My grandfather was the arch-conservative US Senator Jesse Helms from North Carolina. From my grandfather, I inherited a controversial political legacy opposed to abortion, reproductive freedom, and the bodily autonomy of women. He passed away in 2008, but one of his most painful legacies lives on: the Helms Amendment. This 50-year-old legislation restricts the use of U.S. foreign assistance funds for “abortion as a method of family planning,” denying millions of people access to safe abortion—even in countries where it’s their legal right, even in conflict zones where sexual violence is rampant, and even in cases of rape, incest, and threat to the girl, woman, or pregnant person’s life.

My grandfather began his first U.S. Senate term in 1973, the year Roe v. Wade was ruled by the Supreme Court and the year Congress passed his “Helms Amendment,” as part of the Foreign Assistance Act. The Helms Amendment countered Roe v. Wade on the international level. Restricting access to abortion services does not end its practice. Every year, 35 million women, girls, and pregnant people around the world resort to unsafe abortions. Since 1973, my grandfather’s amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act has functioned as a blanket ban on abortion services and information in low to middle income countries that rely on United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding for healthcare. As a result, the U.S. government tacitly contributes to thousands of maternal deaths and millions of injuries annually from unsafe abortion and has done so every year since 1973. There is nothing pro-life about the Helms Amendment.

“There is nothing pro-life about the Helms Amendment.“

The personal is undeniably political, but for me, the political has always been deeply personal. I spent my entire childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood in my grandfather’s political limelight and crossfire. Like his polarizing platform, the experience came with an exciting up close and personal view of U.S. politics coupled with a deep underlying and unspoken discomfort whenever my grandfather’s politics hurt others, which was all the time. The unvoiced discomforts were represented as a series of dominos in my mind. When I left home for college, I fell in love with the field of geology and had an overwhelming realization that science and the sacred were not at odds but were the same. Something about this realization knocked over the first symbolic domino of my inherited fundamentalist Christian, right-wing belief system and down they all fell. I did not believe what my grandfather believed, and I wanted to forge a different path for myself and my lineage. To this end, I moved out west in search of a new culture, perspective, and identity.

Legacy for Terror

I arrived in the greater Seattle area two days before the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The 9/11 terrorist attacks were a major collective trauma that impacted all of us living in the United States at the time. The visuals of that day remain imprinted on my mind and heart. Beyond the overwhelming collective trauma, the 9/11 terrorist attacks held an even deeper, symbolic meaning for me.

My grandfather’s political career roughly began and ended with the two 9/11s, the first being the Chilean 9/11 in 1973. On that day, democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende was couped, committed suicide, and replaced by my grandfather’s political ally, right-wing dictator Augustus Pinochet. The sports stadium in Santiago, Chile became a torture center. Thousands of leftist activists were raped, tortured, and murdered by the incoming right-wing dictatorship. The Chilean 9/11 marked the beginning of my grandfather’s involvement in political terror across Latin America.

“I did not believe what my grandfather believed,
and I wanted to forge a different path for myself and my lineage.“

I interpreted the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as the proverbial chickens of my grandfather’s political terror in Latin America coming home to roost. Political terror generates more political terror. Unhealed cycles of violence result in ongoing cycles of war and violence. I am not saying that my grandfather was responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but on a symbolic level, I recognized that his U.S. Senate career was bookended by unspeakable acts of political terror. I came to understand his political career as an unresolved cycle of violence that must be confronted and reconciled for me and my lineage to be healed. I knew I needed support to do this healing work. I chose higher education as the vehicle.

I chose Saybrook University’s MA/PhD Psychology program, with a Specialization in Transformative Social Change, as the container for my process of theoretical introspection, healing, and reconciliation. I embarked on my academic journey with the sole purpose of reconciling the painful political legacy I inherited from my grandfather. The sub-discipline of psychology best suited for this endeavor was liberation psychology, which was founded by a Jesuit and psychologist in El Salvador during the dirty wars that plagued Latin America from 1970s-1990s. As it turned out, my grandfather was a political ally and associate with the right-wing death squad commander thought to be responsible for the assassination of liberation psychology’s founder.

“I recognized that his U.S. Senate career was
bookended by unspeakable acts of political terror.”

To put it bluntly, my grandfather was complicit in the assassination of liberation psychology’s founder- Jesuit Ignacio Martin–Baro and the attempt to undermine the sub-discipline of psychology I use to reconcile and heal his legacy.

Liberation Psychology

Liberation Psychology is an activist-oriented psychology that unravels the connections between individual pain and suffering and unjust social, cultural, economic, and political systems in which the individual is embedded. Liberation requires a manageable psychological rupture from these internalized unjust systems and institutions with the goal of transforming them through grassroots activism and democratic process.  Healing occurs at the interface where individual pathology and cultural pathology collide through a twinned process of individual transformation and sociocultural transformation. Individual liberation is always tethered to collective liberation. Individuals cannot be truly liberated so long as their position in the sociocultural hierarchy causes harm to others.

On November 16, 1989, the founder of liberation psychology, Jesuit Ignacio Martin-Baro, was assassinated at the University of Central America (UCA) in San Salvador, during El Salvador’s civil war (1980-1992). Members of an elite, state-sponsored death squad raided the UCA campus, dragged Martin-Baro and five other Jesuits from their beds, along with the Jesuits’ housekeeper and her teenage daughter, and violently murdered them. The Jesuits were proponents of liberation theology, which promotes the liberation of the oppressed and marginalized from unjust social, cultural, economic, and political systems and institutions. Liberation theologists understood liberation as the ceaseless creation of new and better ways to be more human and more humane through a permanent process of sociocultural transformation. The Jesuits were silenced for their intellectual and peaceful critique of state-sponsored terrorism- largely directed toward the oppressed- that was endemic to El Salvador and Latin America during the dirty wars of the 1960s-1990s.

In command of the infamous Salvadoran death squads was Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, a man who helped ignite the civil war in 1980 by giving the explicit order to publicly assassinate Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero (now Saint Romero) in the middle of mass. As an interrogator, D’Aubuisson earned the nickname The Blowtorch, because it was his preferred instrument of torture during interrogation sessions. Major Roberto D’Aubuisson- The Blowtorch- was a close ally and political associate of my grandfather. My grandfather repeatedly backed D’Aubuisson and his far-right political party ARENA, always denying that D’Aubuisson was involved in violent crimes against humanity. Because of this, I consider my grandfather to be complicit in the assassination of liberation psychology’s founder, as well as the violent deaths of all those who perished at the hands and command of D’Aubuisson.

Academic Journey

In 2018, I earned my Ph.D. in Psychology from Saybrook University in California. I embarked on my academic journey with the sole purpose of reconciling the painful political legacy I inherited from my grandfather. At the outset, I did not know that liberation psychology existed, but I did know that reconciling my legacy was an activist endeavor that required psychospiritual healing at the interface of self and culture.

“I am empowered to stand in the lineage of a liberation psychology that my grandfather unknowingly attempted to extinguish.”

I vividly remember the day I discovered liberation psychology. I was jubilant to find that the psychospiritual and theoretical resources I needed to confront and heal my political legacy had already been forged by Ignacio Martin-Baro. I was devastated to find that liberation psychology was forged in the crucible of political terror and that Martin-Baro had died for his creation at the hands of an oppressive military government. Any lingering joy I felt immediately turned sour as the sinking feeling in my stomach informed me that my grandfather was somehow involved. Discovering my grandfather’s relationship with D’Aubuission nearly destroyed me. I felt like my grandfather was mocking me from his grave because he had stopped this process of healing before it really had a chance to be. But then I realized this was not true. Liberation psychologists are conducting research, generating theory, and transforming self and culture to this day. I am empowered to stand in the lineage of a liberation psychology that my grandfather unknowingly attempted to extinguish and use it to heal and transform his unjust political legacy.

As a psychologist of liberation, I know that my own process of liberation and healing is deeply connected to the millions of girls and women who are unnecessarily harmed or killed each year since 1973 because of the Helms Amendment. I cannot separate the Helms Amendment from my grandfather’s involvement in political terror across Latin America. The Helms Amendment terrorizes women and girls in the global village by forcing them to resort to unsafe abortion, thereby risking their health, well-being, and lives. It is truly unfathomable how many millions of women and girls have been injured or killed due to unsafe abortion since the dawn of the Helms Amendment. I cannot be truly healed or reconciled until the Helms Amendment is reinterpreted and repealed, and safe abortion is accessible to all. As a liberation psychologist and political activist, I believe that every person should have the right to bodily autonomy and that reproductive freedom is a human right.