Memory in Search of History and Democracy Editor’S Letter by June Carolyn Erlick
fall 2013 harvard review of latin america memory in search of history and democracy editor’s letter by june carolyn erlick The Past Is Present Irma Flaquer’s image as a 22-year-old Guatemalan reporter stares from the pages of a 1960 harvard review of latin america Time magazine, her eyes blackened by a government mob that didn’t like her feisty stance. fall 2013 She never gave up, fighting with her pen against the long dictatorship, suffering a car bomb Volume Xiii no. 1 explosion in 1970, then being dragged by her hair from her car one October ten years later and disappearing. Published by the david Rockefeller Center I knew she was courageous. I became intrigued by her relentless determination—why did for Latin American Studies she keep on writing? However, the case was already old even in 1996, when the Inter Ameri- Harvard university volume Xiii no. 1 can Press Association (IAPA) assigned me the investigation for its new Impunity Project. Irma David Rockefeller Center was one of Guatemala’s 45,000 disappeared—one of thousands in Latin America, men and for Latin American Studies women forcibly vanished, mostly killed. Yet I learned from the investigation that disappear- director ance is a crime against humanity, a crime not subject to a statute of limitations. Merilee S. Grindle memory And I also learned from Irma’s courageous sister Anabella that it really is a crime that executive director in eVery issue never ends. “They took my moral support, my counselor; in killing my sister, they stole my Kathy Eckroad human right,” Anabella told IAPA members at a Los Angeles meeting.
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