Word: filartiga
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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...
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...
...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...
...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...
Despite his publicity campaign, the case was still unsettled when Filartiga arrived at Harvard three years later. The government has revoked the license of the lawyer representing Filartiga, then imprisoned him. Without a lawyer, Filartiga will undoubtedly lose the trial, and, according to Paraguayan law, the loser must pay the damages and the other's legal fees. Such payment will cost him the clinic...