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SEVEN Coming back to the States after a prolonged stay in an underdeveloped country , most everyone goes through some degree of culture shock. It can be unsettling , disorientating, even frightening. And the deeper one has lived under the oppression of that life, the greater the psychological reentry trauma. Human rights activists often return with a razor-sharp, black-and-white developingworld perception, where no shades of gray muddle their thinking. They shout out their truth: how institutionalized injustice debases people to an endless struggle for existence; how, for many, the measure of success is survival. But all too soon, the sharpness begins to lose its edge, the clarity of vision dims. Their insights become mired in complacency, their best punches absorbed by the matrix of affluence that molds our society—and us. And in a week, two at the outside, this matrix—what I’ve come to think of as a ‘‘giant marshmallow’’—has sucked us back in. The blizzard that lashed New England that Christmas of 1976 helped smooth my transition. For a time my mind bounced all over the board. I could neither push aside the jumble of random thoughts flashing through my head nor get a grip on the freefloating rage that threatened to explode at the slightest provocation. December marks the height of Paraguay’s summer. Only weeks before, I had lived with 110-degree heat and the fear of Stroessner’s secret police. Now, in the comfort of a Boston suburb, mesmerized by the tons of ice and snow burying my world, there could be no question that all that had been left behind. Sure enough, little by little, my laser-like perception slipped away. By New Year’s Eve, I took a nap. For the first time in seven months, I totally lost consciousness and slept. 1 On the way back from Paraguay, I had stopped in Lima to arrange with friends at the Latin American Documentation Center (LADOC) to do a feature piece on the Caso Filártiga. Fortunately, before adjusting to life on the dimmer switch, I had completed the long article in a smoldering three-day work snit. In those first days of January 1977, I sent off the manuscript to LADOC. And to Inger Farhlander at Amnesty’s Secretariat in London went 300 pages of official Filártiga trial proceedings. Adopting the ways of the dictatorship, a generous gratuity had per- 134 兩 B R E A K I N G S I L E N C E suaded the clerk of courts to lend me the complete file—transcripts, depositions, rulings, reports, the whole works. An afternoon with a photocopier finished the job. I then began phoning people along the East Coast, lining up contacts to begin the work of building support for the Caso Filártiga. My antiwar organizing had been directed against the establishment, but operating within the system was quite something else. And my nearly nonexistent understanding of what mobilizing support for the Filártigas ’ cause entailed only deepened my ambivalence. So, after calling Inger to arrange with the Washington Amnesty office to help with an orientation and introductions, I set out on my baptismal foray into this new universe of international human rights. By the time I returned in February, not a vestige of intimidation remained. The frenetic pace of the trip, however, left me exhausted. Driving back to Boston, I had been daydreaming about sleep. Stumbling through the door of my parents’ place, I dropped my bag in the hallway and headed for bed. The neatly stacked pile of letters on the pillow put an end to that fantasy. On top was a large manila envelope from Father John Vesey. Somehow his Paraguayan Church group had pulled together four updated lists of political prisoners, including Emboscada, Investigaciones, and several local police stations. Incredibly, they had compiled a detailed description of the conditions, and pinpointed the locations, of the majority of Stroessner’s victims in Paraguay. Next was a packet from Filártiga. The optimism that filled his long letter helped allay my anxiety for the family. Joel enclosed a batch of articles from among the yearend media hullabaloo over ‘‘The Trial of the Decade,’’ declaring them ‘‘proof’’ that the Paraguayan press had not been cowed. Enthusiastically, he went on with the heartening news of the flood of support that kept coming in—including petitions signed by twentysix Swiss and fifty-three Swedish physicians—which he insisted showed my activities to build international support...

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