The following is an excerpt from On Our Own Terms: Development and Indigeneity in Cold War Guatemala by Sarah Foss, available wherever books are sold. Defining Indigeneity In 1945, the newly created IING sent surveys to the directors of national schools in sixteen of Guatemala’s twenty-two departments, selecting those with substantial Indigenous populations. Because a large majority of responders were… Continue Reading Defining Indigeneity
The extent of these Nahuas’ and Oaxacans’ participation in the invasions of 1524-28 undermines the very notion of a Spanish conquest. Their lives as Indian conquistadors in Guatemala suggest that we still have a long way to go to understand the lived experience of colonialism by the American continents’ indigenous peoples. Continue Reading Excerpt: Memories of Conquest, by Laura E. Matthew
Earlier this week we posted lots of links to headlines about Susan Reverby’s discovery of U.S. medical experiments on nonconsenting Guatemalans in the 1940s. Today, she wrote in more detail about the discovery of this horrific medical history over at the Hastings Center’s Bioethics Forum: What might have been buried in an historical journal, however, took another step. To make… Continue Reading Reverby recalls discovery, Hadler puts Guatemala case in context
You’ve probably already heard: last Friday President Obama called President Alvaro Colom of Guatemala to apologize for a public health outrage committed 64 years ago. In 1946, American doctors, with the support of the Public Health Service, conducted experiments on prisoners, the insane, soldiers, and prostitutes, who were initially used to infect the prisoners. Though the institutions and governments involved… Continue Reading Susan Reverby Uncovers History of U.S. Medical Testing on Guatemalans
You must be logged in to post a comment.