Leo Honka Who is Fatima? Who is the person wishing us from the Joutseno immigration removal center a kind, “Good night. Loved ones.” Fatima is only a name. It houses no human because it is only a name written on paper by a plane dropping bombs, a tank shelling civilians, and a woman hoping for…
Tag: dirty war
Migrant Tales Literary: Argentinean dirty war odyssey
Leo Honka Cemetery silence emerging from the ashes of death next to gagged cobblestone streets and I should be asleep but I just can’t. The keys of my typewriter glowing red-hot are razor-sharp to the tuouch. The night is at a standstill, now searchlights are combing the state of siege a few high-pitched sirens screaming…
Migrant Tales literary: Returning to where I was once from
Human Rights 101 (Argentine dirty war style)
I’ve taught students the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Some had never heard of it. I had heard of it but never understood its meaning until one April overcast day in 1977 when I was arrested and thrown into a police cell. What happened to me on that Saturday afternoon changed my life permanently. During…
New World Finn: Open the doors
Twenty-five years ago, when I worked briefly for the Buenos Aires Herald as a young reporter, I wrote a column about how Argentina’s past could come to haunt it in the future. The last military regime (1976-83) that ruled the country was one of the most ruthless that Latin America had seen during the last…
Argentina’s dirty war: A couple I never met but always knew
It’s a long story how I ended up conscripted in the Argentinean army during the dirty war (1976-83). Being part of a country that was at war with itself was like taking a one-way stroll down the ally of hatred with a sack over your head. Even if no sack was placed over your head your eyes couldn’t see nor your ears hear what was happening. Terror has a way of numbing your senses.