Luis Quijano. Photo: Nicolás Bravo. Used with permission. This is an adapted version of an interview with Luis Quijano by Alejo Gómez that originally appeared on August 23, 2016 in Día a Día. It was translated and published here with permission. When he was 15 years old, Luis Alberto Quijano’s father forced him to witness the horrors of La Perla, a clandestine detention center in the city of Córdoba, Argentina. Now an adult, Luis testified against his father in the La Perla-Ribera mega trial in the province of Córdoba for crimes committed during the dictatorship. Forty-three oppressors were charged with crimes against humanity in the trial, which concluded on August 24, 2016. Luis Alberto Quijano didn’t choose his life. From the burden of having the same name as his father, to being exposed to brutal military operations in La Perla when he was 15, he had suffered long enough. He kept the family secret for 34 years. En el contexto de esa época yo creía que estaba bien. Me sentía un agente secreto. Pero a los 15 años, un hijo no puede darse cuenta de que es manipulado por su padre. Yo no estaba preparado todavía para darme cuenta de que mi padre era un ladrón, un torturador y un asesino. At the time, in that context I thought it was okay. I felt like a secret agent. But at the age of 15, a child doesn’t realize that he’s being manipulated by his father. I was not prepared yet to understand that my father was a thief, a torturer and a murderer. Luis had no choice: his father was Gendarmerie Officer Luis Alberto Quijano, second in command of the Intelligence Detachment 141 at La Perla from 1976 to 1978, during the Argentine military dictatorship, a period of state terrorism in Argentina from roughly 1974 to 1983. Luis Alberto Quijano. Archive photo. This isn’t the story of Luis Quijano the oppressor, accused of 158 kidnappings, torture, almost 100 homicides and the abduction of a 10-year-old child. It is the story of Luis Quijano’s son, a man who over the years learned the magnitude of the terror he had lived as boy and ultimately testified against his own father in federal court. It is a story that reflects the immense power that a parent has over a child, and how that child can choose a path of redemption. When my father started taking me to the Detachment, I had been going to the provincial gym and became friends with a boy who did martial arts. They called him “Kent.” I told my father and a few days later he showed me a black-and-white photo card and asked me to identify my friend. He said: Me dijo “sos un pelotudo, ¡te hiciste amigo de un tipo del ERP! Mirá si después te ‘chupan’ a vos y me tengo que entregar para salvarte. You’re an asshole, you made friends with an ERP! Watch, later they’ll kidnap you and I’ll have to save you. The ERP stands for the People's Revolutionary Army, which was the military branch of the communist Workers’ Revolutionary Party in Argentina. So he forbid me to go back to the gym, and a few days later he took me to the Detachment to work. He told me I was going to be a secret agent. I was 15, and in that context I believed it was okay because it was what my father had taught me. At the Detachment, they made me destroy documentation that belonged to the prisoners. Documents of all kinds: university degrees, handwritten notes, literature, certificates, propaganda, books, everything. Photo: Comisión Provincial de la Memoria My father took me to La Perla four times, all in 1976. The first and fourth visits, he left me waiting in the car at the entrance. The second time he made me get out and he took me to a shed where there were cars, furniture, televisions, refrigerators, anything you could imagine. All of it stolen. He gave me a package wrapped in a blanket and told me to take it to his car, and when I opened it, I saw it was a giant lump of silver. That day I went to the other side of the shed where they dropped off the stolen things and I started chatting with a gendarme who was standing guard. At one point he gestured to an open room and told me: ahí es donde les dan ‘matraca’ a los secuestrados. Over there is where they torture the prisoners. I peeked in and saw a bed where they tortured people. It was like a military cot with metal springs. Later I learned that they hooked up a stripped negative cable to the metal and used another positive cable to touch the body of whomever was tied down. They would handcuff a person on the cot, drench them with water and apply 220 volts to their genitals. Photo: Comisión Provincial de la Memoria There was such an appalling odor in there… like a dirty diaper. Years later, when my father was being held under house arrest, the same smell emanated from his room. I made the connection and realized that it’s the smell of a body in distress.