Leslie Baer

They came together in a storefront meetinghouse near Melrose and Vermont--Anglos and Latinos, new immigrants and old-time activists--to remember those slain in the Chilean coup of September, 1973. Most especially, they came to honor Victor Jara, whose songs were the anthems of Chile's poor and oppressed. Jara was only 39 when silenced by Gen. Augusto Pinochet's troops, but his music lives. "This is a very emotional night," organizer Paul Baker says.

Leslie Baer-Brown does not seem the type likely to feel at home among an isolated Amazon tribe that kills many of the outsiders who try to visit their jungle home. The Southern California native works as an editor in the Cal Poly Pomona News and Information office and writes folk songs. But last summer, Baer-Brown took a photographer and a crew of advisers to the Venezuelan rain forest. The group spent a week among the tribe known to anthropologists as the Fierce People, the Yanomami.

Hours after the jet helicopter delivered her expedition into a settlement deep within the Amazon jungle, Leslie Baer-Brown fell victim to uncontrollable fear. She had come to study the Yanomami, an indigenous South American people once reported to be fiercely violent murderers, primitives who gang-raped women for fun. This particular Venezuelan Yanomami village, Ashetoeateri, about which she was making a documentary had previously never been contacted by outsiders.

Of course Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would love to speak at his niece's college graduation, the Army Intelligence folks were saying last summer. But there would be a few details to attend to. He would need some 20 hotel rooms--some of them south-facing so the satellite equipment could be hung out the windows.

For an author, it's a dream come true. Imagine you're a British crime writer who has been awarded round-trip air fare plus $20,000 to spend up to nine months in the United States soaking up Yankee culture for the purpose of "enriching" your writing.