The Little School

The Little School (1986) is a memoir by the Argentinean poet Alicia Partnoy describing her imprisonment and torture when she was one of the “disappeared” dissidents captured by the dictator Jorge Rafael Videla during the “Dirty War” military junta regimes of the late 1970s. The military regimes of this time were particularly bloodthirsty in rounding up and kidnapping an unprecedented number of civilians for their political beliefs. As Videla later explained to journalists, he felt no guilt over disappearing these people, since it was a pragmatic way to get rid of dissent without worrying Argentinean society over firing squads. Partnoy’s depiction of the secret prison where she and others were kept – euphemistically called “a little school” where these people would be taught “lessons” – was later submitted to Argentina's Truth Commission as evidence.

In 1976, Isabel Peron, the last scion of Juan Peron’s socialist-leaning government, was deposed by a military junta led by several different dictators, including Videla. Partnoy, who had been a political activist in college, was a committed Peronist and socialist but was not a part of the radical violent wing of the pro-Peron movement. However, when these radicalized Peron supporters waged a guerrilla fight against the army, the dictator Videla responded with an indiscriminate and brutal campaign of repression aimed at anyone who had ever espoused support for the Peron regime.

In 1977, Partnoy was arrested by the Argentinean army and separated from her eighteen-month-old daughter Ruth, who was lucky to end up with relatives and survive this gruesome period of history. Sentenced to “the little school” in her home city of Bahia Blanca without any charges, Partnoy spent almost four months tied up and blindfolded, cut off from contact, not only with her family, but also with any of the other prisoners who were there with her. Eventually, the blindfold she was forced to always wear developed a small hole through which she could see a little bit of what was around her, but it was still almost impossible to communicate since one of the things the guards made sure to do was to prevent prisoners from talking to one another.



The memoir offers us glimpses into the horrors that Partnoy experienced, heard, and could sometimes see. Prisoners were beaten and tortured for almost any reason – and often for no reason at all. Guards spent their time degrading, humiliating, sexually assaulting, and insulting the prisoners, who were often on the edge of starvation. One of the most horrifying things is the fate of the two babies that were born in the prison. Not only do these births mean that heavily pregnant women were disappeared, but it is unclear what happened to these children after they were ripped away from their mothers. In an interview given later, Partnoy reveals that both mothers, like many of the prisoners, were eventually killed – and that their families are still looking for any information about the missing babies.

Lightly fictionalizing the identities of the other prisoners, the memoir focuses on the ways in which the author and those around her desperately tried to hold on to their dignity and humanity in the face of the prison’s systematic attempts to dehumanize them. One prisoner survived torture by reciting a nursery rhyme over and over, while another treasured a broken off piece of her tooth as a way of keeping all of her body intact. Meanwhile, Partnoy found herself savoring the smallest things that bring slight physical pleasure: she caught raindrops on the palm of her hand through a leaky window and hoarded pieces of bread under her pillow in order to eat them in secret. In the book, she writes about these moments with poetic lyricism and beauty, as a way to resist the loss of dignity inherent in what she went through. There are also random moments of mercy from the guards: once, she has access to a toothbrush, and on another day, she is suddenly allowed to recite some poetry to her fellow prisoners.

Three and a half months after her arrest, Partnoy was inexplicably released from “the little school” and instead placed in a state prison. There, conditions were terrible, but nowhere near the torture and dehumanization she experienced in secret detention. After two years in state prison, Partnoy was just as inexplicably released and able to reunite with her daughter and family. The Little School ends with several appendices where Partnoy tries to lay out as many concrete details as she can remember about the other prisoners and the guards that she encountered – information that was later used as evidence during Videla’s eventual trial. Videla died in prison in 2013.