Meet Tom Melville, author of Through a Glass Darkly

Saturday, November 19th at 11am in the Convention Center

Who is the terrorist and who is the freedom fighter? The answer to this much debated and often frivolously asked question finds an unequivocal answer in a recently published book, Through a Glass Darkly, The U.S. Holocaust in Central America. This is the story of a former share-cropping Iowa farmer, Catholic priest, Father Ronald Hennessey, and his up-close experiences with the genocidal practices of a series of Guatemalan governments armed, trained, financed and publicly whitewashed by one United States government after another. Hennessey, a veteran of thirty years of missionary work in Central America as a member of the Maryknoll society, went from being an all-American boy soldiering in the U.S. army?s war in Korea to an outspoken opponent of our country?s Central America deceptions, a conversion that often put his life in danger.

Tom Melville, a friend of Hennessey and himself a former Maryknoller in Guatemala, is the author of Father Ron?s book. Melville was expelled from Guatemala in 1967 for being sympathetic to the insurgency then incubating in Guatemala. He then came back to the U.S. and with his wife Margarita Bradford and John Hogan, both Guatemalan Maryknollers, participated with the Berrigan brothers, Frs. Dan and Phil, and four others in the seminal draft-card burning action at Catonsville, Maryland in 1968. The motivation of the three Maryknollers was to awaken members of the anti-Vietnam War movement to the ever expanding tactical terrorism of the U.S. government in Central America.

Fifteen years (1984-99) of close collaboration between Hennessey and Melville produced Through a Glass Darkly, published recently by Xlibris and characterized by many of the hundreds of readers as ?riveting? and a ?page turner.? Fr. Dan Berrigan says that Melville?s book ?is a meticulous, passionate, at times humorous, at all times insightful chronicle of mass murder in Guatemala and El Salvador.? Stephen Kinzer, co-author of Bitter Fruit, The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, says that ?too few Americans know about the tragedy that has enveloped Guatemala for decades and about America?s role in that tragedy. Through a Glass Darkly tells this story that is passionate and deeply moving but also detailed, factual and informative.? Fr. Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch says, ?If there is one book that U.S. citizens should read about U.S. sponsored genocide in Central America ? Guatemala in particular ? this is it.?

Fr. Ron Hennessey (r.i.p. 1999) is the brother of Sisters Dorothy Marie (91) and Gwen Hennessey (71), nuns of the St. Francis Order, themselves veterans of several SOA demonstrations and graduates of the federal prison system for having ?crossed the line.? Sister Gwen will introduce Tom Melville to the SOA Watch participants this November to have him comment and answer questions regarding his and Ron?s experiences.