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 2023 and 2024 are eligible for the prize awarded in 2024. Books published prior to 2023 and before are not eligible. Advanced copies and/or PDFs of books that are scheduled to be published after the submission deadline will be accepted.

Submission Guidelines

The deadline for entries is November 30, 2024. 
  • There is no entry form. Publishers, authors or readers may send nominations to Corin Zaragoza at cmz12@duke.edu. Please use the subject line Méndez Book Award.

  • The submission should contain a short description of the book and publishing details; no supporting materials or reviews are necessary.

  • Copies should be mailed to:
    Méndez Book Award
    Duke Human Rights Center @ the Franklin Humanities Institute
    114 S. Buchanan Blvd.
    Durham, NC 27708

  • If books are short-listed, we will request copies for all judges.

  • For books due to be published in 2023 but after the entry deadline, nominators may send a pre-publication copy or PDF copy, indicating the publication date.

 

Judges are drawn from Duke University as well as journalists, scholars, writers and others who have worked in human rights in Latin America. 

2024 Juan E. Méndez Book Award Winner

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Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains (Crown, 2023) by Alexa Hagerty is the winner of the 2024 Juan E. Méndez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America. The four judges were unanimous in their choice of the winner.

Hagerty will accept the award and talk about her work on Thursday, February 29, 2024 at 6:00pm in the Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall in Smith Warehouse. More information about the event can be found here.

This is the fifteenth year of this prestigious award. The award is supported by the Duke Human Rights Center@the Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Human Rights Archive at the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. 

In Still Life with Bones, anthropologist Alexa Hagerty describes her work with forensic teams and victims’ families to investigate crimes against humanity in Latin America. This beautifully written and richly researched story explores what science can tell us about the lives of the dead and the grief of the living for the loved ones they’ve lost. Hagerty is meticulous and unsparing in her exploration of the intricacies of finding, cataloging, and returning remains in Guatemala and Argentina, very different cultures united in loss and the yearning to recover the lives violently taken and uphold the rights of the dead and the obligations of mourning and the quest for justice.

Deborah Jakubs, University Librarian Emerita at Duke University, wrote that the book’s “great beauty lies in the many ways Hagerty weaves together the dark histories of the state violence that occurred in Guatemala and Argentina with the complex and touching stories of individuals affected by those crimes, whether victims or survivors, and with her own very personal reflections on mortality, grief, and memory. With great humility, she candidly details her powerful emotional journey as she takes part in exhumations at multiple sites and in the recovery and reconstruction of human remains encountered there. This fine book is part indictment, part lamentation, and part memoir.”

María McFarland Sánchez-Moreno, a Méndez judge, former winner, and acting deputy program director at Human Rights Watch, commented, “Hagerty’s reflections on the impact of forensic anthropology, both on the family members of the disappeared and on the people doing the work, woven throughout the book, felt profound and revealing. She connects the difficult, daily, and often dangerous work of the excavations with the history behind the bones they uncover and the lives of people today, in a stirring way that also created a powerful sense of urgency. These stories aren’t in the past, they’re also shaping the present. Hagerty also treats her subjects with tremendous care, even love, which allows the reader to feel close to them and want to keep reading instead of turning away from the horrors she describes.”

The other judges included Prof. James Chappel, a member of the DHRC@FHI executive committee and the Gilhuly Family Associate Professor in the History Department at Duke; and Robin Kirk, the co-director of the DHRC@FHI and Professor of the practice in the Cultural Anthropology Department at Duke.

When notified of the award, Hagerty stated, “I am deeply honored by the judges’ recognition. I share this honor with the families of the missing and the forensic teams whose stories are told in the book. They have taught me, and I hope whoever reads these pages, a profound lesson about human rights: that where there is violence, there is also resistance, the labors of justice, and the invincible human spirit.”

First awarded in 2008, the Méndez Human Rights Book Award honors the best current non-fiction book published in English on human rights, democracy, and social justice in contemporary Latin America. The books are evaluated by a panel of expert judges drawn from academia, journalism, human rights, and public policy circles. 

For more information on the award, event, and previous winners, see https://humanrights.fhi.duke.edu/current-programs/juan-e-mendez-book-award/.

For more information about Still Life with Bones, see https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706009/still-life-with-bones-by-alexa-hagerty

Learn More About the 2024 Méndez Ceremony

Past Méndez Winners

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2023 Winner

The Condor Trials: Transnational Repression and Human Rights in South America by Francesca Lessa

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2022 Winner

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

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2020/2021 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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Deborah Jakubs

Deborah Jakubs established the Human Rights Archive at Duke University in 2006 during her tenure as Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs (2005-2022).  An historian of modern Latin America, she traces the roots of her concern for human rights in the region to her initial research in Argentina in the late 1970s.  She has been a member of the Review Board of the Modern Endangered Archives Program, the steering committee for the FOIArchive, and a consultant to libraries in Chile and in Turkey.

About Deborah Jakubs