Join Amy Goodman as she moderates a virtual panel with Nobel Laureate Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum and journalist Vincent Bevins.
Dr. Menchú Tum is a Mayan K’iche’ woman who was born in Laj Chimel Village, San Miguel Uspantán, El Quiché, Guatemala. She participated in the farmworker movement in Guatemala as a young woman and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her social justice work. Her seminal testimonial, “I, Rigoberta Menchú, An Indian Woman in Guatemala,” denounced President Reagan’s support for government attacks on Mayan communities.
Prior to the panel discussion, Dr. Menchú Tum will deliver a keynote speech that explores the devastating consequences of U.S.-backed state terror in Central America and Southeast Asia in the twentieth century. In Central America alone, U.S. intervention from 1960-1996 led to the deaths of over 300,000 people. U.S.-backed dictatorships in Guatemala and Indonesia killed more than a million people accused of revolutionary activism. At the same time, throughout the Global South, rural workers led powerful movements against U.S.-backed regimes to win basic rights.
Panelist Vincent Bevins will outline a global history of U.S. terror against civilians during the Cold War, based on his book “The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World” (published in 2020). After working at the Financial Times in London, Bevins served as Brazil Correspondent for the Los Angeles Times (2011-2016) and then moved to Indonesia in 2017 to cover Southeast Asia for the Washington Post.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is necessary and will provide you with the event Zoom link. Click here to register.
Spanish interpretation and closed captions will be available.
Tonight’s event is part of the 2022-2023 Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series, presented by the UMass Amherst History Department in collaboration with the Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy.
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