September 19, Sunday

It’s a big job organizing things to travel, planning which clothes to take, deciding what things to pack away for storage. It will be autumn in America and the weather will be getting cold in the winter; it could even snow. I’m glad to have all the activity to keep my mind occupied. Yesterday after the boys went to bed I dug up the metal box Luiz had buried in the backyard, and now I’m sitting down to read the record he made me promise to preserve. I will take it with me to America to keep it safe.

After just a few pages I have to take a break and go outside, gulping the night air as tears dry on my face. It’s a new moon and the sky is completely dark, the Southern Cross constellation bright against the Milky Way. I hadn’t planned to read everything but I can’t stop myself, and I couldn’t sleep now anyway.

Luiz’s account documents everything in minute detail: names if he heard them, descriptions of people and places, and voices if his head was covered with a hood. His disbelief that night in São Conrado when they told him to walk down the road to the gate and he found me waiting for him. His determination to not let them get away with it, even if it meant losing his life.

People’s lives mean nothing to the dictators. Power is the only thing they care about, and they will do anything to keep it. They rationalize the things they do by telling themselves they are patriotic, that they are saving the country from communism and making the economy good for business. They build dams and power plants with money given to them by Tio Sam, and half of it goes into their pockets.

They created a system of dealing with political prisoners that has become an institution. Classrooms for teaching torture, with an audience of a hundred military officers taking notes. Suspending the supposed communist naked from a bar, the parrot perch, and carefully attaching electrodes to various parts of the body to discover which is most sensitive. Pouring water down the throat of the example prisoner until he almost drowns. Stuffing their victim into a cage that’s too small and keeping him awake for days until he hallucinates. They are endlessly inventive.

They are assisted by doctors who check the victims if they lose consciousness and give the go-ahead to continue if it won’t result in death. They are schooled in their techniques by shadowy guys in mirrored aviator sunglasses, who look bored and chain-smoke cigarettes.

If you don’t give up your comrades they keep going until you do. If you don’t give up the locations where you meet with your comrades, they keep going until you do. And if you don’t break, they won’t bother with you anymore and they will move on to the next victim. And you are disappeared.