Wolfowitz Resigns From World Bank - New York Times

Wolfowitz Resigns From World Bank - New York Times

This issue was first exposed by the Government Accountability Project which can be found at: www.whistleblower.org

Community Arts in the Aftermath of Genocide: A Potential Strategy for Healing

I’ve not written to this blog for several months due to my annual visit with family and friends in California. While in Los Angeles, I, along with Pauline Ross, Executive Director and founder of The Playhouse in Derry, N. Ireland, attended a four-day conference on ‘Arts in the One World: Culture and Identity’, subtitled ‘Shape and shape shifting – How the arts and culture help destroy/create the sense of self and other’. The conference was held 25-28 January 2007 at California Institute of the Arts in Torrence, CA.

Over the past several years, students from various CalArts departments have collaborated with artists in Rwanda to develop a new paradigm of community art. They have done this under the direction of Eric Ehn, Dean of the School of Theater at CalArts and Jean-Pierre Karegeye, Director of Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies, Kigali, Rwanda. This collaboration is facilitated by using the arts as a neutral language to aid the process of healing between the perpetrators and surviving victims of genocide and their families.

The focus of the CalArts conference expanded beyond the work undertaken by community arts practitioners in Rwanda to include those engaged in similar projects in other countries where genocide has occurred notably Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Uganda. And, although retroactive acts of genocide are not covered under the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention, representatives of Native Americans were also panelists.

Situated on rolling hills overlooking San Fernando Valley, the tranquillity of the CalArts setting contradicted the horror described by panelists of their family, friends and neighbors being driven from their homes and hacked to death with machetes, or dying due to suffocation, lynching, torture, or starvation. Alice Buhikare, a Rwanda genocide survivor, told of fleeing the carnage in her village after finding remnants of her parent’s bodies which she put into a suitcase and carried with her. Other Rwandan survivors did likewise because their tribal culture forbad their abandoning their ancestors without proper burial. Alice’s description of that ordeal, told in her calm, matter-of-fact monotone, signaled to me she was still in a state of profound shock 14-years after the ordeal which resulted in the killing of one-million people in a three-month period. Alice’s ‘telling’, like the telling by other genocide survivors in Rwanda and elsewhere is a personal political act that she, like they, use to free themselves from the unspeakable horrors they witnessed, to free themselves from the guilt of their survival, as well as unlock the denial of these events.

However, perpetrators of genocide also need to tell their stories to gain an understanding of why they so willingly slaughtered neighbors, friends, even relatives. They both, survivors and perpetrators, need to tell their stories in a public forum so they can begin the process of healing themselves, each other, and their community. In Rwanda this is being accomplished by the Gacaca Courts. For me Alice’s ‘telling’ was reminiscent of a remark by a panelist at a Playhouse-sponsored conference I attended at Monaghan, Ireland in November ‘06. During her presentation about being a refugee, Oraib Toukan, whose parents were forced to leave their home in Palestine to live in a Jordanian resettlement camp, stated that she needed others to ‘remind me to remember to forget’ (See my 7 December 2006 Blog).

Most of us became aware of the full horrors of the Rwandan genocide only after watching the film, Hotel Rwanda in 2004, which Belfast-born Terry George directed, produced and co-scripted. (George is a former member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party. (1) However, former colleagues of mine at the National Security Archive have obtained documents, released via Freedom of Information requests, confirming that the U.S. State Department had early information of the killings in Rwanda but failed to act on this knowledge. (2) But this failure to act in spite of knowledge comes as no surprise to victims of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Serb victims in Bosnia and Kosovo, or the genocide of Kurds in Iraq.

In Cambodia, it took the Khmer Rouge nearly three years to murder some two-million people because they were bureaucratically more efficient in their methods by
taking photos of their victims before killing them so they would have a record of those murdered. At the CalArts conference, a segment of a play, ‘S-21', was performed by its drama students. In the play, two of the Khmer Rouge victims, a man and a woman, whose photos are on exhibit in an art gallery, come to life and attempt to determine where they are and how they got there. S-21 is also in the title of a film, ‘S-21:The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine’, made in 2003 by Cambodian-born filmmaker, Rithy Rahn, who was 11 when his family died in that genocide. S-21 was the name given by the Khmer Rouge to Tuol Svay Prey High School in Phnom Penh when they turned it into one of their numerous security prisons – today it houses the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

In her article in Peace Review, Chantal Kalisa, reminds us that we have all participated in the theater of genocide: ‘Perpetrators and victims played their role while the rest of the world watched the "spectacle" live on television.' (3) The question I pose is this: As spectator, how will I, we, respond, react, reflect when witnessing yet another act of genocide in yet another country on nightly television news? Have we played a part in its unfolding because after watching newscasts highlighting the precursors of genocide – forced community relocations, reports of torture, assassination of dissident leaders, accounts of ethnic cleansing – we ignored these warnings? How can I relate to ‘them’, whether victim or perpetrator, who might, one day, be me? Can ways be found to pressure for an end to human rights violations, such as those occurring today in Darfur? One small way I've alopted to put pressure on the government of offending nations is to aid the work of:

Amnesty International: http://www.amnestyinternational.org/
Global Exchange: http://www.globalexchange.org/
Human Rights Watch: http://www.humanrightswatch.org/

By the simple act of adding my name to one of their petitions aids their efforts to inform the leadership of offending nations that their actions are being watched around the world, that these violations are not to be sanctioned or tolerated.

(1) For a description of the formation and early years of the Irish Republican Socialist Party see my book, Daughter of Derry: The Story of Brigid Sheils Makowski (Pluto Press, London, 1989)

(2) See http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ for the following documents: The U.S. and the Genocide in Rwanda 1994 The Assassination of the Presidents and the Beginning of the "Apocalypse"
The U.S. and the Genocide in Rwanda 1994 Information, Intelligence and the U.S. Response
The US and the Genocide in Rwanda 1994 Evidence of inaction

(3) Chantal Kalisa, 'Theatre and the Rwandan Genocide', Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, Vol. 18-4, Winter 2006, p. 515.

Drug Traffficking

On 17 January 2007, BBC Two Television broadcast ‘The 12-Year-Old Drug Smuggler’. This was a documentary of a 12-year-old girl in Bolivia tried as an adult and sentenced to one year in prison for attempting to smuggle cocaine. She was caught with several soap-cake-sized bars of cocaine paste strapped to her body with masking tape after the bus she was on was searched at a police checkpoint.

The girl was carrying the drug at the request of her mother who needed the money her daughter would receive when she delivered the drugs to the next level dealer. If the delivery had been successful, the drug would have continued up the chain until it reached the streets of Los Angeles, London and Dublin. There the cocaine would have been sold to addicts who might themselves end-up in jail for purchasing it or for stealing the funds to make the buy, thus, the cycle of cocaine trafficking that started with the destitute would have ended up with the destitute.

Over centuries in Bolivia the coca leaf has served as a component of traditional ritual and for use in medical treatment. Chewing the leaf also provides energy and relieves perpetual hunger fueled by the lack of income-producing work for a large segment of the population. Thus, the promise by agents of the drug cartels to subsistence-living individuals that processing cocoa leaves to produce cocaine would provide an end to their plight, fell on eager ears. However, urged on by diplomats of the U.S. government, this processing was made illegal under Bolivian Law. Thus, today Bolivian prisons house generation after generation of women because of the minimal part they play in the cocaine trade. Furthermore, because so many of these women have children, the prisons also house their youngsters whose formative years are now spent in this environment. Meanwhile, the profits from cocaine production, transportation and sale end up in the hands of the profiteers.

In addition to the drug cartels, an internal CIA investigation has confirmed they covered up covert crack cocaine trafficking by the Nicaraguan Contras that helped finance the US Government’s secret military assistance to Iran during the Ronald Reagan presidency that was overseen by Oliver L. North. See: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article14704.htm, http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1213-31.htm, and
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB210/index.htm

When an intoxicating substance is made illegal, covert and criminal drug profiteers enter full-force as they need to ensure customer demand to enhance profits. Therefore, a major part of their operation at street level is to entice others to escape reality by ingesting their product with the most vulnerable target being disenfranchised and disillusioned young people. Therefore, it is my firmly held belief that until governments abolish laws that make drug-use illegal we will continue to have this vicious cycle repeated ad infinitum. Certainly, the U.S. government should have learned this lesson during Prohibition when the 18th Amendment made alcohol use illegal, thereby, providing a means for organized crime to increase its wealth and influence.

Stoning Iraqi Women

By Tina Ehrami
December 20, 2006
Submitted to WFAFI

There is no saviour
From the soil,
That swallowed you like quicksand.
Don't blame Mother Earth,
She damns humanity tonight.

There is no saviour
When your hands are tied,
And your body suffocates, cold and dark,
While your head is left out to bleed.

There is no saviour
From the sharp stones that hit your face
Until your crimson blood enrages the madman,
So he can empty his bucket of guilt over your virgin veil

There is no saviour
When the stars and the moon turn their backs
To hide away from this orgy of insanity
Don't blame the sky,
She cries for all you, your sisters and mothers.

There is no saviour
When your face is gone and your scream
Reaches only as far as the valley of the deaf
And the only thing that remains,
Are the seconds of your sobs echoing in our ears.


This poem is from the website http://www.wfafi.org

The Execution of Saddam Hussein

In a Washington Post article (30 December 2006), on the death of Saddam Hussein, a concluding paragraph had this sentence: ‘Nevertheless, the year-long trial further deepened Iraq's sectarian divide, as Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds reacted to Hussein's case along the fault lines of sect and history.’

I congratulate the author of this sentence. Yes, Hussein was executed but this means he will not be brought to justice for the remainder of his crimes–namely the genocide of Kurds. Justice is done only when justice is seen to be done. And I fear that Hussein's death will prevent the full disclosure of other human rights abuses that occurred during his regime. Executing Hussein further occludes the blind eye that the Reagan, Carter, and both Bush governments turned toward these human rights abuses because it served their foreign policy objectives to do so.

Furthermore, we, as individuals, chose to ignore what our government was doing in our name. We did so because our government’s activities in that region satisfied our collective need for its supply of oil. Much injustice has been done and will continue to be done to maintain our energy-dependent lifestyle. Hussain’s death will not resolve this dilemma.

Jimmy Carter's Book -- Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

Quite a flap has occurred over what former U.S. President Jimmy Carter meant or didn’t mean by using the word apartheid in the title of his latest book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. No matter what Carter meant, it is clear the Israeli Zionists do not want to accommodate Palestinians and what the Israeli government is doing by building their walls is akin to re-ghettoizing its Jewish citizens.

In the current web-entry from Truthdig, http://www.truthdig.com/, Joshua Scheer interviews a longtime friend of mine, Stanley Sheinbaum about Carter’s book. In 1988, Sheinbaum led a delegation of five other prominent Jewish leaders to meet with Yasser Arafat. That meeting succeeded in getting Arafat to agree to renounce the use of terrorism and recognize Israel. For this, both Sheinbaum and Arafat were denounced as traitors by their respective ethnic communities. In Sheinbaum’s case some of his detractors threw dead pigs on the driveway of his Santa Barbara home to signify their belief he had betrayed Israel. To drive this attitude home David Ifshin, former legal counsel for the America Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), once said to me: ‘The day that Stanley Sheinbaum dies, the people of Israel will dance on his grave’.

In the Scheer interview, Sheinbaum stated the title of Carter’s book was unfortunate as it detracted attention from the serious questions Carter posed and diverted efforts from holding a serious debate about the current state of affairs in the Middle East. Furthermore, in my opinion, rather than get sidetracked by a lengthy discussion of what Carter meant by ‘apartheid’ we should concentrate more urgently on the growing link between Israeli Zionists, AIPAC, and born-again Christians – something Jimmy Carter has also written extensively about.

In a separate but a related vein, the current London Review of Books has an article by Corey Robin entitled ‘Dragon-Slayers’, in which he discusses the writings of Jewish philosopher and totalitarian theorist, Hanna Arendt. In it he quotes her as having said in the 1940s that without ‘Arab Jewish co-operation the whole Jewish venture [to create the State of Israel] is doomed' and that, ‘only [Zionist] folly could dictate a policy that trusts distant imperial power for protection, while alienating the goodwill of neighbours’. Robin states that by 1948, Arendt had come to oppose Zionist politics and that this opposition was rooted in three concerns: "the correspondence [Arendt] saw between Zionism and Fascism, the Zionists’ dependence on imperialism, and her growing awareness of what she called ‘the Arab question’."

Robin also cites a prescient article Arendt wrote in 1944, ‘USA – Oil – Palestine’, in which she held that the US foreign policy post WWII would be determined by its need to control the world’s oil supply. To see Robin’s entire article go to: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n01/print/robi02_.html.

I, for one, refuse to be labeled an anti-Semite when I highlight human rights abuses by the current Israeli government toward its fellow citizens and neighbors.

Dirge for Pinochet

Celebrate Pinochet’s Death!
Yet mourn its injustice
that denied his appearance
before a Chilean Court.

A trial where all is exposed:
The murders of Salvador Allende,
Orlando Letelier, Ronni Moffitt, Rodrigo Rojas
his victim’s names roll off my tongue.

My voice chants names of the disappeared,
those thousands buried under Chilean soil
red with their blood.

My ears ring with Canto Libre.
A song by Victor Jara whose
guitar strumming fingers were severed
by soldiers in Santiago’s stadium.

My eyes weep for my country’s soul;
assassinated by Nixon and Kissinger
who planned, financed and supported
Pinochet’s rape of Chile’s democracy.

Margie Bernard
12 December 2006

Helicopters Over Derry

Every Wednesday for the past six years, I have facilitated Derry Playhouse Writers, a support group for writers of all genre. This past Wednesday as we were meeting, we once again heard the irritating, constant, dull thud-thud-thud beating sound of British Army helicopters whirring overhead. As they hovered above our location for close to half-an-hour, the noise was so loud it was near impossible to verbally share our writings of this week.

I haven't heard this irritating sound in years. This was the sound of Derry I remember so well from my first visits here in the early 1980s. Those sounds and the sounds of women banging their metal garbage bin lids on the sidewalk to warn others living in The Bogside that British Army patrols were in the area once again are reminiscent of my initial experiences of life in war-torn Derry, N. Ireland.

So, although there has been a drastic sea-change since those days, Wednesday was a déjá vu day of remembrance. That helicopter whirring blades were the sounds I remember from those early days; the other memory is the fragrant smell of burning turf that blazed in the fireplace of every Bogside home.

Transforming Arts: Transcending Beliefs

A Personal Summation
Margie Bernard

The YouCAN conference, Transforming Arts: Transforming Beliefs, was a joint international conference of Boomerang Theatre in Cork and The Playhouse in Derry held in Monaghan on 1-3 November 2006. For me, the event was an artistic and intellectual feast of concepts and practices that enriched my spiritual/activist soul. In my summation, I have taken the liberty of changing its title, as I don’t believe we should be about the business of ‘transforming beliefs’ but rather coming to transcend our beliefs to open ourselves to exploring our differences so we can begin the process of healing and reconciliation.

This conference enhanced my understanding of what is community art and how its expression and execution differ from that of traditional fine art. A difference, I felt, that was highlighted in the opening talk by Mark Patrick Hederman and the final presentations on Thursday by Claudia Bernardi. For me they summed up the schism between egocentric individual art and ego-free collaborative art.

I would agree with Mark Patrick Hederman, an Irish Benedictine monk, that art can be propaganda and entertainment as well as a means of excavation and exploration. He theorizes that we are urgently in need of new symbols to explore the ethical contradictions we face in the 21st Century. In this regard he feels the arts present one means of expressing our confusion and furthering our search for meaning.

Where he and I may differ is in the realm of what constitutes ‘good’ art and what criteria are used in this determination. Long dominated by European male artists and their wealthy patrons who financed its execution, the definition of what is artistic has been undergoing tremendous change as we rediscover the long neglected artistic expression of women and cultures other than those of a western European perspective. There has been a huge transition from seeing art as only individual expression, to that of appreciating folk art, to the current ephemeral expression of community art that is as much about process as product. (There has been a long-standing understanding within feminist circles that numerous works attributed to ‘anon.’ are actually artwork by women that was denied recognition.)

The elite fine arts’ world has long determined what is ‘acceptable’ art whereas community art is seeking recognition and appreciation by a wider audience. Too long have the arts been jailed in marble lined halls where the masses either fear to tread or are not welcomed. Defined by Wikipedia, community art:
Also known as "dialogical art" or "community-based art," is an art form based in a community setting. Artworks from this genre can be characterized by interaction and/or dialogue. The term was defined in the late-1960s and spawned a movement which grew in the United States, Canada, UK, Ireland and Australia. Often the work is based in deprived areas and covers all the art forms, but with a community oriented, grassroots approach.

The presentation of Oraib Toukan, a Palestinian living in Jordan, gave recognition to the fact that an artist can use visual art as a means to convey both the communities’ as well as the individual’s expression of a shared experience. She posed the question of what should be the role of the artist in a conflict situation. Her statement, ‘remind me to remember to forget’, poses a conundrum on which I can gnaw and attempt to unravel.

Oraib demonstrated how the use of the crossed ribbon could be a means to give visual promotion of an entrenched political view as well as give expression of social change visionaries. (And, if memory serves me right, the first group to use a crossed red ribbon was the gay/lesbian movement to signify those who were opposed to homophobia attitudes and was also linked to AIDS prevention awareness.)

Julie Jarvis, a Canadian, demonstrated the need for the individual artist to suspend ego when engaged in collective artistic expression. She illustrated that the collective vision is more important than the personal when using art as a healing mechanism in a rehabilitation context. She also highlighted the importance of using recognizable icons that convey traditional folk images, i.e., the image of the crow as a source of wisdom and knowledge. Her presentation also highlighted the meaningful role the arts can play in educating the community on the link between one’s ecological environment and physical/spiritual healing–a quest for well-being which is both cross-cultural and universal.

Claudia Bernardi, a self-exiled Argentinean, presented the concept that art provides a new paradigm for social interaction. The collective work she and the community in El Mazote, El Salvador, have been engaged in demonstrates that collective community art can give expression to traumatic events that our psyche would rather suppress: that community artistic expression can be a means of enabling collective healing while also providing expectations for a better future. Like Julie, she affirmed how vital is ego-suppression of the artist when seeking to awaken other individuals, and the collective, to the awareness that we all have the ability to give artistic expression to emotion, be that emotion negative or positive.

The process that Claudia and the El Mazote community engaged in, also demonstrated the vital importance patience plays in an attempt to gather all viewpoints of all individuals in a community in order to give collective expression and execution of, an end product–in this case a memorial mural of vibrant rainbow colors sanctifying the 384 genocidal deaths of the women and children at the site of their mass grave.

Roberto Varea, who fled his native Argentina during its ‘dirty war’, demonstrated the need to document the silent voices of the immigrant, in this case the plight of the undocumented in search of work, who cross the border from Mexico to the US (much of which at one time formed parts of their ancestral homeland). In the case of California, where Roberto is currently based and I once lived, without the underpaid neo-slave labor of the undocumented workers, the seasonal produce of the Central Valley fields of plenty would rot; the hi-tech offices in Silicon Valley and Hollywood would not be nightly cleaned; the garbage on the streets and refuse from residences would not be collected.1

Himself an immigrant, Roberto talked about being the ‘other’ whether living in the US or when visiting his native land. And, although light complected, he is regarded as a person of color in California. In the US he has joined other hyphenated residents who live a schizophrenic existence with regard to their citizenship. But as Roberto reminded me he may be the other but the other is part of me–one more conundrum for me to ponder.

Roberto emphasized that community art resides at the demarcation point of transition from the old to the new. It gives voice to those who are seeking economic change and social justice. Community art provides a means of giving this yearning a voice that expresses the underlying unrest with the status quo. Community art also provides a means of nonviolent resistance to social injustice.

Regarding religious belief, Roberto commented that for the Latino's of Central and South America, the Catholic Church has been regarded as one segment of European colonization and foreign occupation. However, in the US, among both documented and undocumented immigrants from these same countries, the Church provides both religious solace and communal sustenance to those in cross-cultural limbo. An attempt to provide a voice for the voiceless in Central and South America was contained within the Liberation Theology movement led by Bishop Romero who was assassinated for implementing it and Pope, Benedict XVI, a.k.a. Joseph Ratzinger, bears responsibility for its suppression. However, on an informal level, liberation theology lives on in the actions of individual community-based priests and nuns.2

In a one-on-one conversation between Claudia, Roberto and myself, we discussed how difficult it is for those who are multi-language to convey thoughts and concepts with a universal voice. I, hindered with only English, find difficulty enough expressing myself in just the one language so don’t know how I would cope with finding meaning within two or more. However, as Roberto pointed out in his talk, a new dialect is emerging in the USA, ‘Spanglish’ which is providing minor linkages of communal expression between the two languages–Spanish and English. This was also the case with earlier Jewish Yiddish language immigrants. In both cases, Yiddish and Spanglish have enhanced the English language. Certainly I give evidence of both in my own use of language along with recently acquired words of Irish garnered while living here during the past six years.

In his presentation, Phil Mullen, an Irish community musician based in London, reminded us that given the right circumstances we also could become the person who justifies inhumane acts with the words, ‘I was only following orders’. This was aptly demonstrated by the experiment in which a subject suspended their moral conscience when ordered to do so by someone they perceived to be an ‘authority figure’. Furthermore, there are no innocent bystanders: we also aid and abet injustice when, in the words of Mumia Abu-Jamal, “ . . . a cause comes along and you know in your bones that it is just, yet refuse to defend it–at that moment you begin to die. And I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about justice."

Or, as that perceptive cartoon character Pogo remarked, We have met the enemy and it is us. Or as Roberto reminds me, the evil I abhor in others also resides in me. All that it takes for this diabolical other to emerge is fear–fear of the unknown, fear of the other. However, as former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt once stated, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself’, a useful daily mantra in this age of fearful uncertainty.

Having attempted to give some personal meaning to the various ideas expressed during this conference, for me they boil down to the importance of the arts to provide a method to explore our shared similarities rather than our differences. Perhaps community art practitioners, working in a tandem with grassroots communities, will provide one means to further understanding between peoples and make accessible to us all the riches contained within our various cultures.



1 On a personal note: The plight of migrant field workers has long been a major concern of mine stemming from my Michigan childhood where I and my family competed with migrant stream of workers (mainly displaced southern whites) who annually made their way north from Belle Grade, Florida to harvest crops.

To my pre-teen eyes these families seemed to live an exotic nomadic existence that belied the backbreaking, sweat-producing labor engaged in by my family and me to supplement our poverty-level existence. These migrant southern workers also helped form my first prejudice that was to regard any white with a Southern US accent as ignorant (a prejudice of which I still harbor vestiges). In an attempt to examine this prejudice, my first political essay was to document the plight of these migrant workers and later to support the efforts of Caesar Chavez in the 1960s, to form the United Farm Workers Union in California.

It was during this latter period that I was exposed to El Teatro Campesino (The Farm Workers Theater) begun by Louis Valdez. He devised a political drama that highlighted the plight of the undocumented Mexican workers in California. The play was staged on the back of a flatbed truck that traveled around California serving as a means to educate the general public about the inhuman working conditions of these field workers. Valdez’s drama was my first exposure to the positive impact of community art on the general public.

This was heightened years later in Washington, DC where Chilean exile friends of mine, José and Francisco (Pancho) Letelier, painted political murals satirizing racism and prejudice on the sides of buildings in the interracial Adams-Morgan neighborhood where I resided.

José and Francisco were exiled when their parents, emigrated from Chile after the coup that displaced the elected socialist government of Salvadore Allende. Because he continued to speak out, their father, Orlando, was murdered, along with a college Ronnie Moffitt, when the car they were in was blown up in September 1976, in front of the Irish Embassy in Washington, DC. Orlando’s assassination was carried out under orders of the coup leader Augusto Pinochet. Ronnie was an innocent victim; her husband, Michael Moffitt, survived the blast. Today, Pinochet is under house arrest in Chile, where he is awaiting trial for the crimes he ordered in Chile following the coup that covertly aided by the US government.

In memory of Orlando and Ronnie, the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, where Orlando was a Fellow and Ronnie his associate (and I, later, an Associate Fellow), has established an annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award. Orlando and Isabel Letelier’s eldest son, Juan Pablo is currently a Senator in the Chilean Legislature. In Chile, 11 September is remembered as the day of the 1972 ‘Coup of the Generals’ that resulted in the assassination of Allende and brought Pinochet to power

2 Today both the Catholic and mainstream Protestant Churches in Central and South America are being supplanted by US based fundamentalist ‘born-again’ Christians who use community art as one means to infiltrate communities and entice adherents. They arrive in deprived communities armed with balloons in one hand and the New Testament in the other in their quest to convert people to take Jesus as their savior.