DEATH LIST AND DENUNCIATIONS ARE ALL IN A DAY S WORK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000200970106-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 29, 2010
• Sequence Number: 106
• Publication Date: June 1, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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population, the government in 1977
began a program to "clean up the
Indian zones." That, Cammack says,
meant open season for kidnapping,
torture, and murder.
Carmack's own troubles began in
1979 when he planned a congress for
anthropologists in the ancient Mayan
capital of Utatlan, rather than in
Guatemala City, as government officials
wanted. The final speaker at that
conference used the occasion to attack
the government. Carmack was blamed
in some quarters. He was labeled a left-
winger - if not in action then at least
in sympathy.
His last trip to Guatemala in the
spring of 1981 was terrifying, he recalls.
"I went there first that year in
February but the pictures I needed from
that trip didn't turn out. To go back and
re-shoot, I entered the country by night,
by bus from Mexico. I was petrified.
Everyone I met in Guatemala was
petrified. The killing was widespread.
I stayed undercover the entire time
I was there."
Two weeks after he left the country,
the minister of education, a military
officer close to the country's leaders,
denounced Carmack as an enemy of the
government in a national radio
broadcast.
"By then I was back in Mexico,"
Carmack recalls. "That broadcast made
it clear to me that I was a fair target to
disappear or be killed if I went back to
Guatemala." Later he learned from the
CIA that his name was on a death list.
Denunciations and death threats are
hardly a normal occupational hazard
in the conduct of academic research.
But then most researchers aren't kept
apart from the work and study of a
lifetime by a military government and a
civil war.
An ethnologist and ethnohistorian,
Carmack has always specialized in the
study of the Quiche Maya, the
Guatemalan natives who ruled that
country's highlands from approximately
1200 until the Spanish conquests three
centuries later.
His scholarly reputation soared in
1974 when, after 10 years of work in
and around the town of Santa Cruz, he
was permitted to see and study seven
native chronicles, original records of the
Quiche, that had been kept a guarded
secret for centuries.
With some 700,000 Quiche-speaking
people and many more Quiche
descendants today in Guatemala, the
native influence remains strong in the
culture. In some rural areas, the 260-day
Mayan calendar is still in use and people
plan their activities by the fates
associated with each of the numbered
days.
"If the calendar says the fates are
against marriage, there are no Quiche
weddings that day," Carmack says.
But since the Quiche basin in northern
Guatemala is a hot bed for guerrilla
activity and violence, anthropologists
and other researchers in the field have
been obliged to find other places and
people to study.
"It has affected at least a dozen of
our graduate students, including two
who midway through the research and
writing of their doctoral dissertations
had to shift to new topics," says
Carmack.
"We have canceled one project that
was supported by a $30,000 grant. We
have all agreed it is just too dangerous
to go to Guatemala now."
Further, Carmack and many
colleagues believe that regardless of
personal safety, they should not be
conducting research in the country given
conditions today.
"We feel it isn't right to carry on with
business as usual while people all around
are being killed," he says.
Cannack believes that scholars still
working in Guatemala are either
politically on the ultra right wing or
Death List and
Denunciations Are
All in a Day's Work
In Central America these days, when the
CIA tells you to leave a country and a
ranking official of the government there
denounces you in a nationwide
broadcast, the express route to the
border is the only way to travel.
University anthropologist Robert M.
Carmack is an authority on the culture
of Guatemala's Quiche Maya, not a spy
or a provocateur. But arguing that
distinction has not been a profitable
venture in recent years in Guatemala
where death squads have murdered
thousands of people. Some, such as
Amnesty International, say the death toll
is in the tens of thousands.
Having lived in Central America in
the 1950s, Carmack made Meso-
American studies his specialty
throughout school. A member of the
Albany faculty since 1970, he was a
founder of the University's Institute of
Meso-American Studies in 1975. In the
last 10 years, he has spent a total of
more than three years in Guatemala.
"We always had some trouble there,
particularly over artifacts which some
local officials were digging and selling
illegally on the black market," Carmack
recalls. "But we had good local backing
in areas where we were working so we
always felt we could handle the
situation."
Then, frightened by events in
Nicaragua and mistrustful of the native
simply just naive. For views such as that,
he has few friends among Guatemalan
officials.
"I am a perfect example of someone
who was square in the middle, a scholar
in the country to pursue research
interests, not politics. But there is no
center. Those who were there have
simply been eliminated, or terrorized, or
have fled the country."
Unlike his students and many other
Quiche specialists, Carmack's scholarly
activity will likely not suffer due to his
absence from Guatemala. He has an
enormous quantity of data that needs
work and so far he has completed for
publication only two of the seven native
chronicles, the texts of which are now
safely tucked away in his files.
Cammack and Albany colleague Gary
Gossen have already begun organizing a
new project in Chiapas in southern
Mexico where beginning next year they
will be working with a Mayan group
closely related to the Quiche.
Carmack concedes he would rather be
making arrangements to go back to
Guatemala. But he knows that isn't
possible and he has settled in on the
challenges of the new project.
"We will have to tackle the same
problems intellectually, but in a very
different political climate. It's the next
best thing."
- Phil Johnson
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/30: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200970106-6
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/30: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200970106-6
Judith Ramaley Is
New Vice President
Judith A. Ramaley, formerly an
assistant vice president at the University
of Nebraska, is the new vice president
for academic affairs at the University.
Ramaley, the first woman vice president
in Albany's history as a University,
succeeds David Martin, who retired last
year after 22 years at Albany.
The State University Board of
Trustees named Ramaley to the job
in April.
As vice president for academic affairs,
Ramaley will serve as Albany's chief
academic officer, report directly to
University President Vincent O'Leary
and serve as chief executive officer in
O'Leary's absence.
Ramaley, 41, of Omaha, Neb., has
been assistant vice president for
academic affairs for the University of
Nebraska system for the last two years.
In that post, she was the chief deputy to
Steven Sample, who was named
president of the University Center at
Buffalo earlier this year.
Ramaley, whose appointment ends an
exhaustive, nationwide search, will
assume her duties in mid-summer.
Stephen E. DeLong of Rexford, who
has been serving as acting academic vice
president, will return to the geology
department upon her arrival.
A native of Vincennes, Ind., Ramaley
is a graduate of Swarthmore College and
received her doctorate from UCLA,
specializing in anatomy. Her research
interests relate to physiology of puberty,
and her teaching has been in
endocrinology and reproductive biology.
She is the author of four books and
more than 60 articles in her field.
Ramaley completed post-doctoral
work at Indiana University, where she
worked with National Academy of
Sciences members Dewey Neff and Felix
Haurowitz. She began teaching at
Indiana University, and in 1972 was
named assistant professor in the
department of physiology and biophysics
at the University of Nebraska College of
Medicine. She was promoted to full
professor there in 1978. She continued to
hold her academic appointment while
serving in her administrative roles with
the Nebraska system.
The University of Nebraska has an
enrollment of nearly 40,000 students,
with major campuses in Lincoln and
Omaha, plus research centers and
extension services.
The University at Albany, one of four
university centers in the 64-campus
SUNY system, has an enrollment of
about 16,000, including about 4,400
graduate students.
Albany Is a "10"
The rankings are out and Albany is a `10.'
In this instance, 10 is not perfect but
when measured against the rankings
given other institutions in the recently
issued New York Times Selective Guide
to Colleges, it is more than respectable.
The guide takes a look at 265
institutions throughout the country,
describing each campus in a gossipy
essay drawn mostly from student
comments. The book ranks the
institutions on academic quality, social
atmosphere, and quality of life.
In the all important category of
"academics," Albany was given four of
a possible five stars as were SUNY's
three other University Centers. Only
four of the 39 institutions in New York
that were included in the guide received
five stars. Syracuse University was
awarded two stars while small private
institutions Union and the University of
Rochester were awarded three stars.
In the other two catagories, Albany
received three stars, or "average"
ratings.
Unlike college basketball, where there
are tournaments to select the best,
academic rankings are far more
subjective and the Times book is just the
latest entry in the college guide
sweepstakes. But it has elicited
unprecedented attention.
In at least one instance, a college
president quarreled in public with
Edward B. Fiske, Times education
editor and author of the book. The
president earned a promise from the
Times that a three-star rating would be
reviewed and possibly upgraded for the
next printing.
While Fiske claims no competitive
ranking was intended, star totals were
quickly tallied. No campus received a
perfect 15. Only three, Brown, Stanford,
and the University of Virginia, earned 14
stars. Tiny Barat College received the
low mark of five. Wesleyan University,
alma mater of guide author Fiske,
received 11 stars, including five
for academics.
In the wake of the unhappy
grumbling by some over the guide, the
New York Times announced it was
withdrawing its name from the guide's
title in future editions. Fiske will still be
identified as the Times education editor.
Woman Puts
Her Money
"in the Atmosphere"
One woman's lifelong fascination with
weather - and her enjoyment of
meteorologist Ray Falconer's lectures-
has led her to establish a $50,000 trust
fund to help the University pursue its
research and education in atmospheric
sciences.
Gertrude Thompson, a New Jersey
woman who spends her summers in the
Adirondacks, says she first became
fascinated with the weather when, as a
terrified 8-year-old, she witnessed the
worst monsoon in the history of India.
The spunky 74-year-old widow still
numbers meteorology among her
favorite hobbies (along with canoeing
and trolling for lake trout), and says
she's derived so much enjoyment from
her interest in weather that "I've decided
I would like to put my money in the
atmosphere."
She established her $50,000 trust fund
in the name of meteorologist Ray
Falconer of the Atmospheric Science
Department and Atmospheric Sciences
Research Center of the University. The
gift is one of the largest in University
history. It will help Albany continue its
research and education in atmospheric
sciences, especially pertaining to the
Adirondacks.
Atmospheric sciences in the
Adirondacks have mesmerized
Thompson for 20 years. She has been
traveling from her Adirondack
"camp" - as vacation retreats are
known in that area - to hear ASRC-
sponsored lectures at the center's
Whiteface Mountain Field Station since
the eight-week annual summer series
began in 1962. To get to the lectures, she
makes a mile-long canoe trip to her car,
and then drives 40 miles to the field
station.
Thompson, a retired psychologist and
counselor of delinquent adolescents, lives
alone in her summer camp, despite being
partially disabled by a hip injury more
than 10 years ago. She says she canoes
about 300 miles every summer and
spends the rest of her time attending
lectures throughout the Adirondacks,
fishing for trout, bass and catfish, or
studying Adirondack vegetation.
The weather and the mysteries of
nature have captivated Thompson since
her childhood. She was born, by her
own admission, "with a silver spoon in
my mouth." Even though her family,
the meat-packing Swift family of
Chicago, lost its fortune in the Great
Depression, she and the sculptor she
married were able to continue their
world travels, thrilling to sights ranging
from the little rivers of southern Africa
to the tranquility of the Adirondacks.
Since the death of her husband many
years ago, Thompson has been spending
her summers in the Adirondacks
whenever her health permitted, and
canoeing part of the way to the Falconer
lectures even when it meant stowing her
crutches in the canoe. She says she
decided to become a benefactor of
Falconer and the University's
atmospheric science projects when her
husband's and her original intended
beneficiary, a museum for sculpture,
went bankrupt.
"I love money and I love to watch
what it can do," Thompson said. So she
decided to create a fund for Falconer.
GE and University
Develop New Tool
for Computer Age
Good old Yankee ingenuity is legendary.
When a gizmo breaks, an American will
find a way to fix it.
But what do you do when your gizmo
is so small that a thousand of them laid
end to end would measure a mere
millimeter?
At the University, there will soon be
help for such problems. With the help of
a $75,000 gift from General Electric,
scientists from Albany and from G.E.
will develop a one-of-a-kind research
tool known as a nuclear microprobe at
the University nuclear accelerator.
The research tool will be able to
analyze the composition and structure of
regions as small as a thousandth of a
millimeter in diameter and will have
dramatic implications for the
microelectronics industry.
There are only two other nuclear
microprobes in the United States and the
Albany facility will be able to do what
they do at 10 times their speed.
The facility will enable researchers to
analyze faulty microchips and,
ultimately, to develop smaller, faster and
more reliable chips that will play an
increasingly important role in medicine,
communications, industry, the office
and the home.
The microprobe will be added onto
the University's existing particle
accelerator which, because of its high
electrical current capacity, is especially
suited to this type of research.
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