Walking through Automotores Orletti, an Argentine prison camp from the Augusto Pinochet regime, Robert Solonick felt sick. Bullet marks dotted the walls. The floors were stained with faded pools of blood.

During the fall of his sophomore year, Solonick, a senior international relations and Spanish major, studied abroad in Santiago, Chile and learned of the country’s violent history. In the 1970s and 1980s, the dictator ordered thousands of Chilean citizens against his regime to be lined up and shot.

For his senior thesis, Solonick examines politicides and dirty wars in Argentina and Chile. Governments that perpetuate dirty wars create lies about violence happening in their countries to justify violence. Similar to genocides, politicides are the extermination of a certain group of people, but where victims of genocide are determined by race, religion or ethnicity, politicide victims are identified by their political beliefs.

‘Rob is just on fire about this,’ said Francine D’Amico,the director of undergraduate studies in international relations and adviser to Solonick. ‘He became so compelled by that story of human rights violation, and that took the focus immediately for what he wants to do, study and be in the world.’

Solonick will continue his studies as a graduate student next fall at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. This semester, he enrolled in a program in Washington D.C. through Maxwell. As an intern at the National Defense University, he works 35 hours a week with the College of International Security. Collaborating with professors on several projects, he examines how Western countries like the United States view organizations like al-Qaeda as a much larger threat than Eastern nations do.

He found this interest in Latin American history after disbanding his original college career goal of becoming an architect and pursuing his interests in travel and the developing countries in the Southern Hemisphere. Solonick’s passion for understanding the world outside his hometown of Belle Mead, N.J., sparked at a young age.

In second grade, Solonick’s mother, Claire Solonick, home-schooled her son so she, her husband and their only child could travel the world together. As Solonick grew older, the trio took a trip every spring, waking up each Easter Sunday in a different part of the world. One year, they woke up in Paris. Another year, in Rome.

‘They instilled me with the travel bug,’ Solonick said of his parents. ‘I love going to the airport because it means I am going somewhere completely new and completely exciting.’

Claire remembers Solonick reeling in a 45-pound salmon from the Alaskan waters when he was 14. The captain of the ship said it was prize-worthy, she recalled. Solonick stood on the deck of the ship with a huge fish in his hands and a huge grin on his face.

The family’s trip to Alaska is Solonick’s second-most favorite place he has visited. But for Solonick, there is no place in the world like Chile. The summer after his junior year, he returned to the country to further his studies.

Mauricio Paredes, the program coordinator in Santiago, helped connect Solonick with victims and also with officials at the University of Chile. Through a series of 15 interviews with lawyers, human rights activists, victims of political violence and military personnel, Solonick began to understand a world where a prison guard and one of his victims from the years of dirty war may cross paths daily on the streets of present-day Santiago.

Fluent in Spanish, Solonick communicated openly with Chilean citizens through their primary language. In many instances, Solonick recalls just the subject of the dirty war bringing tears to the eyes of many as they remembered the loved ones they lost to the regime. One Chilean friend told him of an uncle who disappeared during the politicide when she was young.

‘What do you say when you are talking to someone, and they just break down crying in front of you because of how traumatic it is for them to bring this up again?’ He said. ‘It’s horrible.’

Gladys McCormick, assistant professor of history, said Solonick’s enthusiasm for Latin American history is contagious.

‘Whatever he goes to do next, I’m completely confident that he is going to be intellectually prepared for it,’ McCormick said. ‘He genuinely wants to make a difference in the world.’

Claire always encourages her son to experience the world and new foreign places.

The last time Solonick was in Santiago, Claire met him there. The pair climbed volcanoes, peered into the eyes of iguanas, swam with sea lions and gazed up upon the large stone statues at Easter Island.

‘It was like an epic journey,’ she said.

And Solonick hopes to continue these journeys and further his love for studying the differences in cultures, people and languages through the field of international relations.

‘There is always something more you can do,’ he said. ‘There is always something more you can learn.’

rebarill@syr.edu

Published on April 29, 2012 at 12:00 pm