Whatever Happened to Radicalism? Voices from the George Vickers Papers

María Julia Hernández: “Our main… mandato… how do you say?” 

Others: “Mandate.” 

María Julia Hernández: “Mandate, yes, is to work in order to defend the violation of the persons that present the demand in our office. For example, the people comes to our office and they put a denouncement. And immediately we document that case and we analyze that case in order to help immediately to them. This is our main purpose.” 

Vickers colleague 1: “Yeah, this is usually for somebody who is actually being held in prison or...?” 

María Julia Hernández: “Yes, for example, if they are captured, they disappear, or even we know that they received some tortures, they are assassinated, everything we have to... to do something in order to help everyone. This is our main purpose. The other things becomes... because we are an office of human rights. But our main thing is to help the people immediately as much as we can.” 

George Vickers: “There was a woman waiting this morning whose son was taken by the army up in Santa Ana, there was a lawyer from the office going with her to the prison today.” 

María Julia Hernández: “We go to the security courts, we go to the military headquarters, we go as much as we can or as much as the military... let us to do. Yes. This is our main thing.”  

Vickers colleague 2: “Just as an American, has the huge amount of money the Americans put into the army, has that made things worse?” 

María Julia Hernández: “The military help from the United States to our country? Well, the church always says that we consider military helps from each side, from each part that cames, as a bad thing, as a... because it helps to prolong war, to kill more people, it’s a lethal help. We know that we’re a very poor people, that we’re a very poor country, and we need other countries. But the need that we wanted is to help us to build our society, to look for a new ways of arrange our political problems, but not war, not to bring war, not to bring death, not to bring military aid.”