Abstract
The Latin American Perspectives collective mourns the death from cancer of untiring activist and long-time friend and collaborator Saul Landau. His unique voice as a filmmaker, writer, and commentator will be greatly missed by all those who seek social justice, defend human rights, and oppose U.S. imperialism. Saul’s links to LAP predate the journal’s founding, when he was part of the radical community in the Bay area that included LAP founders at Stanford. His impressive legacy includes more than 40 documentaries, 14 books, and trenchant commentary on current issues for a number of print and online publications. He was looking forward to completing (with Jon Alpert) a documentary on gay rights in Cuba. His multifaceted career also included serving as a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies since 1972 and teaching at several universities.
Latin Americanists are indebted to him for penetrating documentaries that challenged mainstream misconceptions and revealed truths that those in power preferred to keep hidden. He is particularly known for films that brought the reality of the Cuban Revolution to international audiences, notably Fidel (1968) and The Uncompromising Revolution (1988). Other significant films include Conversation with Allende (1971), Brazil: Report on Torture (1971), The Sixth Sun: Mayan Uprising in Chiapas (1996), Maquila: A Tale of Two Mexicos (1999) and “We Don’t Play Golf Here”— and other stories of globalization (2007). His work denouncing U.S. aggression against progressive governments and complicity with dictatorships includes the book (written with John Dinges) Assassination on Embassy Row (1980), an investigation into the 1976 murders of exiled former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his colleague, Ronni Moffitt, and films like Target Nicaragua: Inside a Covert War (1983) and Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up? (2012), the latter detailing the shameful history of U.S. policy toward Cuba from the Bay of Pigs to the case of the Cuban Five.
His awards include an Emmy and the George Polk award for investigative reporting, both for Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang (1980), a documentary with Haskell Wexler exposing the devastating effects of nuclear testing on people living downwind of the Nevada testing ground. In addition, he received numerous film festival prizes and, for his human rights work, the IPS Letelier-Moffitt award, the Order of Bernardo O’Higgins (Chile’s highest civilian honor for a non-Chilean), and the Cuban Medal of Friendship. As a professor at Cal Poly Pomona, Saul regularly took students to Cuba, and in the 1999–2000 academic year he collaborated with LAP editors Don and Marjorie Bray and Enrique Ochoa at California State University, Los Angeles, and Rosalind Bresnahan at California State University, San Bernardino, to create an innovative tri-campus program that brought eight prominent Cuban writers and social scientists for two weeks each to those institutions and was followed by a student-faculty study tour to the island. Several years ago he donated an archive of his work to the Tomás Rivera Library at the University of California, Riverside, where it is part of the library’s Special Collections.
Saul wrote four articles on Cuba for LAP between 2002 and 2009. His final contribution was the testimonial included in this issue. We add our voices to those of all the others affected by his work and extend our condolences to his family.