Alicia Partnoy
|
|
Alicia Partnoy was born in Bahia Blanca, Argentina in 1955 which was the same year that the Argentinian President Juan Peron was overthrown by a military regime. The Peronist political party grew with fervor within the countries? Universities and workers who surrounded themselves with the Peronist ideals. Yet the war against communism and socialism ran high and the government saw these ideals as a threat to national security. People began to disappear and Partnoy was one of those who suffered through the ordeals of becoming a political prisoner. Partnoy had learned of and became an activist of the Peronist Youth Movement while attending Southern National University. She was taken from her home and her two-year old daughter on January 12, 1977, by the Army and imprisoned at a concentration camp named The Little School(La Escuelita). For three and a half months, Partnoy was blindfolded. She was brutally beaten, starved, electrocuted, raped, and forced to live in inhumane conditions. Partnoy was moved from the concentration camp to the prison of Villa Floresta in Bahia Blanca where she stayed for six months only to be transferred to another jail. In 1979, she was forced to leave the country and moved to the United States where she was reunited with her daughter and her husband. In 1985, she told her story of what had happened to her at The Little School. The world began to open its eyes to the treatment of women in reference to the ?disappearances? of Latin America. Alicia Partnoy has testified before the United Nations, the Organization of American States, Amnesty International, and the Argentine Human Rights Commission. Her testimony is recorded in a compilation of testimonials by the Argentine Commission for the Investigation of the Disappeared. She currently lives in Washington, D.C. and teaches at the Catholic University of America as a poet, human rights activist and translator.