Uruguay Nunca Mas: Human Rights Violations, 1972-1985

This remarkable book, a bestseller in Uruguay, soberly and authoritatively documents the horrors of repression under the military regime that ruled Uruguay from 1972 to 1985. Unlike in Argentina or Brazil, in Uruguay neither the government nor the church conducted this investigation; it was the work of citizens who combined personal testimony and a knowledge of social science, as Lawrence Wechsler notes in his perceptive introduction. (His own book, A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers , is in part a chronicle of the making of this report.) It teaches us about the breakdown of democracy in Uruguay, the practice of state terrorism and the scars such depredations left on individuals and on the country. ``To forget past crimes becomes a new crime against human nature,'' the authors conclude. Photos not seen by PW. (Nov.)