dreams, the brain sets in motion a flurry of biochemical reactions that linger and become the breeding ground for all sorts of social, emotional and psychological problems. It could be that dreams rather than money are the root of all evil..
Terry Fagan is a renowned Irish local historian and storyteller from Dublin’s North Inner City. Born in the 1950s and raised in the historic heart of what was once Europe’s largest red-light district, the Monto, Fagan witnessed firsthand the rapid transformation, and often erasure, of the surrounding Dublin tenements and their culture.
He is, to this day, one of the best living sources of lore and information about this lost world, as well as a collector of histories of it.
In the 1970s, Fagan began his historical work by recording oral histories from local residents, many of whom remembered formative events such as the 1913 Lock-Out, the 1916 Easter Rising, and the War of Independence and Civil War. These interviews also documented memories relating to life in Dublin’s tenements, experiences in industrial schools and Magdalen laundries, dock work, women’s roles, deaths of children, money lenders, orphanage life, and more, covering both the public and intensely personal history of inner-city Dublin.
Fagan’s work extends far beyond oral interviews. He is the longtime director of the North Inner City Folklore Project, an initiative that began as a jobs program and allowed him to preserve and publish stories from his community. Over decades, he has amassed a vast collection of tenement artefacts: photographs, books, letters, coins, dockers’ buttons, children’s toys. His vision has always been to open a dedicated museum so this vital social history is preserved within, and for, the local community rather than being housed elsewhere.
This museum has been a reality in the past and Terry’s current passion is to reestablish it.
Terry has published works such as “Monto: Madams, Murder and Black Coddle” and “Dublin Tenements: Memories of Life in Dublin’s Notorious Tenements,” both drawn from his extensive oral history collections. He is also a popular walking tour guide, interweaving tales from his own life as well as audio samples from the collections he oversaw. The Monto tour includes tales about brothel madams, dockers, and a “hidden Dublin” many would prefer to leave interred in the past.
A week after U.S. Democrat Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib wrote to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defence demanding a halt to the use of Guantanamo as a detention facility, CBS obtained internal government records exposing the Trump administration’s accelerating transfer of detainees. Departing from the earlier policy of only holding migrants from South America pending deportation, the U.S. is now also detaining migrants from Africa, Asia and Europe at Guantanamo.
This confirms earlier speculations in June that the U.S. would be expanding Guantanamo facility to detain thousands of migrants.
In response legal efforts have intensified to stop the U.S. government from sending detained migrants to Guantanamo. It has been argued that ‘the government has never before used a detention facility outside of the United States to detain noncitizens for immigration purposes.’ The issue of the U.S. illegal occupation of Guantanamo is not only marginalised, but silenced. Yet, it is the historical U.S. aggression against Cuba that provides the foundations for Guantanamo’s notoriety.
What Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth described as ‘the frontlines of the war against America’s southern border,’ has been U.S.-occupied territory in Cuba since 1903.
U.S. Occupation
U.S. intervention in Cuba’s War of Independence against Spain was the first step in denying the people their political autonomy. The Treaty of Paris (1898) forced Spain to relinquish Cuba and supposedly guaranteed the island’s independence. The Platt Amendment (1901), however, established eight conditions restricted Cuban independence, while giving the U.S. the right to intervene in its affairs, ostensibly to defend Cuban independence. The Platt Amendment’s eight clauses were included in a permanent treaty between both countries that was signed in 1903.
Notably, Article 1 of the Platt Amendment states, ‘The Government of Cuba shall never enter into any treaty or other compact with any foreign power or powers which will impair or tend to impair the independence of Cuba, nor in any manner authorize or permit any foreign power of powers to obtain by colonization or for military or naval purposes, or otherwise, lodgment in or control over any portion of said island.’
The U.S., however, excluded itself from the stipulations in Article I. Article IV states ‘All acts of the United States in Cuba during its military occupancy thereof are ratified and validated, and all lawful rights acquired thereunder shall be maintained and protected.’
Writing to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901, U.S. Chief of Staff Leonard Wood said: ‘Of course, Cuba has been left with little or no independence by the Platt Amendment… The island will gradually become Americanised, and in due time we shall have one of the richest and most desirable possessions anywhere in the world.’
The Platt Amendment also required Cuba to sell or lease lands for coaling or naval stations, under the guise of enabling the U.S. to maintain Cuban independence.
In February 1903, the U.S. and Cuba signed an agreement for the lease of Guantanamo, supposedly for the sole use ‘as coaling and naval stations only, and for no other purpose.’ The agreement gave the U.S. complete jurisdiction over the stipulated areas. The lease for Guantanamo was set at $2,000 to be paid annually in gold. In 1934, the Treaty of Reciprocity replaced the Platt Amendment and the 1903 Permanent Treaty, except for clauses relating to Guantanamo. The Treaty of Reciprocity explicitly stated that until the U.S. decides to abandon Guantanamo, or both countries reach an agreement, the U.S. ‘shall continue to have the territorial extent which it now occupies.’ By 1952, Guantanamo’s naval station had expanded to include a training centre, besides a naval station, naval air station, and a Marine Corps and warehouse base.
Fidel Castro on a visit to Washington.
U.S. Imperialist Aggression
Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista on January 1,1959. On March 5, 1959, Fidel demanded that the U.S. relinquishe its occupation of Guantanamo. In protest against the U.S. illegal occupation of Cuban territory, the Cuban revolutionary government stopped cashing the lease cheques after 1960. In that same year, the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Cuba.
A 1962 declassified memorandum states that if Cuba had to ‘denounce and repudiate’ the agreements upon which the U.S. holds the Guantanamo base, the U.S. ‘would be justified in resisting with force,’ given that no termination date was agreed upon.
By that time, the U.S. had already attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro. In 1961, the U.S. authorised the Bay of Pigs Invasion – a counterrevolutionary attack planned during the Eisenhower administration and caried out under President J. F. Kennedy – in which a group of Cuban exiles trained by the C.I.A. attempted to infiltrate Cuba. They were defeated by the Cuban revolutionary forces within seventy-two hours. The defeat prompted Kennedy to launch the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and in 1962, and the U.S. imposed its long-standing blockade on Cuba.
Between 1961 and 1962, Cuba recorded at least three attacks by U.S. soldiers against Cuban civilians in Guantanamo. Manuel Prieto Gomez was interrogated and physically tortured at the military base for allegedly stealing documents relating to the naval base pay roll. Gomez, who named Rear Admiral F. W. Fenno as his interrogator and torturer, said he was targeted for openly supporting Fidel Castro. Ruben Lopez Sabariego, who also supported the revolution and who worked at the base, was detained and murdered. His body was buried in a shallow grave at the naval base. Rodolfo Rosell Salas, a Cuban fisherman, was found dead in his boat in Guantanamo territory, his body showing signs of severe torture.
These first three murders were followed by other instances of U.S. forces killing Cubans in Guantanamo. In 1976, the Cuban constitution declared the earlier treaties regarding Guantanamo null and illegal, since they were signed under unequal conditions that diminished Cuba’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The U.S. also used Guantanamo as a training base for foreign intervention in South America. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter announced the U.S. would conduct military manoeuvres in Guantanamo, reported in the press in 1980 as Operation Solid Shield 80, which included the transportation of an additional 1,200 U.S. Marines. Further plans and drills for military intervention in South America took place in 1982 under Operation Ocean Venture 82, which included a simulation of invading Puerto Rico. Two years later, the Pentagon sent a report to Congress, detailing a plan to spend $43.4 million to improve Guantanamo, as well as upgrading military installations in South America by 1988. In 1987, the U.S. announced Operation Solid Shield 87, which consisted of a practice response to a hypothetical assistance call from Honduras in case of an invasion from Nicaragua – as well as a response to a Cuban reaction in case of such a scenario.
Protesters at Ft. Huachuca against the US policy of endorsing torture.
Violations of international Law
Besides the aggression against Cuba, the U.S. began using Guantanamo as a detention facility in the 1970s, when it intercepted boats carrying Haitians. Those on board were sent to Guantanamo for detention and processing. The situation was repeated in 1991, when the U.S. backed the Haitian Army to overthrow the democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Using Guantanamo as a detention base rested on the ambiguous conditions under which the territory was leased. The U.S. retained jurisdiction over Guantanamo while Cuba retained sovereignty. The U.S. government hasargued, however, that U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction over Guantanamo since it does not hold sovereignty over the territory.
Since the onset of the so-called War on Terror, Cuban territory has been exploited by the U.S., which committed atrocious acts of torture. These were linked to further violations of international law such as the extraordinary rendition of alleged terror suspects, which made Guantanamo a black site for C.I.A. enhanced interrogation techniques.
Several European countries participated in the C.I.A.’s extraordinary rendition flights. Austria, Italy, Poland, Portugal and the U.K. refused to cooperate during investigations carried out by rapporteur Giovanni Fava. The report states that the C.I.A. operated 1,245 flights within European airspace to U.S. bases in Europe, some of which were linked to extraordinary rendition and also to Guantanamo.
While President G. W. Bush publicly defended Guantanamo’s use in the C.I.A.’s extraordinary rendition program in 2010, Barack Obama had announced his intention to close the detention facility within a year – a statement he reneged upon four months after suspending the trials.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez has regularly criticised U.S. intervention in Cuba, includingthe use of Guantanamo as a detention and torture site. It only gains symbolic political momentum, however, when it comes to the illegal U.S. blockade against Cuba. Regarding Guantanamo and the Western front against migration, Cuba’s right to reclaim its territory is overshadowed by both well-meaning and ill-intentioned policies. Human rights organisations are calling for the detention facilities to be closed, but ending the U.S. illegal occupation of Guantanamo is central to closing the detention facilities, an occupation which Cuba has denounced since the revolution.
As Fidel Castro wrote, ‘The U.S. base at Guantanamo was necessary in order to humiliate and to carry out the dirty deeds that take place there. If we must await the downfall of the system, we will wait … Cuba will always be waiting in a state of combat readiness.’
Feature Image: A tent facility at a disused NSGB air terminal used to hold Haitian migrants
The magic place lay under a blanket of snow. On the ridge of the park he walked, a silhouette shifting, hunched and thoughtful under night. The lone trudging figure, wearing a long black wool coat and a brown fedora, moved carefully through the virgin white crunch towards the warren of streets by the Thames. He paused and felt the cold wind on his face as the panorama light of London grew before him. The city had grown to block out the starlight. Everything was quiet. The park was locked but he had jumped the fence and wandered in the snow past the general’s statue that stands watch over the sleeping city. He had something particular in mind. This would be the night of his death. Above the bridge, watching the river, the angel quietly waited.
His thoughts were closing in on him, condensing the entire galaxy into his field of vision. Every sinew, every hair on his legs and arms, his liver and his feet, his knees, his fingertips, and his nose, were simply a mortal vehicle for his thoughts. A carriage for his soul, for his fleeting being, anchored in evermore. The falling snow was now resting on him, but he was happy to let it settle, comforted by the nature’s way. He had spent most of that day walking the city streets, seeking aloneness among the architecture. He could ignore himself in the crowd. He thought to himself “The London crowd will only end when mankind ends. Maybe that’s why it can be so pitiless.” The blizzard had arrived hand in hand with sundown and the snowfall continued into the night. It sought the soul that cannot flee, that will not hide. It sought the lone figure, who’s spirit was in rebellion. He had decided to murder the endless voice in his head. It was however indecision itself that had brought him to this sad moment.
London was keeping him alive like a patient on a drip. The breathing history of the buildings, the ancient lineaments that welcome each generation, giving the children clues as what to do next, held him in its familiar embrace. The ghosts that had built it had walked him home many times. Now they had fallen as silent as the snow. He looked out at the skyline and registered how it had changed so dramatically within his short lifetime. The glass towers becoming a money made monolith before his eyes, but somehow lacking Manhattans punch. The lack of stone in the shining spectacle reminded the man of the impermanence of glass and metal. Not like good old St Paul’s cathedral, smiling in the vista. He looked ahead down the pavement and saw that the white drift was untouched.
He looked at his phone. One twenty-three in the morning. Maybe no-one had been here. He looked back and saw the single line of footprints he had made being slowly erased by the blizzard. He looked around. There was no-one. He suddenly felt the familiar loneliness, that old dog, the pang of memory. It was the city itself. Empty as the soul of sorrow. Every single generation now gone, every one up until these last living three, vanished, returned to oblivion. He looked up at the snowfall in the lamplight and it eased his troubled mind. He had wanted to die. Not now though, not in that moment, registering the long-forgotten struggles, the long-forgotten victories of the unremembered ones that had brought him here, to this moment. Mesmerized, he stood still for a while. London lay before him like an eternal thing. That night the falling snow was beautiful, and he stayed long enough to understand.
There was one place open. A private party in someone’s house going late into the night. The house stood on the edge of the river with a Christmas tree of white twinkling lights in the window. There were cheerful voices inside, warm in the snowy night. It was a birthday. The stranger wearing the brown fedora and the long coat opened the door and the patrons registered his presence with a dart of the eyes in the candle light. Dancing between the chattering voices was music. The beautiful sound of violins. He sat down in a black leather chair and closed his eyes. He started wondering about music. Music the liberator, the soul of dreams, emancipator of captives, of slaves, uplifter of the downhearted. He wondered whether music was evidence of something unique in us. Music, sorrow and saviour. Creator of dark and light. The meaning of barren planets. The fertile spirit of the wasteland. Crying tears of sorrow and tears of joy. It is both winning and losing. It is hope. It is delight. It is anger tamed. It is dancing. It is the life in the smile, somehow surviving the death of the world.
Above the bridge the statue of the angel with its wings set to heaven watched the Thames flowing, waiting in silence under the falling snow. ‘It has the power to make you brave enough to die.’ He thought ‘Who masters who? The music or the musician?” The lone figure walked out onto the street and lighting a cigarette looked up at the sky as if it was watching him. When the cigarette was done and the cold of the snow had been felt, he re-entered in search of one more drink. He sat back in the chair with another glass of Jameson. The people at the party knew him but he didn’t know them, because he had garnered some fame. He regretted not being inconspicuous in the world. ‘It would have helped my art if I was unknown’ he thought to the point of melancholy. He had been drinking whiskey heavily the night before and it had burnt his brain-peace. When he slowly opened his eyes that morning, registering the havoc lonely rocking and rolling can have, and not just on the liver, he realised his mind-zone was also faltering. Between his brain and his mind he now found himself floating. It had taken him the whole day to recover from the hangover. He had laid in the single bed long enough for it to become uncomfortable. He got up, washed his face only, lit a cigarette and looked out of the window into the pale winter glow of the street and remembered he was young enough. Life took on new meaning, a subtle charge of being, without foreboding or fear. Someone offered him a line of cocaine on a recently microwaved plate. The crisp twenty-pound note bit gently into his nostril as he breathed the powder up his nose feeling slightly invigorated against his drunkenness. He smiled as he handed the plate and note back, but stayed seated as if the party was a film and he was in the theatre just to watch.
Next came the green faerie. He looked into the glass of absinthe as if it was a beautiful painting and as he lifted the glass to his mouth he thought of her. How could he not? As it hit his throat and he swallowed, all he heard was music in his head, above the chattering of the kitchen party. The white lights of the Christmas tree made his eyes glow. He suddenly felt at home in his wanderings for the first time that day. He drank another whiskey back and sighed a great sigh of relief. It took him a minute to adjust to its potency. He realised he was drunk and experiencing a curdling head rush, so he stood up out of the leather chair and walked slowly and deliberately, giving accidently the false impression he was sober. A sudden rush of energy came over him, like the surge of a cold shower. He thanked the strangers who implored him to stay so they could indulge in his celebrity, bade them farewell and exited the place in favour of the snowy streets. The sweet noise of the party evaporated on the lane. It was the middle of the night and he was alone again. Still darkness. The angel watched the river from high up on her perch.
He trudged on through the thick snow. The labyrinth of London was not unfriendly. He made his way forward, trudging through the whirling white, back towards the heart of the city. Now the thing that tormented him didn’t need to be killed. It had gone into hiding. The strong drinks he had consumed were coursing through his veins, but the falling snow had begun to retreat, its diminished ferocity had tempered his awe. His mind returned to its once contented state. It wrapped itself around his body again until he could feel no cold, and see only the hollow of the night.
The lone figure had walked nearly a mile when he looked up and saw a police car with its main lights off, driving slowly alongside him. Annoyance, followed by a dim throng of adrenaline. Could be fun to run. He avoided eye contact with the passing car. He noticed a taxi cab on the other side of the road. The man waved him in and the snow fell from him as he sat down in the car and closed the door. He smiled to see the police lights disappear down the road and gently kneaded the bag of powder in his coat pocket. He said ‘Shaftesbury Avenue’ and the car began to move. He rested his head back and watched as the snowy city passed him by, knowing for sure, for certain if he lived, that some years from now he would only be able to remember glimpses of this undiluted beauty. How can someone remember their exact sequence of thoughts when so much time has passed? Memory is an image in which sometimes lives a feeling. He conceived again his plan. Perhaps the end of pain approached, the end of suffering for good. He began to tremble.
Thoughts of Soho re-emerged in his mind’s eye. That’s where the lonely people go. That was his tribe. He thanked the driver and got out and saw he wasn’t the only one lost. He walked past prostitutes who beckoned him to join. It was a potent mix, desire and loneliness. Perhaps the most potent. Disregarding humiliation, the cause of almost all violence, his temptation was reflected in his change of pace. He carried on with the melting appearance of a fake smile. One of the prostitutes dressed in a skirt of red leather asked for a cigarette. He spontaneously turned around and handed her one. The lack of mercy and compassion in her eyes chilled his spirit more than any winter night. He sensed something wicked deep inside her, but then thought it was only himself, reflected. He concluded as he turned and walked away toward the river that she had killed more innocence than most. ‘Good old London. It is beautiful in the snowfall.’ He thought. Sometimes people have been able to achieve this rarity, to build an environment that reflects their imagination. As the white haciendas of Andalusia are built for the sun, so London is built for the people now forgotten, the barely remembered past of the world, and its unintelligible, mysterious future. The lone figure had bitten and hit himself countless times and cried bitter tears deep into the night. Now he understood why. Now his life was nearly over, in ruins, he finally understood what his tears had meant. They were what he was destined to become. And how he had been ordained to die, by his own soul. He turned and walked down elegant sideroads to the river.
He looked down an empty street and saw no one. Then, from behind the corner at the end of the block he saw the head of a stag, with large antlers, slowly emerge around the street corner. The large, strange eyes stared straight at him. He blinked to awaken himself, to catch his senses. It was obviously a prop, being worn by a man. But the man was obscured by the wall. Then the arm and hand appeared, a long black arm with hoofs for hands rested on the wall, but still the weird head, motionless, stared out at him.
“What?” He thought. Only questions, only surprise. It offered no immediate threat, but its rareness induced fear. The strange looking animal head stared at the lone figure, immovable and unflinching. They stood there staring at each other for long drawn-out seconds. Then slowly, the stag’s head with its large black eyes retreated back behind the wall leaving the lone figure totally alone. In the unexplainable moment it began to snow again. He quickly span around to see if anyone was there, if anyone had seen what he had just seen, but there was no one. Only the snow, falling from the night.
He took a half-drunk miniature bottle of whiskey from the deep pocket of his coat and drank it back, skilfully opening his gullet to allow the fiery liquid to pass. The aftershock nauseated him so he washed it down with a quick cigarette and walked away from the other worldly scene with a quick pace, rolling his ankle on the snowy cobbles as he went. He stood still in the falling snow, unable to detect any psychodelia within or without his senses. He made his way quickly to the river.
Soon he reached the dark brooding swirls of the Thames and it seemed to him that the river itself was dancing. He looked over the iron railing. The Thames devoured the snowfall as if it had dominion over the sky. In the near distance was the bridge, devoid of all movement. With clumsy drunken movements he climbed up on the wall and as he stood up, he realised his feet had fissured the untouched, untainted snow. He stood there alone and looked out at the old magnificent buildings on the other side of the river. There was no-one there, no-one to tell him to get down. But a part of his soul wanted to die. A great part. He was unexpectedly reminded of the beauty that humankind holds in its hand, but the boundlessness of its potential was somehow being blocked out like starlight behind the blackness of clouds. London was singing. The falling snow was obscured by the black river night. He looked at the distant bridge and saw the angel. There it was, made of stone, waiting still.
And then, from on top of the bridge, the stags head slowly ascended above the grey brick wall. The lone figure rubbed his eyes. The weird stag was up on the bridge staring down at him. How he had got there so quickly the lone figure didn’t understand. His breath was swallowed up by the adrenaline rush of fear. His footing felt unsteady on the snow-covered wall and he had the sudden sensation he was about to fall, fall, fall down into the dark river. The wind and snow took up and blew the lone figure’s hat clean off his head. He wobbled as he quickly stretched for it but it had gone into the babbling darkness below. He caught sight of it in the light of a street lamp, right way up, riding the white washing waves of the river. It sank beneath the gloom. He sighed sadly to see it drown, like departing an old trusted friend forever. He looked up and the stag was still there on the bridge staring down at him, with those strange, dark eyes. The wind stormed in and blew his hair up into his face, but now he only had the will to let it do its work. Staring through the swirl he saw the stag looking directly at him, motionless in the blizzard. Then the arms of the stag man raised and his hands rested on the antlers but still those black eyes were fixed, penetrating the stormy night. The lone figure, terrified, looked down at the river and heard the sound of the rushing waves calling.
And then, he heard music rising. The melody exploded through the curtain. His soul began to shine. Hiding in the visible, the music burst in colours, lighting the lone figure’s eyes like underwater lamplight reaching the surface of a lake. The music. The beautiful music. The lone figure wept. He remembered kindness. Through his tears he saw his hat re-emerge on the surface. The dream world came back to him. The world of imagination. He looked up and there was the stag man, now standing up on the wall of the bridge. He suddenly felt frightened to see the pagan thing. The stag man stood still, looking straight at him. A feeling came over the lone figure to jump down off the wall. But he stayed. It was as if he was beckoning the strange apparition to make the first move. The cold wind whipped up. The adrenaline surging through the lone figure’s body kept him warm enough. Then the man on the bridge took off the stag’s head and stared down at him. ‘It can’t be’ said the lone figure out loud as he looked at the man. ‘No! It can’t be!!’ He screamed at the night. It was his own face up on the bridge, staring down at himself. Tears burnt through the freezing air. The stag man smiled and dived off the high bridge with a look of joy on his face, down into the Thames and under he went. The lone figure could feel his heart beating fast as he looked at the place where the stag man had landed. It was time. His pain would soon end, and his joy. Heaven and hell waited in the waves. He leapt from the wall into the mist, with his arms stretched out in front of him, his hands hitting the ice-cold water first. Unwatched by any living soul, the lamplit murk of the river consumed them both. They were seen no more. High above, the stone angel watched the scene, her tears made of rain, her open wings gathering the falling snow.
Aged sixteen, I started trading sex for meth. There was no discussion about this with the drug dealers. It was understood. To me, this was a natural progression. My stepfather began to gawk at me when my first breast bud appeared, then molested me when I was twelve. Until I left home for college, I suffered his ongoing body comments and threats, which proved him interested in his sexual excitement and not his fatherly duties. Perhaps even worse, the predatory behavior I experienced within my own family created a dangerous foundation that others soon would exploit.
By thirteen, many adult men would stare and some asked me out. That year, an eighteen-year-old had sex with me on a beach, when I couldn’t find the words to say no. A family friend molested me while I was on the phone with my mother, apparently confident I wouldn’t tell her. He was right as that didn’t occur to me because she never intervened when my stepfather beat me. By sixteen, I’d had sexual encounters with at least six men more than ten years older. They all expressed astonishment at my prowess but otherwise had not referenced the age implications.
Each traumatic event, including the regular physical attacks at home, propelled me into a search for escape. Within a month of the initial sexual assault, I often consumed alcohol. I added marijuana, then pills, then acid. At sixteen, I found my drug of choice, methamphetamine, and began shooting up at seventeen. I was in full-bore addiction when I graduated high school.
I had disconnected from my body and emotions long before I used drugs. This strategy helped me endure life in a house of horrors. The chemicals made this technique easier to maintain. As my substance use disorder progressed, so did my promiscuity statistics. I earned the approval of men at the top of the local drug dealer tier because of my sexual skills and attractiveness. If they weren’t available, I’d have sex with almost anyone who filled my spoon with meth, even strangers. With the guys from my hometown, I accommodated them to reinforce the friendship bond or in an unstated exchange for speed. Once a dealer I’d known since childhood suggested I blow him, handed me a half-ounce bag of meth, and told me to take as much as I wanted.
The “sex and drugs and rock and roll” motto of the day afforded me a bit of cover. But that slogan’s fun aspect didn’t apply. Sometimes these men, even those I categorized as buddies, would become aggressive if I said no to sex. For example, I occasionally slept with the ex-con who first provided me with meth. One afternoon, he tried to convince me to give him oral sex, which I politely refused, since I needed to sleep after a three-day drug run. He pushed my head down repeatedly, trying to force me. I cried and after a while he left. Later, when I ran into him at the bar, he bought me a drink and gave me a speed vial. I interpreted this as an apology. Afterward, I’d hang out with him in a group but never alone.
This was a rare healthy decision. More typical, I took rides from men I barely knew or went to their apartments to shoot up. The other meth-addicted girls warned me against this. But I didn’t care about the risk, as long as I gained access to the drug I craved. Plus, in addition to the deep drive to consume meth, threatening situations felt familiar and energizing. I often wondered if I’d survive the night but did it anyway.
And to be pretty provided a rare feeling of power, as short-lived and superficial as it was. At times, my promiscuity caused me to writhe in disappointment with myself. But I shoved aside such thoughts. I wasn’t thrilled when someone mentioned that, behind my back, people said I was a slut, that horrible word society uses to put down women but not their male partners. Still, I didn’t care enough about my reputation to change. In my mind, the greater the number of boys, and especially adults, who desired me, the greater my value. I didn’t appreciate that the validation I sought through promiscuity exacerbated the pain that compelled me to fall even deeper into my addiction.
So, when I entered recovery for my methamphetamine use disorder, I felt ashamed of my promiscuity. Until, in treatment for post-traumatic stress and anxiety, my counselor pointed out that most of my earliest sexual experiences were crimes against me. This list includes my stepfather’s molestation and sexual threats, the family friend who grabbed my naked breasts, every adult male who had sex with me when I was under the legal age of consent, and each sexual encounter where I complied due to fear.
Gradually, as a result of hard work in therapy, I came to understand the connection between trauma, addiction, and my actions. I also learned that one-third of abused adolescents develop a substance use disorder by age eighteen. And those, like me, with four childhood traumas or greater, are six times as likely to do so in their lifetime. Similarly, this group is four times more likely to start sexual activity earlier, to become pregnant as a teenager, and to have over fifty sexual partners. While it is true that some women make these choices freely, which is their right, many fall into the behavior for reasons they barely fathom.
I didn’t have any of this information when I was sleeping around. Gaining this new understanding released the self-condemnation and allowed me to empathize with my younger self. I had made these self-harming and life-threatening choices because all these sexual assaults, and the physical abuse, destroyed any belief that I deserved better or had anything else to offer. Looking back, I even congratulated myself for entering into a monogamous relationship in my early twenties. Because this was long before I began the long slog to heal from my addiction and the emotional scars from my childhood.
It’s been thirty-one years since I began my recovery journey. During this process, I married my long-term partner, went to law school, and was appointed a federal judge. I also learned to recognize and then address the numerous effects of my trauma history. While I still struggle with anxiety, these episodes are less intense and briefer. Instead of making choices that add to my pain, I now value serenity and contentment.
Still, I clearly recall how, when I engaged in high-risk activities like sex with strangers, I intermittently would think, “I’ve lost my mind” or “I must not care if I live or die.” This message also came from others, mostly through their horrified expressions when they heard what I’d done.
What I, and my drug cohorts, should have thought was, “What happened to you that you’re driven to act this way?”
Todo lo que vemos o nos parece, no es sino un ensueño en un ensueño! ‘Everything we see or seem to see is nothing but a dream within a dream’
– Ruben Dario
My father was cremated in Dublin, but he belonged to the heat. In Ireland, he carried Nicaragua on his shoulders—low, heavy, as if the land itself rode with him. He spoke in a voice that never lost the edge of elsewhere –somewhere tropical, somewhere distant. He loved it here, but never lost fully his unique Latin American flair, which, as you can imagine, stood out in a place like Dublin. He wasn’t like the other Irish dads. I used to think he sounded like a story half-told. Now I wish I had asked for the remainder of that story. However, when we wish, it is always too late.
As I stood there, the street, Calle Cuba, was quieter than I remembered it. After many years, I had returned to Central America, my father’s land – the land of my origins and where half of my blood line lies. I wondered what I was going to do. I was now twenty-five, no longer a child, and no longer accompanied by my mother – or, by my father. Having decided to go back to Nicaragua with a backpack, a grief-stricken heart, and many unanswered questions, I was now present in the liminal space of my father’s past. This was where his roots lie. Where he grew up, worked hard. Where he looked to escape from. This particular neighbourhood in Managua now seemed dusty and desolate, with only the curious eyes of the odd passerby and the noise of distant traffic from the main street. The fragments that remained in my memory from when I saw it last seemed louder– brighter. I had come here when I was twelve years old, too young to know the meaning of what was rooted in this land, or the meaning of what it is to be of mixed nationality. Or the meaning of anything, really. No one at home in Ireland ever talked about this side of my heritage. But dad, he ensured I made the journey with him across the wild Atlantic to see the little house that he was building – for me. He always spoke with a quiet pride about what home was to him, or about relatives that I didn’t know. There were a multitude of them. I knew names and names knew me. But that was about it. Even then I felt like a guest in my own story – always listening intently – yet thinking that the stories seemed too hot, too loud, and too far away.
Memory plays funnily in soft focus. Sun-drenched and half-formed, Nicaragua, until I returned, lived more in feeling than in reality. Both he and the past were never truly mine to hold. Learning to count to ten in Spanish when I was twelve was the closest I ever got to it. Jumping up the staircase in the family home with a cousin, one step at a time. Uno, dos, tres. The numbers slipped easily off my tongue, like butter. They were always there, but never had the chance to emerge. Little me was so estranged. Happily Irish, but unaware of this other world that ran through my blood. I remembered the mango tree that grew above this unfinished house, and eating the fruit that would drop lazily onto the roof. I would suck the tropical, flesh-like yellow goodness, right down to the seed, and eat it with salt. I recall the noise of the streets and the colourful birds—how alive everything felt. Even the pavement was breathing, or shimmering rather in the hot sun my mother could not handle.
I remembered the bitter, cacao smell of the coffee plantations we would visit, the sun-lit bamboo, the verdant palm trees and the wild dogs whose bones protruded like knives. I remembered the distant relatives that embraced me with besos and amor. How loved I felt – as the big brown eyed, curly-haired Anita, who had come all the way from Ireland. I felt almost like a prize that my dad had brought to showcase from that far away, capitalistic land in the Western world. And mostly I remembered how, over there, my father was central to it all. The magnet that connected the pieces. His energy was magnetic – too powerful at times – causing friends and family to flock to him. Fast forward sixteen years, and things had changed. He was no longer there to protect me, and the stillness that I felt when I stepped out onto the street reflected exactly that.
Perhaps a part of the reason for my going there again amidst a backpacking trip throughout Central America was to gain some sense of closure. I thought that by being in this foreign and mystical land far from home, I would feel a noteworthy connection and something within me would stir. This, I suppose, was ultimately the goal of my trip, having travelled down through Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and finally, five months later, to Nicaragua. When we arrived on a night bus from El Salvador, the air was hot and heavy as everyone unloaded from the van. There were no presents under a tree, no jingle bells, and certainly no partridge in a pear tree. But this is where I chose to spend this Christmas. A year and a half after my father’s funeral, I guessed being there would allow the unresolved within me to resolve itself. Untangle the threads of grief gently full of quiet resolve, like loosening a knot in silk– carefully, slowly, so nothing tears. Perhaps this was all I thought I had left to reach my father again. And when it didn’t, when it wouldn’t budge, I felt the stillness, the nothingness, that comes after death. The quiet whisper in the dark that tells you ‘there are no more chances’. No more years to resolve the distance or work on a relationship that, just maybe, could have been better. I discovered then, that with death comes release. And instead of idealising and imagining the place in my mind from afar, I saw it in its true colours, miles and miles across the rough Atlantic.
I lost him in a physical sense in June of 2023. Though we hadn’t always been close, his absence tore something open in me—something I hadn’t known was holding me together. It felt like I had lost a layer of myself, the kind that only one who has lost a parent can conceive of. Grief quickly arrived as a hole in my heart that I thought could never be filled again. It’s funny how time works, it plays tricks. Now I feel guilty that I am not sad enough. At first, the sadness was all-consuming. Now, it feels insufficient. When I think back to the weeks following his death, the loss seemed unconquerable- almost like an impassable landscape. Tears would come as I drove to work, causing me to pull over. A song would play, and sadness would follow, my mental state undone by a single lyric. I thought then that this hole could never be filled, that this experience, or the dark shadow of it, would shape me forever more. Now I know that, although this hole can never be truly filled, light can filter in. It can come streaming gracefully in hues of gold, through love, people and moments, and slowly allow me to come back together.
I found out he was sick in spring, and he died in summer. The sun was beginning to slip behind the terracotta rooftop of my home in Central Valencia, Spain, when my phone began vibrating. I had finished teaching English for the evening and my feet were outstretched on the terrace, as I took in the honeyed light that makes you forget that the world can be cruel. When the phone rang I picked up right away, delighted to practice my now fluid Spanish with my father.
He spoke, ‘the doctor says my cancer is terminal, and that I only have months to live’.
I paused. I questioned. The soft breeze blew.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The cancer has spread- to my skin, my lungs, all over.’
I drew in a breath.
And with that, came the kind of loud silence that hangs, the only kind that follows the word terminal.
With that I made a return to Ireland, heading straight to my dad’s apartment in a heavy mist, the grey weather cloaking the city like a shroud. It was a stark contrast from sunny Valencia. Dublin was the same as it always was, red brick and grey, the dirty old town I had grown up in. I loved it and hated it at the same time. I sensed that there was a storm coming. The car radio had said so.
When I arrived at his building, I paused before knocking. He opened the door, and immediately I could see the physical decline. In just a matter of months, the cancer had begun to eat him alive. Inglorious sickness, and soon to be untimely death. Through cigarette smoke, he pulled me into a hug, but the strong and macho man that I knew him to be was fading. He had grown more fragile, and instead of muscle I felt bone. His face had lost some of its colour. It was still my father’s embrace, but it carried the unmistakable weight of what had begun to slip, slip away. The potential to build on our relationship, get closer again – slipping and scattering like sand through open fingers.
I saw in him, the fading light of a slow dying star.
In the following weeks, I came to understand that there is no substance to time. Like light or air, it is ever present but cannot be grasped; even if you know it is running out. I also learned that there are limitations to language, and that sometimes more than words are needed to express meaning. Words cannot fill the void which follows such a loss. I did not want to believe that the doctor’s words were real when a fresh afternoon in April brought us to the GP. Sitting in a cold room in the practice in Phibsborough, she repeated the words again: ‘Months, or weeks, to live’. The words were loud, flying off her lips and into my consciousness. My father laughed when she said them, but I saw the pain in his eyes. He didn’t want me to hear them either.
How can one possibly process this information? Did his life, or what it had been until this moment, flash before his eyes? Did the unfinished house in Managua, far, far away, rise like a mirage in his mind?
But the doctor didn’t laugh, she was dead serious in fact. She furrowed her brow.
‘You’ll need to consider making funeral arrangements’, she said. I didn’t respond, and neither did he.
Her words hung in the air and we allowed them to sit there for a while.
Outside, cars whizzed by and people went about their daily lives, chatting about this, that, and the weather.
The Hospice
In the months that followed I was consumed by hospice visits, surrounded by illness.
I was very much alive, and a regular attender in a space filled with dying people. His room was at the back, and had a view over the beautiful garden where flowers were in bloom. Pink hydrangeas, mostly, and potted plants that were scattered all around. On good days, we spent afternoons outside in the sunshine. I would bring him out in a wheelchair, as by then, walking left him breathless. We sat together in the sunshine and shared cigarettes. It felt like a quiet rebellion on his part. No chemotherapy, no quitting smoking. The killing object between his lips had, perhaps, lost its power to kill. Without saying so, he knew the damage was done. Ordinary instants passed uneventfully as I waited for the world to shift beneath my feet. But the days were normal. We did not speak much about death. In fact, we spoke about everything other than what was actually happening. Denial and avoidance echoed – loud, and strangely comforting. Family came from overseas – Nicaragua and Atlanta – to visit. We took pictures, shared meals, and still, I could not cry. I felt as if I was a character in Dali’s Dreamscape, ever present to witness his melting clock and the unraveling of time. Reality danced and played and all we could do was wait for him to become the photograph on the mantelpiece.
Salvador Dalí. The Persistence of Memory. 1931.
They say that people choose their time to die. When it happened I was the only one in the hospice room with him. It was a sunny day in mid June, in St Francis Hospice, Raheny. The head nurse, Anne, an angel complete with white hair and a heart of gold, had called me out of work to say that his condition had grown weaker; he was slipping. I got there as soon as I could, and once I ran into the room, his frail body reached out to me. The flip had officially switched, I was now the strength that my father needed, just as I had, my whole life, needed his. Although he could not speak properly, he saw me. There was still life in his eyes although the rest of him had given up. I think he knew that it was his time. Over the course of an hour or so, nurses came and went from the room. Outside, I could hear the soft clatter of trolleys and the low murmur of them exchanging life updates. They attended to us as they attended to other patients. His condition was notably weaker, but nothing unusual – they still thought he had weeks. Every noise from outside or notification on my phone was a terrifying reminder that time hadn’t stopped. But, to me, it had.
We were approaching the summer solstice and the clouds outside drifted and resembled white silk on a canvas of deep blue. As the light in the room changed, my dad’s breathing did too—long, deep, and laboured breaths. He was slipping like smoke from a fire no longer burning. My heart racing, I panicked, rang the bell. Anne came to help. I spoke to him, telling him everything would be okay. He looked at me; a helpless look that still haunts me. Anne began to speak, words of comfort and affirmation. Softly she said ‘yes, nice and easy, that’s it, it’s happening’. I just held his hand. He gasped. And gasped again. Looked at me with those shining brown eyes. Fixed his gaze. And suddenly they were glazed. A glazed look that I will never forget. His hand slipped from mine, and went cold. Silence. Anne walked over, gently took his silver bracelet off and placed it on my wrist. The room was still. But of course, it was filled with pain and release. She closed his eyes.
There is a fine line between life and death, and in that moment I experienced it. I left the room and went into an adjacent one; a reading room overlooking the garden, intended just for visitors. I cried out louder than I ever had before. Everyone around heard me scream. Finally, the emotion had surfaced. The tears had come.
Or should I say: the release of love.
There is no proper way to grieve, just as there is no overarching meaning to be found to life. Letting go feels like a betrayal. But perhaps it is essential for the living to stay living, while the dead remain close to our hearts, forever. Just maybe this is how we keep living—carrying our loved ones; not in the past, but in the breath between ordinary moments.
She was summoned back from the dead, a spirit with form to keep me company, sword, sister for me, brother- man. I missed her, was lonely so she came. Her voice tore down buildings as she flew around me, and though it comforted me, the price was too high, people were going to get hurt, the earth was sinking in, the ground cracked and sunk. My sister brought me to a canyon, vast desert open plains and still they crumbled from my dead wife’s voice. This place was suitable, but was no way to live. I would have my love by my side but no one could come near. And she was a floating thing, I could never really touch her, flying pixie with dark air, dark hair. ‘This is the only safe place’ my sister said, but even then the mountain tops were crumbling on the horizon. Blue sky yellow ground and yellow tumbling mountain tips breaking away and falling down. ‘Send her back’
‘So many bad things happened here. So many good things can still happen here.’ Photo by Luisa Felicia Clauss Taino symbol of Protection of the Earth Mother taken during the solar eclipse 2024 in a basement where a mother and child were murdered by the father.
Girls have fathers. Conjuring the man but keeping him in the bag. I can have all the dinner I want at this kind of resort. And everything’s ok with this girl now right? I think she came out of the bag enjoying a raven’s crow. Beehive around my arm at night. Thrown against walls and not held warm. In a pit of hate, pleasant petals falling over the dainty hunt and slaughter.
I Loved the Gauntlet and There Was No Other Way. Album Released October 29th 2024. Photo and images by Uhuruheru Costume, headpiece & makeup by Uhurumatahari with help from their daughter Laxmi.
Such a relief to breathe a dream, loving the solid ground and also the spirit of breath coming on like a volcano. Dreams that were written on parts of my body were part of something else you were interested in. A point of light was written something about you on my side, showing you were also written inside me. There were so many words, so many words that you were interested in.
On the cusp of welcome, on the cusp on invasion. Do you feel you are a soul-less cog in a wheel? Do you regret every time you push people away? What is it that people meet if they don’t meet your heart? I’m dying to meet you in a space that’s strong enough to really see you and to be fully seen. I think I’m ready, I want to try. I want to sing your song that’s my song too and get well paid. Steer me away for terror and into kindness. The edge hell so near suddenly and I only on a sofa reclined. I stomached the casual racism too, alerted to make an intelligent difference. There is no reason to be circling around the carcass. Let’s eat and be strong, clean up and to move along with the true meaning of the scavenger and the vulture. The child, the man and the woman do not need to walk down such a dark path alone, do not need to walk down such a dark path at all. A little company on the ledge let’s say, a little company on the ledge. My secret space is small and round and along the edges are some rectangular friends (they are not all bad you know)
Still from ‘Very Fond’ video.
These days are simple for me now. When it’s time I withdraw to greet my grief and menstruation while watching the evening sky turn dark. Writing living Taino song. Do I write a song how I’ve been fucking spirits? Any spirit, any and all? And when I stopped, when it was time to shut the factory down, how they came at me first in dreams of iphones of porn but they couldnt tempt me, I had got so clean. Later was next level. I thought I was in heaven until I couldnt move my arm. Then I knew I was dreaming. In my fake dream of heaven I knew I was asleep in my bed. I knew it was coming for me and that I must wake up fully. It’s true that when good healing is happening it also attracts the bad spirits.
‘The Free Hand’ Italy 2025
They held me down when they couldn’t tempt me to use, and be used. They held my left hand to the corner of the bed. When I fully woke up my arm was being pulled slowly. They rubbed my breast just as I got myself free. Lol. That was weird I said. And you know the difference between dreaming and not. Cheeky bastards. I slept with the light on, ok, but still spooked and scared. Next night my wardrobe door popped open. Is that what’s been following me around this whole time? Is that the demon I was feeding? Now we’re going to get to know each other real well. We can become true and caring friends because all the cards are on the table now. Surely there’s better things we can be doing than rolling around the sack with all those blue and pink probing tendrils from outer space pumping into us. I had been pushing this gunk into me for years. And years with the way I was forcing my body to feel a certain way. So after thirty days and thirty nights she showed me how it was done. She’d be the boss of the hand, not the other way around and nothing would be forced. And yes, I had strict rules on simple things and in the end it was the inside and the opening of a flower that could actually seduce me and nothing less.
U.S. citizens Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi were detained and executed in Chile during the early days of the US-backed dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Investigative reporter and author John Dinges, who has written extensively about Latin America and Operation Condor, investigates the earlier premise that both men were murdered by the Chilean military upon direct orders from the U.S. government. Chile in Their Hearts: The Story of Two Americans Who Went Missing After the Coup(University of California Press, 2025) finds no evidence to confirm direct US involvement, upon which earlier books, as well as the 1982 film Missing, starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, were based.
Dinges wastes no time in affirming the outcome of his research. In the early 2000s, thousands of declassified documents pertaining to the dictatorship were released, including some relating to Horman and Teruggi. ’I had long thought the movie’s theory of the case was highly probably, and I set out to find the evidence to prove it,’ Dinges writes in the introduction. The author also reveals a personal interest, having lived in Chile during which time he met Horman once, and was friends with Teruggi.
Charles Horman
U.S. involvement in Chile’s destabilisation, brutal military coup and dictatorship is well documented. Thus the theory of U.S. involvement in the execution of both men is plausible. The only mention, however, of direct U.S. involvement rests on a statement by Rafael Gonzalez, a National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) agent who was on the scene at the time of Horman’s detention, and who retracted his testimony years later.
Frank Terrugi
There is a certain note of dejection that immediately strikes the reader in this book. Dinges’s meticulous research rests on careful scrutiny of documents, the court files and interviews, through which he pieced together a picture that reveals no direct U.S. involvement. This is disconcerting when one considers the extent of U.S. involvement in toppling the democratically-elected socialist government of Salvador Allende.
Elimination of the earlier premise is also compounded by the absence of a known motive for why Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi were targeted and killed by the Chilean junta, other than them being leftists.
’The evidence I found,’ Dinges writes, ’led me to conclusions I had not expected, especially about the U.S. role.’ However, the author notes that the U.S. is not entirely lacking in culpability. ‘The evidence demonstrates definitively that the U.S. Embassy and State Department shielded the Pinochet regime by hiding the truth, conducting a sham investigation, and sanctioning Chile’s official coverup of the murders.’
Dinges devotes separate chapters to the backstories of Charles Horman and his wife Joyce, and Frank Teruggi, who arrived in Chile separately. Both men met in Chile through their involvement in the Fuente de Informacion Norteamericana (FIN). Chile had become a safe haven for those fleeing oppressive dictatorships across Latin America. At a time when U.S. activists had mobilised against their country’s involvement in the Vietnam War, Chile offered alternative, participatory politics as part of the socialist reform implemented by Salvador Allende. At the time, Chile was hosting around 20,000 foreigners.
Salvador Allende in 1972.
Both Horman and Teruggi became involved with left-wing movements in Chile. Horman was carrying out his own research into the assassination of General Rene Schneider, while also working with Chile Films, which brought him into close proximity to socialist and communist groups. Teruggi became involved with the Frente de Estudiantes Revolucionarios (FER, Revolutionary Students Front) and also became friends, and willingly involved with, the Movimiento Izqueirda Revolucionaria (MIR, Revolutionary Left Movement). Notably, Teruggi had also been on the FBI’s radar for his antiwar activism in the U.S..
Valparaiso, the port city which was central to the plotting of the coup, emerges as a key component of the earlier premise of direct U.S. involvement. Both Horman and Teruggi had taken photos of military ships in the port, to be published in the magazine Punto Final. Horman’s presence in Valparaiso and his conversations with Captain Ray Davies, the head of the U.S. Military Group in Chile – as the coup was underway – were central to the narrative around his death. For decades, Horman’s execution and disappearance were linked to him having unearthed information about U.S. involvement while in Valparaiso, condensed into the phrase “he knew too much”.
U.S. Complicity
Dinges uncovered no documentary evidence to support this premise, but the book illustrates two main components that can be proven. One is about the U.S. embassy’s painstaking efforts to shield the Pinochet dictatorship from accountability over Horman and Teruggi’s murders. The other concerns the U.S. failure to investigate important leads on both men’s executions. These findings illustrate the U.S. intent to prioritise diplomatic relations with the Chilean junta at all costs.
Both Horman and Teruggi were reported as missing to the U.S. embassy. Their disappearance, however, is described by the author as representing to the embassy, ’an awkward inconvenience, a snag in the U.S. determination to help the junta succeed.’ The U.S. embassy could have investigated the detention and execution of both men, but orders from Washington, specifically from Henry Kissinger in the immediate aftermath of the coup, directed otherwise: ’The first thing for us not to do is to give the appearance that we are putting pressure on them.’
Thus, U.S. embassy officials upheld the dictatorship’s official narrative, which shifted from statements that no foreigners had been murdered, to denying the military operations that led to Horman and Teruggi’s detention and subsequent executions. One cover story disseminated by the Chilean military and taken at face value by U.S. diplomats was that both men were killed by leftist snipers in the aftermath of the coup. The State Department repeated this narrative to the media, allowing the U.S. to deflect questions on why it had failed to investigate.
With the U.S. rigorously maintaining the dictatorship’s official narrative, it stands to reason that the gaps would be filled by analysing the contradictions spouted by the Chilean dictatorship and U.S. officials. Dinges explains that this was Ed Horman’s process. Having travelled to Chile to investigate his son’s execution and disappearance, and encountered enough ambiguity and insufficient solid evidence from U.S. officials, Ed Horman concluded that the Chilean military would not have acted without U.S. complicity.
Dinges writes, ’The mere absence of such evidence cannot be used to argue that such evidence must exist. Or, as I tell my students in teaching the techniques of investigative reporting, “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absent evidence.”’
While direct U.S. involvement can be ruled out for want of evidence, Dinges shows that upholding the Chilean dictatorship’s narrative aided the U.S. embassy’s refusal to investigate. One new piece of evidence that Dinges unearthed and included in his book is that Michael Townley, a U.S. citizen who worked for the CIA and DINA, and who was responsible for the assassination of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington in 1976, knew the identity of Frank Teruggi’s killers. U.S. officials failed to pursue this lead.
U.S. officials also failed to follow up on the evidence gathered by Raul Meneses and Jaime Ortiz, the two Intelligence Military Services (SIM) investigators who told Ed Horman that his son had been executed, despite their names being included in an embassy draft letter dated 1973. Meneses’s report detailing that Horman had been killed on the orders of DINA agent Pedro Espinoza was destroyed by SIM. In 1987, the U.S. State Department hesitated to accept Meneses’s testimony. Embassy officials also knowingly withheld information and failed to call in the FBI to investigate the cases.
Photographs of victims of Pinochet’s regime.
National Commission of Truth and Reconciliation
Such wilful negligence had legal implications. In 1991, the cases of Horman and Teruggi were among the first to be made public by the National Commission of Truth and Reconciliation. Nine years later, the Horman family filed charges of murder and kidnapping in the Chilean courts, but the judicial investigation was based on the interpretation of declassified documents, rather than hard evidence. By 2003, the court’s attention had shifted to the presumed U.S. involvement and Davis was charged with Horman’s murder, on the premise that the latter “knew too much”, based upon Gonzalez’s initial statement, later retracted.
Despite the U.S. coverup for the Chilean military, Dinges’s examination of court records do not reveal evidence of direct U.S. involvement. In his discussions with Judge Mario Carroza – well known for his role in investigating crimes related to Operation Condor – Dinges notes that the Chilean courts required ‘an assumption deemed to be reasonably based on other established evidence.’ According to Carroza, the charges against Davis were so weak, ’It would have been easier to convict Henry Kissinger.’
Dinges also recalls research by Peter Kornbluh, director of the National Security Archives, and investigative author Pascale Bonnefroy, who conducted extensive research into Chile’s terror under the dictatorship. Neither unearthed evidence regarding US involvement in Horman and Teruggi’s executions. Reflecting Dinges’s own research, Bonnefroy stated that assumptions were being made upon association and liaison, rather than documented evidence.
This is perhaps an unsatisfactory conclusion to such detailed investigation into this snippet of U.S.-Chilean history. Even as Dinges lays bare the logic guiding his research, readers cannot help but grapple with the question of whether there is more to the story. While Dinges writes with both logic and humanity, it is in the acknowledgements that Dinges pays tribute to the questioning of the unknown, particularly to the Horman family, who remained committed to uncovering the truth. Dinges’s research narrows the search, but the heart will keep searching.
Our research on toads and carabids
considered predator and prey.
Japanese toads and bombardier beetles
were ‘introduced’, let’s say.
The relationships were explosive –
but complied with current laws.
We intend to show you footage.
Please, hold your applause.
Our methodology? Each beetle placed
in tongue’s reach of a toad.
Each swallowed.
Chemical explosions soon showed
toads bulging, swelling,
changing shape –
till finally, through emesis,
they let their prey escape.
Our results? All beetles were ejected –
and survived. No toads died.
We timed explosions, measured vomit,
observed from every side.
We’ve now described how toxic creatures
can avoid digestion.
Ah yes sir, at the back there,
do you have a question?
Reference Sugiura, S., Sato, T. 2018 Successful escape of bombardier beetles from predator digestive systems. Biol.Lett. 14: 20170647. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0647
Feature Image: Japanese Common Toad by Yasunori Koide.
Vincent in Hiroshima “A work of art is a corner of creation viewed through a temperament.”—Emile Zola
I.
Daubigny’s Garden, a late
masterpiece of Vincent van Gogh,
painted in July 1890 (the same month he died),
now hangs in Hiroshima. Talk about
ghosts of the blast. Beauty clings
to Horror, and still clings, even when
it let’s go; just as we suspected:
Siamese twins.
II.
Glimmer at the edge of fog.
Sphinx at sunset, red paws.
Oval flocks of moons while drunk.
A bow of measure in a coffee spoon.
The way her delicate lips pucker
while thinking of yesterdays
you never entered.
III.
Back to Vincent in Hiroshima.
Back to the gravity of collage. How each day
slips into the groove of whirling
months. How the garden
swirls with flowers and a church
tower in his final summer. How
Vincent’s last words were:
“I wish it were all over now.”
How the true page is never printed. How
the puzzle we call history shrinks
as the world grows into one
piece of a larger puzzle.
Feature Image: Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Daubigny’s Garden’
