#kate doyle

In 2008, the 51-year-old presented key testimony about forensic evidence that was obtained from 21 declassified U.S. documents, which ultimately led to the conviction of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori for crimes against humanity during a long armed conflict against leftist guerrillas.

Doyle has contributed to many of the National Security Archive’s greatest achievements by using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to declassify important U.S. government archives that would later support the investigations of human rights organizations and truth commissions in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico. And now after two decades of forensic archival work, she will be honored with the prestigious Puffin-ALBA Award for Human Rights on May 13.

Like many other American activists of her generation, Doyle first became interested in Latin America during the 1980s. “It wasn’t one culminating event but many,” she said in an interview with Univision News. “You remember the mining of the Nicaraguan harbors, you remember the secret funding of the Contras to overthrow the Sandinistas, you remember the billions of dollars being poured into El Salvador to back what was already clearly a murderous military.” 

This fueled both outrage and an intense interest in the region for Doyle, and compelled her to become an activist against U.S.-supported Central American wars, first as an undergraduate at Brown University, and then as a tourist in 1987 when she visited Nicaragua for the first time to observe the destructive consequences of war. Doyle would eventually make the transition from activist to forensic analyst at the National Security Archive, where she edited collections of declassified records about death squads, guerrilla war, and U.S. covert operations in Central America. 

One of Doyle’s biggest accomplishments includes the discovery of a Guatemalan military logbook that was leaked to her in 1999. The death squad dossier documents the capture of 183 people who disappeared after the scorched earth highland massacres. The photographs that appear next to each name were taken directly from the victim’s documentation, including passports, driver’s licenses, or official identification cards, and glued onto the pages of the logbook. 

Doyle described the document as an important breakthrough that reveals, in corroboration with other records, details from inside the Guatemalan “killing machine,” which enabled investigators to reconstruct the composition of the military -- the commanders, campaigns, plans, and general operations. The logbook has now become the focus of collective legal action that was brought by more than a dozen of the victim’s families before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and Doyle was called as an expert witness in the case on April 25 to present a thorough analysis. 

Three months ago, forensic anthropologists in Guatemala identified the bodies of five people who are listed in the logbook through DNA testing. The truth commission estimated that approximately 45,000 civilians disappeared during the three-decade conflict. The logbook reflects the capture of senior noncombatant members from August 1983 to March 1985. These civilians had organized and recruited for one of the major insurgent groups in Guatemala City.

Looking back at her career, Doyle explained that uncovering the shared history between the United States and Latin America will help people in the region find the mechanisms to protect society from government repression. “Historic memory in Latin America specifically means to recognize and preserve the social trauma of violent state repression,” she said, “it is the only way to come to terms with periods when the social contract between the government and its citizens breaks down.”

When asked about the legacy of the current human rights cases and the truth commission in Guatemala, Doyle pointed out that while there are still very regressive forces in the Central American country that resist change, even the Guatemalan President, who once served in the army at the time of the scorched earth massacres “sees and understands that this is a critical moment for his country.” Doyle credits the long truth-seeking process with the awakening of thousands of Guatemalans, and some Americans, who are implementing and defending elements of Guatemala’s historical memory in all aspects of their communities.  

The Puffin-ALBA award gala will be held at the Museum of the City of New York. Special guests will also include the documentarian Pamela Yates who directed Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (watch our interview with Yates here,) in which Doyle also appears.