We’ve been in Paraguay for about a week and a half, and have completed our work with the Telecentro and Viñas Cue community. This week we are working primarily in the community of Santa Ana, a part of the city that is fairly poor economically, with many unfinished homes and flood-affected areas, but rich with determined and hard working people. We have been working alongside a school of students close to our age, with a daycare and center for malnourished children, as well as helping rebuild a woman’s flood-damaged home.
Tuesday morning I woke up sick. Rachelle, one of our trip leaders, felt my head and described my body temperature as “toasty.” Sadly, this meant I would be spending the day in bed, trying to shake off the cold. Around 2pm my roommates came bustling back into the room, and I eagerly listened to the stories from the morning. They had gone to a school and were welcomed by the students many of which were around our age. I was disappointed I couldn’t go, but knew taking the morning off was needed. Soon, Rachelle peeked into our room and reminded me that if I was feeling up for it, we were going to a museum later that afternoon and I could join. The medicine had kicked in and I was feeling substantially better by that time.
They came back to the hostel, and the energy of our group is contagious. So I piled on three layers of assorted jackets and sweaters and fumbled my way into the van as our group left for an afternoon tour of the Museo de las Memorias. We were met at the entrance of the museum by a man named Martin who explained that he would be our tour guide. We walked into the small lobby of the building, and began the walk-through.
The goal of the museum is to tell the story of the human rights violations that occurred in the very building where the museum is located, under the 35 year dictatorship in Paraguay. Each room showed a different part of the history, from the frequent kidnappings where people ranging from young children and their mothers, to adult men, were plucked of the street and held in the tiny center for indefinite amounts of time, to the cruel and medieval devices they used to interrogate prisoners. It was gruesome, and it was very hard for me to remain emotionless as we were exposed to the horrible treatment of thousands of people. We made our way to one of the middle rooms where a map of the Americas was pinned to the wall. It was covered with colorful dots pinned especially over Latin America. We realized it was a map that showed the United States’ interventions and military support, and where it had been located throughout the Americas.
It was apparent that through the tactics taught through the School of the Americas, and the dispatched military personnel to South American countries through the twentieth century, whose job was to teach torture methods and ways to rip information from “suspected communists,” directly linked the US to the horrendous tragedies that occurred there. This story, the history of what really took place less than thirty years ago, is practically untold. The museum, which is run solely by Martin (our guide, who is also the gardener, janitor, and caretaker of the grounds) is virtually the only place where the history is being told, and the only place where survivors and people deeply connected to the center through lost family and friends, can seek some type of sanity by visiting the building.
The Paraguayan government is still tied to the ring leaders from the dictatorship, and actively withhold information from the public by banning books covering the topic in college libraries, and refusing to let it be taught in schools. Sadly, I feel as though the U.S. is behaving similarly, as we barely touch on our bloody history and involvement in South America, or address the fact that many of the issues Paraguay and other nations face, like the lack of government support for its people, are linked clearly to our interventions years ago.
The museum gave me a new perspective on Paraguay, and opened me up to a whole new layer of trauma and past memories that continue to shape people’s mentality and the way society functions here. It also reminded me of the importance of knowing all sides of a story, and being able to learn about the beautiful things countries have done, but also the horrible mistakes, so that as a nation and as a world we can stop repeating debilitating systems of government and focus our energy on moving forward and creating new ideas to shape a happier, safer, and more peaceful globe.
Maxine DV., Wheaton High School