Catholic sister from Grants speaks out about torture
Sister Ortiz tells of Guatemala incident

Speaking Saturday night about her experiences and discoveries in her faith after being held captive and tortured in Quatemala and about her role as founder of the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International, Sister Dianna Ortiz stands behind a podium during the 3rd Annual Bishop's Mardi Gras dinner at the BestWestern Hotel in Gallup. (Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent)

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff Writer

GALLUP — On the eve of Lent, Sister Dianna Ortiz brought a message to Catholics in Gallup about the contemporary suffering of victims of torture.

And she reminded her audience about another victim of torture who was executed 2,000 years ago.

Ortiz, originally from Grants, N.M., and now the Director of the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition of Washington, D.C., spoke on Saturday evening at the Third Annual Bishop's Mardi Gras, which was sponsored by the Catholic Peoples Foundation of the Diocese of Gallup.

"Ours is the only religion founded by a victim of torture,"said Ortiz, who urged her audience to look closer during the Lenten season at the symbolic depictions of the crucified Christ. She urged them, each time they saw a crucifix, to contemplate the torture Christ endured and to say a prayer for all the people today being tortured, "the same torture that God's son suffered so long ago."

Ortiz has become an internationally known figure among human rights activists working to end torture. The author of "The Blindfold's Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth," Ortiz is a controversial figure to some. To her supporters, Ortiz is a courageous truth-teller who has helped to expose the complicity of the U.S. government in the torture of innocent people by corrupt and ruthless regimes in Latin America. On the other hand, her critics have expressed doubts about her story and have said that it raises more questions than it answers.

According to Ortiz, when she left Grants to become a Catholic sister with the Ursuline religious community, she envisioned a life of service to God as a teacher. And in the late-1980s, Ortiz was sent to Guatemala to teach Mayan Indian children how to read and write in their own language.

"In Guatemala I had found myself and my mission in life," said Ortiz, who described that early period in Guatemala as the happiest time in her life.

However, that assignment to Guatemala, a country wracked by a bitter and protracted civil war, ended up turning her life inside out and, in fact, almost destroyed it. Foolishly, I thought that being an American and a Catholic nun, I thought that I would be safe," he recalled.

In 1989, Ortiz said, she was abducted by Guatemalan security forces and taken to a clandestine prison where she was gang raped, burned more than 111 times by cigarettes, tossed into an open pit full of other victims, and subjected to other forms of torture. As her book relates, Ortiz was able to escape through the intervention of one of her captors, a mysterious man that Ortiz's supporters believe had ties to the U.S. government.

During the ordeal, Ortiz told her audience, one of her torturers whispered into her ear,"Your God is dead."

Describing that as the "darkest moment" of her soul, Ortiz compared it to theologian Martin Buber's concept of "the eclipse of God."

"What died was my image of God," said Ortiz. What died, she explained, was a passive and gentle God that she had previously found only in scriptures and church sacraments.

"It was a time to rediscover God," she said, adding that she has since discovered a faith and a God that are founded in action. "I look for that God that stands strong against the wolves of injustice and oppression," she explained.

Although Ortiz said she dreams of a day when she can return to teaching children, her current ministry is confronting torture and "knocking on the door" of the consciences of the world. More than 150 governments practice torture, she said, and even some members of the U.S. government and the Catholic Church advocate its use.

"Each time I speak out, I tremble inside," admitted Ortiz, who said she believes she and all other Christians have a moral obligation to speak out against torture. "Our faith," she said, "demands that we live out the Gospel."

— Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola can be contacted at (505) 863-6811, ext. 218 or ehardinburrola@yahoo.com.