Receiving the Benjamin Linder Fellowship this year has been a great honor that has allowed me to continue my work for the UW Center for Human Rights, researching human rights abuses during El Salvador’s civil war of 1980-1992. This work requires a huge level of organization—new documents and correspondence need organizing, new FOIA requests need filing and, often, appealing. On any given day, my research partner Gabrielle Lundquist, who has since graduated, and I find ourselves many layers of folders deep within our online archives, which have been carefully curated by a years-long chain of undergraduate and graduate CHR students, to participate in research with real-world effects.
When a spreadsheet of documents mentioning his name became a video call with his family, this work researching atrocities from 40 years in the past gave me new insight into the power of human rights research.
When I joined this project in the spring of 2024, I quickly learned the human impact that this work can have through the first case I worked on—the forced disappearance of Efraín Arévalo Ibarra, an educator in El Salvador who was a member of the teachers’ union ANDES 21 de Junio. Through past FOIA requests by the UWCHR, his death was confirmed to his family, who were able to hold a memorial for him. When a spreadsheet of documents mentioning his name became a video call with his family, this work researching atrocities from 40 years in the past gave me new insight into the power of human rights research, including from the organizational stages of research up to the success of a historical verdict made this summer over the killings of four Dutch journalists in 1982.
As an UWCHR researcher, the bulk of my work involves maintaining and continuing the work of researchers before me. Working together, though without even having met most of my predecessors, we have created a massive library of documents that is ever-expanding through FOIA requests. Even after the departure of Nicole Grabiel, the 2023 Benjamin Linder recipient, her work with Argentinian documents continues to be a part of my role. This system has created a wealth of knowledge stretching back to the beginning of this project, allowing students like me to gain invaluable insight into the formation of an archive, the importance of human rights work and research, and learn more deeply about Salvadoran history than I never would have had the opportunity to otherwise. Between processing huge DIA releases of documents, I also get the freedom to dive deeper into cases such as the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero, whose death in 1980 has been widely reported on, yet has never led to prosecution. Combing through cables, news reports, and memorandums—both classified and declassified—allowed me to more deeply understand the systems that allow a dictatorship to survive as name after name of potential collaborators were mentioned, yet never charged.
As a part of the UW Honors History program, I have also been working on individual research regarding third-gender groups in Indigenous Latin-American communities. My interest in Latin American history has been a huge motivation for my work at the Center for Human Rights. While the two projects differ from each other, the archival experience I’ve gained has helped build my own archive for my thesis project. In addition, learning about the power of research in activism has inspired me to use my thesis as a way to analyze the existence of these third-gender groups in the modern day, focusing on the rights, treatment, and culture of these groups today as a part of a longer history, but also acknowledging the ongoing existence and challenges they face. Working with Argentinian documents has allowed me to practice my translation skills, another way in which this role connects to my personal goals as I work to improve my Spanish.
The nuanced view I have gained of El Salvador’s history has given me new insight and motivation into the ongoing impact that historical atrocities can have. Nayib Bukele’s presidency has once again reminded the world of the United States’ relationship with El Salvador, and as Bukele visits the White House and accepts U.S. deportees, it becomes ever more important to understand the historical connection between the United States and El Salvador, including the long history of human rights abuses.