Hear My Testimony: Maria Teresa Tula Human Rights Activist of El Salvador
While military solutions to social problems take an awful toll in human suffering, the military's gain in wealth and power is apt to make it reluctant to support peace unless funds are cut off. Tiny, overpopulated El Salvador has recently emerged from a savage 13-year civil war that devastated the country. The war, in reality an agrarian movement to rectify the ownership of over half the land by two percent of the people, gave rise to such human rights abuses that thousands were massacred or fled abroad. Protests by women in turn made them aware of their own status as a disadvantaged group. The author herself was transformed from a peasant to an international human rights activist. Those who know Latin America will not be surprised at her story; a similar story is Nidia Diaz's I Was Never Alone: A Prison Diary from El Salvador (Ocean, 1992). For large collections.Louise Leonard, Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, Wondervu, Col.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.