Torture survivor Hector Aristiz?bal grew up in Medell?n, an
impoverished Colombian city torn by civil war and the cocaine
mafia. With the mandate of the Estatuto de Seguridad, which writer
Diane Lefer likens to a Colombian Patriot Act, the military took
Aristiz?bal into custody and subjected him to unimaginable
torture.
Though this experience became a powerful force in Aristiz?bal’s
life and thought, he is careful not to let it define him. In an
interview
with Lefer in The Sun, Aristiz?bal explains that he
sees his torture as an ordeal, like any other, rather than a
christening into lifelong victimization. The experience did give
him focus, however, from living a life merely trying to survive in
a dangerous city, to living a life desiring meaning.
After escaping to the United States in 1989, he co-founded the
Los Angeles Center for Theatre
of the Oppressed, in addition to his work as a therapist for
torture survivors. Though he remains deeply angered by the
prevalence of torture and, in particular, the United States’ use of
legal loopholes that allow torture to continue, he sees his work
today as creating a forum for ‘imagination and conversation and
listening,’ rather than merely preaching prescriptively.
— Ty Otis
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The
Blessing Is Next To The Wound
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