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Being trapped in a world where torture is a commonality, Hector Aristizabal, a Columbian native, fled his country because of the torture he was put through when he was 14 years old. Now in the United States, he tells about his torture through a performance called Nightwind.

On Friday, Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. at Cline Library Auditorium, Aristizabal, who also works as a psychotherapist, performed a show based around his torture with Palestine native Vivien Sansour.

Aristizabal and Sansour co-founded the organization Imaginaction. Masks, drumming, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Arabic, Sign Language and many sound effects contributed to the effect of the play.

Aristizabal began the performance by standing on a wooden table with a black sheet over his head. He then progressed into his birth, acting in his mother’s place.

Aristizabal jumped to life as an early teenager, slowly moving into the beginning stages of his torture.

“As teachers we always fantasize we’re being watched by Columbia’s soccer team,” Aristizabal said. “We’re always being watched by Columbia’s military.” 

Hector Aristizabal, the creative director for the traveling theater arts company ImaginAction, acts out a torture scene from his play "Nightwind" last Friday night at Cline Library. Aristizabal was arrested and tortured in Columbia in the 1980's and has been a peace activist since. - Matt Beaty/ The Lumberjack

In the performance, a priest in Aristizabal’s neighborhood overheard him and friends talking politics during a campout and informed the army. Soldiers stormed in and raided his home.

“We knew the barrio was being taken over,” Aristizabal said.

Aristizabal used voices and his sheet as props to symbolize a gun. He interacted with the audience, acting as a soldier finding books and photos underneath seats.

He and his brother were taken from their family to a place where they were forced to face a wall where soldiers practiced aim. The soldiers then split Aristizabal and his brother up.

He went through the motions of being tied up, beaten and drowned, using water and sound effects made by Sansour. Then, the soldiers attached electrodes to his testicles to “jumpstart” his memory, demanding Aristizabal tell them everything he knew.

Aristizabal repeated the phrase, “What is it that saved my life?” numerous times throughout the act.

“I fantasize a helicopter rescuing us,” Aristizabal said. “Of course, that is not what happened.”

He said he was released 10 days later but his brother was sent to prison for carrying an adverse weapon: a machete. Aristizabal never saw his brother again.

He then attained a visa and came to the United States to flee Columbia, a country where at least 20 people experience torture everyday.

He met an American woman with whom he fell in love and they had two children together. Three years later, he returned to Columbia after hearing word that his brother’s body had been found. In his performance, Aristizabal recreated his mother’s reaction, her words and movements, through his acting.

Justin Strong, a freshman dual-major in criminology and political science, said this scene was the most emotional to him.

“When he was going over the torture, especially his mother’s reaction, it had so much emotion,” Strong said. “He is on a stage telling people about it and actually being able to do it.”

Continuing the scene, Aristizabal said he wanted to kill his brother’s murderers but instead returned to America for his children.

“I committed massacres in my dreams,” Aristizabal said.

Aristizabal concluded the act with a dance at a peace demonstration.

“We need to keep dancing to kill the terrorist within,” Aristizabal said.

Aristizabal then explained some of his own techniques used during his psychotherapy sessions. He began with a dynamic meditation, getting every person moving and dancing around the room.

“A bad dance doesn’t kill the Earth, but no dance kills the spirit,” Aristizabal said encouraging audience members.

He then explained how we as humans get paralyzed in our emotions and instead of doing something, it consumes us.

International Student Recruiter Nancy Currey said the performance was inspiring.

“It was deeply moving, evocative,” Currey said. “Portraying what is harsh is the true reality.”

For more information, visit www.imaginaction.org.

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