Meanwhile, scientists continue digging up mass graves and then piecing together and trying to identify the remains of the murdered -- to honor them and, perhaps, to help bring their killers to justice. Saul Gonzalez reports.
SAUL GONZALEZ: On a forested hillside in the highlands of western Guatemala, the villagers of Chuinimachicaj gather to grieve and pray, asking God to bless the work about to begin here. That work is a dig.
Forensic anthropologists, with the help of villagers, are searching for evidence of a massacre -- the remains of people killed by government soldiers here over two decades ago, when this country was in the grip of a vicious civil war.
FRANCISCO SUKHENA (Lay Pastor) (Through Translator): On the fifth of May 1982, the soldiers gathered together the poor men buried somewhere here, tortured them, and then brought them here to kill them.GONZALEZ: Francisco Sukhena, a lay pastor in the village who survived the massacre, says such incidents were common in those years because of the government's belief Indian villagers were helping leftist rebels.
Mr. SUKHENA (Through Translator): It was the same all around this area, the massacres, the violence. Such a complete sadness was to be found here. All of the time you lived with such fear for your family, but where could we go?
GONZALEZ: About three hours into the work, the forensic experts begin finding human remains -- first, small fragments of bone, then clothing with skeletal pieces beneath the fabric. As the digging continues, skulls are soon unearthed.These remains represent just some of the 200,000 people who were killed during this country's 36-year-long civil conflict, a conflict that ended with the signing of peace accords in 1996.
Now that the fighting has stopped, a group called the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, which is directing this exhumation, is on a mission to find and identify the war's innocent victims.
Dr. FREDY PECCERELLI (Founder and Director, Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation): This is the cranium that's currently being reconstructed.
GONZALEZ: Forensic anthropologist Fredy Peccerelli is the foundation's founder and director. He sees Guatemala as one vast human rights crime scene.
Dr. PECCERELLI: Every single time we go into a community and conduct an investigation, we find out every other community that surrounds it also wants an investigation to be carried out, because one person was killed, because the entire community was wiped out, because 10 people disappeared. I mean, it just goes on and on and on.GONZALEZ: After remains are exhumed in the field, the team's work moves here to its headquarters, a one time private residence in Guatemala City that's been turned into a no frills forensics laboratory. This is where the experts attempt to both I.D. remains and determine how people were killed.
Dr. PECCERELLI: Each remain has a specific case number. And then those are handed over to each anthropologist who being by laying out the remains on the table and then conducting an analysis that entails the determination of sex, stature, age, eventually getting down to the reconstruction of the remains to try to establish the trauma, the trauma that contributed to the cause of death.GONZALEZ: Since Peccerelli founded the Forensic Anthropology Foundation in 1997, he and his small group of colleagues have recovered and examined over 3,000 skeletons. They say most of the remains they analyze show clear evidence of execution-style killings against civilians.
Dr. PECCERELLI: I would say anyone who has the slightest bit of training can see the first day that they stepped into this office that we are talking here about very violent crimes and very repetitive crimes.
GONZALEZ: This country is just starting to confront the human costs of its civil war. Many of the conflict's victims are honored at Guatemala City's Catholic cathedral. Here the names of thousands of the dead, vanished, and tortured are etched in the marble columns. Around the city, it's also common to see walls plastered with the photos of those who vanished. They are people believed to have been abducted and killed by the military during the war. Forensic anthropologists who investigate war crimes and human rights abuse cases say their work is about far more than identifying remains and determining the causes of death. It's also about honoring the memory of victims and making sure that their lives, as well as their deaths, are not forgotten.
Dr. SOLIS (Through Translator): Of course, that's probably the most important part of the work. It's something that we owe to the people who suffered these deaths -- to find them and return them to their families so they can be buried with dignity.
GONZALEZ: Although prosecutions of those responsible for massacres and other war crimes are very rare in Guatemala, Peccerelli and his colleagues hope the evidence they're gathering will one day be used to bring killers to justice.
