Publish and perish: The Story of Myrna Mack

“The Perils of Publishing (April 24)”

by Eduardo Galeano

In the year 2004, for once the government of Guatemala broke with the tradition of impunity and officially acknowledged that Myrna Mack was killed by order of the country’s president.

Myrna had undertaken forbidden research. Despite receiving threats, she had gone deep into the jungles and mountains to find exiles wandering in their own country, the indigenous survivors of the military’s massacres. She collected their voices.

In 1989, at a conference of social scientists, an anthropologist from the United States complained about the pressure universities exert to continually produce: “In my country if you don’t publish, you perish.”

And Myrna replied: “In my country if you publish, you perish.”

She published.

She was stabbed to death.

From Eduardo Galeano’s new book Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History, excerpted at Toward Freedom.

I’m ashamed to admit I had never heard of Myrna Mack. In reading up on her story I learned she was stabbed, 27 times, outside her downtown Guatemala City office on Sept. 11, 1990. At the time of her death, she had been researching and publishing information about the plight of internally displaced persons in Guatemala. In 1993, a low-level sergeant was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison for the crime.

In February 2003 the Inter-American Court on Human Rights heard oral arguments in the case brought by the Mack family against the Guatemalan government for allegedly failing to ensure timely justice in the Mack case. On December 19, 2003, the Court unanimously found Guatemala in violation of Articles 1 (obligation to respect rights), 4 (right to life), 5 (humane treatment), 8 (judicial guarantees) and 25 (judicial protection) of the American Convention on Human Rights.

In April 2004, President Oscar Berger joined the heads of Congress and the Supreme Court on Thursday in publicly acknowledging government responsibility for the 1990 killing of human rights activist Myrna Mack.

“In the name of the state, I ask for the forgiveness of the Mack family and of the people of Guatemala for the murder of this young anthropologist,” Berger said.

Daimler and the ‘Dirty War’: Supreme Court to hear another human rights case

On the heels of Kiobel (of which more soon, I promise!), SCOTUS has agreed to hear  another dispute over lawsuits in American courts against foreign companies for human rights abuses.

DaimlerChrysler AG v. Bauman concerns whether a corporation can be sued based only on the fact that it has a subsidiary in the place where the case was filed. The lawsuit, filed by former employees of an auto plant operated by Mercedes-Benz Argentina, claims that workers identified by state security forces stationed at the plant as “subversives” were arrested and detained, and some of them disappeared, during Argentina’s “Dirty War.” 

According to GlobalPost, the plaintiffs have alleged that the company “collaborated with the Argentine government to kidnap, detain, torture, or kill (respondents) or their relatives during Argentina’s military regime of 1976 to 1983, known as the ‘Dirty War.’”

Meanwhile, Daimler, in its appeal before the Supreme Court, called the lower court’s ruling a “breathtaking expansion of general personal jurisdiction that is impossible to reconcile with the decisions of this court or other circuits” and said it will result in a ”proliferation of suits in American courts by foreign plaintiffs suing foreign defendants based on foreign conduct.”

From SCOTUSblog:

One reason why the Justices accepted the DaimlerChrysler case could have been to say something further on what kind of a U.S. connection is sufficient to support an [Alien Tort Statute] claim in a U.S. federal court. But another reason could be that the Justices saw in this case a wider issue, on the reach of a court in one jurisdiction to allow litigation against a corporation that is mostly located elsewhere, but has some activity where it was sued.

The Court in recent years has been attempting to sort out, for example, how far a state court can allow its courts to reach an out-of-state company. The decision that emerges in the DaimlerChrysler case thus could affect not only a federal court’s reach beyond the U.S., but also the power of state courts to reach beyond their borders.

(h/t Opinio Juris)

You Go Girl

You Go Girl, a photo by Karen Hoffmann on Flickr.

The Divine Lorraine Hotel, rear view, Philadelphia, PA.

Check out this Philly Mag story on its new developer, with great (and logistically difficult) photos of the interior.

UPDATE: Some Temple student was urban-spelunking inside at night, with predictable results. Fortunately he is okay, with just some scars and a tattoo to show for it. Story in the Inky.

Hunter-gatherers mark historic land rights milestone

[Photo (c) Martin Schoeller/National Geographic, 2009]

Via Survival International:

One of the world’s few remaining hunter-gatherer tribes, the Hadza, is celebrating the anniversary of a historic land victory.

In October 2011, the Tanzanian government took the unprecedented step of recognizing the importance of land to the Hadza, by formally handing over land titles to a community of 700 people. The decision was the first time Tanzania had ever recognized a minority tribe’s land rights.

1,300 Hadza live in northwest Tanzania, on the shores of Lake Eyasi. Whilst the majority now live in settlements, and supplement their diets with wild foods, approximately 300-400 Hadza survive almost entirely off the natural produce around them.

Survival International’s picture gallery details the Hadza’s hunting habits.

It explores how the tribe’s search for honey relies on a bird guiding them to bees’ nests in ancient baobab trees, and how their bowstrings are made from animal ligaments, and the arrows fletched with guineafowl feathers.

One Hadza man said, ‘We have no record of famine in our oral history. The reason is that we depend on natural products from the environment such as berries, tubers, baobab fruits, honey and many wild animals for food. By living in this way, the environment we depend on is not damaged and remains healthy.’

Having lived in the Great Rift Valley for millennia, the Hadza have an enduring connection to the land.

But over the last 50 years, the tribe has lost 90% of its land, along with the wildlife and plants it relies on for its livelihood.

One Hadza man said, ‘Because we do not plant crops or herd livestock, most people including government leaders, consider our lands to be empty and unused.’

In 2009, National Geographic published a feature story on the Hadza, which was notable to me for this very un-NatGeo passage:

The days I spent with the Hadza altered my perception of the world. They instilled in me something I call the “Hadza effect”—they made me feel calmer, more attuned to the moment, more self-sufficient, a little braver, and in less of a constant rush. I don’t care if this sounds maudlin: My time with the Hadza made me happier. It made me wish there was some way to prolong the reign of the hunter-gatherers, though I know it’s almost certainly too late.

The entire article, by Michael Finkel, is very much worth reading. (Though who knows how much of it is true.)

What a police-occupied favela looks like

My images, of UPP police in Chapeu Mangueira and Babilonia favelas, from June 2011. AFP story from this weekend.

Sgt. Vagner Luis de Assis of the UPP (Brazilian Pacification Police Units) stands in front of a graffiti-painted wall in Rio de Janeiro’s Chapeu Mangueira favela.

 

UPP police interact with the community at a recreational spot in the Chapeu Mangueira favela, Rio de Janeiro.

Brazilian marines and paramilitary police stormed one of Rio’s most notorious shantytowns Sunday, as the city cleans up ahead of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.

It took just 20 minutes for the security forces to take over the Manguinhos slum in the predawn raid involving 1,300 police assisted by helicopters hovering overhead, and armored personnel carriers carrying 170 marines that plowed through road obstacles set up in the narrow streets.

No shots were fired, but three people were arrested. Police said that five alleged drug crime bosses that had fled to a nearby favela were killed on Saturday.

Authorities said they had seize 60 kilograms (132 pounds) of cocaine in the raid.

Police also increased their presence in Jacarezinho, a nearby favela and a major crack cocaine consumption center. Some 1,300 heavily armed police participated in the operations, officials said. More >

A day in the life (or “Watch out, Karen has a cameraphone again”)

I should change the description of this blog. “Freelance journalist” doesn’t really apply anymore — I’m mostly law student these days. What to post, then, but low-res photos and highlights of the last 24 hours:

- Drive from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia with accidental detour to New Jersey (6 hours).

- Quick grocery store run to get ingredients for boyfriend’s award-winning (seriously!) “Fire Rescue” chili — including four jalapenos and copious amounts of cayenne — for next day’s soup sale fundraiser.

Even funnier after a long drive. (This did not go in the chili.)

- At midnight, finally arrive home to find key doesn’t work in the front door of my apartment building. Belatedly notice a handwritten sign that the locks have been changed.

- Call phone number on sign. Get voicemail.

- Per further instructions, “KNOCK[ED] LOUD!!!” Repeatedly.

- 20 minutes go by. It’s 40 degrees out.

- Longsuffering neighbor finally comes to the door in robe and slippers. Gives me a copy of the new key.

- Throw chili fixins in Meghan‘s wonderful crockpot that she generously donated for the occasion.

- Sleep (3 hours)

- Drink coffee #1.

- Drive visiting boyfriend to airport.

- Sadness and/or lack of sleep cause me to overshoot the return trip not once but twice, first by going south when I should’ve gone north, then vice versa.

Philly does look pretty in the early morning though.

- Figure out how to turn on heat in apartment for the first time.

- Fix the watery chili, lug crackpot on walk to school. Covering towel does a surprisingly good job of keeping me from sloshing any on myself. Meghan, I did not drop it!

- Buy coffee #2.

- Go to meeting with professor and try to make sense. Notice hands are shaking and I’m playing too much with the knickknacks on her desk.

- Go to class #1.

- Sell chili.

People seem to like it, it sells out fast.

- For breakfast/lunch I eat the bottom scrapings, and a Fruity Pebbles Krispie concoction from the table next door.

- Buy coffee #3. Hands still shaking; now stomach starting to protest too.

- Class #2. While trying not to focus on weird bodily sensations in Torts, I am cold called to discuss the case of a woman who was mugged for $19,000 worth of jewelry in the parking lot of a Sam’s Club. Begging the question, if you own jewelry that nice, what are you doing in a Sam’s Club?

- Answer in words — English words, even (I think), make it through the rest of class.

- Head home, empty crockpot noticeably easier to carry. Don’t know what time it is or what I’m supposed to do now so I figured I’d update this blog.

Still haven’t ascertained why exactly they decided to change the locks and not inform tenants.

So that’s what’s been going on with me. How’s everyone out there? I mean, hi Mom.

Breaking News: Ecuador to Pull Out of the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC)

Just received this email from the NGO School of the Americas Watch:

 We are delighted that we can inform you that earlier today, President Correa started the meeting at the Presidential Palace in Quito, Ecuador, by announcing that Ecuador will no longer send its soldiers to the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC). This is a tremendous victory for the human rights community across the Americas! 

The press in Latin America has already picked up the story. Click here for the coverage of the announcement in Spanish.

We are extremely happy about this new development that will give us additional momentum in our efforts to shut down the SOA for good and to end U.S. militarization in the Americas. Stay tuned for a detailed report back from the delegation and from the meeting with President Correa in the next couple days.