Richard is a monthly columnist, appearing in the second week of each month.
Since 2001, Richard Flamer and his wife, Araceli, have run The Chiapas Project, a Catholic Worker center and farm serving the poor in San Cristobal las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. Sponsorship is provided by the Des Moines (Iowa) Catholic Worker Home.
Richard Flamer served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam and was discharged in 1971. In 1975, following collegiate studies in Vermont, he operated a rare book dealership in Omaha, Nebraska, which continued through the 1980s.
Beginning in the tumultuous years of the 1980s to the 2000s, Flamer served as a professional news service photographer in Chiapas, Mexico, and Central America. With a perspective derived from his Vietnam War experiences, he visually documented the profound affects of war and poverty on the Maya Indians and other local people.