THE MEN who abducted Juan Mendez at gunpoint asked no questions before turning him over to another group.
“They claimed to be army, but I’m positive they were Federal Police of the Province of Buenos Aires, intelligence section,” he says matter-of-factly.
“There was no interrogation without torture, other than name, address, and what I had been doing at the bus stop. Then they stripped me naked and tied me very tightly, spread-eagled on top of a table, with a lot of strain, very much stretched out. And they applied an electrical prod on me and a lot of heavy blows with fists and kicks. One electrical prod that they use (they have two kinds) is a traditional cattle prod. It’s supposed to be less painful. I’ve never tried it; the one they used on me is a more sophisticated instrument. It produces a buzz and can be regulated. It’s much more manageable. At the beginning the shocks were much less painful than they were toward the end.” He speaks in a flat monotone, totally devoid of any emotion, slowly, so that you will not fail to understand. Juan Mendez could be giving a history lecture, and in a way he is. ...
People would tell him after listening to his story that forgetting is all you can do. Pretend it happened a long time ago, to someone else.
But Juan Mendez cannot forget, will never forget. Nor now, after seeing his face, will I.
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