Ariel Dorfman Quotes
I think to be in exile is a curse, and you need to turn it into a blessing. You've been thrown into exile to die, really, to silence you so that your voice cannot come home. And so my whole life has been dedicated to saying, 'I will not be silenced.'
Dorfman, Ariel. Interview by Bill Moyers. Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason, PBS, 23 June 2006.
When the Jordanian Arab Army ejected the PLO who were trying to take over Jordan by force, they killed more Palestinians than the Israelis had killed in the entire conflict with the Palestinians. The PLO then went to Tunesia which had no army to defend against them.
Prevented by the Military from ever taking office. She videotaped the lecture in secret in Burma and it was smuggled out and then broadcast by BBC. The dictatorial rule of the Military Junta was oppressing the people of Burma and she was the leader of the dissident forces.
In November of each year protesters gather at Fort Benning, the site of the U. S. Army School of the Americas. The School provides training for Latin American Military Officers in Counter-Insurgency Training. The graduates of the school have included some of the worst Latin American killers and torturers (See {41061} for example) who rose to positions of power in their lands. It has also included many leaders who did not ever resort to war crimes and atrocities and also became leaders of their countries. It has been an institution of great controversy since it was discovered that the school at one point taught methods of interrogating insurgents that were tantamount to torture. Defenders of the school claim that but for the school, the military atrocities would have been worse and that it contributed to more human and democratic governments in the Americas. The annual protest has attracted more than 16,000 protesters, some of whom—like Bourgeois—have been guilty of trespass and interfering with a government facility and have served jail terms for those violations.
This was one of the first calls for a slave strike in America.
Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman is an Argentine-Chilean-American novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina, since 1985.