{"id":108,"date":"2010-04-13T09:00:40","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T14:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/worse-than-war\/?p=108"},"modified":"2010-04-13T17:40:52","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T22:40:52","slug":"perspectives-investigating-guatemala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/worse-than-war\/stories-essays\/perspectives\/perspectives-investigating-guatemala\/108\/","title":{"rendered":"Investigating Guatemala"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 1980s, Guatemala\u2019s military regime committed hundreds of massacres of unarmed civilians. A UN-sponsored truth commission estimated that as many as 200,000 people were killed during the country\u2019s 36-year civil war and concluded that the Guatemalan military had carried out \u201cacts of genocide.\u201d Human Rights Watch launched its work in Guatemala in 1982, documenting massacres of indigenous communities and other atrocities by government forces. Since the signing of peace accords in 1996, they have pushed for accountability for past abuses and supported efforts to strengthen the rule of law. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"inline-wilkinson\"In 2002, Daniel Wilkinson, the Human Rights Watch deputy director for the Americas, published <\/em>Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala which examines the impact of political violence in Guatemala through a narrative account of an investigation into atrocities committed in the country\u2019s coffee-producing region and won the PEN\/Albrand Award for nonfiction. The following excerpt from the book details Wilkinson’s time spent in the Sacuchum region and how he first heard accounts of the massacres. Read reviews of the book and learn more at the book’s Web site<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I<\/h2>\n

When La Patria burned down, Sara Endler was living in the United States, where her husband was a university professor and where she had raised her three children. During her years there, she had visited her parents regularly. She hadn\u2019t lost touch with Guatemala, but as the civil war developed during the 1960s, she had come to feel increasingly isolated in the middle of a polarized society. She did not share the extreme anticommunism of people like her father. Nor did she identify with their critics on the left. \u201cI was very much aware of the fact that workers were misused, mistreated, poorly educated, and suffered from poor health. And that allowed me to be responsive to the ideals of the left. I was with the revolution in 1944. I was for that. But by 1954, I had serious doubts. I personally found Arbenz very appealing \u2014 an upright, imaginative man. But I think he was misled, badly used. When they started talking about expropriation, giving a piece of land to everyone, it just freaked me out. I saw personal property as the basis of any sane government. I never regained confidence in the left.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then the assassinations began. In the late 1960s, leftist guerrillas killed several U.S. officials. Perhaps the most disturbing incident for Sara was the 1970 abduction and murder of a German ambassador. She was in Argentina at the time and saw the story on the front page of the newspapers there. \u201cThere was a photo of him in a street in Guatemala City, on his knees, pleading that they spare him. And they shot him. It was grotesque.\u201d The Argentine press denounced the act, she recalled, saying that \u201c\u2018only savages in Central America could kill a man in cold blood like that.\u2019\u201d (The Argentines would, of course, discover their own capacity for savagery a few years later.) \u201cAll sympathy I had for the left was wiped away by those assassinations.\u201d And as the levels of violence escalated in the following decade, her aversion to the left only intensified. By 1980, bodies were appearing on the roadsides regularly. And like the rest of her Guatemalan friends, she \u201cbelieved that the left was doing all the killing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But then she had a revelation. It was 1982, and she was crossing Lake Atitl\u00e1n in a motorboat driven by a man who had worked for the family for many years. In the middle of the lake, the man suddenly slowed the boat and turned to her. \u201cDo\u00f1a Sara,\u201d he said, \u201cthere\u2019s something that I think you should know.\u201d He then told her that the army had massacred an entire village. He explained what had happened, and, when he finished, he continued their trip to the other side of the lake.<\/p>\n

At first Sara wasn\u2019t sure what to make of this news. She confided with a Guatemalan friend, who said that she too had heard about the military killing large numbers of civilians. They wondered if it was really possible. \u201cIt was difficult for us to believe. You see, many people in the capital were sheltered from the massacres.\u201d And they continued to doubt the mounting evidence that the army was killing civilians, until it became too overwhelming to ignore.<\/p>\n

This knowledge did not change Sara\u2019s views of the left, however. \u201cIt was a really dirty war on every level. I think the army was horrible. But the guerrillas were also responsible. Those people killed by the army were giving aid to the guerrillas. They had been warned not to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did they aid the guerrillas?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as I know, everybody who gave the guerrillas anything did so because they were forced to by the guerrillas. I don\u2019t know who was really supporting them.\u201d<\/p>\n

II<\/h2>\n

Who was<\/em> really supporting the guerrillas? Two years after I began asking questions, I still didn\u2019t know for sure. According to C\u00e9sar and his friend Jorge Fuentes, everyone in the plantations supported them until \u201cwhat happened in Sacuchum.\u201d I had heard a similar account from the Guill\u00e9ns in Guatemala City. And in La Igualdad \u2014 where I had gotten only vague answers and then had stopped asking \u2014 the stories also revolved around this place: Sacuchum.<\/p>\n

I had often gazed up at the mountain above La Igualdad and wondered whether or not it was a volcano. Now I began staring up and wondering about this place Sacuchum. Sacuchum de los Dolores was its full name. Sacuchum of the Pains. Something awful had happened there that had changed the course of the war. Sacuchum of the Sorrows. It seemed to be the black hole of history, sucking everything around it into its darkness.<\/p>\n

From below in La Igualdad, you couldn\u2019t see any kind of clearing, no lights at night, no smoke rising, no movement except that of the clouds that drifted by and occasionally gathered around the peak. I knew that there was a path that left from the top of La Patria, climbed through the forest, and supposedly reached Sacuchum. It would be a beautiful hike. But the war was still going on, and that woods was one of its battlefields. I also knew that there was a road that climbed to Sacuchum from the San Marcos plateau on the other side of the mountain. And I often thought about taking the motorcycle up that way. It would be tough going \u2014 far worse than on the roads in La Igualdad, which were kept passable by the plantations. It would probably take hours. And once I got there, what would I do? Who would talk with me?<\/p>\n

So all I could do was stare up and imagine and wait until I found someone who knew people there. I found that someone in an unexpected place.<\/p>\n

I was in Cajol\u00e1, interviewing a group of old men about the history of the community\u2019s lands. They were speaking Mam punctuated by words of Spanish \u2014 an unusual combination, like someone playing two different instruments simultaneously: Spanish consonants formed at the very front of the mouth, while the guttural clicks and rasps of Mam came from back in the throat. A younger man was translating for me. Or rather he was interrupting the men\u2019s stories every now and then, condensing what had been spoken in Mam, and pushing it into Spanish syllables at the front of his mouth \u2014 and in the process, it seemed, passing the stories through a sieve that yielded only fragments of the original.<\/p>\n

They were talking about a man who, in times long gone by, had petitioned the government to protect the community\u2019s lands. His name was Pe\u2019t Chum, and it was said that he had possessed special powers. One of these was the ability to travel long distances in little time \u2014 so, for instance, the trip from Cajol\u00e1 to the capital, a walk that took others several days, he could do in just a few hours. These powers were somehow linked to the fact that although he was human, he had a tail like an animal.<\/p>\n

I asked if his name meant something in Mam. He was \u201cChum,\u201d they answered, because his family was originally from a place called Sacuchum. \u201cThe Sacuchum in San Marcos?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d<\/p>\n

My translator was Pascual Huinil. I had known him for over a year, since before traveling to La Igualdad, when I had lived in Cajol\u00e1 for a few weeks. After I left Cajol\u00e1, we had continued working together in an effort to obtain international funds for a sewage system in the community. He put me up at his house numerous times and had stayed in my Xela apartment more than once.<\/p>\n

After we left the old men, I asked Pascual if there was much contact between people in Cajol\u00e1 and Sacuchum. \u201cNo,\u201d he answered. \u201cPretty much none.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then after a moment he added, \u201cBut I\u2019ve been there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, really? Why did you go?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just passing through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Passing through<\/em>? The road up from San Marcos came to a dead end at the town. \u201cWhere to?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust around there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just around the top of a mountain<\/em>? I didn\u2019t press for an explanation, and only much later would Pascual offer one. Now he told me that he had stayed with a family there and had heard about the massacre a few weeks later. He had never gone back. But he did know some people from Sacuchum, and he could arrange for me to meet one of them.<\/p>\n

The meeting took place in Guatemala City, in the office of a national indigenous rights organization to which people from both Cajol\u00e1 and Sacuchum belonged. The man from Sacuchum was named Fabi\u00e1n Ramos. He was working on a campaign to obtain land for the community. He said he could tell me about the massacre, but he thought it would be even better if I went with him to Sacuchum and talked with some of the survivors there. I immediately agreed. Here was my chance to finally see the summit of the mountain — and find out what had happened there.<\/p>\n

III<\/h2>\n

\u201cWhy dig up the past?\u201d the wife of one plantation owner had once asked me as we drove across town in her Mercedes-Benz. Her husband\u2019s coffee plantation was to the east of La Igualdad, on the other side of the Sacuchum mountain. \u201cAmericans come here, and they just write about all the negative things we\u2019ve been through. Why doesn\u2019t anyone write something good about this country?\u201d She was not denying that there were ugly things to dig up. \u201cThose were terrible years,\u201d she recalled. \u201cYou never knew if your husband was going to make it home from the office without being kidnapped. A lot of ugly stuff happened, but we need to move ahead, to get beyond all that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later I rode with her husband. \u201cDemocracy doesn\u2019t work here,\u201d he told me. \u201cThis is the paternalist culture \u2014 you know, el se\u00f1or presidente<\/em>.\u201d He was referring to the novel about Estrada Cabrera by Miguel Angel Asturias, Guatemala\u2019s Nobel laureate in literature. \u201cThe paternalism hasn\u2019t been all bad, you know. In some ways it has helped the workers. Even if the plantations paid them as little as they possibly could.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy didn\u2019t they pay more?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the same as why the importers in the United States pay us as little as they can. They\u2019ve said, \u2018Let the Mexican\u2019 \u2014 you know, the folks south of the border \u2014 \u2018suffer a little so I can lead the good life, buy my car, etc.\u2019 And the landowner here has done the same thing: \u2018Let the Indian suffer a little, so I can lead the good life. I want to live well, to let my family live well, have a good car.\u2019 It\u2019s sort of a chain.\u201d<\/p>\n

His car was a Land Rover. The kind that I\u2019d seen crowding up the Long Island Expressway as wealthy New Yorkers headed out to the Hamptons for the weekend. Unlike them, he actually drove regularly on the kinds of rugged roads its safari features were designed for. The CD player was an accessory.<\/p>\n

As for benign paternalism, he offered his wife as an example. She had recently insisted that for their wedding anniversary, instead of giving her a present, he would fix up the workers\u2019 quarters on the plantation. He would install electricity and running water in their homes.<\/p>\n

I asked, \u201cWould you ever consider giving them lands the way the government did during the Agrarian Reform?\u201d<\/p>\n

He shook his head. \u201cI use all my land. There\u2019s not an inch unused. And I tell you frankly I\u2019m not going to give up any of it. I want more, in fact. You have some, and you want more.\u201d In this respect, he pointed out, Guatemalan landowners were no different from people in other countries. And that was why they so deeply resented \u201cthe human rights\u201d always singling them out for mistreating people.<\/p>\n

The human rights<\/em>. Like other wealthy Guatemalans, he used the term to refer not to a set of moral or legal principles, but rather an interest group intent on besmirching their country\u2019s image abroad. \u201cWhat\u2019s screwed us over more than anything,\u201d he had told me over lunch, \u201care the human rights.\u201d His wife had tried to explain the source of resentment: by exposing the country\u2019s old wounds, human rights advocates were preventing any healing from taking place. And what really pissed him off, he had added, was the way these foreigners came criticizing this country that they don\u2019t really know.<\/p>\n

So what did he<\/em> know about Sacuchum, I wondered now as I prepared to visit the community. If he didn\u2019t know what had happened there, how could he criticize the ignorance of \u201cthe human rights\u201d? And if he did know, well, might that not be even worse?<\/p>\n

IV<\/h2>\n

Fabi\u00e1n Ramos met me in the central square of San Pedro one Thursday afternoon. He was a small, quiet, busy-looking man, although he seemed more at ease here than he had been in the capital the week before. He had with him a hundredweight nylon sack, which he flung over his shoulder after shaking my hand, and stooping under its weight, he led me to the bus stop.<\/p>\n

Thursday was market day in San Pedro, and the streets around the market filled with people coming and going like bees around a hive. San Pedro was the twin city of San Marcos. At least they looked like twins on the map \u2014 though, in fact, the two towns were separated by a lot more than the little creek that ran between them. San Marcos was the political center of the department; San Pedro was the commercial one. San Marcos was a Ladino town; San Pedro was an Indian one \u2014 or had been until Justo Rufino Barrios declared its residents Ladino by presidential decree. Few people in San Pedro still spoke Mam; few women still wore traje<\/em>. But whether or not they considered themselves Indian, they took pride in at least one thing: they weren\u2019t from San Marcos. On the other side of the creek, the feeling was mutual.<\/p>\n

The bus bound for Sacuchum was overflowing with people and their cargo. Sacks and crates were stuffed under seats and into overhead racks and piled on top of the roof. People stood outside, waiting for the driver\u2019s signal to cram themselves in with their things.<\/p>\n

The majority of families in Sacuchum lived off commerce, Fabi\u00e1n explained to me as we waited. Every Thursday they came down to the San Pedro market, bought bulk quantities of vegetables and grains grown in the surrounding highlands, and brought them up to Sacuchum. Then during the weekend they fanned out over the other side of the mountain, selling their merchandise in the plantations and setting up stalls in the Sunday markets in La Igualdad and the three other towns. Sacuchum, it turned out, was the commercial hub of the mountain, the primary grocer in the subsistence economy of the plantation workforce. And in addition to agricultural products, it supplied lumber and the homemade liquor known as \u201ccusha<\/em>.\u201d The forest around the mountaintop provided the wood, and it also hid their clandestine distilleries.<\/p>\n

The women waiting around us wore traje<\/em> \u2014 the green and gold pattern that few people in San Pedro still wore. But no one spoke Mam, and Fabi\u00e1n told me that few of the people in Sacuchum still did.<\/p>\n

I asked about the name of the town. \u201cLos Dolores\u201d came from the Virgen de los Dolores. And \u201cSacuchum\u201d was Mam for \u201cdry throat.\u201d Why that name? He guessed that it might be because, in the old days, before there were cars, people would carry their cargo up the mountain on their backs and arrive in town with their breath short and their throats dry.<\/p>\n

The overloaded bus lumbered out of town, south toward the mountain, and began to climb. I expected the dirt road to deteriorate, but to my surprise it didn\u2019t. In fact, the farther we climbed, the better it seemed to become. The ground was packed solid and smooth, without all the rocks and furrows that plagued the roads below on the piedmont.<\/p>\n

The slope soon became too steep to take head-on, and the road swung eastward, climbing at an angle up the mountainside. Down to the left now were the twins, Marcos and Pedro, facing off against each other, a thousand feet below. As the bus made its way around to the eastern side of the mountain, they disappeared behind us. Now we could see the road to La Igualdad, three thousand feet below, and the ravine carved by the Naranjo River dropping another thousand feet farther. The mountainside alternated between sheer rock face, steep slopes blanketed with thick forest, and patches \u2014 wherever the ground was even remotely level \u2014 that were planted with rows of corn.<\/p>\n

Climbing further, we were enveloped by clouds. The distances suddenly vanished. The ground below us disappeared. And we were left with only the hum of the engine. We might have been in an airplane. A cow floated by outside. We kept climbing. The cloud thinned around us and disappeared. And the bus pushed over one final ridge and slowed to a stop. We were at the top.<\/p>\n

Below us was a small valley, walled in by steep ridges, like a crudely formed bowl with a jagged rim. The rim was broken in places. A gaping hole on the western side gave way to a thick tumble of clouds. A smaller break, directly across the valley, opened out onto blue sky and the top of a cloud that was climbing the mountainside above La Igualdad.<\/p>\n

In the valley there was a little town. A white church with a small belfry overlooked an open square; two box-shaped buildings faced it on the other side, presumably the school and the town hall; a soccer field stretched behind them; a loose grid of paths extended outward, past small houses surrounded by corn and pasture land.<\/p>\n

The mountain \u2014 eight thousand feet of rock, clay, and ash rising up from the coastal plain \u2014 culminated in this: a quiet hamlet, cradled within wooded ridges, held up to the sky like an offering.<\/p>\n

Fabi\u00e1n left me sitting alone on a cot in one room of his two-room house. The pale light of late afternoon filtered in through a single window that opened onto a row of green corn stalks. We hadn\u2019t had a moment alone since we met below in San Pedro. I hadn\u2019t asked how we would arrange our interviews, and he hadn\u2019t raised the topic himself. I assumed he would be taking me to talk to a select few people in their homes. I imagined hushed conversations behind closed doors. If people in La Igualdad had been reluctant to tell me about the violence, I figured people would be even more so here, where things had supposedly been so much worse. The interviews would take time. And night was approaching. We would have to get started soon.<\/p>\n

Fabi\u00e1n came back after a few minutes and said, \u201cThe meeting is at eight.\u201d<\/p>\n

I looked at him. \u201cWhat meeting?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo talk about the massacre.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, good. Who will we be talking with?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone who lost relatives?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone who lost relatives and everyone else who wants to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was a surprise. A large meeting meant no anonymity, I thought. And it also meant anyone could find out what I was investigating. \u201cYou don\u2019t think it might be better to meet just with a few individuals?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd everyone already knows about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do they know?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sent a car around yesterday with a megaphone to announce it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh really? And what did you say?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat an important person was coming to investigate the massacre.\u201d<\/p>\n

The clouds rolled over the ridges and sealed in the valley like a heavy lid. It began to rain. We got wet as we made our way through the darkness to the center of town. A dozen or so figures huddled under strips of plastic outside the town hall. The door was locked, and Fabi\u00e1n left to go look for someone with a key. I stood alone listening to the rain and wondering whether I had been a bit rash coming here with this person I barely knew. After the robachicos<\/em> scare on that island two years earlier, I had promised myself never to get stuck alone in an unfamiliar community again. But here I was, on top of a mountain, surrounded by strangers, and with no way out until the next bus left in the morning. What\u2019s more, the whole town knew I was here to investigate what might be the worst atrocity committed by the army in the region.<\/p>\n

Fabi\u00e1n returned with a man he introduced as Apolinario. Apolinario opened the door and I followed him into a single large room with a table at one end and a series of benches facing it. Fabi\u00e1n and Apolinario led me to the table. The people outside filed in, others followed them, and soon the room was packed with some forty people. The two front rows of benches filled with old women in traje<\/em>. The other rows filled with older men, and others stood at the back. The room was cold, and the faces looked ghostly in the pale light of a naked neon bulb. They gazed toward the front in silence, somber and impassive, waiting, as if before a mass.<\/p>\n

Fabi\u00e1n spoke first. \u201cIt is a great honor to have with us tonight in our community of Sacuchum, this se\u00f1or<\/em> who has come to document what occurred in the massacre of 1982 . . .\u201d I was sitting on the table with my notebook in my lap. And as Fabi\u00e1n spoke, I looked around the room, trying to read the crowd. I had no idea what they were thinking. What this meeting meant to them. What they expected of me. Fabi\u00e1n was describing me again as an \u201cimportant person.\u201d And it made me feel like an impostor. There was nothing important about me. I was here only to get some background information that would help me understand the history of La Igualdad. I tried to think of what to say: I wanted to dispel any illusions about my \u201cimportance,\u201d but I also didn\u2019t want to disappoint them. I wanted to hear about the massacre, but I didn\u2019t want to impose upon them \u2014 I was so used to people being afraid to talk about the war, even in private, that I couldn\u2019t imagine anyone wanting to talk about it in public. I wanted to make people feel comfortable, but I myself was scared. I saw some young men standing in the far doorway and looked to see if any of them had military haircuts.<\/p>\n

When Fabi\u00e1n finished, all eyes focused on me. I cleared my throat and spoke slowly, first thanking Fabi\u00e1n for inviting me here. I said I couldn\u2019t offer the community anything other than to record what they told me and try to let people know about it. I said that my aim wasn\u2019t to create any problems for anybody \u2014 neither the victims nor the perpetrators \u2014 but only to find out what had happened.<\/p>\n

I stopped talking, and the room was silent, but for the pattering of the rain on the roof above. I opened my notebook. \u201cSo to begin . . .\u201d I thought a moment, how should I begin<\/em>? and opted for a specific question. \u201cWhen exactly did the army arrive in town?\u201d<\/p>\n

Again there was silence. I looked around at the unfamiliar faces. They looked back at me. The question hung in the cold air between us. I glanced over at Fabi\u00e1n, but it didn\u2019t appear that he was going to answer it. I saw one of the young men in the back step out the door into the rain, and I imagined he was off to report what I had said. My eyes wandered the room, and my mind searched for a way to wrap up this meeting as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

Then I saw an arm rise in the far corner of the room and a shadow of a man step forward. I nodded to him, and he began to speak.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the first of January 1982, a Friday . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

There had been a battle in the woods below, and all day long they had listened to the army bombing the mountainside. Then on Saturday the soldiers came up the mountain from all sides and surrounded the valley. The people had no idea what the army intended to do. So they waited. And on Sunday morning the soldiers came down into the town.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat wasn\u2019t the first time we\u2019d had trouble, you know,\u201d the man said, hesitating as if unsure whether it was okay to backtrack. I nodded for him to go on. \u201cEarlier in the year, four of us were stopped by soldiers when we were returning from La Igualdad. They kicked us hundreds of times, all over.\u201d He put his hands now on his chest and stomach, as if massaging old wounds. \u201cI was sick for four years after that. After beating us, they tied our arms to boards and made us walk uphill, like we were carrying crosses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again there was silence. I had never heard anyone in Guatemala talk like this in public. I looked around the room to see if others would join him. But no one spoke. So I threw out another question: \u201cHow many soldiers came into town that day?\u201d<\/p>\n

This time it was Apolinario who answered. \u201cThere was an enormous number of them \u2014 a few hundred soldiers. And more in the hills around town. And there were helicopters \u2014 three helicopters \u2014 that circled overhead. The soldiers ordered everyone into the center of town. And they dragged people out of their houses.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man in the corner said, \u201cThey dragged some by their hair. They knocked people to the ground as they walked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now an older man who was sitting in one of the back rows spoke up: \u201cAnd they went into the homes and took whatever they wanted. They took radios, clothes, money, whatever they could find.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the corner: \u201cAnd they raped the women.\u201d<\/p>\n

Silence again. I imagined the scene: soldiers swarming up over the mountaintop and down into the valley. What I couldn\u2019t conjure up was what had gone on in the houses \u2014 the images that must have been playing back now in those eyes that were watching me.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many people were raped?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout twenty,\u201d Apolinario said.<\/p>\n

No one elaborated, so I moved on. \u201cAnd what happened next?\u201d<\/p>\n

The man in the corner spoke: \u201cThey gathered us into the plaza in front of the church. And there a captain spoke to us from the belfry. \u2018Today you will be punished,\u2019 he told us. \u2018It\u2019s known that you are bad, that the guerrillas have been here, that they\u2019re here because they\u2019re fed by you. They wouldn\u2019t be here if it weren\u2019t for your support.\u2019 And he said, \u2018Fish only live where there is water. You here are the water. When the pond dries up, the fish dies. We\u2019re going to take care of you, so that the fish will die.\u2019 Someone in the crowd spoke up: \u2018Please, se\u00f1or<\/em>, God does not permit this.\u2019 The captain yelled at him: \u2018Here there is no God! Here there is only the Devil!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The soldiers then herded the people out to the soccer field and made them form a line and present themselves, one at time, before a group of officials who stood with a civilian wearing a hood. The officials had a list of names and occasionally they would ask the hooded person: \u201cIs it this one?\u201d The people who appeared on the list were taken by the soldiers. The rest were ordered to return to their houses. There were to be no lights or fires, and anyone who ventured outside would be shot.<\/p>\n

The older man said: \u201cPeople couldn\u2019t cook. They couldn\u2019t sleep. They passed the night worrying, waiting for their relatives who had been taken away.\u201d<\/p>\n

I looked at the women who sat in the front row like a silent chorus. It occurred to me now that they weren\u2019t as old as I had first thought. Yet there was something that made them appear prematurely aged. Their faces had that parched look you see in people who are perennially exposed to the sun in the Andes and other high places. Which was strange since this mountain wasn\u2019t that high, and the other people in the room didn\u2019t have it.<\/p>\n

The women gazed back at me, and when our eyes met they didn\u2019t look away, as they probably would have under other circumstances. It was as if our gazes never really met, as if it wasn\u2019t me they were looking at, but something I represented \u2014 something that, for some reason, was in fact important.<\/p>\n

Apolinario spoke: \u201cThe soldiers left town on Monday morning. Before going, they announced that the people were not to leave their homes for the rest of the day or they would be killed. But as soon as the soldiers left, some of us went out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWeren\u2019t you scared?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

The man in the corner answered, \u201cThey said they\u2019d kill us if we went out. But I didn\u2019t care. I just wanted to find out where my brothers were. I was ready to die if I had to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apolinario said, \u201cSome people had seen the soldiers leading the prisoners into the woods. So we went to investigate, climbing up the ridge and down the other side. It was around ten in the morning that we found the first bodies. They were half-buried, in ditches, five or six people in each ditch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were my brothers. They had their throats slit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of them had their throats cut. Like animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome had been strangled. They put a cord around their neck, tied it to a stick, and turned the stick until they were choked.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cForty-four people had been killed. And no bullets had been fired.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a moment of silence while I scribbled in my notebook. Then a new voice spoke. A woman\u2019s voice. I looked up and saw her traje<\/em>, and it suddenly dawned on me: of course, these must be the widows<\/em>. Her chin was thrust forward, and her eyes were fixed intently upon me \u2014 first on my face and then on my notebook, as if she wanted to make sure I wrote down her words. I did write them, and I kept writing as the other people around her began to speak. Later I would remember the look on her face \u2014 determined and defiant \u2014 as if she were standing at a floodgate and, having just pulled the lever, was bracing herself for the deluge. And it came, from all around her, new voices, with new details, about throats and fingers and skin, but none so horrifying to me as what she had said: \u201cThey cut out their tongues.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the voices subsided and I was able to look up again from my notebook, I saw that the place had been transformed. The room seemed somehow smaller. There was color in people\u2019s faces. And moisture in their eyes. And warmth in the air between us.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat did you do after you found them?\u201d<\/p>\n

Apolinario described how some people went to San Pedro and spoke to the justice of the peace, who then sent the firemen to collect the bodies and bring them down to the morgue in San Marcos. How half the families went to collect the bodies and bury them in Sacuchum, while the other half \u2014 too scared to go \u2014 left their dead to be buried in a common grave in the San Marcos cemetery. How the army returned to the town regularly for the next few months. How eight more men were abducted. How the townspeople were prohibited from traveling to the piedmont to do business. \u201cThose were months of fear and hunger and sorrow. There were fifty-two widows and more than one hundred orphans. Many of
\nthem got sick with fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked, \u201cCould you denounce the killing to the authorities?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, there was no one we could denounce it to,\u201d Apolinario said. \u201cAnd the newspapers and radio said that the dead were all guerrillas who had died in combat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWere you ever able to tell the true story?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had just one more question, I said. \u201cAfter all this happened, how were people in the community able to get on with their lives?\u201d<\/p>\n

Apolinario answered, \u201cWe needed a lot of time. Each person has had to deal with this in his own way. As they say, the suffering of each is his own sentence. Some have suffered more than others, especially the widows. As a community we had to move ahead.We\u2019ve worked on projects to improve the town.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat sorts of projects?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBuilding the road, for instance.We built it with help from the government. It took us twelve years.\u201d<\/p>\n

I nodded. \u201cIt\u2019s an impressive road. I noticed when I came up today. I\u2019ve been in many communities in this country, and the truth is I\u2019ve never seen such a nice road.\u201d<\/p>\n

I now saw smiles around the room, like the first rays of sun peeking through the clouds after a storm. Someone said, \u201cJust like the roads in New York, right?\u201d And now people laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, almost!\u201d I said. \u201cJust needs some asphalt.\u201d<\/p>\n

They laughed again.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what other projects?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a health center, a school, this community hall. We brought electricity, potable water. In this way we\u2019ve improved ourselves a lot. Even though you never forget, you have to live always with the memory, but we have come together as a community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fabi\u00e1n closed the meeting with a short speech thanking me for coming to hear what they had to say. He called for applause. It came loudly and didn\u2019t stop. Yes, I could see now, they were applauding an important person: the first outsider who listened to their story. It could have been anyone; it happened to be me.<\/p>\n

When the applause finally petered out, one of the widows spoke up. She gave another speech thanking me for listening. Someone in the back called for more applause. And again, it was loud and long. When it died out, the people got up to leave. A widow who had been sitting in the front row, who had remained silent through the meeting, came up to me and offered a warm smile. \u201cGracias<\/em>,\u201d she said and walked away.<\/p>\n

I left the meeting feeling more certain than ever that the history of the violence on this mountain needed to be told \u2014 and, at the same time, more perplexed about its impact on the plantations below. How could the owners have possibly kept themselves oblivious to events as horrific as these? And why were the workers more reluctant than the people here to talk about what they had suffered?<\/p>\n

V<\/h2>\n

One afternoon, the middle-aged son of a wealthy cattle rancher gave me a ride from Coatepeque east on the coastal highway. The day was clear, and the crown of Sacuchum was silhouetted against the blue sky above us to the north. He drove a large American car, and he drove it fast, around sixty-five, which wouldn\u2019t have seemed like much on another country\u2019s highways, but Guatemala\u2019s roads were not made for such speeds. This \u201chighway\u201d was really just a two-lane road with no divider and not much of a shoulder. The pavement was pocked with potholes. The holes forced most drivers to slow down. But they turned this one into a slalom racer. The only thing that slowed him down was the one-lane wooden ramp that spanned the space where a bridge had recently been blown up by the guerrillas.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are we to do with all those inditos<\/em> blowing up bridges?\u201d his seventy-something mother had complained to me earlier. \u201cYou foreigners don\u2019t understand that human rights is one thing, but governing a country is something else.\u201d<\/p>\n

His brother, a businessman, had expanded on their mother\u2019s comment \u201cGuatemala isn\u2019t ready for democracy,\u201d echoing a line I\u2019d heard from the coffee exporter. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have culture. It needs mano dura<\/em>,\u201d the iron fist. \u201cYou know how the father of la Mench\u00fa<\/em> was burned in the embassy?\u201d He was referring to the father of Nobel laureate Rigoberta Mench\u00fa, who, in 1980, had occupied the Spanish embassy with a group of indigenous activists and demanded an end to human rights violations in their communities. The government responded by firebombing the embassy and killing the protesters. \u201cHe was burned because if he hadn\u2019t been, this country would have gone to hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

I suggested to him that the reason Mench\u00fa\u2019s group had occupied the embassy was because they thought things were already pretty bad. \u201cIt\u2019s true,\u201d the brother conceded, \u201cthat there are landowners who treat their workers terribly. I always tell others that they shouldn\u2019t flaunt their wealth. They shouldn\u2019t wear expensive clothes around peasants in rags. They shouldn\u2019t arrive at the plantation in expensive cars or planes.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what about trying to do something for them, like what the Arbenz government did with the Agrarian Reform? I asked this now to the brother who was driving, and he shook his head. \u201cIf we parceled up the land, this country would go to hell. Guatemalan peasants are lazy. They don\u2019t like to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

He began to talk about the virtues of hard work. He told me proudly of his daughter, who was studying to be an architect. In this world, a woman needed to be able to fend for herself. She shouldn\u2019t have to rely on any man. \u201cLife is difficult,\u201d he said, \u201clife is difficult for everybody.\u201d Then he began to tell me about his wife. She had cancer. She had been operated on once. Now they could only wait to see if the tumors would return.<\/p>\n

He sped around a curve onto a stretch of road that was more populated than the rest. There were small cement houses and wooden huts thirty feet back from the asphalt, and people were going about their business by the roadside. My right foot was instinctively pressing the floor where the brake would have been if it were the driver\u2019s side. His foot was on the accelerator. Up ahead a rooster stepped into the road. It was a large bird, two and half feet of muscle and magnificent plumage. It strutted to the center of the lane and stopped, surveying the asphalt as if it owned the place. When it noticed the car, it cocked its head to the side, started to strut in one direction, then panicked and darted back the other way. Too late.<\/p>\n

His foot came off the accelerator. But he did not brake. There was a dull thud, and the bird disappeared under the front of the car.<\/p>\n

We sailed ahead in silence, his foot hovering in the air. Then he shrugged. \u201cWhat could I do?\u201d He pressed down again on the gas and continued telling me about his family. Then he told me about a business venture he was hoping to undertake. He would import a chemical from Europe that could be mixed with asphalt to provide a more durable filling for potholes.With so many potholes to be fixed on Guatemala\u2019s highways, there would be ample business.<\/p>\n

VI<\/h2>\n

History wouldn\u2019t be kind to that business venture. In December 1996, the Guatemalan government and guerrillas signed a peace accord, bringing an end to the thirty-six-year war. The government then cashed in its \u201cpeace dividend\u201d \u2014 hundreds of millions of dollars from its wealthy trading partners \u2014 and bought asphalt. Asphalt flooded the country, filling the major highways and spilling over onto back roads that had never seen it (maybe even Sacuchum got some after all). Guatemala soon looked like a different country. The potholes were gone.<\/p>\n

I had gone back to the United States and enrolled in law school, thinking that maybe I should get my life back on the course it had been on before I visited La Igualdad. But as I sat in those classrooms, listening as the smart young lawyers-in-the-making sought to outdo one another with the language of \u201cslippery slopes\u201d and \u201cinefficient outcomes,\u201d my mind would drift back to Guatemala, to that mountaintop valley, to that widow releasing the floodgates of memory. Unable to concentrate on torts and contracts, I applied for another fellowship, took a leave of absence, and in the fall of 1997 headed south.<\/p>\n

Cajol\u00e1 had shown me how much people could hide. Sacuchum had shown me how much they might want to tell \u2014 if they only had the right opportunity. And now, more than ever, I felt driven to find out what was hidden in La Igualdad and to find a way for the people who wanted to tell their history to do so.<\/p>\n

Millions from that \u201cpeace dividend\u201d had also gone to the formation of a truth commission \u2014 known as the Commission for Historical Clarification \u2014 which the government had reluctantly signed off on in the peace accords. Once back in Guatemala City, I met the commission\u2019s head investigator. The investigation had been under way for several months now, and they had already collected testimony from thousands of people throughout the highlands and in the cities. I asked him if they had been able to get as much in the coffee region on the piedmont.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re getting nothing<\/em> from the plantations.\u201d<\/p>\n

I said maybe I could help a little \u2014 at least in one community in San Marcos. He told me that the help would be appreciated and gave me the phone number of their regional office.<\/p>\n

Before I called that number and before I returned to La Igualdad, I went to pay a visit to the people who had just emerged from the shadow world of the war \u2014 the former guerrillas now returning to civilian life. Perhaps they would know who in La Igualdad could arrange the sort of meeting that I had had in Sacuchum. And perhaps they could tell me themselves how their war had transformed the region.<\/p>\n

Human Rights Watch does not endorse, and does not necessarily share, the views and opinions expressed in the film \u201cWorse Than War\u201d or other work contained or referenced therein. Human Rights Watch takes no responsibility for the accuracy or currentness of any information contained in the film \u201cWorse Than War\u201d or other work contained or referenced therein.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 1980s, Guatemala\u2019s military regime committed hundreds of massacres of unarmed civilians. 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