Witness for Peace: HOTLINE

The Witness for Peace Hotline is a newsletter, released weekly, that lists the tragedies occurring in Nicaragua and later around Central America. In simple and clear prose, the one- to two-page newsletters list attacks, injuries, kidnappings, deaths, etc., and comments on who from the organization was there or heard about and reported on the events. Rarely, it includes commentary, asking readers to consider the place of US aid in these events, and occasionally even imploring them to contact their representatives and demand a change in policy.

Witness for Peace, as is evident from the name and the content of the Hotline newsletters, is committed to bearing witness to atrocities that the US government had interest in keeping quiet. This is a very useful resource that I have found, however, I wish I had access to the group members' personal papers, because I want to know how witnessing these events affected the people personally. In other words, were these events traumatic for the witnesses?

I really like testimonial literature. But what was the effect of this particular dry, regimented testimony, directed at a US audience? I want to know more about this. I also want access to a mission statement - their work is obviously involved with bearing witness, but what is the goal? I have access, in addition to the hotline transcripts, to the WFP newsletter, however, the archive does not have the earliest copies of the newsletter where perhaps the goals of the organization could have been stated.

**It turns out that I was confused of the actual format of the WFP hotline. Actually, it is a recorded message that interested people could call and listen to, updated weekly. Either way, it is accessible in written form, however, it should not be called a "newsletter" (as it is at the beginning of this post).

Would a section about the Nicaragua contra affair be applicable to the course? Or a section on testimony? I know we had talked about Anne Frank and her place within Holocaust literature, and that is also spoken to in The Texture of Memory. Maybe I'm just getting excited about all the material I'm finding...