hitech detectives in guatemala
May 27, 2008Look out for a story airing on PBS’ Frontline/WORLD this evening. It takes place at the junction of history, technology and human rights.
Guatemala is slowly recovering from the trauma of a thirty-six year-long civil war. One aspect of that conflict was the suspected abuse of urban dissidents by the national police force. An police archive – millions of documents – relating to that period was recently discovered. But it was almost unreadable; it had been discarded, weathered, thought lost.
Now a Silicon Valley tech company is helping to scan, clean and analyze the archive. And it’s shedding light on those suspeced human rights abuses, and on a dark chapter of Guatemala’s history.
The story originally aired on the show I work for, PRI’s The World.
But the reporter behind it, Clark Boyd, has now done a version for the tellybox. Check your local listings and tune in.
