Victor Porter

Victor Porter is originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He arrived in Vancouver in 1984 as a government of Canada sponsored refugee. He worked in a variety of jobs, dishwasher, cook, beekeeper, production line worker, advocate, popular education facilitator, coordinating British Columbia’s response to human trafficking, and recently as a negotiator with the Hospital Employees Union. He lives with his wife, Maria Inés. They have four children—Maria Teresa, Paula Isabel, Camilo, and Jorge Luis.

Victor’s Story

My name is Victor Porter; I am sixty-three years old and live with my wife and children in Vancouver. I arrived in Canada as a government-sponsored refugee in April 1984. I was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a grandchild of migrant Jews who left Poland and Ukraine in the earlier 1900s. From my earliest memories, the principles of justice and fairness were ingrained in me; I attended a state-run school in the morning and a liberal non-religious Jewish school in the afternoon. I have a very vivid memory of the moment in a class when we were studying the prophets. The teacher described the rage and wrath of God against those oppressing the people. That was the beginning of my understanding and my desire to become an ish tzadik, a just person.

Around the same time, when I was about nine years old, I began to understand more about my family history and started to piece together the family puzzle: my grandfather Jacob migrated to Argentina in the midst of the First World War to escape being drafted into the Polish Army. As soon as he could, he brought over my grandmother Ester and they settled in a working-class and immigrant neighbourhood in Buenos Aires called La Boca. He worked as an upholsterer in the Ford factory, and my grandmother started to sell work clothing to his co-workers. Eventually they opened a clothing store in the neighbourhood.

After the end of the Second World War, my grandparents devoted their time and money to reconnect with the very few relatives that had survived the Holocaust, and to bring them to Argentina. They were able to locate seven nieces and nephews and their spouses. They brought them to Argentina and supported them as they started afresh in a new country. All of them had been through a taxing journey, and had experienced tremendous losses, incarceration, trauma, and carried the added burden of being survivors when others were lost forever.

My cousins and I were curious children and wanted to know everything. At family events we would corner our uncles, Abraham and Shimon, and beg them to show us their concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms and to tell us some stories. Shimon was reluctant, but he did. He had been a partisan and fought with the French resistance. Abraham barely shared anything. He had grey eyes and a very sad gaze. I now realize that whenever we forced him to talk about his experiences he was transported to another dimension, to a grey and ashen place.

My extended family and the familiar place of my Jewish afternoon school were my immediate reality. Then there was the outside real world, my state-run elementary school in which I was a minority among minorities. Most teachers were good, some excellent, but there were others who embodied the fascism ingrained in a significant portion of the Argentinian society. Take for instance our music teacher. I remember being in Grade 5 or 6 and having to march on the same spot on the bleachers while we sang the Federal Police anthem. The teacher seemed to hit the keys on the piano with inexplicable anger. Was this a music class? The country suffered successive dictatorships, with every new general trying to be more ruthless than his deposed predecessor. Their only interest in ruling the country was to protect the privilege of a few and to fight Communism.

One afternoon when I was ten, while I was having a glass of chocolate milk and crackers and watching the news after Jewish school, I learned about the capture and execution of Ernesto Che Guevara. I still remember how that afternoon changed my life. The man who walked what he talked about was gone, only to return as an inspiration to me and many more worldwide. By the time I was sixteen, I was a young political activist working with other students and neighbours on many issues related to poverty, supporting workers on strike, organizing impoverished tenants etc. Early in 1976, a new military junta established a dictatorship and started a plan of state-sponsored terror. I clearly remember their chilling discourse: “First we will kill the enemies of the fatherland, then the subversive terrorists, then their supporters, then their families and friends, then the undecided.” They did exactly that, or at least tried hard to. In the end, thirty thousand people disappeared. Only a small percentage of the bodies of those who disappeared were ever found. The alleged “enemies of the fatherland” were either killed “in combat” or “attempting to escape”. Many more were incarcerated, including me.

After the junta came into power I, who was then eighteen, left Argentina only to return two years later, in 1978. For almost a year I distributed printed bulletins from the resistance, spray-painted anti-dictatorship graffiti, left leaflets in public places, markets, parks, and other activities like this. I also used television signals to broadcast messages from the resistance in areas of ten square urban blocks—this was prior to cable television. We were able to hijack the over-the-air TV transmission waves, blur the image, and replace the soundtrack with our broadcasted message. We usually timed our broadcasts to coincide with the local family dinner time between 8:30 and 9:00 p.m. This was also the time when the most popular TV shows aired. Barking dogs was one way for us to measure the success of our transmission: If the interference was successful, people started to scream, and dogs started to bark. All these efforts did not produce any tangible result other than to keep people’s spirits up. The few activists left were disconnected and isolated. I was eventually arrested but the government did not acknowledge my detention for a week. I had “disappeared.”

Torture, or “enhanced interrogation techniques” as some people have called it more recently, was a blanket approach applied to everyone from drunks to subversives. I, like everyone I later met in prison, was subjected to this treatment. Argentina abolished slavery and torture in 1813; however, its use was widespread. Electric cattle prods turned out to be excellent instruments to extract confessions and interrogate stubborn suspects. I was beaten badly and received successive applications of electricity, with armpits, gums, genitals, and nostrils being the favourite targets. Then there were the simulated executions. My hope throughout the torture sessions was to die soon, as soon as possible.

I consider myself lucky, very lucky, because at the time of my arrest I was very fit and was able to endure more and provide confusing answers. No person was subsequently arrested because of me, and this fact continues to give me peace of mind. I do not know what would have happened if the torture sessions had lasted half a minute more. I do not need to know, and I am grateful for this.

My family learned of my arrest/kidnapping through calls from witnesses. They immediately contacted my relatives in the United States of America and Mexico, and they in turn started to spread the word. I had lived for two years in Mexico and had made lots of friends while attending the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Xochimilco. Upon learning of my detention, my Mexican friends organized a campaign to demand that the Argentinian dictatorship acknowledge my detention. The campaign included a march in front of the Argentinian Embassy in Mexico City and the release of an Urgent Action bulletin by the Mexican branch of Amnesty International. I owe them my life. Because of these actions, the way I was treated changed. I was asked if I had “important” friends or family overseas. I answered: “Yes, very important” and played up the notability of imaginary friends and relatives.

A few days later I was recognized as a detainee and transferred from my secret place of detention to a police station, where I sat in a cell for a couple of days. At that point I realized that no matter what hardships awaited me in jail, I would survive. I also noticed how bad I smelled after a week in the Inquisition place. It was a smell I had never produced before, and I have been very dirty in my life through camping excursions, sports, and so on. But no, this was different. It was a uniquely acrid and penetrating smell. Perhaps it was the smell of fear and primal survival, the chemistry and physiology of a body and a soul in turmoil. I was sleep deprived and had been without any food or water. The tortured are denied water because the electricity stored in a tortured body can be fatal when it is combined with water.

Eventually I was transferred to a regular prison where other political prisoners were held. The one I was held in was a 24-storey building with no windows, which meant the kept the fluorescent light on 24 hours a day. This jail was built with the purpose of housing regular detainees for a few days at a time in between court appearances, not as a permanent place of detention. However, the dictatorship recognized that this place was the perfect location to undermine our mental and physical health. I spent close to two years in that building. In addition to having the light on 24 hours a day, each cell consisted of three brick walls and a fourth one made of bars, identical to the kind of cage one would keep a monkey or a tiger in.

Our daily regime was called “Régimen de máxima peligrosidad,” which means “Regime of maximum danger,” and we the political prisoners were labelled as DT and or DTS, which respectively stands for “terrorist delinquent” and “subversive terrorist delinquent.” In addition, we were often raided by the requisa, a special unit within the guards. Their raids would coincide with political events taking place outside. The requisa would come to our floor armed with helmets and batons and Dobermann dogs. They would pull us from our cells, ransack our meagre possessions, destroy our writings, and then beat and humiliate everyone. We had to undress and expose ourselves in case we had a hidden weapon or a master plan for our escape or for defeating the dictatorship. They left as suddenly as they came, like a tornado leaving our lives to be picked piece by piece from the floor.

Sometime in 1981 I was transferred with others to another prison outside Buenos Aires, which was an older complex, with windows in the cells, and we were able to go to an outdoor patio a couple of hours a day. When we arrived, after almost two years with no direct natural light, even the guards at this prison were shocked by the colour of our skins, which had the appearance of a pale yellow parchment. “Where are you coming from?” they asked. “You look like ghosts!” Having a window was a big change for me, because I could look at the sky, the empty yard, barbed wire, the sun, the clouds and the rain. The days were slow and tedious and the regime continued to be abusive and humiliating—an attack on a fellow prisoner by officers and guards, mysterious landings of military helicopters in the field nearby and the possibility of being taken away again from prison for further interrogation. The only certainty was uncertainty. Yet we lived with that uncertainty day after day, trying to keep each other engaged with life, with ideas, with hope. We told stories, shared our knowledge, talked about everything we remembered, and read as many books as the censorious librarian allowed in.

One morning I had an epiphany. It was raining, the day was grey and everything looked like in a black and white movie. I was sitting by the window, drinking maté, our national tea. Everything was quiet, with only the noise of falling raindrops breaking complete silence. I could see the drops suspended on the barbed wire. I was mesmerized by the fact that the raindrops lasted so long hanging on the wire. I knew that they would inevitably fall. I was taken by the beauty of such a sad picture, and something became crystal clear to me: I was in the place a person like me should be in that moment in history—an imprisoned political prisoner. If I were not one, there were only three other options for me—living underground, being disappeared, or dead. I realized that despite the daily rigours of life in prison, the hunger and the anger, I could be here for as long as the dictatorship lasted and I would be just fine.

My grandfather Jacob had died many years before I was arrested, and yet he visited me in prison. I still have vivid memories of those dreams in which he visited me in my cell. He came and sat on the cement bench and we had lengthy conversations. In one dream I asked him, “How come they let you in?” and he responded: “I can go anywhere I want.” When I think about my time in prison and what helped me endure, survive, and emerge from the experience more or less in one piece, I have to credit the unconditional love and care I got from my grandfather as a child, and of course his regular nocturnal visits. He was an important part of my being reconciled with my fate.

Another exceptional thing happened to me while in prison during Easter week in 1982. The regime allowed contact visits. Ordinarily we could only see our visitors through glass and communicate with them through a sort of hose or metal tube, but during this time we could see and embrace our visitors. Those of us receiving a visitor were taken to a large room. In that room I ran into Pedro, a friend who was held in another wing. I have not seen him for many months and was happy to have a few minutes with him. Then the visitors entered the room. My mother appeared with a young woman. I kissed my mother and was introduced to this young woman. “This is Maria Ines, Pedro’s younger sister.” I kissed the girl on the cheek as is customary in Argentina, and she carried on visiting with her brother. But for me, the world stopped, everything faded and went out of focus. I was semi-paralyzed in her presence.

It felt like a silent thunderbolt had cut through me, had washed everything away, and for weeks I was in heaven and in hell at the same time, unable and unwilling to shake the impact of her presence. On March 30, 1982, the Argentinian people mobilized and organized the first massive demonstration against the dictatorship. The police started to move on the demonstrators. In response, office employees from the buildings surrounding the demonstration started to throw everything they could get their hands on--glass ashtrays weighing two pounds were the projectile of choice--and many Army and police vehicles were damaged. The people had enough and, most crucially, acted in spite of their fear and the reign of terror they were subjected to.

Perhaps as a response, the junta launched an invasion of the Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands) and declared war on England. There were a few weeks of patriotic euphoria that lasted only until the time it took for the British navy to cross the Atlantic and defeat our malnourished, trembling, and inexperienced eighteen-year-old draftees. Argentina lost the war, and that was the beginning of the end for the dictatorship. Shortly after the end of the war, the dictatorship allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit the prisons where political prisoners were held to inspect and document the conditions. A few days later delegations from the Vatican, France, Holland, Denmark, and Canada were also allowed to visit the prisons and talk to the prisoners. As they heard our stories, and viewed the conditions in which we lived, their message was consistently the same. The foreign delegates said, “We are unable to get you out of prison, but as soon as you are out, we will get you out of the country.”

I was released from prison around Christmas 1982, and I was picked up by my family. Also, a couple of other released prisoners came to my home to organize their return to other provinces where they had come from. The release was announced that very morning, and by the early evening we were at my house. Relatives kept arriving. It was a big day for everyone, as they all felt that they were recovering a part of them that had been taken away. My uncle Abraham, a Holocaust survivor, embraced me and said, “Now I have someone who understands me.” And then he started to cry. To this day I believe that if my almost four years of being jailed as a political prisoner made my uncle Abraham feel understood by someone, then every minute of this journey was worth it. I came out winning. We came out winning.

At the same time, I regret the amount of pain and suffering that my detention caused to my parents and sister. My father, like many other fathers, was not able to come to terms with my being detained. He got extremely sick with a bone infection and endured a number of operations. My mother, and most of the other mothers I heard of, shouldered the agony of their sons and daughters being in prison or disappeared. They became the spine of Argentina’s moral and social consciousness and are still in their late eighties and nineties the bastion of social justice. Following Canadian consular advice, I left Argentina after my release, and got my visa in another country. I landed in Vancouver in the spring of 1984 as a government of Canada sponsored refugee. Like many other newly arrived refugees, I struggled to learn English, to understand the country, and to find and make my way. I worked as a dishwasher, delivered newspapers, became a cook, a beekeeper, a production manager in the first tofu wiener factory in the country, a theatre practitioner, an advocate for immigrants and refugees, a coordinator for the British Columbia government’s response to human trafficking, a popular educator consultant, and most recently, an employee of the labour movement. I can still smell injustice from a distance and continue to work to do away with it.

Every morning, I wake up and from my bed I look at the trees lining my street. Next to me, Maria Inés is still asleep (yes, the girl who struck me like a thunderbolt arrived in Canada in 1987 to join me). We raised four children, who are more courageous, hard-working, compassionate, intelligent, and grounded than I ever will be. Every morning I know that I am in the best place on earth, and I am grateful for everything.

Porter, V. (2021). The Best Place on Earth. In G. Melnyk & C. Parker (Eds). Finding Refuge in Canada: Narratives of Dislocation. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press.