March 2005

All the people in our town were killed during the massacre. My mother was killed. My grandparents had already died. Our original village, Yalamopoch, was burned. Our house was burned. It’s not there, it doesn’t exist. We escaped with my father. It took 3 days for us to get to Mexico. We went with many people through the mountains, there isn’t a path. We went day and night, climbing. We were hiding from the army in the mountains.

When we got to Mexico we weren’t received well, but they allowed us to stay. Before this war, my father would go every so often to work in Mexico. So, he already had friends there. We lived in a refugee camp, far away from the Mexicans. We lived in a house with a lot of people, maybe 10 people. It was very crowded. The houses were very close together. I went to elementary school and one year of secondary school there.

My father, my uncles, all of the people that went to Mexico they told me what happened. I didn’t see what happened but they talked about it. It is very sad. It affected me a lot because I didn’t have a mother. In Mexico we talked a lot about this, but, well, we only talked between the refugees, not with the Mexicans. Sometimes it’s better not to …we prefer not to talk. Because it’s sad, it’s painful.

We came back to Guatemala because my father is a leader, an important person, he’s an organizer of the refugees.

We returned on January 13, 1993.What happened was, the Permanent Commission organized the return of the refugees to Guatemala. The Permanent Commission was organized in Mexico, for those of us who had lived in Tescado.

We gathered in Comitan. They put us in Quintana Roo, Campeche, Merida. Then we gathered on the 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 of January. And on the 20 of January we left Comitan. We arrived at the Mesilla, the same day, and we stayed to sleep in Huehuetenango. So, on the 20th of January, we returned. We crossed the border of Mexico into Guatemala.

And where I live, my village is called Victoria 20 de enero, because we crossed the border of Mexico on the 20 of January in 1993. We were the first group of returnees.

I was 13 years old. I was sad because I didn’t want to come because I wasn’t used to Guatemala and things were going well in Mexico. I was studying typing and how to make shoes and jewelry .

I was crying and my father was crying, too. We were both very sad. We didn’t want to return to Guatemala because it’s very violent. I was reading in the newspaper this past month that Guatemala is the 4th most violent country in the world. It’s worrisome, but that’s the way it is.

My uncles didn’t return to Guatemala, because they were afraid. They are still living in Mexico.

So, I was in secondary school when we arrived here in Guatemala. I studied basico. In IGER, by correspondence because we didn’t have money to be able to study in a college. So, that’s how I studied. I studied two years in IGER. I finished tercero basico and the next year, I studied teaching in a boarding school. I studied there for three years. After three years there, I graduated as a bilingual teacher in two language, Spanish and K’iche.

But now I am very happy living in Guatemala. I am a Guatemalan citizen. I’m expecting to get my diploma and my license. I’m looking forward to that. What matters to us is to rise above our history. To be professionals now. That is our hope.

The students talk together. Yes, we talk about superficial things. Sometimes I talk with people who have a similar situation. But there are many students who have a different situation. Maybe a student who stayed in Guatemala or went to another country, it’s not like my situation because my family went to Mexico and came back.

But to speak of the war is a bit dangerous. Because sometimes, the people that talk a lot about the stories, it can be that they are killed. So, it’s better not to talk to whatever person…how would I say it? We say, we cannot talk about this when a military, or an ex-military is there. We say, maybe the military is going to tell you ahhh… it’s the military that killed the people… So, I don’t talk about the situation. You have to be careful in public. It’s somewhat dangerous.

I like studying. It opens our minds to see things with objectivity and for that reason, I have liked it. And it’s the only way to come out ahead…we cannot live the way we were in the villages; a man who is 15 years old already has a woman. I am 25 years old and I do not have a wife.

But I think that we, the professionals, we are going to be the difference in the future. Yes, this is the hope, and I think that we have to do it. That’s why I’m studying English, I want to be a professor. Now I’m studying law at the University. I enrolled to study in the University of San Carlos with the support of the program (FEPMaya). I studied in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 up until now.

Now I want to prepare myself to be something important. In the future. That’s why I want to learn other languages. I’m going to keep going. I hope to study in another country. In the next year or two I have to write my thesis and then I’ll finish.

I hope to write a book about my history. I hope to write my book.

My name is K’in. In regards to what happened to my family during the war in Guatemala, what I remember, or better said, what my mother tells me, is that I was just a few weeks old when my whole family had to leave Santa Cruz del Quiche for the capital because my father was a health provider in the town where they lived and he was very involved with religious activities, which had them in the “black list” that the army had. My father and my 3 older siblings were on the list. My mother wasn’t, but they decided that we all went to the capital for security reasons.

Then, from that time, around 1980, 1981, we were in the capital. My father had to start working selling fruits, vegetables, and things like that. He had to do business and my older brothers also helped him, while my mother stayed home with us, the younger ones, and took care of house chores. We hadn’t been in the capital very long, when my grandparents, on my father’s side, and a cousin, were massacred in Santa Cruz. A few months later, they kidnapped my father, he disappeared, and, to this date, we don’t know anything about him, whether or not he died.

After this, my older siblings had no other option but to join the guerrilla. Three of them joined it, and one of them had to go to Mexico for exile. The 4 younger ones stayed with my mother. One of my sisters that had join the guerrilla got pregnant and had to come back to the capital with us. She was doing my father’s job. From one place to the other, we were never very long at one place, one week in one place, a few days in another one, etc., until we decided to reside permanently in the capital, for the same security reasons because my mother heard constant news that the army wanted to killed the whole family.

So, she decided to leave my 2 young brothers in a boarding school. They were there for about 10, 12 years. Also, my young sister and I were left at another boarding school. We were there for 3 1/2, almost 4 years. My mother worked with an organization for the displaced from the war. For several years she was an activist there. Then, she decided she had to get the 4 younger siblings together again, and she came back and got my sister and me from the boarding school, but my other 2 young brothers were left at the boarding school where they were.

After many years, when the peace was signed, I met my older siblings. I only got to know them recently. They came back to a “normal” life, so to say, and I think that that may be the reason that we don’t have a close family relationship. Each one  is doing their own thing.

However, we all know we have to continue fighting for justice for the family and the community since it was the job my father started in Santa Cruz del Quiche. That’s all I have to say.

After reading the book, my first impression or my first feeling is the importance of keeping the memory and to rescue the memory. Because with the civil war, we lost, we lost our process, we lost our life. But basically, we lost our opportunity to talk and to say what is going on in our life, what we were feeling because of  the civil war, because  of oppression, because of repression. And I think we didn’t have the time to reflect and to think where are we going, you know.

Because people were so busy trying to survive?

Exactly. So with this opportunity to talk and to remember, because this is the importance of  memory, to remember that we were living… I mean, we were living in this time, you know, and we have to remember what we felt, you know, we cannot continue in the life forgetting or losing this part of our memory. So, I say it is important to keep the memory. Not just for the next generation, but for all the world, for us, for our dignity, for our existence. We have to remember where we were, what we were feeling. So it is important for us, and then, in my opinion, we can do something with the memory of the people who died during the civil war. But we need to recognize ourselves first.

What about the people who say that the memories and remembering the history are too painful?

I agree, and I think that it is so painful, but I think it’s better to live seeing and touching this pain, because after you can talk, you feel better about yourself, I mean, it’s part of your life and you need to talk about this .The first time or the first times can be very painful, but then I think it can get easier. And the pain is part of our life and it’s the most hard part of our life and sometimes we cannot see it, you know, we don’t want to see it, we don’t want to recognize it in our life; we just want to go on, walking straight, and not turn around to see ourselves with our pain, with our bad feelings. But there are good things, too. So, I think it’s necessary.

The reality is that even if you don’t talk about it, it doesn’t mean that you don’t feel pain.

Exactly. Well, my Mom talks sometimes, you know. This morning she was remembering some parts of our suffering in our life then. And she talks about things, but just for a little bit. I mean, some nights she wakes up and starts to talk about my sister who “disappeared” or sometimes about my father who was murdered. And then she stops and sleeps. I mean, you just have to listen to her, you know. And it’s just s little bit. But I can see that it’s different now from five years ago, or ten years ago.

She’s talking more now. Maybe just five minutes, or one minute, and maybe just to remember something, like “Oh, this food was your sister’s favorite food” and “I remember one time”, like that…

And maybe if you start to ask her, or something like that, she’s like… she’ll stop talking, you know. And my feeling about this book is… one is that I thought that I have all the perspective of the painful parts of the human history, but when I read the book, I say no, this is more than I was thinking, you know. I feel closer to the people (who told their stories) and I feel that it’s a history of all of us, you know. I feel that I can share more, maybe through the book I could understand the people and share with them, you know, that I’m with them and they are with me. Even though maybe we never talk about this, never.

In my testimonio I said that we lost things and maybe will never recover, you know, but now I can think that we are building again together, you know, it’s the opportunity to building again and to say yes, we had this situation, we lost many things, but we are living now, we are alive and we are rebuilding, too. I think it’s necessary to continue and to look to the future and to see what we want as an individual, as a Maya movement, as, you know, as a struggle, the Mayan struggle. We have to see the past and to talk about the past. And I think that’s what’s most important about this book. And I think it’s the first book to talk about young people’s experiences, not political. This does not mean that young people don’t have political positions, but I think we are talking about our experiences when we were very young or little boys or little girls, you know, little people. So, I think this is the most important, to give a voice to us to say what we were feeling during that time. Not now, that time.

That’s exactly what you said to me, and I remember the moment…It was way before I’d even written the book. You said, “thank you for bringing the story of young Maya people out into the world”. And I remember standing there with you, thinking,  “I can’t do that, that’s too hard, I don’t know how to do that”. And with your help and with the help of all of the other people giving their testimonies, we were able to do it. 

You articulated that very early on, way before I knew what we were doing. And that catapulted me forward into making it happen. What I hope will happen with the book is that we find a way to get it into the school system, so that other young people will learn about and be able to understand what the real history is. You said before that the book is simple, it’s written in simple language; that’s because that’s the way people told it, it’s not theoretical. These are the voices of the people who lived the experience.

I agree. My Mayan guides told me that the pain can purify you, and he said that our life is like hilo,(thread) and sometimes we have to wind and unwind it.

And some parts of our life are not too good, are not too happy, you know, but when we take the pain, I feel that we can do this, we can purify our soul. And then I can remember more clearly the other people who cannot talk anymore because they died. And the history is in Cual Guerra?, many people talk about friends, about parents, about brothers, about fathers, about sisters.

Maybe before they could not talk, or they don’t want to talk about this ever, but now they are actually recognizing their struggle. I mean, with the testimonios of the students, they are recognizing not only their own lives, they are recognizing the life of the family, the struggle of the family. And I think it is not necessary that they have political implications.  It’s their everyday life. So I think this is, for me, the most important of the book.

Do you think it’s possible to get the book embedded into the educational system so that more people would read it? And what do you think would be the best way to distribute it?

I think it’s difficult but it can be a goal,  because, for example, in the Peace Accords one of the commitments was that the Truth Commission Reports be distributed through the official educational system.

And has that happened?

No. No. And it’s a commitment of the government, you know, because the UN said that it’s necessary for the new generation to know what happened in Guatemala and, actually, the first recommendation was from the REMHI, the book from Archbishop Gerardi, Guatemala, Never Again! The UN said that is necessary to share, to talk about this. It hasn’t happened because this official system is not interested. One side is not interested in talking about this; the other side is interested in hiding, you know.

So, even though there is the mandate that this information be disseminated, it hasn’t happened. So, do you think that Cual Guerra? would fall into the same category, that the government would not want the book distribute?

We can try it. Editorial Cholsamaj probably has contacts with the Cultural Ministry, and maybe they would talk with the Educational Ministry, and we can see. And maybe it could be distributed through the Rigoberta Menchú Foundation, for example. Or the Presidential Commission against Racism.

And, you know Ricardo Falla? He is a priest, who was with the CPR (Communities of Population in Resistance) during the civil war and, actually, he has started to write about young people. Because he said that the last time we had the histories about the civil war it was just about adults, but what happened with the kids? And last year he made a presentation about young people.

The book is about how they are living now. Young people in Mayan communities where the civil war was very hard, for example, in Ixcán or Quiché. What’s going on with them, you know. So, he was thinking about a strategy to share and to send the books to more young people…

I think Cual Guerra? tells it’s such an important part of history that you all had the courage to speak about. It’s so important to get it out and have people read it. So that’s the next step. 

Antonio:

My name is Antonio. I am 24, I was born in 1981 at the time of the worse crisis in Guatemala. I was about 1 year old when Rios Montt became president, and he was the one that created the civil war and had many people massacred in different parts of the country. When I was born, my father had just graduated as a teacher and he knew that it was very dangerous to work in the west, where I’m from. Since the young teachers were sent to faraway places and there was fear of losing your life, my father decided that we should go to Huehuetenango when I was about one year old, while we waited to see if the situation got better or worse. We knew that Huehuetenango was a little less dangerous than other places towards the north of the Department. I was about 3 and one of my uncles, my mother’s brother, had also just finished his teaching degree and was working in a community in the Ixcan . He had just started to work there and he was going from the capital to his job and disappeared.

We don’t know how, or when, and I think that left a mark forever, mainly on my grandmother, his mother. They were looking for him for a long time, but there are no record of what happened to him. At that time, transportation was very limited, and my uncle had to walk for a couple of days to get to his job, he would stay there for a long time, a month, 2 months, and he would come for a week or two. One of those times was when he disappeared. My mother tells me that during his last trip, he came to see my mother to visit, and that was the last time they heard from him. They don’t know anything else. That’s what I could say about what my family, mostly on my mother’s side, suffered with my uncle’s  disappearance. Just that.

Have you told other people about these experiences?

Maria:

I think it’s important because I didn’t tell my mother what I saw (a young mother and her baby shot by soldiers). And during those years, 6 or 7, I was always afraid, frightened. I grew up very different than my brothers. I could see that they were different than me because they hadn’t seen what I saw. Then, after I talked to my mother, I felt much better and I feel that talking to people about what one experiences is very important because it’s a way to vent your feelings. It’s a way of saying that another person feels what I felt, not just me, and it makes you feel understood. And yes, I think it’s very important to talk about what happened, that people know what others have suffered, because many people don’t know about it and many have suffered even more than us.

Antonio:

I think it’s important to talk about it, mainly with young people because the ones that are 14, 15, 16, they know that there was a difficult time for the country, but very superficially. They don’t try to find out whether their families were involved or not. In my case, I know that what happened with my family was painful, but, as our classmate was saying, they suffer even more in other places. I remember my father telling me that there were times when the Army would get to the houses and they would take anybody in the house that had books from their “red list” of books. When my father was studying he had good books, works of literature that he used while studying. But my grandfather got scared and burned them. Maybe for lack of knowledge since my grandpa didn’t know how to read, but also because he was afraid that the Army would accuse him of being involved in something which he didn’t even know about. I realize that sometimes when I go to my town, the young people now are very different, they have other ideas, and don’t know what happened. I think it’s good that they know the history so when they are electing Representatives, they choose them well so that they know how to work for the whole country, and to avoid a repeat of what happened.

Ana:

My name is Ana. I really didn’t suffer anything during the civil war, but my parents did. My mother tells me that when she was young, she was 18 then, they were always afraid and I think they still feel it, because she told me that even seeing the Army made them afraid. What they did to the young women then was to rape them, so my mother would hide so that she wasn’t raped. At that time, my father had just graduated and he was working at a school. He had to hide because they had the list of teachers, parents, and everybody who knew how to read and write. And so my father went to the mountains to hide from the Army. My grandfather did, too. Even if I didn’t live through it, just by knowing so many stories, I feel hurt.

And so I wonder why these things happened since we are not animals. And I wonder why those problems still happen when supposedly there is now the Peace Agreement. I think that’s why it’s good to have these talks, that the people who suffered talk to the younger ones so that they can understand because the younger ones are not aware of what happened. Many young people do not think about what they do. And I think that us, the indigenous, have to get ahead, look for other opportunities, and going to university is one of the ways, but very few have access to it. The younger ones have to be pushed to go forward, especially the indigenous.

I have another question. Sometimes people feel that talking about difficult and painful things is too hard and not a good thing to do. And sometimes people feel that talking together in a group where other people understand your experience makes you feel less alone.  Do you think that it will be helpful if the program offered an opportunity to talk together about your experiences?

Maria:

In my case, for instance, I don’t think it’s so much help in sharing with others, but helping us look further, to have ambition for something better for us, for our culture. We don’t talk much about this in the program, like the others classmates pointed out, unless you make good friends with someone to share these things. I didn’t want to talk about it for some time. I wanted to forget, to have a new life, but there are moments in which I needed to talk, to share with someone else and feel that I wasn’t alone.

Hector:
I’m not very old. I’m 19, but I lived the war directly. The war is not very much heard of in San Marcos because its impact was mostly in places like Huehuetenango and Quiche. But it happened there. My father was a teacher at a town in San Marcos, in the municipality of Comitancillo and we were with him, of course. But this town was very attacked by the Army. They would come and take the rural school, the elementary school and they stayed there and controlled the whole community. Nobody could leave their houses and if they didn’t have food or water, that was their problem. You had to stay in your house because we knew that the guerrilla would go by and our families had to provide them with food, tamales and whatever they needed. So, they (the Army) found out about it and that’s why they took control of the town. And precisely in 1992, both groups got together in the same place, in the same town, and there was a conflict in the center of town and it lasted 3 days and a half, day and night, and we could only take our corn crop, put it together, and we got under the beds. The corn was just to prevent the bullets from going through because our houses had very thin walls. What really had an impact on me at that moment was that my father took out the propane tank that we had because he knew that if there was a bullet it could cause an explosion. He took the tank and went out running in the middle of the shooting to throw it far away. At that moment, we could only wait for him to be shot. Thank God it didn’t happen. We had only water for 3 days because we didn’t have enough food.

This is not that my parents have told me, it is something I remember, so it is my own experience. Some of my uncles were injured, but nobody in my family was killed, but others that we knew were killed and many disappeared. There were people from our own town that would tell the Army who they thought was helping the guerrilla and they would disappear and we wouldn’t hear about them again.

What I saw is what I just told you. The bombs were exploding near the house because we could hear it. Some of them injured some people badly. My parents were not killed. My father took part in several protests in the capital. He studied at San Carlos University and it was very damaged by the Army, so that was a constant fear we had. He fought in favor of the university.

Has this affected me or my family? Of course. I still suffer from insomnia, I can’t sleep well. It’s had a psychological impact because we were constantly expecting the Army attacks which happened several times at night, so there was constant activity at night that wouldn’t let us sleep well, and even now I can’t sleep well.

I’m studying Law at the university and what happened influenced me to study this, because I know that the politics, the laws were the cause of the conflict. The law was unfair, it still is now, but then it was even worse. The politicians used their power to repress the town and control the whole country. That was what motivated me to choose a career that was related to society. My society, the one in which I live, and the people who have many sequelae from the war as we can see now in the violence that happens in our cities, mainly in the capital which is where many people join maras (gangs). That delinquency was caused because of the violence that the people suffered because many of the young people that live in the maras actually are orphans from the war.

I can tell this story and I hope that it will help other people to understand. The constant fear has affected us directly, but indirectly too, since there wasn’t a lot of commerce between the towns because it was very dangerous to go from one town to another since the Army was on the road and they would take people or torture them. It was really hard because several of my neighbors were tortured or mutilated.

When I have children, because I don’t have them yet, I will tell them the history of how things happened because they will be the ones, when we die, that will continue in this country and it depends on them that this country changes. So, if they have a knowledge of what happened in our country, they’ll have a social conscience to change that history, to prevent it from happening again and to put an end to the sequelae. And mostly, in regards to the children that my friends have or that I’ll have someday, the main thing is to educate them without violence because when a parent is violent with their kids, he’s teaching them about violence and placing the seeds for violence again in them. This is all I have to say. Thanks for this time.

Ikal:

My name is Ikal. Now I am 32 years old. In 1982 when the war was at its height, I was 9 years old. One of the things that we have to say about the war, that some called the Conflicto Armado, is that it is a historical event in Guatemala. It’s not only that someone decided to take up arms in the ‘60’s and that after that the contra-insurgents came, it has its historical reasons. In Guatemala during the war, one of the things I see is that racism against the indigenous was present, against us. It’s something that I’d say some got more affected than others, like us, in the north of the country. There are some communities more affected than others. In my community what happened was that several people disappeared. A peasant leader disappeared because at that time our communitarian land wasn’t recognized by INTA (National Institute for Agrarian Transformation), which was the entity that had to provide the titles to the communities so that they could have the support for their land. So, he was in the process of getting a title when he was killed, for obvious reasons, because the interest behind the land were very tied to the politics of the government. There were also some catequists (lay religious leaders) in my community, and 2 or 3 people in charge of community co-ops.

I didn’t understand a lot at the moment because I was 8, 9, 10 years old and it wasn’t until later that I got interested in learning more, I mean the history, by reading reports that have been published like Guatemala Never Again and the Report from the Commission for Historic Clarification. Likewise, I have asked my father what happened and it hasn’t been until now that he’s more open to talk about it since it seems that this history was prohibited because if you talked about it, you were considered to be a guerrilla, an insurgent.

We weren’t directly affected, but indirectly we were because people are afraid to become organized. But not to do bad things, but for their own well being, like to have their public rights protected by the State, which is what all citizens should have. That’s a situation that calls my attention every time I am with my people, in the communities, since there is a lot of fear of getting organized, so we don’t face the State since we still have the fear that they keep repressing us with soldiers. Because during that time the State became the source of repression to its own people. That’s one of the things that the armed conflict has left us and we don’t become organized as citizens and it’s still present (the fear) in this new generation that were very young then and are now 40, 45, or even 35. Very young people, but they are apathetic about giving their opinion.
What I studied at the university, Political Science, I think is very relevant. Because if we don’t understand politics, it’s very easy for us to be manipulated in different ways. They can tell us that the State is this or that and we don’t understand its true dimension, what it is, and what our role as citizens is, as well as the forms of organization that we should have. That’s what has called my attention. Initially, I was going to study Communication Sciences, but I realized that Political Science was more important because of these reasons.

In regards to our children, what my wife and I have thought for our family is to tell them the truth about what happened. This happened for such and such things. I think we shouldn’t be like some Guatemalans that want to hide that history. We don’t want to just tell them that it happened because the guerrilla manipulated the indigenous people and they killed them saying that they were all guerrillas, etc. Things were not that simple. There are more profound things to tell our children so that it doesn’t happen again and that they can, in the future, prevent it from happening again. My idea is to tell them the truth, its causes, not that it was just something simple, and I think that is what will help them in the future and we are committed to do that. That’s my personal idea.

Pancho:

My name is Pancho. I study Communication Sciences. The moment in which the war started for me is at the age of 5. Let’s say the story of life and war for me is from age 5, and it’s not that I knew it at that moment, but through recollections from my parents and grandparents is how I have recovered a little of that story. When I was a child, I didn’t know what was happening.

However, when I was 5, I have a memory that has made me difficult to understand, has made me vulnerable with ups and downs. I didn’t grow up in the same place where I was born and it is very difficult when you’re trying to go back to that place. I didn’t live the war directly, fortunately I was a very young child. But I lost one of my grandparents to the war. The rest is what my parents have told us.

I was a refugee in Mexico for 20 years. All my cultural identity, my basic knowledge, are not Guatemalan, and it’s been very difficult to come to face again my identity, my customs, etc. And that has also fragmented my family. Some, or most of my brothers don’t recognize in Guatemala any other reality besides the one they learned in Mexico; they consider themselves Mexican citizens. Even though they are my brothers, there are still those differences between them and I. I am involved in working with the indigenous people, with that ideology and the Maya way of thinking and culture. However, they ( my brothers) are not. I wouldn’t say that they think like ladinos, but still, they don’t have a knowledge of the Maya culture. Even though it’s sad, they are not guilty of that, as I tell them. They were born and raised with another point of view. They probably never imagined what happened and that’s sad.

What happened at home the day they went to get my grandfather, it’s been told to me by his sons, my uncles, that it was very hard, and that it set a mark also in the whole town because my grandfather was a catequist, a leader, and maybe that was the motive to kidnap him. I recognize, for instance, that in my family all my uncles, my parents, understood it from a different perspective. They were guerrillas up until the moment of peace signing. They always were, but now they don’t even know what they are, they have many problems understanding what they did before, their ideas just block them. For instance, we, the whole family, cannot return to the community, because in that town they see us as guilty for the violence. It has been very difficult.

At the university I’m studying Communication Sciences, and that’s what I like, but I also think it’s important because the media has great capacity to transform realities, or to build them up, and many young people have need to express ourselves, we need to be known. For example, our culture doesn’t make itself known, even though some say we do. But I feel that we need to make ourselves known, so that others learn about us, which is one of the purposes of intercultural exchange that we haven’t been able to achieve.

I have a son, Fernando, and I don’t talk to him about the war yet. However, I think that that reality is going to be chasing him when he goes to the old house, the first house, where I was born and raised. I think he will perceive it there. The conditions in that house are not like the ones we have here, these better ones. Instead, that’s another reality and I think he notices. I think that he can still live or learn it in the reality that we live now, that we are preserving. That’s mostly what I have to tell. Thank you for the opportunity.

Ikal:

I want to add this: My father-in-law disappeared in ’82, exactly on September 13th, when my wife was 8 years old. He was never found. He and his family lived in Comalapa, one of the most affected places. Some military people took him out of a car to some unknown place. His remains still haven’t been found, where he was, where he was killed, and what happened to him. I’m telling you this because the consequences are going to be there for a long time.

My wife suffers from nervous breakdowns because, as one of my classmates said, the Army took the school. And in front of the play space where the boys and girls played basketball, they laid the dead, so that in the town people would see how the people who they called guerrillas were killed. The reports call it “exemplary massacres”, meaning the psychological war. My wife tells me that she saw how those people were laid there as if they were chickens, in the sun, already killed. She has been very affected by it. She has had terrible insomnia and we have to treat her constantly. My mother-in-law has diabetes and sometimes her blood pressure is too high, we have to monitor her sugar levels, and it was caused by that situation. We have those cases, and also broken family relations for long periods. My wife, my mother-in-law, my brothers-in-law never went back to Comalapa because their own grandparents didn’t want to acknowledge them. They told them that they were guerrillas, and they didn’t want to see them because they (the grandparents) were not guerrillas. For about 15 years, they never went back to the town until recently because now we have children and we have been trying to get close to the family in Comalapa. It’s very difficult.

And the other case that I wanted to tell you about is that even if it didn’t affect us directly, it did affect us indirectly because there were the so-called PAC (Civil Self Defense Groups) and we had to organize in groups in the communities. It was mandatory to be on guard and there were duty times (to be on call), for instance, from 6 a.m. until 6 a.m. the following day. They had to be standing there, either with arms if they had them, if not with machetes, to guard against guerrillas or suspicious people going by. That affected my father so much that he suffered a partial facial stroke. His eye became very red, so we also had to treat him, and now he’s not old, he’s only 54, but it was because of that situation, the insomnia, worries because he, my uncles, and my grandfather were on a list that said they were guerrillas. There were about 7, 8, or 10 people on a list that someone from the same community had given to the Army. My father didn’t tell us about his worries, but he looked very worried, and he was sick then for a long time, his stomach, headaches, and very red eyes. I think those are some of the effects that the war caused, and many people are still suffering its consequences, the effects of this horrific conflict.

Since they began doing exhumations in Comalapa, my wife and I have been there when they ask for help, to see if we can find my father-in-law because my wife can’t leave it aside. It’s something she needs to find. She wants to find her father, where he is, and see him even if he is in his bones. This is what they call the “grieving process” in psychology. The unfinished grief, that didn’t have closure, so we have to keep searching for him. She’s now thinking about DNA exams to the bodies that have been found since they have found more than 200 graves from people in hidden graveyards. This is true. I have been there myself doing excavations and it’s horrific to see how the bodies have been thrown into the communal graves, and now they are trying to find them. What I mean to say with this is that it still continues and, unfortunately, the government is not doing any of this. It’s being done by non-governmental organizations, international ones that are helping. But the government doesn’t care about it, and according to the Peace Agreement, the government should guarantee that the victims were helped economically, materially, and psychologically. But the government is not doing it.

What you just said, had you each told each other these things before? Had you heard these stories from one another?

Student:
Only when we have opportunity to talk about issues regarding the war in Guatemala, some students comment on the experience, but not all the students, not in a specific meeting we’ve organized. I believe that in the group of students there are many experiences, sad experiences, they’ve had in the past.

Do you think that it would be helpful to have a group meeting for people to share and talk about their experiences during la violencia?

I think it’d be useful because, as I said, in this moment many students are having psychological problems, but we don’t have space to share and I believe that it’s good, it’s important, to open a space to share because the students needs to share with other and to validate each other.

Sometimes people are worried that when they talk about these things it’s very painful and they worry that it might make things worse instead of better.  Do you think that it’s better to talk about these things or not? 

Student:
As my classmate said, during the war it was prohibited, nobody could talk about it. Thanks to God we can do it now. Personally, I would dare to do it for the media because we now live in a country that is changing, improving, and it’d up to us that it continues like that. Before, nobody could talk about it.

Pancho:
But I think what you mean to say is if we talk in regular life. I feel that for me it’s very difficult when I remember the town or the house. My voice always becomes (crying). I travel by bus and I always remember that, I mean…

Ikal:
I think that’s very difficult, you’re right, it’s not easy. I don’t suffer a lot in that way because I didn’t live it directly, only in other ways. But in my wife’s case, she couldn’t talk about it for a long time. When she remembered she couldn’t talk more. Even now I realize some things. I have asked them where the house was in Comalapa, they had a big house, with animals, and I think it is still there. But since they are very sad and nostalgic, they haven’t set foot in that house again. The house is still there, someone took it and they lost everything. But now they don’t want to talk about that house, or go and see if it is there. They don’t want to, because it hurts, suddenly leaving your house, everything, on top of losing your father, or your mother, or whatever, it’s very difficult. That’s why I say that it isn’t just to tell people that they can find their things. No, it requires specialized psychological help, that really comprehends the situation and how the war happened. Because we’ve seen some organizations trying to give psychological support, but they don’t really understand our people, the dimensions of the problem that our people, very poor people, suffered and the psychological help they provide is not what people need. It’s not just to go and say “don’t cry”. It isn’t simply not to cry, but also to understand what happened and feel that pain, like we, the Mayas say, to feel the other’s pain. That’s very difficult.

Pancho:
It’s very difficult to try to understand someone else. I do therapy to myself. I told you about the bus because when I ride it I think of my grandfather. As Ical says, I’m thinking about the house and suddenly I’m just crying. I have gotten used to not be embarrassed of people seeing my tears on the bus because it happens a lot to me. And I may be wrong, but with everything that I do, I’m always thinking “Grandpa, help me”. It’s something that is there despite the fact that I only knew him for 5 years. Many things remind me of him, the house, my father’s house that he could never use again. Sometimes it hurts a lot because the things are still there, but we can’t use them.

Ikal:
There are several things. It’s not that we are making it seems bigger than it is. Like my wife’s family for the armed conflict, they still remember their dog that was very good, but they had to leave him there. And according to the Mayan history, relationships with animals, as the Popol Vuh says, are very important. I see my wife and mother-in-law crying when they mention the dog and they say that because of the armed conflict they had to leave the dog and they don’t know what happened to him. Whatever happened to those poor animals! There is much sadness for the father, but also for the house, the family, the animals. That’s what the government hasn’t even tried to rebuild. Just by trying to understand the situation, it would be a good step forward in this society that was left completely broken, without the same relationships as before. We are very hurt by it. I’m telling you about these cases because I’ve seen them in my wife’s family and I try to be strong and speak a little, but I can’t deny the things that have happened.

Pancho:
I’m the only one that has returned to Santa Cruz del Quiche who lives here permanently. The rest of my family lives in Esquintla . That’s why one doesn’t even know where one is from. My grandma asked me if I had ever gone back to the town, our house, because she heard that there was some furniture there. When she came back to Guatemala in 1998 after being a refugee, the first thing she looked for was her grinding stone. She found it and her burned armoire. Her house was burned, the only thing left were the walls. I think they live in the past, even at the present time, remembering many things. The stones, the pots, the sewing machines, many things that were needed at home, and they still go to look for them in the hope of finding their material things. For instance, in the case of my grandpa who disappeared, for many years his family, my uncles, my father, they never did anything, like exhumation, or research about where he was.It’s only now that they dare to do it. However, they got together to be able to ask if he could be found. I have written things and I still have the desire for revenge, not with violence, but to demonstrate that even when we had to leave, we could not be destroyed. It’s not that I want ugly revenge, but I feel the pain and that’s what the conflict has left us.

Would it be helpful to have a group?

Ikal:
I think that would be good. It would be a small group, not big. With psychologists, sociologists that understand the situation. In the program we have a psychologist or a sociologist. In Guatemala City there are many programs for mental health and I believe that if the program contacts them, it would be possible to organize some small meetings.

Many students, for example, Eliseo, B., they have had experiences. For example, Eliseo when he was a child in Comalapa, my wife told me that she met Eliseo’s sister and parents, who disappeared in Comalapa. But she never knew where they were until one day when she was working near here, she saw Eliseo’s sister, and now that she saw Julio at this program, she asked him if he was the brother of the woman she knew. What I mean to say is that for a long time, we didn’t know about Eliseo because they were all escaping. Eliseo didn’t want to come to Antigua. He is in San Antonio now, because he escaped from Comalapa. The same with my mother-in-law and my wife, they left and went to Villa Nueva. And they changed their traje (indigenous clothing) so that they wouldn’t be killed.

That’s why I think there are several people in the program who have had experiences in the program that need some support, and I have always recommended that we have discussions. I think there are some students that don’t do well not because they don’t want to, but because there are certain psychological issues that affect them and they need support and that should be offered to them.

Do you think that the person who facilitates the group should be a student or a psychologist? 

Ikal:
I think that the program should organize it but leaders of the groups should be students.

Thank you. I think that this effort to help the affected in the world is important because, as we say, the sad effects are there in this moment.

Maria:
I was born in Quiche in 1980, at the worst time during the Civil War, and I didn’t understand a lot of what was happening, but I noticed certain things. In my Mom’s side of the family, many belonged to the guerrilla. They had 2 options, either to die or belong to the guerrilla. So they decided to join the guerrilla and many of them disappeared. Some were killed, others were exiled in Mexico, and others came to the capital. My family left their town, and went to Santa Cruz with my grandparents.

I was about 5 or 6 and didn’t realized everything that was happening. I understood it many years later. But I had an experience that left an impression on me, and left me with many fears. I don’t know why I didn’t tell my parents, maybe because I was afraid. We lived in a place with a lot of milpa (corn fields), houses were separated, and when I was coming back from the store, I saw about 4 military men pointing a gun at a woman who had her baby on her back, about 4 months old. They were asking her where her husband was and she didn’t want to tell them, so they were pushing her from one to the other and they were hurting her. I don’t know what she told them, but they threw her to the ground and shot her from the back, killing the baby and her. That was a horrible experience for me because I was just a little girl and was just defining my character and I grew up with a lot of fears. And these things happened every day since our house was in a main road and the military were constantly passing by, maybe to go to other towns nearby. And at a certain time, we could hear the shootings mainly in the afternoon. I was very frightened but I didn’t tell my mother until I was about 11. Maybe I hid it because I was afraid.

My family helped the guerrilla somehow and I think that was a good deed, because there were many people suffering, many people in the resistance, and that was a way to help our people. For instance, one of my uncles kept many food items that were left at the house. At night many sacks of food, sugar, coffee, corn, were left at the house, he would take them in, and out again in the morning, and it went on, and all of those items went to the guerrilla campsites. Of course, the army didn’t know about it or we would all have been killed. That’s the hardest experience that my family lived, except some others that were directly involved with the guerrilla and they didn’t come back until the peace was signed in 1996. They didn’t know a lot about their families, their children, spouses, whether they were alive or dead, until ’96 when they came back. That’s what I have to say.

When I joined them the guerilla I did it totally, I could not leave, because I realized what poverty and injustice can do in real life. But in theory I also realized some other things, like the United States intervention in the war and the overthrow of Arbenz. This is back in the year 1952 when he was overthrown… At that time, The United Fruit Company intervened with their exploitation since they would pay $1 dollar for a whole bunch of plantains, bananas, and they’ll take it to the US to sell for 1 dollar each banana. And then, the exploitation of nickel and any riches that Guatemala had. So, I started to realize all of that and so the objective was not to overthrow the Army, but to get rid of the foreign intervention. And we also realized that at the time of John F. Kennedy people were also sent from the Peace Corps but with the purpose of finding out who were the insurgents who were against the government. According to the US wishes, they wanted a totalitarian, military government, while we wanted a civil government, a democratic government. Our goal was to overthrow the Guatemalan government and get rid of the intervention from gringos. That’s why I had to stay for 4 1/2 years in the…

The guerrilla simply fought, with arms in their hands the Guatemalan Army. We tried to fight against the Army with their same weapons, trying to save the civil population because the Army would arrive to kill, to massacre. At first, I was in the south but the Army didn’t get there much because the people were more organized and they had more businesses, so the Army wasn’t as interested in them. They concentrated more in Quiche, Quetzaltenalgo, San Marcos, Huehuetenango and the middle part, the Altiplano Central, Chimaltenango but at its northern part, the part by the Motagua River. Those are places that were taken by the Army. They would arrive and just because someone was a cathequist, or the president of a co-op, or had a religious position, they were accused of being a guerrilla. While us, the ones in the mountains were not as affected because they knew we were going to fight them with the same weapons. So I was 4 years, or more exactly, 3 years around the Quiche area.

Do you  feel that the villagers, the people in the towns, supported the guerrillas? Some people say that the villagers were with the Army. But, the Army say that the villagers were supporting the guerrillas.

Yes, the townspeople suffered. In the first place, they suffered. Of course when we reached a town, not everybody wanted to become involved in the fighting. Some said that they did not want to get involved in anything, while others, young people of 18, 15, 14, 20 years of age up to 25, that had their family, father, mother, children killed, they were very angry. So they came with us. But it is also true that we also attacked the army. We tried to leave some resistance in the towns. Unfortunately, the Army would come with more sophisticated weapons like airplanes, tanks and kill everyone. So even when the guerrilla tried to take over the Altiplano Central, including Quiche, we couldn’t do it because the US intervened military and financially. They sent military advisors to the Guatemalan Army. And they advised them against the guerrilla, the insurgents and so Rios Montt started to kill anybody. We also felt the consequences. We were in the mountains, in the open, without houses, and sometimes we’d run out of weapons so we had to quit.

How many guerrilla you think there were?

Guatemalan guerrillas? About 15,000 total.

And there were international guerrillas, from many countries. Spanish, gringos, Mexicans, I never saw Cubans. They were internationalists. They could fight here as well as in any country that needed them, as long as they didn’t die (laughing).

And, of the fifteen thousand nationals, were most of them ladino or Maya?

I could say that about 99.5 were indigenous and only .5 ladinos.

And were the leaders ladinos or Maya or both?

That’s the major problem. The leader was Guatemalan, you knew about him, the one that just died, Gasparilon. And there is the other one called Roland something. They were all ladinos. The leaders were ladinos. Yes, they were all intellectuals.

Possibly, there were many internationalists. Since there wasn’t only one battlefront and I was in the John Sosa one. A battlefront is composed of more than 250 guerrillas. It can be up to 500, 1,000, even 2,000, 5,000. So, there were many battlefronts.

 How did you hear about your brothers’ disappearance? 

Before that, I want to clarify something. There were many fewer ladinos in each battlefront. So we interchanged through more than one group. We belonged to the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo , PGT, (Guatemalan Labor Party). Our commandant was Cardosa and he died already. So, the 4 commandants got together to discuss the strategies of war. And we realized that the indigenous were the majority in the guerrilla and in the Army… we were killing each other. But one was working with a group and the other with another one with different ideas. So, that’s why we decided to call the 4 commandants to a meeting in Nicaragua. The Frente Sandinista de Liberacion gave us access to Nicaragua. It was around October or November ’81. In Nicaragua, us, a group of Mayans, asked what was the role of the indigenous in the taking over the power, since we realized that the indigenous were the majority, in any factory, industry, workers. They said that they’ll take care of that after the war. So we said that if a decision is not made before, the war will be a failure. “We will continue if you give us an answer now to that question.”

“Why?” they asked.

“Because we claim justice and you are a minority in all parties.” In the battlefront that I was there were about 50-60 ladinos, while we were about 500.

They realized that the way …. our efforts is vain, they asked the question, where is going to go this if they don’t give them assurance that… They went to Nicaragua and they questioned them. We want concrete assurance. They questioned the leaders….

If it had only been the Guatemalan Army, we had an advantage, we could have won. But when there was intervention from Chile and the US, Argentina, all of the… we started to lose power. I remember when we were bombarded in March, it lasted for 3 months, and our strategists could not anticipate all of that. And also when we had that meeting with the commandants, many of our fellows started to give up, since they realized that the power will be again in the hands of the ladinos.

It was happening towards the end of ’82. We started to get discouraged, we stayed in the battlefront, but there wasn’t an answer to our petition. And then ’82, ’83 went by, and at the beginning of ’84 the Army attacked us with international help. Then, when they attacked us completely it was ’84, March, April, May, and in June the Mexican government caught us and we had no other option but to ask for political asylum in Mexico.

So, you did go into Mexican territory?

Yes, we got there without knowing it.

What did they say to you when they captured you?

They asked us to hand in the arms, raise our hands, and identify ourselves. We told them that we would not give up the arms since we were Guatemalan patriots (citizens) and we were revolutionary soldiers. “We are going to shoot you” they said.

“So, we will all shoot each other here. You die with us.”

They asked the leader to come forward. Someone raised his hand and said, “Let’s talk, we are Guatemalan guerrilla, we are in the middle of an armed fight against the regime, and we didn’t noticed that we had trespassed into Mexican territory.” We asked for a high Army and government authority.

Did you stop being a guerrilla at that point?

Yes, definitely, because after a few days of talks, and after the United Nations Commissioner and Amnesty International got there, they asked where we wanted to go. “You want to go back to Guatemala or you want political asylum? You can go to Canada, Italy, Panama? Or you want to stay in Mexico?” I stayed in Mexico.

So, were you in Mexico when you heard that Carlos had disappeared?

I had been in Mexico for about a year when I heard the news about my brothers being caught.

How did you hear that Carlos and your other brother had disappeared?

There was a newspaper there, El Dia.

So the people that disappear, their names appeared in the newspaper?

I still have the article from the newspaper that I brought from Mexico.

How did you feel when you found out about your brothers and did you feel like you should come back to your family?

Of course I felt the need to come back. I couldn’t believe it. What happened? So I called a friend, a Catholic priest. And I asked him. He said yes. I said it couldn’t be true because I was making an effort for Esteban to go. I had spoken with him on the phone and by letter and he had told me that they were being persecuted. But I never thought that Carlos will be the first to go. He was working at the Universidad Rafael Antigua. As I told you at the beginning, their only fault was to help the people that came from other towns, but they didn’t join the armed groups like me.

Yes, definitely, it was very dangerous. Even in ’85, before my brothers were kidnapped, I met a Guatemalan that was there in Mexico looking for better opportunities and he told me not to go to Guatemala, or not even try to contact my family. He said “Every week, every 2 weeks, the Army is patrolling your father’s house. They are not uniformed, they dress normal, but they are around the house because there are rumors of you going there and they may get you. Even the photography in your civil registry at age 18 when you got your I.D. card, is not there”. Well, maybe because I’m so handsome… (laughing).

How did you finally decide to come back to Guatemala after all those years in Mexico?

Well, the family. My purpose may not be very well taken. When I joined the war, my purpose wasn’t just for my family. I wanted a better life for a whole population, a whole republic, a country. And I didn’t realize how I was endangering my family. Only the general purpose.

And now that you are older would you do it differently?

If I had physical strength, I would join the fight again.

You said you came home to see your family. You were married, you had a wife here with children. You didn’t see them for 14 years?

4 1/2 years with the guerrilla and then 18 years in Mexico. Twenty-two years.

My wife and children were here, they studied, their mother worked for them, and I couldn’t return until the peace was signed in ’97, so I came back but went back because I could not find a way here to fit in.

Did your family go to see you in Mexico?

Yes, my family went. I saw them not more than 2, 3 times.

What did you do for work in Mexico?

I know how to be a tailor, so I made a living with it.

Later, I worked making clothes, shirts, and I started to sell them in a town called Morrolion, Guanajuato, so I was traveling a lot. It was 10 hours away from the capital, and I will travel to take the clothes and return to make more. I managed to buy 14 industrial sewing machines, I also have my factory. I rented it now.

After the peace was signed At the end of ’96, I came back to see my mother and father.

But I wish I could be in Mexico, I won’t deny it, because they gave me a hand. Not only the people who helped me when they found out that I was Guatemalan and guerrilla, and I was politically persecuted, but also in the sense of work. I had work, whatever I wanted.

Now I’m trying to get settled here, to find financial stability. Because in Mexico I had it, but here…

One last question, there were women who were guerrilla fighters. What was it like for the men and the women working together?

Very interesting question. The relationship was one of mutual respect. They, as well as us, had to help each other like human beings. There were jobs that here in the family are specific to the women. There, the men had to do that job, learn the work of women, and we all did it equally.

The problem here is that even the husband marginalizes his wife. We see that tiring work of women: do the laundry, clean, cook, work that is not seen but is tiring, and in the mountain men and women had to cook, both had to carry their bags in the back with their arms. Men or women that were sick were taken care of as human beings. There wasn’t that aspect like “Hey, since you are a woman, bring me that”. No, the men and women were worth the same. But women exaggerated a little because later on in Mexico, not all but many of our women fellows became more liberal, and that they didn’t learned in the mountain, they did whatever they wanted to in their particular life after.

There was an occasion in which a woman was shot in her leg and couldn’t walk. She couldn’t take care of her chores in the mountain and there were other 4 or 5 women but they were far away. So, the political fellow asked us who could wash her clothes, her underwear, and we all raised our hands. It’s a sign of solidarity, that there wasn’t any prejudice because around here we think that if we help a woman with laundry, that man is not manly. And we wanted that, to reach equality between women and men. We did not expect to fight just for power in government, but also for liberation, in the financial aspects and the women’s marginal role.

Thank you for  time and for sharing your story. I appreciate you sharing it with me. 

It is worth with me and others you can interview, and they may have better things to tell you that the world should know.