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Word: filartiga (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
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Usage:

Sickened by his father's social circle and economic exploitations, Filartiga began to work with his father's laborers "out of curiosity." He recalls with satisfaction earning his first check for a solid week's labor. He soon after announced to his father that he intended to work full-time. Many long family battles followed. He eventually left and continued to work alongside laborers, leaving only to get a medical degree. In these early work years, "I learned compassion," he says...

Author: By Susan C. Faludi, | Title: The Art of Healing Paraguay | 2/1/1980 | See Source »

Stroessner's regime has its reasons for singling out Filartiga as a politically dangerous figure. As the sole physician to almost 40,000 peasants in the poorest country of the continent, Filartiga had attained the unofficial status of folk hero and rural leader. If anyone can mobilize revolt, he is in the most strategic position to do so. Though Filartiga does not aspire to organize politically subversive activity, his art publicizes the repercussions of Stroessner's reign on an international scale which seriously threatens the dictatorship's security...

Author: By Susan C. Faludi, | Title: The Art of Healing Paraguay | 2/1/1980 | See Source »

Stroessner and the Filantigas weren't always on opposite sides of the fence. According to Chris Hager '66, who assisted Filartiga at the clinic last year, Filartiga's father was an influential industrialist, tobacco exporter, and personal friend of Stroessner...

Author: By Susan C. Faludi, | Title: The Art of Healing Paraguay | 2/1/1980 | See Source »

...Filartiga found his voice--a strident one--as well as his compassion in these years. His son's death taught him to use it. Joelito's one-and-a-half-hour torture session was recorded by the police, because they were so certain it would produce a confession. Filartiga has heard the tape, heard his son cry out that he had nothing to confess, listened while they accelerated the electric shocks, administered through his fingertips and genitals, until Joelito suddenly had a cardiac arrest and died...

Author: By Susan C. Faludi, | Title: The Art of Healing Paraguay | 2/1/1980 | See Source »

...Filartiga did not retreat to nurse his pain in private. Instead he laid his son's naked body, mauled and burnt, in state on the bloody mattress just as he found him. He encouraged hundreds to file by and see the evidence for themselves. Filartiga next distributed photographs of his son and the details of his death to the Paraguayan papers. Several newspapers printed the pictures and ran the full story. Finally, Filartiga filed a homicide suit against the police inspector and three other members of the force...

Author: By Susan C. Faludi, | Title: The Art of Healing Paraguay | 2/1/1980 | See Source »

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