Truth & Memory

Editor's Note: The international human rights case charging eight Guatemalan former military and police officials with genocide, state terrorism, torture and other crimes began February 4 in Madrid. Kate Doyle, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive and director of their Guatemala Project, attended the closed hearings as part of the investigative and legal team working on the Guatemalan Genocide Case. This is the third installment of her five-part series on the opening days of the case, in which witnesses gave harrowing testimony on a period known in Guatemala as the "Silent Holocaust."

Some 2,500 Argentine mothers and their supporters gathered in Buenos Aires' main square April 30 on the fourth anniversary of

The terrifying revelations made by a navy captain of the "death flights" carried out during Argentina's dirty war show that

Two recent news items on Guatemala have made headlines in North American papers. One is the publication of the report

"The objective of memory is to highlight both the struggle of the dead and the nature of the powers that

It's summer in the southern hemisphere, and a warm bright- ness permeates the beginning of the days. There is an

Processes of democratization after military dictatorships are not easy or smooth.[1] With democratic mechanisms more or less in place in

SANTIAGO—It has not been a banner year for Chile's former military tyrants. October 16, 1998, saw the arrest in London

A much awaited human rights abuse trial is underway in Argentina. The accused is a Catholic priest charged with carrying out human rights abuses while working in several clandestine detention centers during the nation's 1976-1983 military dictatorship. The priest was arrested four years ago while living under an alias in Chile. This is the latest human rights trial of accused torturers since the landmark conviction of a former police officer for genocide in 2006.

In this commentary, Miguel d'Escoto Brockman, the former Foreign Minister of Nicaragua (1979-1990) and a Maryknoll Priest, ponders the hypocrisy of the U.S. War on Terror on the 30th anniversary of the Cubana Flight 455 bombing over Barbados.

"We know that a rape or beating has certain effects on the victim. But growing up in a complete lie, with the possibility that those who raised you are your parent's assassins or their accomplices, not even Freud had written anything about it." – Abel Madariaga, Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo Association.

After more than 20 years of waiting, communities in the highlands of Guatemala are finally able to bury their loved ones—victims of some of the most brutal violence of the country's 36-year civil war. After an arduous process of gathering testimonies, finding the mass graves, and exhuming the bodies, villagers hope the dead will finally be able to rest in peace.