• Memory Politics

    Preparing for one of my favorite classes: Memory Politics: Truth, Justice, Redress

    “Meditate that this came about:

    I commend these words to you.

    Carve them in your hearts.”

    — Primo Levi, survivor of Auschwitz

    Memory Politics.Fall 2012

  • The Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team

    Catalogue from the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team

  • Raging Grannies on Legitimate Rape

  • Conference on Culture and Justice, Madrid

  • Empire State building shooting

    Shooting in the Empire State building:

    And once again, brace yourselves for the post-massacre debates. Gun control will be but a blip on the screen, and quickly the deterrence narrative will devolve into either 1) the mental state of the shooter or 2) an insistence that “if only someone in the crowd had a gun, they could have stopped this.” The conversation stops there….everytime.

  • How Difficult it is to be God

    How Difficult it is to be God

    This was a collective labor of love and admiration for our dear colleague, Carlos Iván Degregori.

  • Más sobre el Cuartel Cabitos y el juicio que está en plena marcha.

    Más sobre el Cuartel Cabitos y el juicio que está en plena marcha.

  • The Cabitos Trial, Ayacucho, Peru

    The Cabitos trial continues in Huamanga today.  Yesterday two women testified about rape and other forms of sexual violence they endured in the military base.  “Alcira,” now over 70 years of age, was a young schoolteacher in the community of Machente.  She was detained and taken to the Cabitos base, where the soldiers stripped her naked. At that moment in the trial, the prosecutor asked everyone to leave the room so that Alcira could continue testifying in private.

    A second, younger women also testified yesterday.  She was 17 years old when she was detained and taken to the Cabitos base.  She was subjected to soldiers touching her all over her body (other women we have interviewed mentioned the soldiers referred to this harassment as a “medical check-up,” laughing at the women’s humiliation). The soldiers then pulled her pubic hair, her breasts, and continued to torture her for hours.

    And one final testimony from a man who was also tortured in the base, with electrical wires attached to his nipples and his genitals.  His testimony was punctuated by tears.

    More testimony forthcoming today.

    Thank you to Edith Del Pino, Praxis, Ayacucho office

  • “Speaking of Silences: Gender, Violence and Reparations,” at “Ways of Knowing After Atrocity: Assessing the Methods Used to Research, Design and Implement Transitional Justice Processes,” Oxford Transitional Justice Network, June 28-29th, 2012, Oxford University, England.

  • “Anthropologies of Justice,”  American Anthropological Association 111th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, November 14-18th, 2012.