Date:
For a recording of this event, click here.
Speakers: Robert J. Cox, British journalist and editor and publisher of the Buenos Aires Herald 1959–1979; Maud Daviero de Cox, Argentine writer and columnist; Jayson McNamara, Director of Messenger on a White Horse
Moderated by: June Carolyn Erlick, Editor-in-Chief of ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America; Kirsten Weld, Professor of History at Harvard University
A conversation with Robert J. Cox about his work and the documentary Messenger on a White Horse. The documentary powerfully describes how in the late 1970s, Bob Cox, as he is known to colleagues, risked his life to publish news stories about the shocking human rights crimes of Argentina's military dictators. Decades later, his life's work still has an impact on the human rights community—informing the search for truth, justice and historical memory. This film will be offered for free through streaming two days before the event to pre-registered participants.
Robert J. Cox, 1980 Nieman Fellow at Harvard, is a British journalist who became editor and publisher of the Buenos Aires Herald, an English-language daily newspaper in Argentina. Cox became famous for his criticism of the military dictatorship (1976–1983). He moved to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1979, where he became an editor of The Post and Courier, owned by the same publishing company that owned the Buenos Aires Herald. In 2005, the Buenos Aires legislature recognized Cox for his valor during the dictatorship.
Maude Daviero de Cox, Argentine writer and columnist. Daviero de Cox has a Ph.D in comparative literature and is the author of six books, including Salvados, a 45 años de la dictadura militar.
Jayson McNamara is an Australian documentary filmmaker and journalist. His film work explores the contemporary resonance of historical human rights crimes, specifically in Argentina where he lived for 8 years. Jayson’s first feature “Messenger on a White Horse” was released globally in 2017 on Nat Geo Mundo and Amazon Prime, and he is currently finishing his second film “Norita” which profiles Argentina’s ‘godmother of democracy’, the activist Nora Cortiñas.
June Carolyn Erlick is the Editor-in-Chief of ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America and Publications Director coordinating Faculty Voice podcasts. She is the author of Natural Disasters in Latin America and the Caribbean: Coping with Calamity (Routledge 2021), Telenovelas in Pan-Latino Context (Routledge, 2018), translated as Telenovelas en el Mundo Latino (Editorial Universidad del Pacífico, 2018), as well as Disappeared: A Journalist Silenced, the Irma Flaquer Story (Seal Press, 2004), translated as Desaparecida (Sophos, Guatemala, 2012) and A Gringa in Bogotá: Living Colombia's Invisible War (University of Texas Press, 2010) and Una Gringa en Bogotá (Santillana, 2007). She teaches journalism at Harvard Extension and Summer Schools and coordinates the journalism capstone and internship programs there.
Kirsten Weld is a historian of modern Latin America. Her research explores 20th-century struggles over inequality, justice, historical memory, and social inclusion. Her first book, Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala (2014), analyzes how history is produced as social knowledge, the labour behind transformative social change, and the stakes of the stories we tell about the past. It is a historical and ethnographic study of the massive archives generated by Guatemala's National Police, which were used as tools of state repression during the country's civil war, concealed from the truth commission charged with investigating crimes against humanity at the war’s end, stumbled upon by justice activists in 2005, and repurposed in the service of historical accounting and postwar reconstruction. Paper Cadavers won the 2015 WOLA-Duke Human Rights Book Award and the 2016 Best Book Award from the Latin American Studies Association’s Recent History and Memory Section.