Brugge Blog

The PBS Frontline crew has helped keep the story of the Guatemalan National Police Archives alive by airing a segment about the ongoing work being done, in what may be the first significant television coverage since I first heard about the story two years ago.

Along with the story of the archives, they do a brief profile of Benetech, the Palo Alto non-profit that’s providing the software and expertise to catalog all of the records. Although I think they do a great job of telling both stories, I’m not unbiased. I’ve had the privilege of working for Benetech for the past six months, and while I haven’t been involved with their human rights program, my experience of working with the folks who make up the Bookshare team has been that the organization as a whole has a potent mixture of strong technical savvy, committed, passionate people, and business acumen. They are in a niche that they’re largely carving out themselves, and I think the interviews in the segment give a good flavor of that.

The story of the archives looks like it is one that will (and should) go on for quite a while. Besides just the massive amounts of paperwork to process, there is still the unanswered question of what will come out of all of the data. It’s not clear how much data there is already, but there must be a fair amount for all of the time being spent, and yet there hasn’t been any outside access allowed or even hints or summaries given. Something will have to come out, the question is when. Hopefully when it does there will be outlets in the mainstream media who will send it out for people to hear. This is a long and important story, one that’s not simple or complete.