Alicia Partnoy

Alicia Mabel Partnoy (born 1955 in Bahía Blanca, Argentina) is a human rights activist, poet, college professor, and translator.[1]

After Argentinian President Juan Perón died, the students from the left of the Peronist political party organized with fervor within the country's universities and, along with workers, were persecuted and imprisoned. There was a military coup in 1976 and people began to disappear. Partnoy was one of those who suffered through the ordeals of becoming a political prisoner. She became an activist of the Peronist Youth Movement while attending Southern National University (see Education).

She was taken from her home, leaving behind her 18-month-old daughter, on January 12, 1977, by the Argentinian Army and imprisoned at a concentration camp named The Little School[2] (La Escuelita).[3][4] For three and a half months, Partnoy was blindfolded.[5] She was brutally beaten, starved, molested, and forced to live in inhuman conditions. She was moved from the concentration camp to the prison of Villa Floresta in Bahía Blanca where she stayed for six months only to be transferred to Villa Devoto prison in Buenos Aires. She spent two and a half years as a prisoner of conscience, with no charges.

In 1979, she was forced to leave the country, coming to the U.S. as a refugee with her daughter where they were reunited with her husband in Seattle, Washington. In 1985, she told her story of what had happened to her at The Little School in an eponymous book.[6] The world began to open its eyes to the treatment of women[7] in reference to the disappearances of Latin Americans.[8]

Alicia Partnoy has testified before the United Nations, the Organization of American States, Amnesty International, and the Argentine Human Rights Commission. Her testimony[9][10][11] is recorded in a compilation of testimonials by the National Commission for the Investigation of the Disappeared. She currently lives in Los Angeles, California, CA and teaches at Loyola Marymount University.[12]

In June 2007, a collection of her poems appeared in the second issue of the avant-garde Hebrew poetry and criticism magazine Daka rendered by Eran Tzelgov.

  1. ^ Levinson, Nan (1 March 1995). "Women in Exile". Women's Review of Books. Retrieved 27 March 2009.
  2. ^ Partnoy, Alicia (1998). The Little School tales of disappearance & survival. San Francisco: Cleis Press. ISBN 1573440299. OCLC 493073401.
  3. ^ Pohl, R. D. (4 October 1992). "ARGENTINE AUTHOR TELLS HER REAL-LIFE HORROR STORY". Buffalo News. Retrieved 27 March 2009.
  4. ^ Galloway, Paul (3 July 1984). "Ambush leads to three years of prison". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on 19 October 2012. Retrieved 27 March 2009.
  5. ^ Detwiler, Louise A. (2000). "The Blindfolded (Eye)Witness in Alicia Partnoy's "The Little School"". The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association. 33 (3): 60–72. doi:10.2307/1315342. ISSN 0742-5562. JSTOR 1315342.
  6. ^ Karlin, Adam (June 20, 2006). "Argentina seeks justice for its 'Dirty' past". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 27 March 2009.
  7. ^ Portela, M. Edurne (2003). Writing prison : women political prisoners and the power of telling. University of North Carolina. OCLC 1112940484.
  8. ^ Partnoy, Alicia (2013). "Concealing God: How Argentine Women Political Prisoners Performed a Collective Identity". Biography. 36 (1): 211–241. doi:10.1353/bio.2013.0006. ISSN 1529-1456. S2CID 143562995.
  9. ^ Portela, M. Edurne (2003). Writing prison : women political prisoners and the power of telling. University of North Carolina. OCLC 1112940484.
  10. ^ Adams, Anna (1988). "Women's Tales of Torture". MACLAS: Latin American Essays: 115–23.
  11. ^ Manzor-Coats, Lillian (1990). The Reconstructed Subject: Women's Testimonials as Voices of Resistance. Pittsburgh: Latin American Literature Review.
  12. ^ "Dr. Alicia Partnoy to talk about detention camps in Argentina". Drury Mirror. March 5, 2008. Archived from the original on 4 May 2009. Retrieved 27 March 2009.