I met Nita Manitzas in the late 1970s. I have searched my records and cannot find anything to help me remember how we met. I do know it led to a very important change in my ethical, moral and political philosophy. Nita was a scholar of contemporary Latin American politics. I could not find anything about her academic credentials. I do know she spent a long time with the Ford Foundation in Latin America.

She was married to Frank Manitzas, a renowned journalist (read his obituary here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/obituaries/article138539573.html ) 

Here is an example of a reference to her work that I found:

Revolutionary Cuba in the World Arena Edited by Weinstein, Martin Philadelphia 1979

The most original article in the collection is the last: “Cuban Ideology and Nationhood: Their Meaning in the Americas,” by Nita Rous Manitzas. She is the only contributor to link developments since 1959 to the long struggle in Cuba for independence, first from Spain and then from the United States. “The Cuban phenomenon,” she notes, “is as much rooted in the island’s special historical experiences as in the play of contemporary events, ideologies, and alliances”

What I do remember is her asking me one day, knowing of my political organizing skills in the environmental arena, and that my politics were, shall we say, left of center, to help her organize a chapter of Amnesty International in Miami.

But first a couple of interesting side notes. Her husband Frank was posted to Santiago, Chile by his news organization, and since Nita already had a relationship with the Ford Foundation she found a position in their office there. So he reported on Pinochet’s coup overthrowing Allende. A movie starring Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon, “Missing”, was made about the revolution. As the wife and father of a student who disappeared during the coup, they were referred to the Ford Foundation office, as there was someone there who might know what had happened to the young man. I remember Nita was quite proud as she asked me if I saw the movie, and when I said: “Yes”, she told me she was the young woman portrayed in the movie who told them he was being held in the stadium. I did not ask but I am sure Frank’s connections with his news informants led to that information.

A humorous moment occurred one day at her house when her son Nikki came through wearing an interesting looking T-shirt. I asked what it said.

“Come on, Phil, you grew up in Miami. You should have enough Spanish to know!”

I begged to differ. The words on the front were “Salvadoran Press Association”. On the back was a drawing of a person with their arms stretched up into the air as you have seen of pictures of people in war zones getting shot, with a target on his back, and lines through the air tracing the bullet paths, and the words said:

“Journalist! Don’t shoot!”

 Get it?

So we organized the chapter. One of the Christian chapels gave us space for our monthly meetings on the University of Miami campus. I do not remember which one. Amnesty’s technique was to write letters to the authorities holding Prisoners of Conscience, non-violent people usually imprisoned for their political beliefs in dictatorships. Our assignments were graduate students teaching at the university in Kinshasha in the Congo, who when they had gone so long without pay they could not eat, protested. And were arrested. Without a trial. The dictator was Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobutu_Sese_Seko).

During this time Amnesty started the death penalty campaign, and knowing the politics in the United States left it up to the chapters there whether or not to participate. When I told our group about the campaign, I had the idea that we would start the monthly meetings with a kind of Friends (Quaker) meeting. Each person wishing to share thoughts or feelings would speak, until no one had anything else to say. Then we would sit down to the hard work of writing letters.

At the time I still felt there were some crimes warranting it: rape and cruelty to animals. But one night a member announced that what he was going to tell us was very sensitive, because he was an elected Circuit Court judge, who in Florida impose the death penalty in capital cases. He trusted us not to speak of what he had to say elsewhere, for obvious reasons. And he did not believe in it. Why?

After law school, he had a post-doctoral fellowship in a capital crime appeals organization in north Georgia. And this is what he saw. The desire to kill the criminal on the part of the public led to a barbarizing, a de-civilizing, of the entire society. And that was not worth it. And suddenly, like leaves off a tree in the fall, I shed any remaining belief it was ever justified in any case. Of course in the intervening decades so much more has come out about what is wrong with the death penalty, which I am confident my readers do not need to be reminded of.

But let us give credit for integrity in ending their hypocrisy (that only unborn babies should not be killed, but it is OK to kill born babies) to one organization that comes into so much criticism in the modern world. On August 2, 2018, the Vatican announced that it had formally changed the official Catechism of the Catholic Church on the death penalty, calling capital punishment “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” and deeming it “inadmissible” in all cases. Good for them.