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Aftermath of a Massacre in Guatemala
The highland village of Santiago Atitlan continues to hold monthly masses to commemorate the 14 citizens killed and 24 injured when soldiers fired into a crowd that had gathered to protest an earlier shooting of a resident by drunken soldiers. A 30-year conflict
Tropic of Illusions
Takashi Shida bent down in a field of soy beans, briefly disappearing in the sea of pea green stalks that swelled off toward the flat horizon. Surfacing again, he brandished a plant better than a yard long. He grasped it firmly and, as
Re-Inventing the Wheel
The story of the disability rights movement could be written about Marilyn Hamilton’s impatience. It would start the summer day in 1978 when Hamilton crashed her hang glider nose down into the side of a California Sierra mountain. Her spinal cord was bruised
The World’s Armies Agree: Gas Masks Are Here to Stay
WASHINGTON-For Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, it would have been a hellish dream come true-allied ground troops pinned down by Iraqi forces and pummeled with chemical rockets and artillery. At his briefing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Feb. 27, the fourth day of the
America’s Trade Warriors–Still Searching for the Right Weapon
On Seventeenth Street, just a short walk from the White House, is a handsome, five-story building that is one of the oldest government offices in Washington. Appropriately, it houses the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), which deals with an issue that
Abandoning Men: Jill Gets Welfare–Jack Becomes Homeless
For the past several years, advocates for the homeless have sought public support by drawing attention to the number of homeless families on the streets. That is an understandable tactic, for Americans respond to social issues on the basis of sympathy for the
Queer Rage
Photos by Marc Geller. DISNEYLAND, CA–Eighteen-inch golden tresses fall softly atop the pleated, puff-shouldered blouse of an immaculately scrubbed and smiling Alice-in-Wonderland. Nearby, Cinderella, her hair in a bun, a black choke-band around her neck, looks on as Alice smoothes out the mock-linen
Guatemala’s Refugees
APF Fellow Vince Heptig lives in Guatemala City and has been photographing Guatemala’s refugees in Mexico and other locations. In addition to living in poverty, the new generation of refugee children has lost most cultural ties to its Mayan heritage. A child is
Japanese in the Amazon: The Riddle of Farming the Tropics
TOME-ACU, Brazil–Every evening, when work was done at the farmer’s cooperative, Noburo Sakaguchi would drive home to his small plot of land a few miles out of Tome-Acu, an agricultural village in the eastern Brazilian Amazon region. Sakaguchi, an agronomist by schooling but
Pity is a Four-Letter Word
“One thing we’re going to vote on is a revolution!” Deep-felt cheers erupt from the convention crowd. “Resolution” is the word that T.J. Monroe wanted. But revolution, really, is more like it. Monroe and the 300 people in the hotel ballroom are retarded
Help for Strangers in a Strange Land
In an upcoming NBC television movie, a black youth from Harlem graduates from Phillips Exeter Academy with honors. Three weeks later, he is shot to death by an undercover police officer who alleges the young man tried to rob him. The film is
The Devastating Power of Racial Belligerence
Sonny Carson is not the best known or even the most disruptive of New York’s freelance “black activists,” but he has proved the most painful thorn in David Dinkins’side. The two men’s names were first linked in the public’s mind in August 1989,
The New Enemy in Guatemala
The signs are visible everywhere in Guatemala. Newspapers carry frequent accounts of grisly execution-style murders. Immigration authorities report a surge in the entry of Colombian nationals. Deluxe apartment buildings and office complexes rise dramatically on the outskirts of Guatemala City. A newly chartered
Forging Controversy: Polluting the Amazon Rain Forest with Factories, Old and New
Acailandia, Brazil-On an August day in the Amazon, when the earth is brown and parched, you can smell this sprawling frontier settlement long before you arrive. Even as the train heaves towards the distant stop, the acrid aroma of charcoal is every where,
Forcing the Young into Nursing Homes
Photos and text by Joseph P. Shapiro. Jeff Gunderson’s voice is choked with worry. He is about to reenter the place he calls “the concentration camp.” It is a nursing home, one of two where Gunderson, who has cerebral palsy, was sent from
Importing Girls to Integrate a Connecticut Public School
Ridgefield, CT-The cute Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx perched atop her bunk bed in a boarding house and pondered her ambivalence toward this affluent, mostly white town where she attends school. Ana Negron, 17, delighted in the academically challenging school. She adored
Faces of the Anguished Middle East
APF Fellow James Lukoski has made several trips to the Middle East, focusing on Israeli-Palestinian issues. These photographs illustrate some of the tensions in the West Bank and Jerusalem and were taken before the U.S. declared war on Iraq. The funerals of two
Intolerance on Campus
After taping the poster announcing the spring activities of the black student association to his door in Wright Hall, Timothy Rey had gone to sleep around one o’clock that Saturday morning, his freshman year at the University of Indiana at Bloomington. When he
Gay Politics
Photos by Marc Geller NEW YORK-The walls of the elevator were polished mahogany. Inside stood four people. A somewhat severe elderly woman in a business suit was coming home at day’s end. An unmistakably wealthy gentleman with a maroon silk ascot and yellowish
“The Gift of the Indus”
If any one place deserves to be called the birthplace of modern irrigation, that place is the Punjab, a sandy triangle of pancake-flat alluvium where India’s British rulers built the first of their 46 “canal colonies” in 1849. The first colony consisted of