The Spoils of War

I leave you everything,
but not my dreams.
José de la Rosa

They surrounded the house and then they invaded it. Amidst screams and death threats they destroyed furniture, broke down walls, tore up books and notebooks, stomped on our clothes. And they stole. They took away two envelopes: one contained my last three checks for back pay, and the other my brother’s paycheck. They stole my parents’ wedding rings. A gold pendant, a gift from my seventh-grade students. A brooch, also gold, with my mother’s initials engraved on it – the gift we gave her when she celebrated her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Little earrings, bracelets and rings, all relics of my childhood that my mother had kept in a little silver-plated coffer.
Five years later, when I left the Villa Devoto Prison, I lived through another similar experience. The night that the matron told me to get ready, that I was going to be freed, I demanded that she return my belongings that had been confiscated in the raids. One bag of letters that my parents, my brother, my cousins, aunts and uncles, friends, students and neighbors had written to me during the four years I had been imprisoned there. An envelope with drawings and cards from my fellow inmates. A silver chain and crucifix from my brother Vicente. A journal of memories, notes, poems and prison recipes. A ring and a pendant made of carved bone, gifts from Mariana. The matron looked at me with sarcasm and refused to return my belongings. She told me that they were objects seized by the penal authorities, and proof of my stay in the Villa Devoto Prison. I was enraged. I tried to find an explanation for the guard’s absurd answer, and the memories of the October 24, 1975, came to me: the screams, the threats and the spoils of war that the police made off with when they took me from my home.