end in our lifetime -- all of Central America was in flames by 1981 and eighty thousand by then had died in Guatemala alone--but the Guatemalan story continued for me in the summer of 1974, when I spent a fruitful week at the U.S. Army War College as a civilian guest at its annual defense seminar.
At one of the cocktail parties, on a glorious spring day on the perfectly manicured lawns, I noticed one of the young colonels studying me rather carefully. Finally he came over and asked, "Aren't you Georgie Anne Geyer?" When I nodded, puzzled, he laughed and said, "Well, I know you, but you don't know me."
The colonel turned out to be the officer who in 1966 had been the Special Forces adviser to the Guatemalan military at the brigade at Zacapa, the town nearest to where we were. This brigade was the one that eventually sent out every sort of military and civilian killer it could find to wipe out the guerrillas. The only trouble was that they were rather indiscriminate about the whole business: they managed to wipe out not only a few hundred guerrillas, but even by conservative embassy estimates at least ten thousand peasants just like the ones we had met.
It turned out that the American military officers on the scene, whom we identified in the stories by numbers if not by name, knew we were with the guerrillas. In fact, I learned that night, they were after us.
It was one of the stranger experiences of my life, but not untypical of our times, to sit there in a neat, pleasant, orderly American house on the army base at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, calmly discussing with this decent and thoughtful chap how he was encouraging and advising part of an army that was out to kill me. Not only was I being stalked by the Guatemalan military, I was being stalked by my own. And it was all too typical of the manner in which all too many Americans of my generation were to become so often angrily divided and alienated from our government.
At the end of the evening, after several drinks and a warming dinner and excellent conversation, he leaned forward and said, "You know, I was never sure that you weren't the one who was on the right side."
II.
Starting on the South Side
"Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden them."
-- OSCAR WILDE
Like so many things, it all started with a small obsession. When I was only seven or eight, I used to lie in my comfortable old German bed at night, in every respect a most loved and blessed child, and think about it. What, I would wonder for reasons I have never totally understood, if only one person had the truth and that person was a woman? She would not voice it because the women I knew did not speak out; and so the world would be denied this crucial truth.
Years later a famous Chicago architect told me that when he was about the same age, he was tuning in to the same waves when he also wondered, "If I knew the truth, would I tell it to a woman?" Even to his mother? The male answer: "No." The life I started with was circumscribed to create the perfect young wife and mother. The expectations were clear, and until I was well into adulthood, I never knew anyone who questioned them. In the forties and fifties, there was no women's movement, and the old feminist movement of the twenties had left little residue for our type of world. Too, World War II had left the United States with men who craved the hearth and women who craved their men.
My future seemed engraved in stone. I would be the first generation of our family to receive a college education. I might work for no more than two or three years (but only as an "experience" in life, certainly not to support myself or for the joy of some desired work), and then I would marry some stable, nonabrasive, amiable, boy-next-door "good provider" with whom I would settle down (nearby) and raise no more than two children. They, in turn, would then proceed to replace my life just as I had replaced my parents'
At one of the cocktail parties, on a glorious spring day on the perfectly manicured lawns, I noticed one of the young colonels studying me rather carefully. Finally he came over and asked, "Aren't you Georgie Anne Geyer?" When I nodded, puzzled, he laughed and said, "Well, I know you, but you don't know me."
The colonel turned out to be the officer who in 1966 had been the Special Forces adviser to the Guatemalan military at the brigade at Zacapa, the town nearest to where we were. This brigade was the one that eventually sent out every sort of military and civilian killer it could find to wipe out the guerrillas. The only trouble was that they were rather indiscriminate about the whole business: they managed to wipe out not only a few hundred guerrillas, but even by conservative embassy estimates at least ten thousand peasants just like the ones we had met.
It turned out that the American military officers on the scene, whom we identified in the stories by numbers if not by name, knew we were with the guerrillas. In fact, I learned that night, they were after us.
It was one of the stranger experiences of my life, but not untypical of our times, to sit there in a neat, pleasant, orderly American house on the army base at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, calmly discussing with this decent and thoughtful chap how he was encouraging and advising part of an army that was out to kill me. Not only was I being stalked by the Guatemalan military, I was being stalked by my own. And it was all too typical of the manner in which all too many Americans of my generation were to become so often angrily divided and alienated from our government.
At the end of the evening, after several drinks and a warming dinner and excellent conversation, he leaned forward and said, "You know, I was never sure that you weren't the one who was on the right side."
II.
Starting on the South Side
"Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden them."
-- OSCAR WILDE
Like so many things, it all started with a small obsession. When I was only seven or eight, I used to lie in my comfortable old German bed at night, in every respect a most loved and blessed child, and think about it. What, I would wonder for reasons I have never totally understood, if only one person had the truth and that person was a woman? She would not voice it because the women I knew did not speak out; and so the world would be denied this crucial truth.
Years later a famous Chicago architect told me that when he was about the same age, he was tuning in to the same waves when he also wondered, "If I knew the truth, would I tell it to a woman?" Even to his mother? The male answer: "No." The life I started with was circumscribed to create the perfect young wife and mother. The expectations were clear, and until I was well into adulthood, I never knew anyone who questioned them. In the forties and fifties, there was no women's movement, and the old feminist movement of the twenties had left little residue for our type of world. Too, World War II had left the United States with men who craved the hearth and women who craved their men.
My future seemed engraved in stone. I would be the first generation of our family to receive a college education. I might work for no more than two or three years (but only as an "experience" in life, certainly not to support myself or for the joy of some desired work), and then I would marry some stable, nonabrasive, amiable, boy-next-door "good provider" with whom I would settle down (nearby) and raise no more than two children. They, in turn, would then proceed to replace my life just as I had replaced my parents'
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