108 / Cuchillo de palo (Paraguay, 2009)Dir.: Renate Costa
It was winter. My father called us urgently. My uncle’s naked body had been found lying on the floor. A crowd had gathered at his corner. The police dispersed onlookers. My relatives were there. They asked me to go inside and choose the clothes in which he would be buried. I opened his wardrobe: It was empty. When I asked them what he died of they told me: "Of sadness". That answer contradicted all my memories of his life.
Rodolfo was the only one among my father's brothers who didn't want to be a blacksmith like my grandfather. In the Paraguay of the eighties, under Stroessner's dictatorship, he wanted to be a dancer.
This is the search for traces of his life and the discovery that he had been included in one of the “108 homosexual lists", arrested and tortured. Still today in Paraguay when someone calls you "108" they mean "faggot." For more than one generation, the duration of Stroessner's dictatorship, men who came under suspicion of being homosexual or against the regime were the favorite target of collaborators.
Rodolfo's story reveals a part of the hidden and silenced history of my country.
A film where two generations come face to face: the generation that lived under the dictatorshipand is keeping silent and the generation that, living in democracy, doesn't have anything to say because nobody remembers the real meaning of "108".
In the family and in the country, the same photographs have been hidden. As if nobody had the courage to question anything: the same way of looking down, the same prejudices, the same secrets under the carpet, the same silences.
There is no film about this period. To keep silent in order to forget. To hide in order to erase memories.
A personal quest made of few certainties and many questions often without an answer. Questions that will allow us to discover the relationship we construct with the past, and how this relationship defines our own present.
A film that is ultimately about each one of us.
The “108” Lists
The witch-hunt began with the Aranda case and continued with the Palmieri case. In both murders, the suspects were homosexuals. Stroessner ordered the creation of "blacklists" of homosexuals, which were distributed and affixed in visible places in the city’scompanies, districts and universities with the aim of punishing them. The presumption of innocence was not even contemplated.
This episode is popularly known as “the 108 list” because the first one contained 108 names. Many were dismissed from their jobs, stigmatized, discriminated, rejected by close friends and family. Stroessner created the idea in the collective consciousness that “homosexual” is synonymous with “assassin.” If before people had already believed that homosexuality was a disease, after the list episode, they were convinced that it was also dangerous..
Time passed. Now few people in Paraguay remember the name of Aranda or Palmieri, but “108” is used as a common insult and everybody knows that it is a synonymon of "queer". In hotels in Asunción, it’s still common to find that there are no bedrooms with the number 108: clients didn’t want them. The same thing happens with car license plates or lottery numbers ending in 108, which people never buy.
Rodolfo Héctor Costa Torres was number 41 in one of the public lists of homosexuals.
Διαβάστε επίσης:
A film where two generations come face to face: the generation that lived under the dictatorshipand is keeping silent and the generation that, living in democracy, doesn't have anything to say because nobody remembers the real meaning of "108".
In the family and in the country, the same photographs have been hidden. As if nobody had the courage to question anything: the same way of looking down, the same prejudices, the same secrets under the carpet, the same silences.
There is no film about this period. To keep silent in order to forget. To hide in order to erase memories.
A personal quest made of few certainties and many questions often without an answer. Questions that will allow us to discover the relationship we construct with the past, and how this relationship defines our own present.
A film that is ultimately about each one of us.
The “108” Lists
The witch-hunt began with the Aranda case and continued with the Palmieri case. In both murders, the suspects were homosexuals. Stroessner ordered the creation of "blacklists" of homosexuals, which were distributed and affixed in visible places in the city’scompanies, districts and universities with the aim of punishing them. The presumption of innocence was not even contemplated.
This episode is popularly known as “the 108 list” because the first one contained 108 names. Many were dismissed from their jobs, stigmatized, discriminated, rejected by close friends and family. Stroessner created the idea in the collective consciousness that “homosexual” is synonymous with “assassin.” If before people had already believed that homosexuality was a disease, after the list episode, they were convinced that it was also dangerous..
Time passed. Now few people in Paraguay remember the name of Aranda or Palmieri, but “108” is used as a common insult and everybody knows that it is a synonymon of "queer". In hotels in Asunción, it’s still common to find that there are no bedrooms with the number 108: clients didn’t want them. The same thing happens with car license plates or lottery numbers ending in 108, which people never buy.
Rodolfo Héctor Costa Torres was number 41 in one of the public lists of homosexuals.
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Cuchillo de Palo / 108
Statement
"Cuchillo de Palo / 108" was born out of a reaction and the necessity of
confronting the anger and pain that comes from seeing people's willful
ignorance in the face of clear evidence. It arises from the need to film in order
to bring to light that which is hidden, as a base from which to establish a
commitment to reality.
In the blacksmith's workshop, Rodolfo was a “Cuchillo de Palo”, “a useless
knife”, during the dictatorship, when anybody who thought or acted differently
was subject to repression. A life condemned to silence, even within the family.
"Cuchillo de Palo / 108" is an intense inner process in search of acceptance
and reconciliation: the acceptance of Rodolfo, the father, society, and history,
in order to reconcile with our past.
In front of the camera, people remember, contrasting their memories with the
confused, associative memories of childhood. An attempt to reconstruct an
image of the persecuted, the hidden, the "abnormal" in the words of the people
who speak or avoid speaking, and by doing so, to capture the image of a
society which was and still is imprisoned in a certain intolerance, silence and
passivity.
Filming the present in order to recover a past that allows us to gain a better
understanding of where we come from and to recognize who we are. Life turns
out to be made of shadows too. This is what gives it meaning. Confronting
what we haven’t lived through means accepting that we carry the burden of
history, family and society, whether we are aware of it or not.
The film makes part of the “unofficial history” visible through a personal story,
which proves to be universal. This issue is not only related to the past and to
Paraguay. It can make us think about how society’s and individual’s acceptance
of identity can be crucial to the construction of a community’s way of thinking.
The film is an immersion into the difference of the “other” and in this way, a
reconciliation with what each of us is made of. In the end, we all have to learn
how to live with our ghosts.
Renate Costa - Estudi Playtime
Historical Context
On Wednesday, August 16th 2006, a human rights group and several
Paraguayan activist groups meet for the inauguration of the Museum of
Memory, Dictatorship and Democracy at the building popularly known as “La
Técnica”, a former clandestine torture site during Stroessner’s dictatorship.
Suddenly, news arrive: Alfredo Stroessner has died that same day. He died of
natural causes aged 93, in his Brazilian exile, hiding from Paraguayan justice.
After World War II, politics in Paraguay became particularly unstable with
several political parties fighting for power in the late 1940s, which most
notably led to the Paraguayan civil war of 1947. A series of unstable
governments ensued until the establishment in 1954 of the authoritarian
regime of Alfredo Stroessner, who remained in power for more than three
decades.
The dictatorship
Stroessner governed Paraguay with an iron hand from 1954 to 1989. He
changed the Colorado Party, originally with a Social-Democratic tendency,
turning it into an extreme right party. "Peace and Progress" was the slogan of
the administration whose economic policy hid a network of nepotism and
corruption that benefited close friends of the regime. Stroessner's strong anticommunist
stance made him a friend of U.S. interests for most of his rule,
participating in Operation Condor and even offering to send troops to Vietnam.
Alfredo Stroessner's human rights track record was one of the worst on the
continent. His regime is accused of torture, kidnappings and corruption,
proven by the "terror archives", discovered in 1992.
All in all, thirty-five years of systematic human rights violations, with an
estimated 3,000 to 4,000 murders and more than 500 disappeared people,
thousands of political prisoners and more than a million people living in exile.
Paraguay Today
For the first time in 61 years, the Colorado Party lost a presidential election in
Paraguay. The 2008 presidential elections were won by Fernando Lugo, a
Roman Catholic bishop whose duties have been suspended on his request by
the Holy See.
The Paraguayans have erased certain things from their memories, others have
been shut away and hidden, or are only evoked whispers, off the record. The
greatest torture was silence, being forced to keep quiet. Even today,
Paraguayans do not complain, they do not hold street demonstrations and they
do not use public places. People have been so repressed that even after fifteen
years of democracy they are still afraid to go out. Nobody has been processed
for the crimes that occurred during the dictatorship. Everything has been
silenced and condemned to forgetfulness.
The Filmmaker: RENATE COSTA
Born in Asunción, Paraguay in 1981.
Renate Costa graduated in Audiovisual Direction and Production from the
Paraguayan Professional Institute. She studied Documentary Filmmaking at
the International Film School of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. Since 2006
she has lived in Barcelona, where she obtained her Master in Creative
Documentary from Pompeu Fabra University and developed “Cuchillo de
Palo / 108”
In the field of documentary production, she worked in Paraguay as producer of
“Cándido López – Los campos de batalla” (José Luis García, 2005; Audience
Award at BAFICI; Best Film, Best Script and Best Documentary at Cóndor Awards
2006) and as a member of the production staff of “Os caroneiros”, a TV
documentary co-produced by Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
In fiction films she has collaborated in “Paraguayan Hammock” (Paz Encina,
2006; Fipresci Award at Cannes – Un Certain Regard).
As a director, she debuted in 2007 with the short documentary film “Che
yvotymi - Mi pequeña flor” which she also produced. She directed 13
episodes of the TV documentary series “Histories of the way”, created by
Jorge Rubiani and produced by Canal 4, Telefuturo.
“Cuchillo de Palo / 108” is her first feature film.
FILMOGRAPHY
“Che yvotymi - Mi pequeña flor” Paraguay, 2007. 12’. Documentary
“Historias del camino” Paraguay, 2005-06. TV documentary series.
Cuchillo de Palo / 108
www.cuchillodepalo.net
Sinopsis
Era invierno. Mi papá nos llamó urgente. Habían encontrado el cuerpo desnudo
de mi tío en el suelo. Había gente agolpada frente a su esquina. La policía
separaba a los curiosos. Mis parientes estaban ahí. Me pidieron que entrase y
eligiese la ropa con la que se le iba a velar. Me acerqué a su ropero: estaba
vacío.
Cuando pregunté de qué murió me dijeron: “de tristeza”. Aquella respuesta
contradecía todos mis recuerdos sobre su vida.
Rodolfo fue el único hermano de mi padre que no quiso ser herrero como mi
abuelo. En el Paraguay de los ochenta, bajo la dictadura de Stroessner, quería
ser bailarín.
Esta es la búsqueda de las huellas de su vida y el descubrimiento de que fue
incluido en una de las “listas de homosexuales o 108”, arrestado y torturado
por ello.
Todavía hoy en Paraguay cuando te dicen “108” te están diciendo “puto,
maricón” y es una ofensa grave. Durante más de una generación, el tiempo que
duró la dictadura de Stroessner, los hombres que despertaban sospecha de ser
homosexuales o contrarios al régimen eran el blanco preferido de los
“pyraguë” (vecinos colaboradores con el régimen).
La historia de Rodolfo desvela una parte de la Historia escondida y silenciada
de mi país.
Una película donde se enfrentan dos generaciones, la que ha vivido la
dictadura y calla y la que viviendo en democracia no tiene nada que decir
porque desconoce el origen del significado de “108”.
El silencio sigue instaurado. En la familia y en el país las mismas fotos han sido
escondidas. Como si nadie se atreviese a cuestionar, la misma forma de
agachar la cabeza, de no mirar a los ojos, los mismos prejuicios comunes, los
secretos bajo la mesa. No hay ninguna película acerca de este periodo. Callar
para olvidar. Ocultar para borrar.
Una búsqueda personal hecha de pocas certidumbres y de muchas preguntas,
a menudo sin respuesta. Preguntas que nos permiten entender la relación que
construimos con el pasado y cómo ésta define nuestro presente.
Una película que, en definitiva, habla de cada uno de nosotros.
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