HER short stature and soft voice were deceiving. Among Guatemala’s highland Indians she was a legend. Among her colleagues in North America and Europe she was a rising academic star. An ethnic Chinese Guatemalan, Myrna Elizabeth Mack Chang had become one of Latin America’s most eminent anthropologists. Her research focused on Guatemala’s nearly 1 million indigenous refugees…
Somewhere just outside of Baghdad, I was blindfolded and led down a corridor into a room where, to judge by the sound of the voices, there were at least half a dozen men. The possibility of being beaten or tortured was on my mind. I was ordered to sit, and waited in the darkness. The interrogator asked me what was my “real job.”
GUATEMALA CITY — Myrna Elizabeth Mack Chang was Guatemala’s most respected anthropologist. Her work with the country’s indigenous refugees — displaced by the military’s severe counter-insurgency practices — was internationally renowned. But on September 11, 1990…
NEAR THE BORDERS OF SYRIA, TURKEY AND IRAQ -Small waves broke over the sides of the creaky raft that our Kurdish contacts had lashed together from old inner tubes and scraps of plywood. Though it was only about as wide as a city avenue, the river was high with the spring melt, and the water was the color of coffee…
American officials in both San Salvador and Washington claim that they have cooperated “intensely” with the investigation into the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter last November. Yet even though State Department officials finally yielded to pressure from Congress to turn over…
SAN SALVADOR- The official purpose given for Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aronson’s visit here two weeks ago was to express support for negotiations between El Salvador’s U.S.-backed government and the leftist guerrillas. But the real reason the ranking state department policymaker for Latin America…
Original story can be found here. The slaying of six Jesuits was only the most recent reminder that El Salvador is one of the few remaining countries where the price of thought can be death. San Salvador – Several months ago a friend invited me to his sociology class. “Come on,” he said, “we’re going […]
