2023-12-27 22:51:12
That January 3, 1978, when—according to the calendar—just began the third day of another return to the sun, summer once again showed the streets of Montevideo with little activity. Something customary in this city so far south of everything where the summer season seems to cause a kind of siesta. It had been five years since the civil-military dictatorship was established and a few more years since authoritarianism had been installed in our country. Aparicio Méndez was the puppet president of the military junta.
Repression, prison, torture, disappearances and deaths, as well as exiles, were commonplace in those days. For some the issue was survival, for others, in addition to survival, the reason for life was resistance to the opprobrious regime.
That day at Estudio Uno (Camacuá and Reconquista, headquarters of AEBU) Cinemateca Uruguaya was showing a film made six years earlier but which, for film buffs of those times, in our country still turned out to be almost a premiere. It was “Everything you wanted to know about sex but were never afraid to ask” by Woody Allen, starring Allen himself along with Gene Wilder, Louisse Lasser, Lynn Redgrave, Burt Reynolds and John Carradine, among others. A comedy with a satirical tone that addresses some taboo topics of human sexuality.
With unions dismantled, unions and everything that was connected in one way or another with political parties and social organizations prohibited, without opposition press, in 1976 the dictatorship intensified its repression in the cultural sphere. Prohibitions, censorship, closing of rooms, requisitions and burning of books, dismissals and many times torture and prison for educators and artists.
In this context, in 1976, a handful of old friends, cronies and colleagues decided to start a traveling library. This included books, texts, records and pamphlets prohibited by the prevailing regime. It would circulate among people of strict and proven trust. It would be totally clandestine and a system of deliveries and receptions would be devised in which no one would see who was carrying the book or who was receiving it. I deliberately omit the details of the system here, because who knows if at some point it will be necessary to use it again. Let’s just think about the famous naval battle game. For example: D.B2 or E1-F8-A6 (Record Store, Batea 2 or Studio 1, Row 8, Seat 6).
Cinemateca Uruguaya, as well as a small but large record store that was located on Avenida 18 de Julio, almost the University, and a theater were the places where the exchanges took place. References from those places, Manuel, Liliana, Martín, Nancy and Eduardo accepted under strict security and confidentiality rules that this dangerous game would be played in their territories. In the event that the worst happened, we knew how to exempt these institutions from all responsibility. And in the case of any suspicion, the periodic publication in the classified ads of the newspaper “El Día” where it was read “I buy books, I review libraries, I go home” provided us with more or less credible coverage. The books thus acquired, specifically those dealing with cinema, were later donated to the Cinemateca.
For two years, operating clandestinely and perfectly, the library increased its collection and in 1978 the inauguration of the Lorenzo Carnelli rooms was planned, so the radius of action would be expanded. Very good. Therefore, that night with the waning moon was perhaps the omen that something would go wrong, or at least, not entirely right.
After the last screening of Allen’s successful film, I prepared to head home with three books that had been returned to me, there in Studio One, without knowing by whom. The three titles: “What to do” by Lenin, “What is dialectical materialism” by Ovshi Yajot and “Class consciousness” by Antonio Gramsci.
Around midnight, already on board a bus heading to my home and when the 164 was advancing along Miguelete Street, upon arriving in front of the current Fourth Police Station (at that time it was Eighth), two individuals who were traveling on the bus and whose presence had not caught my attention, they order the driver to stop driving and open the rear door of the vehicle and, taking me by surprise and from behind, they throw me onto the aisle and drag me out.
An oversight when paying for the ticket had allowed them to see the title of one of the books. They did not know and never did know where I came from.
Once at the station, the interrogation, the call to superiors and the transfer to my home with three trucks, two of them from the Army that quickly arrived at the police station and which were popularly known as camels.
It was almost midnight, a camel in front, the police van in the middle with me inside and the other camel behind. They blocked the way at both corners, beat me down, pointed their machine guns and demanded that I open the door.
I took the keys, opened the door and dove inside… the surprise at my movement made them hesitate for a moment. A few precious seconds that served to warn my parents what was happening and hide some books. After overcoming the ridiculous fear of being shot, police and military (joint forces) entered nervously and shouting, brandishing their weapons. They beat my father, they kicked the dog. They only found a couple of books. Twenty more were in a safe place. Frustrated by such a meager loot, they dedicated themselves to breaking a guitar, some glasses and plates and stealing records and some objects.
Under insults and threatening my parents with their weapons, they beat me back into the truck. Then the march to the National Directorate of Information and Intelligence, a torture center located on Maldonado Street almost Paraguay.
There, hooded with my own nylon jacket, the sit-in, the beatings and the trash can, a cylindrical metal tank full of urine and putrid water. Dungeon, two by two, cement walls and ceiling, nothing inside.
They could prove nothing beyond what was visible. On the second day, a couple of men in suits and ties were arrested and accused of smuggling, and when they took me to the bathroom down a narrow hallway, the guard told them “don’t look at that guy, he’s very dangerous, he’s a subversive.” They couldn’t prove anything, beaten and without receiving any type of food, only water, four days later they released me. Four days missing, without anyone I knew knowing my fate, without anyone knowing what had happened to me after the kidnapping.
Once free, for security reasons, I could be under surveillance – in fact it happened that way – I stopped joining the group, the library cell.
Library that continued to operate for a couple more years, until the 1980 plebiscite.
For this and many other things, Cinemateca Uruguaya is much more than a cinema. It is much more than the conservation of film material and the exhibition of films. Cinemateca is everything you always wanted to know and never dared to ask.
I read more of Jorge Juliani
#Avoiding #dictatorship #traveling #clandestine #library