From April 14 to 17, I participated in Puerto Rico at the annual conference sponsored by The American Ethnological Society and The Society for Urban, National and Transnational Anthropology. On Friday April 16, I served as a discussant to the panel The Category of Perpetrator in Human Rights Discourse. Presenters, among others, were Winifred Tate, Linda Green, and Samuel Martinez.

There is today a small but significant number of anthropologists who have been dedicating their research to "perpetrators." Anthropology came in quite late in studying political violence and its main focus has been the victims of gross human rights violations. And this no doubt has been the right thing to do. In fact, as an expression of engaged anthropology, students of human rights have given a fundamental contribution to the field of human rights by allowing to bring to the fore effects of power and by lending an ear to a truth that speaks to power. Sally Engle Marry, Linda Green, Ricardo Falla, Deborah Poole, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Victoria Sanford and others have been pioneers in the field.