She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Of Light and Struggle: Social Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability in Uruguay, and reported the following:
Page 99 falls in chapter 3 of the book, which is focused on U.S.-Uruguayan bilateral relations. In the text itself, I provide some analysis of Carter’s initial human rights policy that I explain was “vague and general” as the administration went through a broad policy review to figure out how the new administration would bring the rhetoric of human rights into action items in diverse contexts around the globe. By the bottom of the page, I show how Carter initially sought to focus on a “limited number of ‘worse’ cases”, of which Uruguay was one, in part due to the work of activists and congressional representatives that consistently brought the violations in the country to international attention in the first four years of the dictatorship.Visit Debbie Sharnak's website.
In many ways, the snapshot is emblematic of a central theme of the book where I analyze how grassroots actors, with a particular focus on the situation in Uruguay, helped shape the understanding and implementation of human rights on an international level. On the other hand, the page is limiting as a window into the book because it is one of only two chapters that does not take place at least in part ‘in’ Uruguay. During the most difficult years of the dictatorship, there was limited activism at a domestic level, and the story of human rights work and discussion was most vibrant and accessible from a documentary perspective through the work of those abroad. Therefore, while the book does have a distinct foreign policy focus, tracing the trajectory of Richard Nixon all the way through Ronald Reagan’s policy toward the country, it is not just a story of U.S. policymakers. Rather, they are one of a myriad of actors that helped shape and contribute to human rights work in the Southern Cone.
--Marshal Zeringue
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