unions, and suppress critical thought. By spreading massive terror and uncer-
tainty, they hoped to impose a reign of the deaf-mute. The computer at the Joint
Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces placed all Uruguayan citizens into one of
three categories, A, B, or C, according to the degree of danger they presented
to the planned military kingdom of the sterile. Without the Certificate of
Democratic Faith, provided by that computer and delivered by the police --
specialists in Democracy, having taken courses from Dan Mitrione, U.S. Profes-
sor of Torture Techniques -- one could neither obtain employment nor keep it.
Even to have a birthday party, police authorization was required. Every house
was a cell; every factory, every office, every school became a concentration
camp.

The dictatorship demolished the system of education and in its place imposed
a system of ignorance. By brutally replacing professors and programs, the
attempt was made to domesticate students and oblige them to accept both the
barracks morality which calls sex hygienic outlet or marital duty and the mum-
mified culture which considers natural the right of property over things and
people, as well as the duty of women to obey men, children to obey their parents,
the poor to obey the rich, blacks to obey whites, and civilians to obey the military.

The order was given to dismember and detongue the country. All ties of
solidarity and creativeness that brought Uruguayans into contact with one
another were a crime; a conspiracy, all that brought them into contact with the
world; and subversive, any word that did not lie. All who took part were
punished -- political and union activists and whoever did not denounce them. A
simple comment could be considered harmful to the armed forces, and there-
fore could mean three to six years in prison and sometimes-fatal beatings. They
even went to the extreme of censoring news from their neighbors and colleagues,
the Argentine and Brazilian dictatorships, because it said too much. To name
reality, present or past, was against the law. The wiping out of the country's
memory was decreed; for after all, José Artigas and José Pedro Varela, spirited
away from the bronze of their very statues, could provide dangerous clues to
identity and spaces of discovery to perplexed youth who wondered: Where does
my country come from? Who am I? With whom am I?

And nevertheless, Uruguayan culture managed to continue breathing, inside
and outside the country. In all of its history it had never received higher praise
than the ferocious persecution it suffered during those years. Uruguayan culture
remained alive and was able to respond with life to the machinery of silence and
death. It breathed in those who remained and in those of us who had to leave,
in the words which passed from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth, as

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