Myrna Mack

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Myrna Mack Chang (24 October 1949 – 11 September 1990) was a Guatemalan anthropologist.

She was born in Barrio San Nicolás, Retalhuleu department, to a mixed Maya/Chinese family. She studied anthropology in the United Kingdom, at both the University of Manchester and Durham University.

Upon returning to Guatemala, she conducted fieldwork among several of the many Maya campesino communities uprooted during the Civil War. She was assassinated outside her office in Guatemala City (stabbed 27 times) by an armed forces death squad (allegedly educated by the School of the Americas). In April 2004, following a judgment issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Guatemalan government publicly recognized that its agents had committed the killing and provided her next-of-kin with a compensation package.

Her sister Helen Mack was honored with a Right Livelihood Award in 1992 "for her personal courage and persistence in seeking justice and an end to the impunity of political murderers."[1]

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