Throughout the twentieth century, the United States trained and financed military regimes to crush reformist and revolutionary movements. This keynote will explore the devastating consequences of U.S.-backed state terror in Central America and Southeast Asia. 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.
The keynote presenter, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, participated in the farmworker movement as a young woman. Her seminal testimonial, I, Rigoberta Menchú, An Indian Woman in Guatemala, denounced Reagan’s support for government attacks on Mayan communities. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her social justice work, and she was part of a decades-long effort to convict the former Guatemalan dictator José Efrain Ríos Montt of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Journalists Vincent Bevins and Amy Goodman will join the keynote presenter. Bevins will outline a global history of U.S. terror against civilians during the Cold War, based on this book The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World. Renowned journalist Amy Goodman will moderate the event. Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, and co-author of six New York Times bestsellers. Read more….
Free and open to all. Spanish interpretation and closed captions will be available. This event will be recorded and made available on the Feinberg Series website.
