Demons & Democracy

Reati (far left) and GSU students on the May 2009 study abroad trip stand behind a transparent board with names of victims of the D2 detention center in Córdoba, Argentina.

In 1976, as a college student at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Córdoba, Argentina, Fernando Reati was an active and vocal opponent of de facto President Jorge Rafael Videla's regime and the government's sanctioned violence against its own people.

On Sept. 2 of that year, during the first throes of Argentina's "Dirty War," he was arrested. He was beaten and waterboarded for eight days before being sent to prison for four years and four months. His family - presumed guilty by association - was also arrested: His 17-year-old brother was sent to prison, and his parents were exiled from the country for two years.

No official reason was ever given for Reati's arrest, no trial took place and he never went before a judge or military tribunal.

For more than three decades, he lived with the memories and with the knowledge that those responsible had never been brought to justice.

In 2010, however, he was finally given an opportunity to return to Argentina to testify in court about his experiences.

Going back meant facing his captors, including the man who had beaten him so badly many years before: Sergeant Miguel Angel Gomez, known as "El Gato," who was on trial for torture and murder.

"It was the most shocking and emotional moment," Reati says. "To be able to look in his eyes and say, 'It's you.'"

Today, Reati is chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages - as well as co-chair of GSU's Center for Human Rights and Democracy. For the past two summers, he has traveled to his homeland with a group of Georgia State students on a study abroad program that he co-directs with psychology professor Gabe Kuperminc. The program investigates Argentina's history of human rights violations and its transition to democracy.

Among other field trips, Reati takes the students to the notorious D2 detention center in Córdoba, one of the sites where political prisoners were held and tortured between 1976 and 1981. Each time, he takes the group to visit one particular cell.

"That's where my mother sat," he says, pointing. "That's where my father sat."

The cell in the D2 detention center where Reati, his parents, brother and more than 20 others were held.

Reati and the Dirty War

In 1975, the Argentine government gave its armed forces control of state and local police forces and the country's prisons. The government then gave a mission: to "annihilate subversive elements throughout the country," according to an official decree.

Between 1976 and 1981, the government brutally repressed dissent, going after not only leftist guerillas but also student activists, journalists, trade union members and citizens thought to hold left-wing views.

People in these groups began to disappear - up to 30,000 of them, according to the most commonly accepted estimate. Many more were arrested and tortured.

Reati remembers the day of his arrest. "Two friends of mine - I saw them in my house, they were arrested, and they were never seen again."

Reati, his parents and his younger brother were taken to the D2 detention center. For eight days he was interrogated and tortured by "Sergeant El Gato," as Reati refers to him.

Ostensibly, those who arrested Reati were simply trying to suppress the violence of the leftist guerilla groups. But during those eight days, there were disturbing signs that a more extreme agenda was in play.

"Once, I was able to see past my blindfold," Reati says. "I saw a policeman wearing an armband with a swastika."

Other police officers took to threatening Reati's mother, a Jew and owner of a well-known local boutique.

"You pretend to be a lady," Reati says, repeating the words they had said to his mother. "But you're a filthy Jew. We're going to turn you into soap."

The entrance to the D2 detention center with photos of victims who disappeared during the Dirty War.

Bearing witness

Justice has been a long time coming for Reati and other Dirty War victims and their families. Some senior military officials were tried in the 1980s but were pardoned after a series of armed rebellions by their supporters in the military.

"Democracy still wasn't strong enough in Argentina," Reati explains. "Now, 20 years later, people are less afraid."

The current series of human rights trials started in 2003 and have included not only the most senior commanders but also junior officers. This past fall, when Reati was invited back to testify in the trial of the officers who worked in and around his hometown of Córdoba, he was one of 100 witnesses testifying against 31 defendants, including Videla.

"I walked in from behind the judge, and the first thing I see is all of them sitting there," he says.

The group in the courtroom included his tormentor, Sgt. Gomez.

"Knowing that he was there. ... for the first few minutes it was frightening," Reati says. "I thought, 'Am I going to be able to say anything?' But then you lose the fear. It was a powerful, freeing moment."

While in Argentina to testify, Reati was under police protection, a double-edged sword for someone who had been abused so badly by the police in his youth. But the young officers assigned to him were gentle and polite.

"It's the most amazing experience for someone who was a victim then to be protected by the police now," he says. "That was probably 50 percent of the experience, to be able to lower your guard and build a relationship with a police officer."

Reati thinks, however, that his own personal liberation is not as important as what the trials mean for Argentinean families. His nieces and nephews, who are too young to remember the Dirty War, have been asking Reati what happened to him, and to their parents and grandparents.

"For the first time, they wanted me to tell them everything," he says. "In my family, it opened up these emotions, these old stories. And this is happening all over Argentina - it's liberating for the whole society."

On Dec. 22, Videla, Sergeant "El Gato" Gomez and two others Reati testified against were sentenced to life in prison by a three-judge tribunal, along with about a dozen more of the accused. Life in prison is the harshest sentence possible under the Argentine legal system since the country does not have the death penalty.

Reati (second from right) and professor of Psychology Gabriel Kuperminc (center, in black sweater), co-directors of the study abroad program, stand along with GSU students and founders of The Madres de Plaza de Mayo. For more than three decades, the Madres, an association of Argentine mothers whose children disappeared during the Dirty War, have raised awareness of the victims of the War. As a symbol of the blankets of their children, the Madres wear white headscarves embroidered with the names of the missing.

Breaking the cycle

Reati's getting used to telling his story, not only to his family but also to his students. His experiences led him to a life-long passion for human rights issues, and to his current position as co-chair of the university's Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

Reati wants his students to understand that human rights abuses can happen anywhere - he, after all, was a college student just like them when his own government tortured him.

"I tell them that everyone has the potential to become a victim - or a torturer," he says.

This last point is particularly important, Reati says. Most of the torturers during the Dirty War were ordinary citizens who were taught that they were doing the right thing and who had been desensitized to other people's pain.

"Nobody is born with the capacity to give electrical shocks to someone else," he says. "But if you slap someone three or four times, then the next time you can kick them. There were even prisoners forced to torture other prisoners."

Human rights scholars, including Reati, believe that education is the best way to prevent future abuses. That's why he goes back to the D2 detention center every summer and takes students with him.

"What we have to do is try to prevent those circumstances from arising in our societies. If we are better educated in that concept, we are better prepared to make those moral decisions."