Historical Memory Project News Today

Witness the obliteration of a highly significant passage in U.S.  history. To be deprived in this way of the past — of the facts of our time — is a kind of condemnation. By Patrick Lawrence Original to ScheerPost There are certain things I do not quite get since Special Counsel John D

For the Biden administration, taking a new direction on immigration — as is the case with turning away from most Trump initiatives — is fairly easy at the start. A basic humanity and empathy, conc...

Out now in documentary form, The Art of Political Murder presents a riveting narrative reconstruction of one of Latin America’s most controversial and bizarre criminal cases: the killing of Guatemala’s great human rights champion, Bishop Juan Gerardi.December 23, 2020 Bishop Juan Gerardi was savagely murdered on April 26, 1998, two days after presenting the Recovery of Historical Memory Project (REMHI), the Guatemalan Catholic Church’s report recounting the atrocities committed by the Gu...

As the US remains in the extraordinary position of having a President who refuses to acknowledge he hasn’t been re-elected, and who continues to encourage those who agitate for a populist coup, we often seem on the brink of political violence Americans are accustomed to seeing only in “banana republics,” or other nations we routinely dismiss as corrupt and backward. That violence did not explode as feared around Election Day, when the Electoral College certified its results, or when the S...

A documentary looks into the killing of a Guatemalan bishop who had exposed military crimes. Key witness Ruben Chanax testifies in court Photo: HBO By John Anderson Dec. 15, 2020 4:07 pm ET Based on novelist Francisco Goldman’s 2007 work of investigative nonfiction (subtitled “Who Killed the Bishop?”), “The Art of Political Murder” is a satisfying portrait of courage, corruption and the murderous deep state that opera...

A new HBO documentary on the legacy of Guatemalan Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi, who was murdered in the aftermath of the country’s long civil war, highlights the courageous role of Catholic clergy in the fight for democracy in Central America. It also offers a model for struggling democracies today. “There are a lot of negative stories, films and documentaries about the Catholic Church that get made. I was attracted to the idea of this not being that,” said director Paul Taylor in a Zoom ...

Copy to Clipboard The Art of Political Murder (HBO) In April 1998, Bishop Juan Gerardi was attacked in his garage and beaten to death. The human rights activist had presented a report that outlined the atrocities of the army in the wake of the Guatemalan Civil War. Three army officers – Colonel Byron Disrael Lima Estrada and Captain Byron Lima Oliva (who were father and son), and José Obdulio Villanueva – were convicted of Gerardis murder in 2001 and sentenced to 30-year prison terms.  Bi...

Guatemalan Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi. Photo courtesy HBO VATICAN CITY (RNS) — A new HBO documentary on the legacy of Guatemalan Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi, who was murdered in the aftermath of the country’s long civil war, highlights the courageous role of Catholic clergy in the fight for democracy in Central America. It also offers a model for struggling democracies today. “There are a lot of negative stories, films and documentaries about the Catholic Church that get made. I was at...