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Sna Jtz'ibajom: The House of the Writer

Sna Jtz'ibajom, The House of the Writer, based in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, for the past 16 years, has striven to give a new voice to traditional Mayan beliefs and customs on paper, on the stage, and on the air, to revive and stimulate interest among Mayans, to engender an appreciation among non-Indian Mexicans for their Indian heritage, and to inform the outside world that Mayan civilization did not crumble with the pyramids, but flourishes today.

The Ituri Forest Peoples Fund: Site; Ituri Forest, Democratic Republic of Congo

With tears streaming down her face, ImaNjede hands her three month-old daughter, Atauma, to Gilda. "Zilda, Zilda, save my baby" she pleads with a sense of desperation and faith that we can do miracles. Atauma lies on Gilda's lap shivering even though her skin is on fire and she is covered with sweat from an acute attack of malaria. Gilda crushes a chloroquine tablet between two spoons, adds honey to try and mask its bitterness, and tries in vain to get Atauma to swallow the medicine. Gilda and ImaNjede know it's hopeless and before midnight Atauma dies.

BRIEFLY NOTED: Indigenous Peoples Fight Park Service in the US

Native peoples are often adversely affected by efforts to protect natural resources by state agencies. According to a newly formed alliance, this is no different in the U.S. The Alliance to Protect Native Rights in National Parks recently formed to defend and protect native peoples who have found part or all of their ancestral homelands under U.S. National Park Service management.

Burma Update

Indigenous ethnic minorities make up approximately one-third to one-half of the population of Burma. Despite their large numbers, these indigenous groups are subject to continual attacks under the oppressive regime of The State Law and Order Council (SLORC). Military offensives against these ethnic minorities have not relented as the ruling junta appears to have adopted a policy of "Burmanization." One of the ways this effort has manifested itself has been through regulations which mandate that ethnic minorities, such as the Chin, not be allowed to speak their native languages in schools.

Serbian and Croatian Nationalism and the Wars In Yugoslavia

The creation of Yugoslavia as part of the reordering of Europe after the first world war made a great deal of sense. In geopolitical terms, it helped accomplish the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, removing Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia & Hercegovina and Vojvodina from Austrian or Hungarian control. At the same time, the creation of a Land of the South Slavs, or Yugoslavia (Jugoslavija, from jug, south, plus slavija, of Slavs) met the demands of at least some of the dominant political figures among the South Slavic peoples, particularly the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

Behind the Headlines: Violence, Land, and People in a Changing Southern Africa

Behind the Headlines: Violence, Land, and People in a Changing Southern. Africa

Nelson Mandela's release in 1990 set in train, as Nadine Gordimer put it, "the complete reversal of everything that, for centuries, has ordered the lives of all our people." After decades of sanctions, boycotts, and isolation, the South African government moved to dismantle apartheid, graphically illustrating the effectiveness of non-violent strategies for changing immoral policies.

People of the Great White Lie?

John Paul Myburgh's film People of the Great Sandface (1986) has apparently been well received in Britain and Europe and hailed by respected, well-informed and critical South African media commentators as a breakthrough in South African ethnographic film. Yet People of the Great Sandface raises troubling questions, not only about how we portray the human dimension of southern Africa, but about the very nature of the academic enterprise known as visual anthropology.

Rebels Create Havoc in Mozambique

In December 1987, Robert Gersony was engaged by the Department of State's Bureau for Refugee Programs to undertake an assessment of designated Mozambican refugee matters. The bureau's director, Ambassador Jonathan Moore, decided to have the assessment conducted as a result of the bureau's perception of a mounting refugee crisis in southern Africa.

The bureau had witnessed an increase of 300 percent in the number of Mozambican refugees in southern Africa over the past year. The bureau currently estimates that the total number of such refugees is about 870,000.

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