Reappearance Of Terror

In 1951 Paul Gallico published a novel called Trial by Terror, a gripping, terrifying story about a young American newspaper reporter arrested in the Soviet-occupied zone of Austria and forced to confess to the charge of espionage at a carefully staged show trial. The novel appeared on the American scene before the experience of American prisoners of war in North Korea had made "brainwashing" a familiar word. Yet it detailed that process with clinical precision.

Gallico's story was simple and straightforward. The reporter, tough, headstrong, and built like a football player, had entered the Soviet zone in the attempt to find out why men behind the Iron Curtain were confessing to crimes they had not committed. He learned the hard way. The book describes how a team of Russian psychiatrists worked to break him, using isolation, deprivation of sleep, drugs, and a nerve-shattering kind of violence--placing a galvanized iron pail over his head and beating it with broomsticks--until finally this once hulking, proud man was reduced to an empty shell of his former self, ready to intone his prepared confession at the slightest harsh word or most "accidental" clank of metal.

Trial by Terror was based on the postwar show trials in Eastern Europe, the most famous of which was that of Cardinal Mindszenty in Hungary. Today, 30 years later, recent events in Central America suggest that even more sophisticated methods of psychological manipulation and control have begun to appear on this side of the Atlantic; only this time they are being used not by communist regimes, but by right-wing governments using the threat of communism to justify the most violent kind of internal repression.

On September 30 of last year, a 35-year-old Jesuit priest, Father Luis Eduardo Pellecer, was presented at a press conference in Guatemala by government officials to make a confession. In a formal statement which had earlier been videotaped, Father Pellecer announced that he had with the knowledge and approval of his religious superiors joined a revolutionary group, the Guerrilla Army of the Poor, working with them for a year and a half as a "non-militant" propagandist. He claimed that he had later come to the realization that violence was not a legitimate way to work for justice and social change, and so he had arranged to have himself kidnapped in order to seek asylum with the government security forces, describing them as "true friends and brothers."

In his long statement and subsequent answers to questions from the Guatemalan journalists, Pellecer argued that the "theology of liberation" adopted by the Latin American church at the episcopal conferences of Medellin (1968) and Puebla (1979) leads necessarily to violence. He also stated that certain religious orders, especially the Jesuits, were working with subversive movements to impose socialism or communism on the people of Central America, first attracting and organizing them religiously, and then building a political platform upon the religious base, a "second tier" to be used for spreading the revolution. Acknowledging his mistakes and asking pardon of the people of Guatemala, he announced that he was leaving the Jesuit Order.

Who is Father Pellecer, and what really happened to him?

Father Luis Eduardo Pellecer Faena was born in Guatemala in 1946 and entered the Jesuit order in 1967. At the time of his kidnapping he was working as the managing editor of Dialogo, a Guatemalan ecumenical religious magazine. He was also assisting a group of very poor slum-dwellers in Guatemala City, recent arrivals from the countryside, to organize themselves and to make their needs known to the appropriate authorities. In a similar way he was working with Guatemala City's large refugee population, people who had fled Nicaragua under Somoza or current refugees from El Salvador. His work on behalf of the refugees from El Salvador may have been the reason behind his kidnapping, for the government of Guatemala fully supports the repressive policies of the junta in El Salvador and finds the presence of Salvadoran refugees both an embarrassment and a threat.

A year ago, on June 9, Father Pellecer was stopped and dragged from his car in the middle of the afternoon in Guatemala City, beaten unconscious by unidentified armed men, and taken away in a car, all in the presence of eyewitnesses. Their accounts of his resistance and of his bloody condition as he was taken away contradict his own statement on September 30 at the press conference that he had arranged his own kidnapping. Inquiries by his relatives his religious community, Guatemalan church authorities, and ultimately various international agencies to the police and government proved fruitless; the government claimed to have no knowledge of the incident. Nothing at all was heard of Father Pellecer for 113 days, until suddenly government officials brought him before the television cameras and acknowledged that he had been in their hands all the time.

The circumstances surrounding the reactions of the bishops and Jesuits in Guatemala are complex. Relations between the government and the church could not be worse. The president of the Guatemalan Episcopal Conference, Monsignor Juan Gerardi, Bishop of El Quiche and a native of Guatemala, has not been allowed back into the country since November of 1980 when immigration authorities prevented his re-entry after a trip to Rome. In August of 1981 the bishops of Guatemala published a pastoral letter detailing a pattern of repression directed against priests, religious, catechists, and other lay people working on behalf of the poor. They pointed out that in the last two years 12 priests in Guatemala have been assassinated or disappeared.

But these figures do not even begin to suggest the extent of the violence that has so terrorized the people of Guatemala. According to recent estimates, more than 20,000 political killings have occurred in the last 10 years, three-quarters of them the work of right-wing terrorist groups. Amnesty International estimates the number of deaths in the past 15 years at almost 50,000. Last July, an American priest, Father Stanley Rother of Oklahoma City, was shot to death. Three Protestant ministers have also been killed.

According to a spokesman at the Jesuit Missions Office in Washington, the bishops of Guatemala first saw Father Pellecer's confession on videotape at a meeting with the president of the country, General Romeo Lucas Garcia, supposedly arranged to discuss relations between the church and the government. In fairness to the bishops, it should be pointed out that they had thought that Father Pellecer had been killed, only to be stunned by his sudden reappearance and by his statements, apparently siding with the hostile government.

When they asked to speak with him, the bishops were allowed to see him, but only in the company of government security agents. Several of the bishops, convinced that Father Pellecer was speaking what he truly believed, began to denounce him loudly as a liar and traitor to the church. Father Pellecer's response was to automatically begin his confession all over again, as though an interior tape recorder had been switched on: "I am Luis Eduardo Pellecer Faena, 35 years old, priest of the Society of Jesus...."

The response of the Guatemalan Episcopal Conference, prepared in haste, was concerned principally with protecting church members and institutions. The bishops denied Father Pellecer's statements that various Catholic communities and apostolic workers were engaged in subversive activities. They never questioned whether or not his statements were voluntary; indeed they seemed to accept his confession as genuine, expressing their regret "that the priest has taken the road of subversive violence as the means to reach a solution to the very grave problems of the country."

At the same time the bishops stated their trust in "the wisdom, common sense and critical judgment" of their people "who in the present circumstances, will know how to distinguish between truth and what is imprecise in the statements of a very general nature" made by Father Pellecer, accusing "very worthy institutions of the church without foundation." However, at the time the bishops' official statement was published, some bishops made public statements which allowed for the possibility that Father Pellecer's statements were not voluntary.

The Jesuits of Guatemala also denied the validity of most of Father Pellecer's statements; they also, however obliquely, raised the possibility that his statements were not freely given.

In the timid response of the Guatemalan bishops and Jesuits, one can sense the unbelievable tension and fear gripping the church in Guatemala. In addition to the constant threat of violence, there is the terrifying dilemma of whether to speak out or keep silent with other priests still missing, presumably in unfriendly hands.

In August of last year, before Father Pellecer made his reappearance, another Jesuit, Father Carlos Perez Alonso, was kidnapped while getting into his car in downtown Guatemala City just 15 feet from the heavily guarded door of the Military Hospital, in which he had just finished saying Mass. Nothing has been heard of him since, though Jesuits in Central America are worried that he may also turn up one day in government hands to make a similar public confession. The fact that what has happened to Father Pellecer has been so little reported in the United States makes more understandable the sense of isolation felt by members of the church in Guatemala.

The Jesuits of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, Mexico, and Venezuela have issued statements expressing doubts as to the authenticity of Father Pellecer's confession and apparent conversion. Archbishop Marcos McGrath of Panama and Bishop Rivera y Damas, acting Bishop of San Salvador after the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, have made similar declarations.

The Jesuits of the Central American Province of the Society of Jesus, the province to which Father Pellecer belongs, issued a statement last year on October 2 rejecting his comments as having been made under duress. Specifically, they noted that those who knew Father Pellecer well had observed that his appearance, his behavior, and his manner of speaking on television had not seemed normal. They pointed out that no doctor has been able to verify his state of health during or after his confinement, that he was seen only while in the company of government security agents, and that he was not allowed to meet with representatives of the Jesuits. They demanded that Father Pellecer be turned over to the Guatemalan church authorities, or to some international agency such as the International Red Cross, in the presence of representatives of the church. This the government has refused.

Others familiar with the case have noted various inconsistencies and factual errors in Father Pellecer's confession. Several details of recent Jesuit history would immediately be recognized as falsely stated by anyone well acquainted with the Jesuits. In his confession Father Pellecer also falsely claimed to have four different university degrees, including one in engineering, a subject he had never studied.

Last October 22 Father Pellecer was again presented for a press conference, this time in El Salvador at the Gerardo Barrios military school in San Salvador. Later the same day he met with the bishops of El Salvador, the Papal Nuncio, Father Cesar Jerez, the provincial superior of the Jesuits of Central America, and of course, Salvadoran security officials. Father Jerez, who had been notified of the meeting only after it had already begun, requested that he be allowed to meet with Father Pellecer in the company of the Papal Nuncio and Bishop Rivera y Damas of San Salvador. Again the military refused to honor this request.

That same day in Guatemala City there was another public confession, this time by Emeterio Toj Medrano, a Guatemalan Indian and leader of a national peasant organization called the Committee of Peasant Unity. Medrano had "disappeared" about June or July. On November 26 Medrano escaped from the military barracks in Guatemala City where he was being held. He retracted his confession, claiming that he had been forced to make it after being tortured and because his military captors threatened to torture and kill his wife and children if he refused to cooperate.

On October 31, Dr. Frederick Allodi, a Spanish-speaking Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Canada and an international authority on the psychological effects of torture issued a statement after viewing a videotape of Father Pellecer's press conference in Guatemala. It is the opinion of Dr. Allodi "that Father Pellecer had undergone a process of psycho-physiologically forced conversion, e.g. brainwashing." He recommended that a place of safety be found for him outside of Guatemala, stressing the danger to Father Pellecer when the effects of his condition begin to wear off.

In a recent statement, the Jesuit Provincial Father Jerez demanded that Father Pellecer "be tried in a court of law, if he has committed any punishable crime, or that he be freed." At the present time he is reported to be in "protective custody" in Guatemala City, supposedly because his life is in danger from the Left. The government claims that he is free to leave the country if he wishes, but few people in Guatemala believe this. He has not been allowed to meet privately with representatives of either the Jesuits or the church. His family has not heard from him since his kidnapping. Informed sources say that the Vatican is working through diplomatic channels to have Father Pellecer brought out of the country.

Some Jesuits in Washington have made informal contacts with people in the State Department and have been told that the U.S. government has no influence with the government of Guatemala. The State Department seems content to allow this tragedy to pass without comment.

The president of the Jesuit Conference in the United States, Father John O'Callaghan, S.J., requested that the United Nations Commission on Human Rights consider the Pellecer case at its meeting in March, 1982, in Geneva. The head of the U.S. delegation, lay theologian Michael Novak, informed Father O'Callaghan that the commission had considered the question of human rights violations in El Salvador and Guatemala. The commission denounced alleged instances of "psychiatric mistreatment," without mentioning Pellecer. In a vote on March 12, the commission condemned violations of human rights in both Guatemala and El Salvador by an overwhelming majority. Interestingly, the United States voted against the condemnation of El Salvador and abstained in the vote on Guatemala.

In late March a new government, headed by General Efrain Rios Montt, came to power in Guatemala through a coup. Shortly after the coup, an unconfirmed report in a Guatemalan newspaper said that the new government did not know where Father Pellecer was. The government has neither confirmed nor denied this report, and has not commented publicly on the Pellecer case. There is some hope that General Rios Montt, a born-again Christian, may prove more friendly to the church. At present, attempts are being made to approach him about Father Pellecer through his brother, Bishop Mario Rios Montt of Escuintla. Hopefully it is not too late.

Thomas P. Rausch, S.J., was an Associate Professor of Theology and Director of Campus Ministry at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles when this article appeared.