Remembering

Abstract

Since its inception in 1974, the year of the publication of Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America and of Pablo Neruda's memoirs Confieso que he vivido, the focus of LAP has been on political, economic, and social issues, but its editors soon recognized the importance of studying Latin American cultural productions. There was a special issue on culture in the age of mass media in 1978 (edited by Julianne Burton and Jean Franco), one on cultural production and the struggle for hegemony in 1989, and two on testimonial literature under the title Voices of the Voiceless in 1992 (edited by Georg M. Gugelberger and Michael Kearney). At the center of the discussion of testimonio was Rigoberta Menchui, and since then, the journal has published her writings and those of others about her. It is fitting that the anniversary of LAP coincides with the republication of Galeano's book and the publication of the second book of Rigoberta Menchui. Her first book, Me liamo Rigoberta Menchu y asi me nacio la conciencia (1983), changed the direction of the field of Latin American studies; her second consists of reflections on this success. The inflammatory remarks made in Simojovel, Chiapas, on July 1, 1998, by the president of the Mexican Republic (see La Nacion, July 2, 1998) during one of his increasingly frequent and increasingly perturbing visits to this southern state-always followed by additional bloodletting by the military or the paramilitary forces-have been almost unanimously repudiated by intellectuals and other observers. Many considered them little short of a declaration of war. After the unjustifiable killings at Acteal and El Bosque, the impression prevails among many Mexicans that if this intransigence and