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An aerial view of part of Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley shows ravaged patches of jungle which have been cleared by peasants for the illegal cultivation of coca bushes. Use of the pesticide Spike over the area, which is at the experimental stage, could further damage the ecosystem, according to environmental advocates. Photo by AP/Wide World Photos.

The Lure of a Criminal Cash Crop

TINGO MARIA, Peru. – On her farm in a hollow in Peru’s high jungle, one woman’s pride are her tropical fruit trees. But she acknowledges that fruit doesn’t bring in money in. Nor does the coffee and cacao she and her husband grow.

Corinne Schmidt February 4, 1997
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Is the Government Losing its Memory?

Note: This article contained pictures that were copyrighted and could not be published on this Web page. Captions for those pictures appear in italics. Scholars of antiquity and the Middle Ages often complain of insufficient information with which to piece together the historical

Alexander Stille January 26, 1997
American-born, but of Dominican ancestry, Alex Rodriguez is a shortstop for the Seattle Mariners. He signed right out of high school with the team for $1.3 million in 1993.

The Imports

By Marcos Bretón with photos by José Luis Villegas There was a time when America’s game was played by only three kinds of people: White Americans, black Americans and Latins. American-born, but of Dominican ancestry, Alex Rodriguez is a shortstop for the Seattle

José Luis Villegas and Marcos Breton October 26, 1996
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Hear No Evil, See No Evil: Early U.S. Policy in Yugoslavia

Note: This article contained pictures that were copyrighted and could not be published on this Web page. The small group of American diplomats were gathered in the secure room of the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, debating what was holding Yugoslavia together and what

Maud Beelman October 26, 1996
These orphaned Russian siblings comb the streets and bazaars in Dushanbe, in Tajikistan, in search of food and small change. Shoeless and infested with scabies, these children are among the thousands of orphaned children of Tajikistan, the miserable spoils of the civil war.

Report From Tajikistan

Story by Andrew Meier with photos by Mia Foster TAJIKISTAN – It had been a lovely afternoon drive through the mountain passes of this small Central Asian state. As we made our way along the craggy reaches of northeastern Tajikistan, the greatest threat

Andrew Meier October 26, 1996
The office of fugitive Mayan Indians called Community of Population in Resistance (CPR) has mixed influences: the filing system is Western-style, but the names and categories seem copied from a Politburo manual.

The Mayan Apparatchiks

When the Guatemalan president-elect Alvaro Arzú promised on January 7 that his government “will be one of total and absolute respect for human rights,” the announcement had a novel ring to it that on second thought was rather chilling. Mr. Arzú led his

Anna Husarska July 26, 1996
The music school in Ilidza, a Serb suburb, burns the day before the official handover on March 12.

Pitfalls of Peace in Bosnia

The woman piled her books and magazines on the grass in front of her apartment building in the Sarajevo suburb and set them alight. In the crazy logic of her world-turned-upside-down, this meant Serb thugs wouldn’t need to torch her apartment, as they

Maud Beelman July 26, 1996
Betty Jo Dulaney has been running the Tunica County Literacy Center since 1985.

Gamblers’ Needs Focus a Town on its Reading Failures

TUNICA, MS. June, 1996 – A teacher stands before a blackboard in an otherwise barren room. Eleven faces stare back passively. Most are in their twenties, a few in their forties. They are newly hired cashiers at the Sheraton Casino. On Monday, they

Laura Parker June 30, 1996
"When you're at this level, nobody can do anything for you because you are nobody," said José Paulino, 19, a new recruit from the Dominican Republic at his first major league spring training camp. "This is the profession I chose and I don't know how to do anything else. And they are the ones who decide whether you are going to today, tomorrow or the next day."

The Dream: Trying to Make it in the Major Leagues

By Marcos Bretón with photos by José Luis Villegas La Victoria, Dominican Republic – It is after dark on a humid and still March night – the last night before 11 young men would fly to America on a trip that could forever

José Luis Villegas and Marcos Breton May 26, 1996
Haitians still arrive in South Florida the hard way: smuggled in from the Bahamas on leaky boats. Occasionally crafts are swamped before they reach shore. There have been 70 confirmed drownings of Haitian immigrants in Florida waters since 1980. Rescue workers try CPR on one Haitian whose boat capsized. Photo by Greg Lovett, The Palm Beach Post

Delray Beach, Florida: Little Haiti’s Little Sister

Note: Many of the Pictures used in the original APF Reporter issue are copyrighted and could not be used in the web eddition Daniella Henry remembers her first visit to Delray Beach. Driving up from Miami one night in 1990, she exited brightly-lit

Joel Millman May 26, 1996
Prague's old Jewish cemetery, contains 100,000 bodies, buried on top of the other, 12 layers deep. The oldest grave is that of poet Avrigdor Kara. His eyewitness elegy to the 1389 pogram, where 3,000 Jews were killed, still is recited every year in the Yom Kippur Day of Atonement services. The cemetery is now a tourist attraction, part of the "Jewish Prague" tour.

Traces of the Past

Text and photos by Jill Freedman APF fellow Jill Freedman traveled to eastern Europe to document the remnants of Jewish life in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. These residents of the Jewish home for the aged in Szeged, Hungary listen during a concert of

Jill Freedman May 26, 1996
Corey Whitman, 11, is physically healthy, but is one of thousands of children coping inside a family ravaged by AIDS. His mother and sister have died and his father and other sister are infected. He is shown here with his favorite sister, Megan, who has since died. When she began to have difficulty walking, Corey was the first to put her in the stoller and take care of her. At age 11, Corey attempts to fill an adult role and helps his mother care for Megan.

The Others who Suffer from AIDS

Here is the dream that kept coming back to Corey Whitman in the fall of 1991, a few weeks after he turned eleven: He and his parents and his four brothers and sisters are camping out in the woods in a motorhome, a

Doug Root and Randy Olson May 15, 1996
Winston Morin drops off his charges after the morning bus run. Transportation is a major expense for Fort Belknap's Head Start program.

Indian Head Start: Restoring a Culture

HARLEM, Montana – Winston Morin pulls the Head Start bus up to a pink quonset-hut classroom at the Fort Belknap Agency and joshes with teacher Barbara Long Knife as she climbs aboard for the late-morning ride. The two-way radio hanging above Morin’s left

Kay Mills May 15, 1996
Marian Wright Edelman (far right) cuts the ribbon opening the Head Start center named for her in rural Hurtsboro, Alabama. Also at the festivities at the refurbished school building were Jerry Roden, Jr., executive director of the Alabama Council on Human Relations, Hurtsboro Mayor Mary K. Tapley, and Head Start program director Nancy Spears.

Head Start: Helping Alabama’s Poor Survive

Question: Which of these activities involves Head Start? A woman sets as her goal obtaining a commercial bus driver’s license, succeeds, and then aims at a new target- taking the test for her high school equivalency diploma. A child sees commitment to service

Kay Mills May 15, 1996
Shoes from death camp victims at Majdanek. The Germans sent clothes, shoes, stolen gold and money back to Germany. Free use was made of the human body, in what Primo Levi called "stupid and symbolic violence," using the body as an anonymous thing disposed of in an arbitrary manner. Crematoria ashes were used as fill for swamp land, as building insulation, as fertilizer, and to cover paths in villages. Hair was used in mattresses, fishnets and riding crops. Even today, in all the death camps, you can take a handful of soil and find in it human bones.

The Reproachful Voices of the Dead

Text and photos by Jill Freedman A child at the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach touches the face of a child. At least one and one-half million Jewish children were murdered in the Holocaust. The German and their henchmen were brutal, throwing children

Jill Freedman May 15, 1996
The grand mosque of Touba is located 200 kilometers from Dakar and is the biggest in black Africa. Touba also is a thriving market town and center for contraband. From Touba, Mouride businessmen have gained control of most of Senegal's commercial activity, and are now turning their attention to the United States.

Profiting from One’s Prayers

When prayers end, commerce begins. It’s an inevitable consequence when you are part of a sea of worshippers flowing from West Africa’s holiest shrine. This is the only known photo of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, the founder of Senegal’s Mouride Brotherhood. It was taken

Joel Millman May 13, 1996
The continuing breakup of the former Soviet Union plays out in misery and hardship. Women in the break-away republic of Chechnya wash clothes on the outskirts of Grozny from a hot water pipe. Most of the city's residents are without hot water and electricity.

Chechnya Update

As dusk falls on the Chechen capital, Grozny, in southern Russia, the sounds of dogs barking, neighbors chatting, and the theme song to a popular Brazilian soap opera mix with the sounds of automatic gunfire and distant explosions. But the conversations continue, soup

Jason Eskenazi April 27, 1996