The Demonic Attack on Sister Dianna Ortiz

“Centeredness is a quality of individualization, in so far as the indivisible thing is the centered thing…the center is a point, and a point cannot be divided. A centered being can develop another being out of itself, or it can be deprived of some parts which belong to the whole: but the center as such cannot be divided—it can only be destroyed.” --(Paul Tillich. Systematic Theology Vol. III., pdf., p.32).

  

In 1989 Sister Dianna Ortiz was a member in the Catholic monastic order for women know as the Ursulie Order that dates back to 1435 A.D. in Brescia, Italy to teach girls how to care for the sick and poor.  Sister Ortiz was in Guatemala teaching Mayan school children how to read and write. On November 2, 1989 Sister Ortiz was at a religious retreat in Antigua. At this time Guatemala had been in numerous long American financed civil wars since the late 1950s during which death squads became common. Sister Ortiz had gone into the garden of Posada de Belen to pray and disappeared at about 8 a.m. Her friends and relatives immediately reporter her missing. That morning Ortiz had been blindfolded and kidnapped by Guatemalan police officers and taken to a clandestine prison at a police academy facility named “Antigua Escuela Politecnica” in Guatemala City. The police threatened to kill her colleagues at the convent if she refused to go with them.

Sister Ortiz was tortured by her captors at this police academy. It is important to understand that this was not random moronic cruelty unleashed unthinkingly on a human being, but rather, this attack is a systematic procedure based on empirical science—especially cognitive science, and psychology—to destroy the self-identity of the targeted person with repeated experiences of devastating dehumanization and fear. A tremendous amount of thought, long-term effort, and treasure was expended to formulate a universally efficient method to permanently destroy the self-identity of a person for control.

When the police arrived at the academy, she was told that no one knew where she was and no one would care. She was then physically beaten. The purpose of this first beating is to instill complete isolation, hopelessness, and despair. This message is repeatedly verbally stated as psychological reinforcement before and after each torture session technique.

Each phase of the torture process is more severe resulting in complete objectification and dehumanization, which is the tortures’ goal. Sister Ortiz was interrogated for the purposes of inflicting more pain and teach what psychologists call learned helplessness; to extract false confessions for arresting new persons for victimization; and to physically exhaust the interrogated person for the other phases of torture and dehumanization. Her captors told Sister Ortiz that she would be asked questions, and if they liked her answers, she could smoke a cigarette as a reward. The rules were only stated to demonstrate that there are no rules and nothing she could say would influence her brutal treatment thereby destroying any hope of rescue. After every question Sister Ortiz was asked, she was burned with a lit cigarette regardless of the answer. She received at least 111 second-degree burns on her back in addition to other burns on her body according to physicians. 

In the third phase of torture Ortiz was lowered into a pit that contained the partly rat eaten dead bodies of entire families, including children, some persons with decapitated, and some still alive. Ortiz promised to tell the world of their suffering. This torture was designed to terrify both Ortiz and the other captives to destroy any sense of hope that a greater community could save them by showing that the community itself is held captive by the torturers.

In the fourth phase of dehumanization is gang rape by three men. It is important to remember she is suffering severe burns on her back making it ineffective and painful to resist a sexual assault when pinned down to the floor, or other surfaces. The person is raped multiple times to reinforce hopelessness and despair. After one of the policemen raped Sister Ortiz he said, “Your God is dead.” Spirituality is another multi-dimensional target that the torturer seeks to destroy. To destroy the person’s moral sense of right and wrong is another goal of these physical attacks. Later, Sister Ortiz had an abortion as a result of the sexual assaults.

In the fifth phase of the dehumanization process the policemen’s hand is covering Sister Ortiz’s hand holding a knife and is forced to dehumanize another person. The torturer knows that human beings are essentially empathetic. This stage is videotaped to instill guilt and shame in the person to be used as blackmail later if necessary.

At this point in the torture process, an American named Alejandro showed up at the site in a panic and stopped the torture. Sister Ortiz’s friends and family had triggered a media alert that the North American nun was missing which most likely saved her life. There was a sixth phase of torture, which we will never know, but there was definitely a seventh phase that Sister Ortiz also experienced later.

While the American was driving Ortiz to another location he tried to blackmail her into keeping silent, but she escaped from his vehicle while stuck in traffic. The American may have been afraid that he himself would be killed as a witness to the abduction and fled, or was hidden by government officials. 

Sister Ortiz was able to get back to the US and reported her capture and torture. Of course the then former head of the CIA and U.S. President, G. H. W Bush through his administration and the Guatemalan government at first denied the event even occurred. The Guatemala defense minister at the time, Gen. Hector Gramajo and CIA operative publicly said the U.S embassy believed her injuries was the result of a “lesbian love tryst.” Then-ambassador Thomas F. Stroock reported to Washington D.C. he did not believe Ortiz’s account that an American was involved. The embassy’s Human Rights Officer, Lewis Amselem, was the source of the lesbian love tryst rumor. Reverend Joseph Nangle of the Assis Community reported he heard Amselem give a vulgar rant in his presence with others about Ortiz and all the religious volunteers working with the indigenous groups. Amselem was attempting to intimidate the volunteers from cooperating with any investigation. U.S. Ambassador, Thomas F. Stroock and his employee, Amselem, worked hard to hinder any investigation of this crime.

In 2007 Sister Dianna Ortiz went to New Zealand to share her story - here is part one.

And there is the seventh phase of torture which all the other phases of work cumulate for re-victimizing the tortured person: discredit the tortured person’s testimony by exploiting all the post-traumatic psychological injuries such as memory loss, aphasia, confusion, depression, loss of concentration, hopelessness, loneliness, guilt, and despair. This new shift of torturers do not have to get blood on their hands, but only derive sadistic pleasure in publicly expressing doubt of the tortured person’s experience and pain.

Journalist Cokie Roberts contributed to the smear campaign by interviewing Ortiz and implying the entire event never happened. Cokie Roberts worked hard to keep the American/Contra Inquisition of Guatemala and Latin America a secret from the American people. It was later discovered that Cokie Roberts’ brother, Tom Boggs, and his law firm Patton Boggs was paid by the Guatemalan government to improve the country’s media image while internationally known as a human rights abuser. The lobbying firm of Patton, Boggs, & Blow received a $220,000 payment from the Guatemalan government in 1991. Those who reported facts of the mass murders in Guatemala were immediately killed such Bishop Gerardi in 1998. Bishop Gerardi was murdered the day after he published a report that 200,000 Guatemalans were tortured and murdered by the Guatemalan army. Because of Cokie Roberts' role as a propagandist, the American media heaped journalistic awards upon her to mask her immoral character and inhuman actions.

The god that the Guatemalan rapist police officer proclaimed dead is not the God of New Testament Christian monotheism, but rather the rotting corpse of American Christendom lying beside the rotting murdered corpse of American Democracy while the entire world is choking from the putrid stench. The Nation abandoned the God of History--of Time--to fully embrace the pagan occult spirits of Space in which greed is the dynamic engine for accumulating power for its own absolute domain.

Sister Ortiz is recovering.

…to continue “Tillich on the Demonic,” with “The Struggle of the Olympic gods of Space with The God of Infinite Time.”

“This leads to the ultimate point in the struggle between time and space. Prophetic monotheism is the monotheism of justice…God is one God because justice is one.”—Tillich, Theology of Culture, p. 37.