In the Wake of Pinochet
Ambassador Munoz discusses his award-winning memoir
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Durham, NC -- Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz, the Chilean ambassador to the United Nations, will be presented Oct. 15 with the WOLA-Duke Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America at Perkins Library.
Muñoz’s memoir of dictatorship and exile, The Dictator’s Shadow, won the award honoring the best current, non-fiction book published in English on human rights, democracy and social justice in contemporary Latin America.
The Dictator’s Shadow explores former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet’s legacy of violence and corruption from a uniquely personal perspective. Muñoz was imprisoned and exiled by the Pinochet regime because of his political views. In this memoir, he recounts how Chileans brought the former dictator to account for some of his crimes up to the general's death in 2006.
Muñoz will read from his book at 5 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 15, in the Rare Book Room in Perkins Library. The public reading is free, and will be followed by a discussion session with the ambassador. Books will be made available for purchase and signing, courtesy of the Gothic Bookshop.
Professor Ariel Dorfman, a long-time friend of Muñoz, will introduce him.
“I think that faculty and students might be interested in discussing Ambassador Muñoz’s tenure as head of the U.N. Security Council in the year leading up to the invasion of Iraq, where he played a significant role in trying to ensure that multilateralism be paramount in stopping Saddam Hussein, rather than a unilateral military intervention,” said Dorfman, Walter Hines Page Professor of Literature and Latin American Studies.
WOLA and Duke University created the prize to honor the best current, non-fiction book published in English on human rights, democracy and social justice in contemporary Latin America. In addition to the the Archives for Human Rights, the Duke Human Rights Center and the Duke Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies are co-sponsors of the award.
The book award is the second cooperative venture between WOLA and Duke University. Under an agreement signed in January 2008, WOLA has donated its historical archives, dating to the organization’s founding in 1974, to the Archive for Human Rights at the Duke University Libraries. The materials in the archives document WOLA’s influential role in keeping human rights and justice central in U.S. policy toward Latin America.
The reading is sponsored by WOLA, the Archive for Human Rights at Duke University Libraries, the Duke Human Rights Center, and the Duke Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
For more information: http://humanrights.fhi.duke.edu/practice-human-rights/wola-duke-book-award
