The Juan E. Méndez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America honors the leadership and legacy of Juan E. Méndez, a champion of justice who has devoted his life to the defense of human rights.

Méndez is the former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and current Professor of Human Rights Law at American University. The award recognizes an outstanding book of non-fiction, including graphic works, published in English on human rights, democracy and social justice in contemporary Latin America.  Méndez’s papers are housed at Duke University Libraries’ Human Rights Archive, one of the largest collections of human rights materials at any American university. The papers document Méndez’s work as the UN Special Advisor for the Prevention of Genocide and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, as well as his work with the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ).

The award is co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at Duke University and is given in conjunction with the Human Rights Archive at Duke’s Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library.


Eligibility

Scholarly and popular books, including non-fiction graphic works, are eligible, either edited or authored. To be eligible, books must meet the following criteria:
  • An original, non-fiction book related to issues of human rights, the rule of law, social and/or economic justice, and democracy, as they are broadly understood, in contemporary Latin America. Books should pertain to events that took place in roughly the past 50 years.

  • Published in the English language by a commercial, university, or non-profit publishing concern. Books written originally in other languages and translated into English are eligible. Self-published books are not eligible.

  • Published in the two years before the date of the award, including the year of the award. In other words, books published in 2021 and 2022 are eligible for the prize awarded in 2023. Books published prior to 2021 and before are not eligible.


2023 Juan E. Méndez Book Award Winner

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The Condor Trials: Transnational Repression and Human Rights in South America (Yale University Press, 2022) by Francesca Lessa is the winner of the 2023 Juan E. Méndez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America. The judges were unanimous in their choice of the winner.

Lessa shows how networks of justice seekers transcended national borders to win justice for victims. Based on extensive fieldwork, archival research, trial ethnography, and over one hundred interviews, The Condor Trials explores South America’s past and present and sheds light on ongoing struggles for justice as its societies come to terms with the unparalleled atrocities of their not-so-distant pasts.

María McFarland Sánchez-Moreno, a Méndez judge, former winner, and acting deputy Program director and senior legal advisor at Human Rights Watch, commented that Lessa’s book “is a rare combination of deep research and engrossing, accessible writing that sheds new light on the Condor Program’s systematic management of transnational repression.”

Prof. Kirsten Weld, also a former winner and a professor of History at Harvard University, wrote, “The Condor Trials now stands as the authoritative English-language text on Operation Condor. Approaching the topic from a truly hemispheric perspective, Francesca Lessa’s book sheds light not only on Condor itself, but on the transnational mobilizations for justice which continue to this day.”

When notified of the award, Lessa stated, “It is the stories of people exactly like Juan E. Méndez who motivated me to write The Condor Trials. In the book, I recount the efforts of survivors, victims’ relatives, human rights activists, lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and journalists in South America and beyond who tirelessly fought for truth and justice. Over the years, these justice seekers successfully transcended national borders and overcame apparently indestructible walls of impunity to finally achieve justice for the victims of Operation Condor's horrors. I would like to dedicate this award to all the justice seekers I met during the process of researching and writing The Condor Trials: this book would not exist without them.”

Watch the 2023 Méndez Book Award Ceremony

Past Winners

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2021 Winner

The Water Defenders: how ordinary people saved a country from corporate greed by Robin Broad and John Cavanaugh

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2020 Winner

Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict Over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America by Theresa Keeley

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2019 Winner

What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché

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2018 Winner

There Are No Dead Here: A Story of Murder and Denial in Colombia by María McFarland Sánchez-Moreno

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2017 Winner

Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder Óscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice by Matt Eisenbrandt   

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2016 Winner

Boom, Bust, Exodus: The Rust Belt, the Maquilas, and a Tale of Two Cities by Chad Broughton

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2015 Winner

Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala by Kristen Weld

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2014 Winner

 The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail by Óscar Martí­nez

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2013 Winner

The Big Truck that Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster by Jonathan Katz

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2012 Winner

Oblivion: A Memoir by Héctor Abad

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2011 Winner

The Justice Cascade by Kathryn Sikkink

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2010 Winner

Hostage Nation: Colombia’s Guerrilla Army and the Failed War on Drugs, by Victoria Bruce, Karin Hayes and Jorge Enrique Botero

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The Dictator’s Shadow by Heraldo Muñoz

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The Art of Political Murder:Who Killed the Bishop? by Francisco Goldman 

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Judges

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Robin Kirk (Chair)

Faculty Co-Chair of the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute, Kirk is a senior lecturer in the Department of Cultural Anthropology and directs the Human Rights Certificate. Kirk has written five books, including More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs and America’s War in Colombia (Public Affairs) and The Monkey’s Paw: New Chronicles from Peru (University of Massachusetts Press) as well as a young-adult fantasy series.

About Robin Kirk
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James Chappel

The Hunt Assistant Professor of History at Duke University, Chappel studies modern European history. In Catholic Modern: The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church, Chappel traces the way that Catholics came to adopt a language of ‘human rights,’ and explores the limitations and opportunities of religious human rights language.

About James Chappel
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Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno

An activist, writer, and lawyer, McFarland is the author of There Are No Dead Here: A Story of Murder and Denial in Colombia, a Méndez award winner. She is currently Senior Legal Adviser to Human Rights Watch. As the former executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, Maria was at the helm of the leading organization in the US fighting to end the war on drugs. Previously, Maria held several positions at Human Rights Watch, including as co-director of its US Program.

About Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno
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Patrick Stawski

Human Rights Archivist at Duke University Libraries, Stawski has acquired and opened research access to several important collections including the papers and records of Marshall T. Meyer, the Washington Office on Latin America, Global Rights, and the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. Mr. Stawski’s research interests include record-making regimes and their relationship to governance and state power, colonial archives, and digital records in the human rights field.

About Patrick Stawski
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Kirsten Weld

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. 

About Kirsten Weld