In this episode, Lehman College professor Victoria Sanford talks with Richard Relkin, Assistant Vice President for Communications & Marketing at Lehman, about her recently published book Textures of Terror: The Murder of Claudina Isabel Velasquez & Her Father’s Quest for Justice. It is the story of a 19-year-old law student who was murdered in August 2005, emblematic of the thousands of women and girls who are victims of gender-based violence in Guatemala. Claudina’s story is different in that her father, Jorge Velásquez, has been committed to seeking justice for the unsolved murder and breach of justice for nearly two decades. Victoria explains the distinction between femicide and feminicide, a political term that foregrounds the dysfunctional justice system in Guatemala, specifically how the state has failed to uphold the human rights of women and girls. For listeners interested in the current political state, watch the news for the results of the presidential run-off elections in Guatemala to be held on August 20.
A public scholar, anthropologist, and internationally recognized expert on the Guatemalan genocide and feminicide in contemporary Guatemala, Victoria Sanford is a writer, human rights advocate and Lehman Professor of Excellence at Lehman College and the Graduate Center. In addition to Textures of Terror, she is the author of six other books including Buried Secrets: Truth & Human Rights in Guatemala. She served as an invited expert witness in the Spanish National Court’s genocide case against the Guatemalan generals and in an indigenous land rights case in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. A John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and Bunting Peace Fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, she has also held fellowships at the US Institute for Peace, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and Fulbright Scholar awards at the Universidad Libre and Javeriana University in Bogota, among others.
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