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Ikal, Pancho, Maria

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.

by

Carlos’s son

I’m the son of Carlos,  I am 25 years old, and I’m from Patzun, Chimaltenango. I want to talk with you about the history of the conflict here, I know what you’re speaking of this conflict, that lasted 36 years, ending in 1996.Many people, many people were murdered, were affected by this problem. My family, but not only my family, many people from my town, have many problems about all of this even though this conflict happened many years ago.

I was born in 1980, and the years of 1982 – 86, maybe this is the worst part of this war. All of the country, but the most part is in the Atitlan, the K’iche, mainly Chimaltenago. The majority of the Maya communities, Maya people, these are the people affected.

I was young, I didn’t know why the war was happening. Now I still don’t understand, I know there were political problems in the country, the history, but I don’t understand why it happened so much, all that happened to the people, I don’t understand what it had to do with us. With the people. This is what I don’t understand.

Many people didn’t understand, many people can’t read or write. They didn’t learn how.  Many people are only fathers, mothers and farmers. They were very poor, these people didn’t understand about politics, and many people died, and never knew why. The problem is that Guatemala is a country with many problems, one problem is that many people, they think that the Mayan people are inferior, and the political problems are one justification to kill many Mayas. Another justification – the ending of communism, of communism that the attributed to the indigenous people. It was only a pretext to kill them.

Were the people in the mountains supporting the guerilla?

Ah, the guerilla. No, the people of the villages they are scared.

Of the guerillas?

No, of the guerrillas and the army. Many people, many people became guerillas because they saw that the army was killing the people. So, what do you do? If you see that they are killing people? And of course, the guerillas don’t do anything to you, we are like friends, the thing is, many people or, that is… that in this moment. That, in this moment, I don’t know, it’s for defense, it’s because of looking for someone to help you, but I would say that many many of the people didn’t know the difference between which were the guerillas, and which were the army. Really, I didn’t sympathize with any of them.

So they didn’t understand what was happening. So here’s the army and here’s the guerillas, and the people are in between?

Yes, and the army said, “You are guerilleros. you tell me where  the base of the guerillas is” and the people don’t know. There were many massacres. Everyone in many towns were killed. This didn’t happen in the town of Patzun but in the other villages.

I was five years old in 1985, I don’t remember much. My mother and my father never tell me about this, but I see… and in this moment, I don’t understand what was happening.

What do you remember?

I remember discussions, conversations, talk about, I don’t know… one time, my grandpa talk with my mother, father, and my uncles. And he said he had two people that worked for him and one time these two persons turned up dead. They died. He said that it was the army. I don’t …. I remember he said that the people had two knives, machetes, to work. Yes, yes, and the persons..these two people turned up dead, and they had two machetes that were for working, planting. These two machetes, they grabbed them, and when they had killed them, they had the…

Here…draw a picture.

This is machete, and and whoever killed them did this with the two machetes. They made a cross. I don’t know, to me, this is ironic, it’s like making fun of the people that died. Because they grabbed the machetes and formed a cross. I saw many troubles in Patzun. I remember my father talk about this, my grandma told me one time, that we were in the house with my grandmother, and with my two siblings, or, only one brother was there then, and she told us that we should go. And she said go away, go and hide ourselves. I hear airplanes.

Later, she told us that about two kilometers away from the house, there had been a battle between the guerillas and the army. Many people died in this time. There weren’t bombs, there were machine guns, the army of the Guatemala doesn’t have bombs, and I remember this occasion, many times.
Where did you go when you ran away with your grandmother and your sister?
With the neighbors, with other people. And many many nights the same thing happened. So then, they said, “come, let’s go sleep in other houses”.
Were they were looking for your family in particular?
Yes, my family, other families, many families. I don’t know if it’s true, but the people were saying that my father is guerillero. The people said that my father was a guerilla, the same as other uncles, but my father wasn’t. My father worked with…my father was a nurse. He worked in the health center. And later, he worked in the university of Landivar. He worked in this place, and the work is to visit the people in the communities because they gave them support from the institution. Maybe these travels to the communities was interpreted as though he was going around talking, I don’t know, about things…I didn’t see that my father was killed. My father was disappeared. I don’t have one grave to cry for him. I don’t have… I don’t know where is my father. In Patzun, you remember I told you that one month ago they started exhumations at the military base in town.  Many people think that in this place the remains of dead people exist, but one week ago, some brothers were working there, and they didn’t find anything. But they only searched small pieces of the area. They are not going to continue to work. They searched only a small part of all, of all of it, and in this place, they didn’t find anything.
But, the base of the army is bigger, and I know many many people think that yes, there are bodies there, but in the place where they searched, there aren’t.
Did people in the villages know where the graves are?
No, no, but I think they suspect. In this year, this place, there is a church, in this part, you don’t see inside this place. The people that entered, many times they never left. But, well, the people that died there, inside, or the people that entered the inside, never could tell where it was, but all the people are sure that there were acts like this there. And the work they pursued, they were there for one week, working in this small piece of the whole military base.
So when you were 5 years old one day your father just didn’t come home?
Yes, only my father disappeared. He didn’t disappear in Patzun. I told you my family was searched, persecuted. My family went into hiding, first in Patzun, in other houses, and we also went to Guatemala City, to run away for a time. My father ran there for a while, too. Sometimes for one week, sometimes a month, sometimes from moment to moment. Here in Patzun, and outside Patzun.
My father disappeared in Guatemala City. He was working when he disappeared. This day my father he was with his brother-in- law, husband of my aunt and two other people. In this occasion, the four people disappeared. One month after, another of my uncles did too. He lived in Patzun, and the army looked for him in his house, and they grabbed him. In total, in my family, two uncles and the brother-in-law disappeared, or that is, three uncles. My father, Carlos, his brother and husband of my aunt.

I have another uncle, he also is afraid that the same thing would happen to him and he went to seek refuge in Mexico. Three years, no five years ago, he came back to Guatemala. But he stayed in Mexico maybe 12 years. Now, he’s with his family. Many people went to Mexico because in Guatemala they are afraid, they thought…

When did your mother tell you and your sister and brothers about your father?

I don’t know, I have never…. My mother never tells… never speak about this. At that time. But I see, I understood what happened with my uncles, my father…My mother never told us.. I don’t know, maybe to protect us, but she didn’t ever tell us about all of this that had happened. Never. Now she says that it was so that we wouldn’t feel hate. To preserve out hearts, she never told us about this because she thought that since we were young we could have another picture, that we weren’t going to understand it. I knew that my father had disappeared, because I hear, all the people. And I understood. But my mother never spoke of this. As she said, even today she never… My mother never cried in front of us. my mother cried when she’s alone.

And now, I understand that maybe this was the best. To have told us what happened in this time, because I feel like she could have said that it was the army. If she had told us that my father was taken by the army, my siblings and I would have grown up with hate.  Many people (feel that) because obviously, they saw them when they killed their parents. When they killed all the people, they saw them. Many people. Even today, they have an attitude of hate. Yes, they have hate. But, I don’t have hate.

If she had told you what was happening when you were a little boy do you think you would have felt hate?

I don’t know, I feel, maybe, yes.  But it’s not hate, I don’t know, with all the people, I don’t know, it is a feeling, I feel hate, but I feel that obviously, one is going to feel hate, going to feel anger because of all of this. .for everything that happened. But I feel that it is a feeling, a feeling more controlled, it’s not jealous, or extreme, it’s not…Many people feel more hate, but a hate that is just so strong. Really hate, yes…With all of this, the war, the army, with this, and it’s– how should I say it, what I’m trying to say is that since I was little, when I was little my mother never say, your father was killed by the army.

She never told you that?

No, never. She believed that if she had told us, my siblings and I, we would have grown up with hate. And she don’t want this…But now is different, now is trauma, maybe… maybe I have a little trauma…Many people grew up with trauma, many people think… there are many many people that have grown up with trauma. My grandfather believes that one day my father will come back.  Yes, his son. Two sons. My grandparents believe, my grandparents look for him still. But I don’t believe my father will come back to the house. I know 20 years ago, my father probably is dead.

Your grandfather believes that his sons will come home?

Yes. What I say, is that if when  I was young,  when I was a kid, if they had told me everything? Maybe I… I don’t know… I would have thought, or it would have affected my mind…

My mother is very strong in her mind. Christian. Very, very Christian. Yes, she made a better decision. A better decision. Never she say, “I’m poor”, she never said “poor us, this happened to us”. No. She didn’t do that. No. She worked, she was go, go, go! My mother is a teacher. Teacher of elementary school, for 20 years. She is Evangelical, yes. My dad… my father is Catholic, and when I … when I was a boy my father, he brought me. Now, I don’t go to church. I respect the Maya religion, but I don’t practice religion. Because I don’t believe in all this.

Do you think that the fact that your mother was very religious helped her?

Yes, yes. She said, “God help me” and my mother searched and found and got in with a church, she looked for help, my mother searched for help. … so she wouldn’t be too affected, I don’t know, but she might think of other things. I think that yes, it helped her quite a bit. Because, I don’t know, many people believe in God. And in some manner, this gave my mother strength. This is what she says. And she says, “God helps me, if it hadn’t been for Him, anything may have happened, we even might have died”.

Have you talked about this history before with your friends, a teacher or anyone?

No, never. Because I feel with my teachers, not, but with my friends, sometimes, because there’s too many peoples who don’t understand. They don’t understand how I… maybe I am wrong, but, we have very different points of view, different points of opinion about this…I understand that this happened, and that it wasn’t just. I understand too that this is not correct. Yes, it’s wrong, terrible, but I understand it doesn’t do any good for anything. ..Many people even today, they think that… they feel a lot of hate, much hate about this…I understand that this has happened, but it doesn’t do any good to feel this hate. And I understand that to feel angry, hate, it doesn’t do any good…I think it’s better starting work or other things. Many people say, “I am poor because I suffered a lot” I don’t say this, because the best thing is to work hard to have a better life.

Yes, this is the better way. But there are many problems, many stories, stories with much hurt, very much hurt, very hard stories. People have stories much worse than mine, there are people, many students in the program whose father and mother were killed and the majority of their family. I still have a mother. But many peoples in the program don’t have – have nothing.

Have the students talked to one another about their personal stories?

Not with all of them, with some. But I haven’t spoken with everyone about this. I spoke maybe with 5 or 8 people, we’ve talked about this. And there are many stories that are much more complicated… many people cry when they tell about this. Many people cry when they talk about this.

Do you cry?

I don’t know if I… some people cried for my father. But I don’t remember doing it. I don’t remember, maybe never, cried for my father.

Do you think that talking about this is helpful for you or not? 

Yes, yes, it’s good, it’s when I talk about this, sometimes I remember other parts from this, it’s better, better. Today, I feel with my uncles, with my grandma, my grandpa, my mother, never I ask, even until today, I never asked my uncles anything.

You can’t talk to them about this?

No, never, never, but now I feel, I need ask maybe, but now, I feel that… I don’t know, I know the history, what the books say, now I know. Now I know the history,  what was the cause of it, why it started, now I feel like I am ready to ask questions. I feel now, I have different … about this, I want to talk about my father with my grandpa and ask.. I feel like now, I know some different points of view of this.

Do you think that they will be willing to talk to you, to answer your questions?

Yes, but now I need ask more. I want to ask my grandfather…I know what it is that I saw. I need to ask what he saw. I didn’t see very much when I was 5. But it’s, until, with them, I haven’t been able to talk until now, because each time that we speak of this, they cry. Many cry, and can’t speak, but I need now, I need know more. About this.

And do you think that they will be ready to talk?

With all, all the family. Yes I think that yes…I think they…until now, I haven’t asked them… I don’t know, I feel not ready to hear all this. Ready to listen to all of this. To hear all the people. My uncle that fled to Mexico? He told me about this, and he have the history, part of history, but I want …he has his version of the story. I want all the versions to understand. Many times, when they tell you what they say is part of… is part true, but also it is, I don’t know, like modified by their feelings. So, as I said, I now feel more prepared to be able to talk with them. Because I have never spoken of this with them, I haven’t wanted to. I felt that no, because I didn’t know really, first, I didn’t understand what is what had happened, now I more or less…now I know a little more… I don’t know, I feel like if I had done it before, I wouldn’t have understood,  I wouldn’t have understood 10 years ago…and now, I feel that yes, I can talk about this, and ask about it…I don’t know, but I need ask, I need ask. I need know, what feels my mother.

What your mother felt?

No. What my mother feels now. What my uncles feel now. Many years after maybe now is deeper. Maybe it is more centered. Now my own feelings are more mature, maybe. Probably now, the stories are more mature, they don’t have so much crying. I feel that now, my uncles, my mother, my grandparents, can talk about this, they can talk about what they felt. What they were feeling 20 years ago. Now is more easy for them. Yes, it’s possible now. Many years ago…yes, it was very hard.
Do you talk to your sister and your brothers about this?
My sister and my brothers maybe they aren’t very interested.  I was 5 years old, my sister was 3 years, my other brother 1 year, and my last brother, the youngest… no. (my mother was pregnant with him). I think that the interest has to come from within them. They have to be interested. While they aren’t interested, I feel like the same thing that happened to me, maybe they won’t want to talk about this, maybe they feel like they still can’t. The same as me, they aren’t ready for this. Maybe, I don’t know, I am fearing talking with them about this. I have more memories from my father, but the memories I have are not clear.

They are very diffuse, but maybe with the fact that now there are various publications, now maybe 2 or 3 books about the history of this.

Do you have any photographs of your family?

Yes, I have two photos. Yes, my father, my mother says, “your father like the pictures and your father has many pictures of you and him, from all the family. But in the time of the violence all the pictures, my mother burned them, or buried them because she was afraid that someone would see the photos, and she had a … if something happened to us in the family, and they were to find the pictures of our relatives, they would probably go and look for them as well. I have two pictures of my father, and all the pictures, all of the photos were destroyed. I think that they were very afraid that people would recognize the members of the family.

There’s one other thing I wanted to ask you, you know the story you wrote me about how you decided to become an architect?  You said you found a sheet of paper where your father had designed a house.

I don’t know, I was maybe 8 or 10, I can’t remember, how old I was, I found one piece of paper, but I don’t know what this paper is I don’t know nothing, but I .. I see this paper, and I read: kitchen, bathroom, living room. This is a plan. This is one small page where there is a design of a house. I ask my mother,”what is this?” I didn’t know, and she tells me that my father wants one day to build this house. For the family. I’m like, this moment, maybe I… I don’t know, but I felt, in this moment, or I understood in this moment, that I wanted to study this. And now I have this design. Only in pencil… I don’t know, I think that this influenced me to study what I studied. At this time, I saw this page, when I was little. I looked at it, and said, I didn’t know, I asked myself how they had done each of the little drawings, the trees, the chairs, the tables, and I imagined this, that is, I was perhaps curious…I was 8 or 10 years old, but this time, I already could see the house. I hadn’t seen even a plan! But I feel that in this moment, I understood many things. And, I finish my elementary school, my basic education, enough to want …. I want to study this. I never veered, I knew this was what I wanted. It’s, I don’t know, it’s… to me, this house excites me very much. Now I look at the design and all, and I feel, perhaps the same as I did as a child. And just the same, the drawing is bad. The drawing is bad! (laughing) Now I know, that this is a dream of my father. I want maybe in 2 or 3 years or maybe more years, I don’t know, to build this house. His house. It’s like, each time that I remember this little page, I am going to feel the same, like when I was little and I looked at it.. It was a fascination…I don’t know, but this paper is the thing that helps me more remember my father. My father have many dreams. My father wanted this house. My father wanted to know how to be a farmer, with cows, with…My mother still tells of this, and I feel like she still would like to have it. I don’t like the cows. The cows, I don’t like…

My father had many dreams. Maybe I can make one dream from my father. One dream. Yes. That would be good…Sometimes when I remember my father, I don’t feel like crying, I feel happy. I’m don’t feel like crying, I feel happy. Yes, when I talk about my father, I feel happiness, I don’t have to cry. But I have some memories of him. One time when my father crashed on the curb, and I’m going, bang! and I got a bruise. Near the highway, there was a gas station and my father told me, “you, you get water for the car”. And he told me that I should fill the water tank. And I went with a container one, two, three, four, many times..and it never filled.  The radiator was … Have a hole! (laughing) and I hadn’t seen it. I didn’t see it. Then when I got tired, “no more no more”, I walk around the car, and saw all the water…(laughing). I was maybe 3 or years old. This is the memories that I have of my father, but I feel happiness. I never feel sadness. I feel happy…

My grandma, say, yes I look like my father, but I don’t know. It’s …it’s weird, the picture of my memory, of my father, in my head is different,  from the pictures. It’s different, the picture of my father’s face that I have in my head…
How old was your father when he died?

Maybe 28, 29? My father married with my mother when she was 25. So, maybe 29 or 30.

So he was about the age you are.

Yes, I’m 25…

Thank you so much, I really appreciate your talking with me.

Thank you because you want talk about this. This is not, this is not….You… how to say this… you didn’t have to do this. You don’t have one reason to do this, but you want to. Thank you….

In Patzun we have flowers similar to this (crying, handing me a flower), a sun flower. Patzun is the land of sun flowers.
by

Carlos’s widow

Carlos was thirty when he disappeared, I was twenty-eight. I had the four kids, one son was six years old, my daughter was four, the other one was two, and I had just had the baby.When the kids asked me questions I told them we couldn’t go with Dad.When they were very young I told them that. But, when they were a little older, I told them their dad wasn’t here, that we didn’t know what happened to him, that maybe he died. And if he died, we have to behave very well to go with him someday.The one who suffered and knew his dad well was our oldest son.

Carlos would take the oldest boy to his job with him. He said, “I’ll buy him toys and he’ll be with me.” And it happened like that many times. And so he felt his dad’s absence and now he says he remembers him, but his memories are vague. The others don’t remember him at all.

And one day, since I was going crazy, I said I would go and look for him because he’s not dead. Maybe I was weak or sick, and I started walking with the idea that I’d find him. My mother-in-law followed me and asked me where I was going. I told her to the store, but it was 5:00 in the morning. So she told me that nothing was open.Then I went to the doctor and he said that if I couldn’t accept what had happened, I would go crazy and there were already many at the asylum.

I got frightened because I had my kids, I had to fight, and I’d cry then at night, so that they wouldn’t see me, and I’d ask God to help me fill that emptiness I had in my heart.And then, I went to my mother and she made a ruda cup of tea (a natural antidepressant) for me. That helped me. The doctor had said that he’d give sedatives, but that I would get used to them at some point, and they wouldn’t help anymore. I decided I’d rather pray to God to help me, because it was terrible, four kids, what was I to do?

When my husband was alive there was always that help, we both worked. Carlos was a very good father. He was responsible. For instance, when the children were sick, he would make the decisions, we were two people working together. But when I was left alone, I had to figure things out on my own, and if I didn’t have the money, I had to find it.When he was here, he’d do that, so that short time was good for me.Then, it was hard because one way or the other I had to solve any health or school problems. But, after he was gone, it was terrible for me. But I really thank God because He helped me forget him since it has been already twenty years. It’s not the same as it was when it had just happened.

Later, I was working as a teacher in San José, and it was terrible there, too. There were people with covered faces arriving, taking people from their homes, killing them at the market and when I went on the bus they would look at you and at pictures they were carrying…It was terrible and many people died, even entire families, kids, parents, and I thought that we were lucky not to have been with my husband, or we would have all been caught. God knows.

Thank God that I decided that I didn’t want another man, I didn’t want to marry again, I would be with my children and I’d work for them. Because another man might love me, but not my children. So, I said no, no, no. I worked, then I went to the university, I got a scholarship, and studied for three more years to be a teacher, then two more, which means I was very busy. That helped me because before that I was like a broken record, dreaming every night about my husband.

We lived together only eight years. Carlos was very friendly, everybody said that. He always said, “Good morning, good-bye”. And he also had that desire to help. He said that he’d help whenever he could. And for instance, my daughter’s husband, he sometimes says: ‘Let’s go have fun’ and he invites us to join him. But I tell him, “No, keep your money because you may need it”. But my daughter says that he’s like that, giving, and that is good, too. And Carlos was like that; he had a big heart, he talked and laughed.That’s how he was, friendly, smiling.

And I know it’s hard alone with the kids, but they have turned out good, they don’t have bad habits, and I keep telling them that we have to believe in God because that is very important. Because there are families with the mom and dad and the children are into bad habits, so I’m thankful to my mother and everybody because they have supported us, and I’m with my children now. Many people ask me why I didn’t get married again, they said my children would get married and leave, and I’d be alone again. But I think, I don’t want another man because he’s not going to love my children. And I thank God because I was able to survive that difficult time.

When my oldest son and my daughter finished third grade, they had to go to the capital to study, and I didn’t make enough money. So, I decided to change jobs to get another one that paid a little more.At that time, teachers didn’t earn much.Well, they graduated from high school, but I told them they have to go on to the university.Then, when my son was in his third year studying architecture, I told him that I couldn’t help him anymore because I had to help his brothers, too. So, he looked for a scholarship. I talked to the people at Fundación para los Estudios y Profesionalización Maya (FEPMaya) who suggested he send his application. That’s when he started being helped,thanks to all of you. Now, my other two children are just starting at the university and I tell them to follow their brother’s example because he would stay in on Saturdays and Sundays studying, he wouldn’t sleep all night. He is very committed, and, thank God, he is almost finished.

So, I have these two other sons that I’m trying to get through the university because it’s not enough just to have a high school diploma. And I tell my children that, thank God, they graduated because there are many mothers that couldn’t afford to send their kids to school. Even though my salary was not much, I had enough to pay for education and I thank God for everything He has given us because we have gotten ahead, even though we don’t have everything. I have spent most of my money for education, even though we don’t have many clothes, because there are families with a lot of money and clothes and cars, but they don’t have an education. My daughter got married, and I’m happy with the other three.

And I tell the children that life is short, we should love each other, we are here today, but we may not be tomorrow.That’s how life is, with so many dangers, and I always tell them that we go to church and that respect for God helps us not to do bad things, mainly because we may die tomorrow, and it’s not good to die in sin.

Well, that all happened, but it was twenty years ago. Yes, it’s sad. But my children are already grown, I have grandchildren, time goes by fast. I can’t forget, but time helps to not feel the same pain.

Thank you so much, also for knowing you. And now, rest, because it’s late.

by

Carlos’s brother

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.


 

by

Carlos’s father

I have a good book, a lot of information is in that book. And if you want to get the author, I can give it to you in the weekend and you can find it or we can try to.When the violence started, the Army went to rape the women, all the pretty women. So people got angry. The Army went to cut the milpa (corn) fields. We know all of that because of the news. Here we still don’t have any of that but we hear it. So, my son , Carlos, who was a technical nurse in rural health and was working in… in a health center. So the guerrilla got there too and they went to the health center to steal medicines. Then the Army and the mayor told him that he was a guerrilla man. Because he let the guerrillas in when they came for help, so they had the wrong information against him. He realized this and went to another town, to work at a farm there. There was a lot of violence there, so he went to look for work in the capital city.  I don’t know if they followed him, but he was working there and he lived in the capital city . But one day, June 30th, no, June 5th, they gave him a check to go and change… June 5th, 1985, he was kidnapped, he was getting the money out of the bank and the kidnappers were from the G2 . I’m going to tell you a little because to say a lot I need a very long time. So, a few days we are looking for him, but we can’t find him, crying, going all around. Then, Marco Antonio, who is the boss, looked for him too. So we could communicate with them and we realized that the first day they went to the office of the emergency police and then to the Army General Quarters.

I think it’s the emergency police of the Army. Then, he was tortured cruelly for three days and they said they didn’t find any wrong doing with him. Then, they send him to the General Quarters for his death. We were negotiating, but at the last minute they said that it wasn’t their choice but they couldn’t let go anyone that was intelligent, otherwise, they may spread the word of what has happened. Then, on July 5, 1985 another son was captured. He is a lawyer. His “fault” was that he worked at a coop as the manager. And since they talk about Peasant Unions in that that group, they consider that everyone that works there is a communist, guerrilla, terrorist. This is what we have suffered…

Translator: And someone from the Army came to tell that they killed your son or how?

Carlos’s father: Nothing, we didn’t hear anything from the Army. We tried for a year, and then we learned that Carlos had been at the Army Quarters in Chimaltenengo. That’s how we knew he was dead. (We learned this from) Only through other people who do business with the Army. They disappeared. Were they killed in Chimaltenango? Or are they alive? We still have hope that they may return one day or they are dead already, we don’t know it.

Translator: He said that there is a person, Marco is his name, from him they had the information that Carlos was alive. But to negotiate they went to the Army and to other groups and finally they said that it’s really bad for the Army if they let him go because…. So then, they moved him to Chimaltenango and from there, they don’t know. They didn’t tell Marco if he’s alive or he’s dead, or what.

So they never found his body?

Carlos’s father: For 2 years we went to the morgue in Guatemala. There were many corpses there, tortured, but we couldn’t find them. And at the end, I don’t know whether the man  was telling the truth. I trusted him, he’s an evangelical called Miguel Gomez. We did business and he said, “I will go there and get some information if your two sons’ names appear there”. He went to look in the book where the Army records the names of the dead and he said he didn’t find the names of my sons. We gave him 3,000 quetzales. That’s the only information he gave us.

When I was in (name of town) they said that the Army made the people go patrolling and  it was on February 4, 1982 and it ended on October 20, 1988. And when I went there, around 9 p.m. that people got together to talk, the mayor, Osorio and the Ramey went to…. And they killed him, they burned him with gasoline. And they put the body(ies) where there was hay to burn them, and that’s why he can’t stand it anymore and left. And since my other son, Lazaro worked at a Coop, Union Campesina, they supposed everybody who worked there was a communist. When he was there he started a project to export cauliflower, broccoli and arracachina. But, since he was in the group with the peasants, they thought they were training him to be a communist or guerrilla. So, they went after him, the police, and he ran. He complained to someone, “What is it that I’m doing, I’m just working, and why does the police follow me?”. So, that person went to the police and asked them why they were following him if all he’s doing is he’s working. So, they let him go. A year after that the Army came to his home and he wasn’t there, but they chased him and got him. That’s his great fault, to be working, to study law. That’s the great “wrongdoing” that my sons committed.

Also Francisco, my other son was there too but when he realized that the Army had been around too much, he decided to flee. I don’t know whether it was psychological, or he was also being persecuted. He went to live to another country for 20 years. And that’s why he is alive and came back now, after the peace was made, but about 10 years after it was made… because when they signed the peace they continue to kill people, since they don’t respect peoples’ dignity. The Army here is not human, they are wild beasts because they think they own Guatemala and life itself. They don’t respect God.

Francisco escaped. But I didn’t know where. We cried because it was all very sad. I had already thought that my son, Francisco, was dead. And since the Catholic priests worked a lot with the people, a priest from Spain came and asked me, “Are you Doroteo? that’s good. I’m priest Juan”, and we started talking about my sons’ kidnappings. “How many children do you have?” he said. “Are they all here?” No, 2 were kidnapped and my son- in-law, but the other one wasn’t kidnapped, he escaped. The priest said “I feel so bad for you. Do you suspect that he’s in the mountains”? And I couldn’t say anything.

He (the priest) pulled out a portfolio and he said he knew that man… “Francisco is alive?” Here there is a letter. I didn’t know what to do, but it’s better that he doesn’t come back here until there is peace. After a few years, we communicated and I went to look for him and I found him. I got one son back. About the other two ….I don’t know anything. What can I do, that’s life. But here in Guatemala we think they (the Army) should go to the mountains and fight with the guerrillas that are armed. But not with the people that are at their homes. I’m angry too. The mayor was killed here because the Army commander is the one that kills everybody. I also am on a “black list” of people and I pray to God nothing happens.

In 1987, when we did protests and went to the Palace and the police was there and I told them that they were killers and they killed mostly indigenous people. Because what is more prominent here is discrimination. Well, I accused the Army and I have a copy of the words I said.

In 1985 and ’86 I left from here and went to look for them (my sons) everywhere, hungry, without anything. Then, in 1987, I wrote this and went directly to the Palace. “Christ died because of the truth, but I confront you to go to God’s court. There is justice there, and if my sons are criminals, or you are the criminals, we’ll confront before God’s tribunal.”

I said: “Mister President, Ministers, Minister of Defense, Army Generals,… and (search your) conscience… because you are the ones that kidnapped my sons, and if you believe in God, you still have time to free them. And as the Holy Bible (and I pulled it out), because the ones that pretend to be Christians like Rios Montt”.So that’s how I made it clear on a tape but I don’t have it right now. So I told them that and I’m still alive.

I have 2 grandsons who are traumatized. They’re Lazaros’ (his son-in-law) sons. Well, now we don’t cry that much during the day, but my wife , sometimes at night, says “wake up, wake up, why are you crying”? We cry in our sleep, at night. Day and night, always in tears. When Lazaro disappeared one of his sons was already born, maybe a year old, the other…
Carlos’s father: Since I’m a Christian, Catholic, the priests always come to see me, to give me fortitude. One day they were going to tell me who were the accusers, but I didn’t want to know because it’ll be troublesome. My conscience is at peace, it doesn’t matter if I cry day and night. There are certain songs that they used to like and one night my wife heard one and started crying. I’m sure I won’t forget until the day that I die. And for that reason… for instance the Army, they are not ignorant, they are scientific about it. I waited because in 1985 I realized that my sons and son-in-law Felipe were taken to Zone 6, to the Police. And then to the General Quarters. Then, they found those documents and maybe Carlos’ss father will show up one day, if they follow human rights and maybe he’ll appear. But…

Thank you. Because here in Guatemala there are thousands in the same situation. For instance there is a historic story that here the ones that are left, since they were not captured, the young ones, left. So, they captured the mother and sent her to jail. Then, the son, the one they were after, a Catholic, went to the priests to be confessed and asked them to give him the last blessing because he was going to be killed so that his mother could be free. So, they gave him Communion and the mother was let free. That’s a very deep pain because the mother and the father are alive but the son gave his life for his mother, That’s very cruel.

When one does God’s will, He saves you. For instance, I realized I am on the “black list” but, thanks to God I haven’t been killed. But, I don’t stop being charitable to others for love to God and my brothers. Many people fled. I received them in my house. And I don’t care if I’m killed for them. If there is work, I give them work.

Translator: He decided to tell you one more story,  about what people had told him happened in Chocolo.

The Army got there and tied all the men with a rope. Then, they told the women to kill a few chickens, make lunch and so they wouldn’t kill their husbands. Then, they took all the 15 year old pretty girls to the mountains and raped them. Around 3 p.m. they killed the men. What criminals. The women fled and they told me about it. This is very sad about Guatemala and they don’t understand that in the US. The Spaniards also killed our people, took our gold, our land. We are poor and the sons of Spaniards took our farms, more than 500 years ago, and then came back to kill us. As one man said: “we, the indigenous, are saints, we are not killers”. But if we had arms now, I’d kill them. We were born good, but with everything that has been done to us, we became rebels because we can’t stand it anymore.      

by

Porfirio

 In Santa María where I live, we didn’t hear about all this, and some people even today don’t know if there was war or not. Perhaps recently they have heard that there was fighting between guerillas and the army, but really what happened they have never found out. In 1992 there was a massacre in El Aguacate of San Andrés Itzapa, because they showed it on the TV news, but not too many people from our village saw it because not everyone had a television.

But it was always said that there were guerrillas and the army, but really what was going on the people didn’t know, I am including myself. I only learned this a long time later from what was reported in the newspapers, even though not everything that was happening was told there. I became more aware of all of this where I was studying (later) because there they did tell what was really happening and it wasn’t until then that I became more interested in what was going on in Guatemala.

What I did know about was what they called ‘forced recruitment.’ The military made two attempts to take me away, but I was only 13 years old. My father came and talked to them so that they wouldn’t take me, but, yes, at that time in Santa María and Santiago, the two towns were competing for who hadthemostyoungmeninthearmy.Infact,Santiagoistheone that has more men, they even didn’t have to recruit them, they just showed up on their own because they had that much desire to belong to the Guatemalan army. But they didn’t really know what they were headed to. It wasn’t until they were already in the army that they realized what the reality was. Much later they repented having joined up, but they couldn’t get out at that time. Because if you left they killed you, they searched for you, and they killed you because you were a defector from the army.

One of the things that went on in Santa María were the civilian self-defense patrols. But really they didn’t do anything, they just presented themselves on Sunday, they marched all day, they were trained in all kinds of combat, and then they made rounds of the town at night.There were two shifts, they started from 6:00 to midnight, and then another group came at midnight until 6:00 in the morning.The army came once a month and stayed for a week. Seeing all this, the people did not know what was happening, as I have told you, and let me say again, many people from my village really did not know what happened in Guatemala.

I myself did not have the experience of something like a family member who disappeared, but you heard about these things and dead bodies appeared on the outskirts of the village. Three or four tied up or thrown in the tall grasses, but they were not people from our village, they were people from other places. And the violence and the bodies that appeared at that time were people who had been kidnapped, or people that they said belonged to the guerrillas, this is what you heard, and later no one said anything.

The most I ever heard directly about the violence was from a guy I’d gone to school with. He joined the army and became a Kaibil, one of the special commando forces, you know, they’re the ones who wear maroon berets? They have a patch on their uniform that’s a blazing sword.A lot of the boys wanted to join because those uniforms are really nice, and they thought they’d look really handsome and the girls would like them.Also, I think they got paid a little more.

I ran into this guy in a bar in the City several years later. I almost didn’t recognize him, his eyes were bloodshot, he was so drunk he was falling down. He grabbed hold of me, and started talking. He told me things he’d done, that are so terrible, so disgusting and degrading, I’ve never told anyone.  You wouldn’t believe the things he told me. He’d been a nice guy, a little wild, but still a good person, when we were in school. Now he was a crazy man. He said he’d done things that made him hate himself. He hated himself so much, all he wanted to do was drink.  No one in our town would talk to him. He was a young guy, too. Now it seemed like his life was over.

I believe that one of the objectives of the civil war was to exterminate the poor people, or exterminate the indigenous people, because the majority of those that were in the army were indigenous, and those that made up the guerrillas were also indigenous, and they were the ones killing each other. One of the objectives of the people in power in Guatemala was to finish off the indigenous people, so that they could remain in power, and maybe they partially achieved it. But the majority of the country is still indigenous; they are the people who are still struggling to survive and to get ahead. Guatemala is the only country in Central America that still has lots of indigenous people. So I think the people in power believe that the only way to maintain control is to keep repressing them, abusing them, in different ways that still exist in Guatemala.

I think that there are many consequences that are a result of the war, there are still problems that exist and this has made the country very unstable. In reality, I think that signing of the peace accords has not really changed much, because the same social problems that existed even before the war exploded still exist. Maybe what has changed is that now you don’t hear of the guerillas, but the army is still in power. Here in Guatemala the military is who is in charge, not the government.

by

Mateo

I was between 8 and nine years old in 1982 during the worst part of the war. We were in a town near where there were massacres. But we were lucky that they did not continue with the massacres, they stopped about 4 or 5 Kms. from my town. The military came to my town but they were tired of killing . So, in my town they just rest, but all the men get together to receive the military and around 5 or 6 p.m., the military arrive at the school and talk with the men in the community and say they want food. So, the men go back to their houses and bring all the food they can for the military and the military sleep that night at the school, in our community, in Santa Eulalia.
Our people used vacuum sealers in the military camp and I really like this idea, highly recommended for everyone. Read more about vacuum sealers on the shark rocket review that’s come out recently. It has everything you need to get started.

In the morning before the military arrive, the people who see the massacres run from the military walk white ghosts.  In my village, the people who were fleeing said to my mother and father “let’s go, the military are coming”. My father and mother say “No, this is my home, I can’t abandon my home”, and everybody left by midday, but my father and the community waited. I don’t know why but they all waited. They say, “If we’re going to die, we die, but we won’t leave.”

It was lucky, when the soldiers arrive they don’t do anything. They  said “We’ll guard tonight and you guard tomorrow. You can go home to rest”. So, it was like an option to wait for death, to die at home. But, that night with the military there, my father and mother pray to God together, to the God that doesn’t exist, but they all pray. All my family got together. I was very little…

All of my siblings were born by then, there are 8 of us, the little ones and the older ones with my father. So, we pray that night but I don’t understand then, not now.  My parents cry and pray. I was 8 or 9, I didn’t understand, but nothing happened during the night. The next day, the military return to town and go in the military trucks to the military base in Huehue, so luckily nothing happened to us. They were tired of so many days and nights just killing, so when they got to us they just wanted to rest and nothing else.

What did your parents tell you?

They already knew about the massacres , how they happen before.  When the military come they already know everything, they hear that the military kills people. Women, men, houses, everything…they know.

Yes, they know.  My father mostly, maybe because of pride, was trying to organize the civil autodefense groups. They voluntarily got together and they take the Guatemalan flag and welcome the military, so it’s like a good relationship. Because if they are not welcomed, it is as if the groups were guerrillas.

It’s just a warning from the military. That’s why my father talked a lot with the military. He’s like a friend of theirs because he belongs to the civil autodefense group. In the past, my father was the commander in chief for about 4 years. But later on, in 91, 92, 93, there were no problems with killings.  With the past commanders there were.

My village is very big. The military were killing in communities far from the city where there’s no newspaper. But my town is close to the city, so it’s more difficult for the military to kill.

Rios Montt’s killing policy comes from a mix of different cultures. It’s called “model towns”. He uses the United States system for killing. Before, his policy is to create cooperatives in the mountains. He says that “the land is free”. So the people who have no money or land go to the mountains to a town or community. One community here and another one there. His program of model town I think lasted for 3 or 4 years. So it’s a mix of cultures like Quiches, Kachiquel, Mam. Ladinos, Espanol, in one community: this is Rios Montt’s plan so that they can’t communicate, they can’t organize.

They are from different towns, for instance, people in one community that don’t have land or money. But Rios Motts offers them an agricultural economy, INTA politics (National Institute of Agricultural Land). They give them land but in the mountains. They have a house, school, church, there in the north, so people travel to live there. And people from the capital that have nothing also go there but after 2 or 3 years. Rios Montt sends the military to protect the people from guerrillas. And then, when there are military in each town, Rios Montt starts to kill the people in model towns.

It’s politics. First they promote it, then they kill. But this is very common in the north, as you see it’s the jungle, there are mountains, communication is not possible and the international community can’t see it. My town is in the north, but not in the mountains. There is newspaper to know if they kill. Generally, in the radio they say it’s the guerrillas, but the guerrillas are the people who escape a model town. So the military look for them in the mountains and it is there where they kill.

You know the conditions, the discrimination, racism, because the idea that ladinos have is that the indigenous, Indians, are the problem in Guatemala. For instance, Miguel Angel Asturias, the Nobel Prize in literature, is the first racist. His thesis is about evaluation of indigenous and ladinos. Whether the indigenous are intelligent or not. He’s very racist. Racism starts there. He’s an intellectual, it’s a racist investigation. And the people now are not intellectuals, but they are racist. So, the problem is racism.

Rios Montt believed that Guatemala doesn’t progress because the indigenous are uneducated, lack hygiene, don’t shower. That they don’t have good habits, that was the problem that kept Guatemala from progressing. Then, it’s better to kill, genocide, to kill the indigenous culture because they are the problem for Guatemala. This is the main problem, racism.

But, since there are many indigenous people in Guatemala and few ladinos, then, if the indigenous population grows, it’s a problem for ladinos. And it’s a problem now because the indigenous have an education. Ladinos don’t like it because each time there is a Maya professional at the university, it’s like substituting a ladino in a profession. Because Mayas are bilingual and ladinos are not, then, since it isn’t good for ladinos, it makes it harder for indigenous people to graduate from the university. Before, about 20 years ago, only the ladinos had an education. But now it’s different. 20 years ago, the ladinos were teachers at the university, at the elementary school, administrators at the court, in medicine, at the bank, everything was ladino.  But now there are many teachers that are indigenous or bilingual.

About 5 years ago I had a lot of problems with discrimination. It was hard on me. But for about 3 years, I have been changing because I don’t want any more problems with Ladinos. I want to share, but generally, I can’t talk with a Ladino.

There are very few Maya, about 10%, who get a university education.

For example, in my field, Agronomy, generally, there are not many women, it’s mostly men. But, about 20%  of the Agronomy students are indigenous. But it’s different in other fields.

Maybe a little more, but it never reaches a 50% of indigenous people. Because, generally you need to live in the city, and the majority of the indigenous don’t live there. They live in the mountains, in the rural areas, and in order to study in the city they need a job to pay for the university, rent and food. So, one of the problems for them to study is the economic issues. Another one is the social pressure against indigenous people. It’s like it’s not possible to leave that low position. Indigenous (are believed) never have an education, they can’t work, they are not smart.

There’s the belief that the indigenous can’t do it. Then, in a rural area there is not much university culture. In a rural area, there are only teachers for secondary school, since the university is difficult for money and for the belief. There are many factors. But I think that it’s mainly the economic aspect, because there are many people that want to go to university, but can’t. But, you can see that in my university I never had an indigenous teacher. There were all ladinos. Not even in the secondary school, only in the primary or elementary school.

But now there are many indigenous teachers in elementary school and also in secondary school. But very few at the university. In my field there weren’t any, but in other fields there were some, but just a few, it hasn’t changed much.

Only in primary and secondary school, not at the university. That’s the system. In the university, if you are indigenous and want a job there, it is competiton for the intellectuals. For instance, I’m indigenous, and at the university I bring an indigenous point of view for the students. But the Ladinos don’t want that. They usually believe an indigenous that is not intelligent.

Because my ideology is peaceful there is no problem working in the university with Ladinos. But, if I am very extreme, the Ladinos don’t like me because I am competition for them.

And it is difficult to compete with Ladinos. And it is a problem for Ladinos, because the Ladinos don’t know the history, the political situation, no.

My friends are indigenous. I am toxic for Ladinos because Ladinos always talk about things that aren’t interesting, or they talk about cars or clothes, or they just talk about money. They never talk about things that are important for personal development or to develop the country.

Because in my university, in agronomy, we are drinking and discussing  political history. And always they are all against me because I know the history, I know the reality. But they are all against me. They say I am lying.

But I feel proud because I know the truth.

In my family all of my brothers are studying. My sisters not much. My first brother is very racist against Ladinos. Because of the system. And he’s studying a lot of the culture and now he has got a master in intercultural studies and he’s bilingual.

He speaks Canjobal, Espanol, but his specialty is in cultural-bilingüal in Guatemala. And he reads a lot of books about the cultural, and rascism, and he has strong ideas and in some way he taught us his ideas.

Have you talked with other people about your experiences during the violence?

In my family…well, we didn’t have direct problems with the military, with the violence… well, a little, but not as much as death. The one that died was my aunt’s husband.

But now we have the expositions to learn about and to accept that the reality we have in Guatemala is multicultural. We have Germans, hispanics, “Belgas”, different people from different countries. And the schools are bringing the children to see it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

by

Eliseo

I hope you understand the spirit of what I wrote, I hope it will be translated word for word, so that it won’t change the sentiment. Sorry if there is any mistake or some words crossed out, but each time I wrote, I became very nervous. If there’s anything you don’t understand, please ask me about it. I noticed that it feels very good to write about my past. I would like to write my story more technically, more orderly, so that it can be understood better, maybe someday I will be able to do it.  Thanks for listening and reading my story.

In this moment, I prepare myself to write my story, I try to remember everything possible, I’m going to try to write all that I remember and all that they have told me, it’s my own story— very sad, but my own. It’s a story that never has been told or listened to in its entirety, no one has ever interviewed me. I’m a victim that has maintained his story in silence, and I write it now hoping that those who read it believe all of it, please. I will not write any lie here, and I hope that the translation will be the most accurate possible so that it won’t confuse what I am trying to tell you.

It makes me very sad to remember that I was only five years old, when these wretched men took away from me what I most loved—they took away my father and my mother.We lived in a very humble house in the village of Pamumús (which in Spanish, means place of rainy weather).This village belongs to the municipality of San Juan Comalapa, in the department of Chimaltenango. It was a very humble village.  To get to it, you had to walk a lot of time through the mountains. I remember that you had to cross a river where I used to love to play.  My life for those first five years was normal. I played, laughed, cried, always had my parents and siblings near me. In my house we had chickens that gave us many eggs, pigs, some cows, and a dog that I played with (we had to leave all the little animals).  Then, what I remember is that one day they all left, and I was left only with my sister Luisa—they didn’t tell me where they went. What I remember is that that day they did not return. My family didn’t come back until the following day, but when they did, not everyone that had left returned.We never again saw my mother nor one uncle.

When I grew up, they told me that when they left me in the house with Luisa, they had gone to the graduation of my older sister, Patricia. My sister was going to receive her degree as a teacher in primary education. She studied in the nuns’ boarding school called the Indigenous Institute of Our Lady of Mercy, in Guatemala City. And due to the distance, they hadn’t been able to return to the village, so they stayed at my uncle’s house. Then, the next day, they started walking towards Pamumús, and as they went walking, some men blocked off their path, and without explanation, they took my mother and one uncle.Then they told my siblings and other family members that they should go quickly, without turning around to look, because if they didn’t, the men would kill them. They had to obey the orders of the damned soldiers because they were afraid of being killed, except my brother Pedro, who very bravely told them that they should take him instead of my mother, but they hit him and told him brusquely,‘No.’ I don’t know if they took anyone else. We never again saw my mother. My uncle emigrated, first to the Petén, and then to Mexico, because they were chasing him to kill him.

It’s not easy to remember and write this.  Because when one graduates, it’s a reason to be happy and have parties, these tragedies turned off our happiness. I think of how my sister must have felt in this moment—no one could explain why they had taken my little mother, nobody could give us an explication. But the nastiness of these people didn’t end there. I remember, some time had passed, (I don’t remember exactly how long it was). One night, when my mother was no longer with us, they knocked on the door.  We were very scared.  We lived with a lot of fear ever since they kidnapped my mommy. I remember that one of my brothers opened the door and a man asked for my father. My father came out to see what was going on (note that my father was one of the leaders of the village of Pamumús. He was a very active man, he liked to work for the family and for the village. He had a very strong character, and we had to obey him or he would punish us.) My father spoke for a good amount of time with the men, and afterwards, he spoke with my older brothers and then he went out into the darkness. Like always, they didn’t tell me anything of what was happening.

(When I was old enough, they told me that my father had to leave in a hurry because people were searching for him to kill him, and these men that had come knocking on the door had been sent by the military to kill him. But instead they just told him to disappear to make it look like he had been killed, and there was no other way but for him to escape and leave us to ourselves.)

I try to remember with accuracy how much longer we stayed in the village of Pamumús, but it’s not possible.The only thing I remember is that later, we left, walking in the mountains, but it wasn’t where we always walked, because I remembered well the path that went to San Juan Comalapa (since then I haven’t returned to Pamumús, my siblings have, but I could not return to this place. If I return, it could end up that I remember many things that would make me even more sad). We walked for a long time, carrying the least necessities possible.

Then we arrived at San Juan Comalapa, and we stayed the night in my uncle’s house.The next day, my siblings decided to travel to Antigua, Guatemala, since the School of Our Lady of Mercy had relocated to Antigua, and I stayed with my brother Pedro for some time in my uncle’s house. My uncle loved me very much—I remember that he bought me a pair of shoes, because I didn’t use to wear shoes very much in the village where we lived. But these shoes that he bought me hurt me, because I wasn’t used to wearing shoes. My sister Luisa stayed with my grandmother, she loved her very much, but Luisa didn’t feel good there and, for this reason, she didn’t stay there very long. Then one day my brother Pedro decided that we would go to look for my other siblings.We wanted to be together, so that was how we ended up traveling to Antigua to look for the School of Our Lady of Mercy. When we found my siblings, they had missed seeing us, but we couldn’t all be in this boarding school because it was only for girls. My sister Patricia spoke with the nun that was the director, to see if we could stay there for some time.The director accepted that we would stay for a while.The director helped my sister Patricia find a place where we would all be able to stay, and it was like this that we traveled to the capital and the director brought us to a boarding school called Hogar del Niño (Home of the Boy), that was directed by Italian nuns that took in orphaned boys. So my siblings just left me there. I remember that when they left me they told me they were going to come back, and that they were only going to buy an ice cream. I asked about my parents, of course, I didn’t know what had happened to them, and I cried and cried and cried until I didn’t have the strength to cry. I remember that it was very hard on me, because I couldn’t speak Spanish. I could only speak Kaqchikel and this school was mostly taught by Italian and Colombian nuns, and none of the boys spoke my language either. I remember that I failed the first year in the school, but in this year I learned to speak a bit of Spanish, and the next year I repeated the first year of school and had a Colombian teacher. She was a very good person, like my mother. She even wanted to bring me to her country, but I didn’t want to go because I wanted to be with my siblings, even though I rarely saw them.

Meanwhile, the director of the School of Our Lady of Mercy looked for a place where the rest of my siblings could stay, my two brothers—Pedro and Jorge—stayed in the Indigenous Institute of Santiago which was another boarding school for indigenous boys.What made me the most sad though, was what happened with my youngest sister, Laura.At that time, she was three years old, meaning that at the time my parents disappeared, she was only two years old, and it was she that most needed my mother’s care, she was only a little baby.They found a place called Mather Orphanage in Guatemala City that was directed by nuns. It was hard for them (my sisters) to get accepted to this school given that Laura was very small and needed special care. And Natalia, my other sister, wore the indigenous clothing of San Juan Comalapa, and she didn’t want to take it off. Only by much insisting did they get permission for the girls to stay at this boarding school.What they told me afterwards was that my sister Laura was close to dying because she was so tiny and the treatment and food wasn’t adapted for her and only thanks to God, did she survive. My sister Natalia stayed in this boarding school until she graduated as a skilled accountant, and my little sister Laura, she was only there until sixth grade, since Natalia had graduated and she didn’t want to be there alone. Natalia started studying in the University of San Carlos of Guatemala, but she couldn’t finish. Laura graduated from the School of Our Lady of Mercy as a teacher of primary education, and then began law studies in the University of San Carlos of Guatemala but because of problems, she couldn’t finish. Maybe some day my sisters can continue studying in the university.

My sister Luisa stayed in the School of Our Lady of Mercy until she graduated as a teacher of primary education.Then she continued with her studies in the University Rafael Landívar with a scholarship, and now she’s actually licensed in bilingual intercultural education.

All of us had different experiences in each school that we were at, but I want to refer to the Hogar del Niño where I ended up staying. I was there for six long years. I say six long years because they were not the best years. In the first year I missed my parents very much and I missed my siblings, since they visited me very little and I became very sad and cried a lot.  The nuns that cared for me couldn’t understand this, given that they had to care for many more boys and couldn’t care only for me. Moreover, they never told me why we didn’t go back to the village of Pamumús (though it was very humble, we were happy there), why we weren’t with our parents anymore.

I spent many sad moments, for instance, when the rest of the children’s families visited and when they were allowed outings to go to their homes, but nobody visited me and I didn’t have anywhere to go.

I remember especially when I was about ten years old.  They brought us to the doctor in the middle of the city—certain ones of us that had problems with our eyes—and on this occasion, we traveled by bus and the nun came with us to care for us, and I was so excited looking at the buildings, the cars, so many people, so many stores, that I didn’t notice when the other kids got off the bus with the nun. I was lost in the city, in a city where I had never been. I cried a lot, I didn’t know what to do. I walked for hours in the streets, until a policeman asked me, ‘Why are you crying?’And I answered that I was lost and that I studied in the school Hogar del Niño.  The police gave me one quetzal and left me on a bus, telling the driver that he should leave me at the Hogar del Niño. I rode alongside the driver, but surprise! he told me that we had arrived, and showed that here was the Hogar del Niño. I began to cry and I told him that this wasn’t the Hogar del Niño.  The driver gave me some food, since it was already lunch time, and I had no idea where I was.The bus had gone the whole length of the city, and then the driver continued his route and gave me directions that I should get off in the place that he would show me and that there, I would board another bus that had the number 10 on it (what luck that I could read and write).And that’s how I did it.When I got on the bus with the number 10, I felt more lost, since I didn’t know where it was going to stop, but I sat down next to the driver and told him that I wanted to arrive at the Hogar del Niño that was in Zone 7. He told that yes, he knew of the place.The bus took a long time to get to Zone 7 and every minute that passed, I got more scared, since I didn’t know the places that the bus was passing. I felt happy when I saw a market that at the time was called La Samaritana (actually it was called ‘La Económica,’ but it didn’t have any economy) and quickly I signaled the driver that I would get off here. Once I got off, I didn’t know what to do, I was very afraid of what the nuns were going to say to me. I walked and walked each step with more fear and urges to cry. At one point, I thought it was better to just stay lost, when all of a sudden I saw my brother, Pedro. I called him and told him what had happened, but before I could tell him everything, I had already started crying bitterly. He calmed me and brought me to the Hogar del Niño.The nuns were very happy to see me, because I had come back.They hugged me and told me that most of the nuns had gone out to look for me.They asked me to tell them how I got back on my own, but I couldn’t even tell them because I was crying so much. In that moment, I knew that there did exist people that worried about me, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted the love of my parents and my siblings.

This is only one of the things that happened to me, all of my siblings had different experiences. My sister Patricia could not care for six siblings. She started to work as a teacher in primary education, in a village in the municipality of Sumpango. Patricia had to walk a lot to get to the village, and she earned 80 quetzales (about $10) each month, which wasn’t even enough to support her, much less support her six siblings.

We had many sorrows of all types. Another of the things that at the moment didn’t seem very important because I was a small boy that had just barely started to understand the world, was when I started to travel alone to Antigua, one day my brother Jorge arrived to visit me, but only to tell me that I shouldn’t come to Antigua for a while because my sister Patricia had had her baby die, and no one was free to take care of me. I was left thinking a lot about why I had never had the opportunity to see my sister pregnant, and how she almost never visited us, and now even less since the loss of my nephew. It’s very painful to describe all of this, because at this time, I suffered from a lot of things that a normal boy wouldn’t have to suffer, and since this moment, I never again asked for my parents.

I studied six years in the Hogar del Niño, and then I studied in a different boarding school of Italian priests, called the vocational center of San José, and I studied there for three years. In this school, I had to skip the last year due to the fact that I didn’t want to be closed in anymore.

This next part of my story that follows is the part that very few know. Maybe it is the saddest because it was when I was older and could understand more about things, and on one occasion, my brothers Pedro and Jorge (they were studying in their final year in order to graduate as primary school teachers) brought me to the municipality of Sumpango, to a place where a man lived. My brothers were doing their work in Sumpango, and they lived with this man, and I also stayed with him once in a while.This man had a very kind wife and they also had a son. For much time we had many interactions with this family, but I asked myself, who would this man be? I never asked anyone else, just like I didn’t ask anything about what had happened to us in the past, and nobody told me about it. (Now I understand why they didn’t tell me about it.)

Little by little my siblings started to tell me some things, and what they told me caused me much sadness, and I couldn’t believe them. One day, talking with a friend of my siblings, he told me something that I do not forget.  This friend told me the man we had been going to visit in Sumpango was my father. I was dumbfounded and didn’t know how to answer him, because my siblings had told me that the soldiers had kidnapped and killed my mother and father. I didn’t tell my siblings what this friend had told me, until one day I told my brother, Jorge. He answered me that it wasn’t true, and that I shouldn’t believe the friend because he was joking. (The truth was that they didn’t want me to know, because then I might tell about it if the soldiers asked us). So I believed my brother more than the friend, because the man that was supposedly my father lived with his wife and son, so it was impossible that he be my father.

Three years passed, (in which my sisters Natalia and Luisa graduated as accountant and teacher, respectively) and during that time, I had the opportunity to go back to the man in Sumpango (I mention this man a lot, but I never knew his name, they only told me that he was a friend). He missed me a lot.The fact was that we always found this man living in a different place. We never found him in the same house, he changed houses constantly, but, well, when I returned to see him this time, he lived out in the fields, very far away from the center of the village. In fact, all the houses that he had lived in had the characteristic of being very far from the village.  We always had to walk far, and this time it was very far from the village.The man let us into his humble house and, as usual, he offered us something to eat or to drink. My brother, Pedro spoke for a good while with him in private and then the man gave us a box of tomatoes and other vegetables.We said goodbye, and we left.We were waiting for the bus when in one moment, Pedro broke the silence that had invaded to tell me the following: ‘This man that we come to visit so much is our father.’

(For whoever is reading these lines, I want them to know that in this moment, I spill some tears, I take a rest in order to be able to return to writing. It’s not easy for me to tell about this, I would like to overcome this, but it is very hard for me.)

I stayed completely quiet, because after 10 years, my father ended up to be this man that I had known for about 5 years. I asked myself the following questions: Why doesn’t he live with us? Why did he abandon us? Why didn’t they tell me this when I first met him?

I didn’t know what to say, I took this good man as a person that wanted to help us. (In the course of my life, there have been many people that have extended their hand to us to help us for no reason). I stayed absolutely quiet, I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know whether to start crying or leave running and hug him for the reuniting. But no, I didn’t do anything, nor did I say anything. Pedro didn’t say anything else to me, he just told me that they hadn’t told me before because I was too young, and that I wouldn’t understand. I didn’t protest at all, I didn’t say anything, I was completely confused. I never told anyone this, I didn’t have anyone I could trust that I could tell. During the nights, I thought a lot and cried a lot, I asked myself thousands of questions, like the following: why didn’t my father look for us earlier so that we could be together? Why does my father have another wife and, at that moment, he had three kids with the other wife? Was it possible that my mother also was alive and we just didn’t know where she was? I asked myself thousands of questions, but I didn’t ask them of anyone else. I swallowed everything alone. I lived and continue living always pensive, sad, timid, swallowing all of my problems. I ask my brothers very few things, but when we all get together, sometimes they start to tell about things that happened to us and I take advantage of this to learn about more things from my past, from our past.

I asked myself why my father looked to have another family, and I asked myself if my mother was maybe alive in some place in Guatemala or Mexico. It hurt me a lot that it was hard for me, but it was hard for me to say ‘dad’ to this man, since I had already known him, and had never called him dad. Moreover, I didn’t like that he had another family, because if he didn’t have the other family, he would have been able to live with us. During the trip home, nobody said anything, we all were very pensive. I thought and asked myself,‘When are we going to see him again?’ so that I could have the opportunity to ask the questions that I had always wanted to ask him.

The only person that knows more or less all of this is the woman Lucía, because after the re-meeting, I told her everything. She is the only person that has known how to listen to me. She has given me breath to keep moving forward. I told her how I didn’t feel comfortable calling him ‘dad,’ but that I respected him a lot. (I’m very grateful to Lucía for listening to me and understanding my tears.)

In Guatemala, we celebrate the 17 of June, the Day of the Father. On one occasion, I went to look for my father in the department of Chimaltenango. It was very hard, and I walked a lot, his house was very far away, but in the end I found him.  When I arrived, I found his wife and her kids, I entered the very humble house, and they offered me something to drink.Then I asked them about my father, and they told me that he had gone to work out in the fields (I was very sad because it was the Day of the Father and I thought that he didn’t know it.) I asked them where he was working and I went to look for him. I remember that I walked a lot, and I found him picking the crops. Since the crops were very small it was easy to see him. It affected me a lot to see him work, because when I found him, I saw him thoroughly, and I saw him working with a hoe. He worked very slowly. I slowly got closer, until he noticed I was there.

I greeted him, but I couldn’t say Happy Father’s Day! I don’t know why I didn’t say it, I spoke to him and asked him if he could give me a little time to talk with him. He told me that only if it would just be a moment, because the owner of the land didn’t want him to be resting.The only thing I said was that I wanted to know my story, our story. He began telling me the following:

In San Juan Comalapa, there are some very bad people. (My father told me the names of these people that are actually alive, but I couldn’t remember their names.) Some of these people were in love with my mother but since my father married her, they resented my parents. It was so much resentment that these bad people told the soldiers of the government of Rios Montt that my parents were guerrillas and that my sister Patricia was studying with the money that the guerrillas were giving her. It was for this reason that the soldiers had kidnapped my mother. After that some men sent by the army looked for my father to kill him, but thank God these men were not as bad, and they told him that they had been ordered to kill him, but that they knew him and that they knew he didn’t have anything to do with the guerrillas.They gave him the opportunity to go very far away so nothing more was ever known of him, and they went to inform the army that they had killed him and hidden the body. So that was how that same night he left the house and traveled to Escuintla. Sadly, at this time, the soldiers found out about everything, and they found out that my father was in a farm in Escuintla, and that was why he traveled to the Petén. He lived there for quite a while, and for all this time he didn’t know anything of our existence. He knew where we were living, but the soldiers also knew, and they were watching us to see if he would come to us. Afterwards, he made the trip to Sumpango, and that was when my siblings were close to him, but he was already living with another woman and had one child with her (he told me many things that he saw and lived when he was in the Petén, he saw many massacres, and this affected me a lot. Thank God that he was still alive and we were, too.)

My next question was,‘And my mother?  What happened to my mother? Is she alive?’ He told me that he found out that the soldiers had killed her and buried her in a clandestine cemetery that was in a military camp in San Juan Comalapa.

I said goodbye with much sadness, and I was very angry with the stupidity of the men who had assumed that my parents were involved with the guerrillas. My parents were humble workers, they didn’t know anything about communism, and for this stupidity, the men changed the destiny of our lives.

Actually in the secret cemetery located in San Juan Comalapa, they are doing exhumations and they have found more than one hundred corpses of people that had been buried in this place.When I went for the first time to this place, I felt very moved to see it. In a pit where some anthropologists were working on the corpses of a group of people that looked like they had been buried alive, and that was what the anthropologists commented. In another pit you could see remains of people that had had the so-called ‘shot of grace’, others were mutilated with the head between their legs. I don’t want to keep mentioning them because the only thing that came to my head was, how did my little mother die? To be able to find the remains of my mother, I had to know how she was dressed the last time we saw her, and the only person who remembered, more or less, was my sister Patricia.We traveled to this place various times with the hope that we would find the remains of my mother. We are sure that her remains would be found in this cemetery because one soldier that was in this place at the time knew my mother and he told us that she had been assassinated there.

I felt very sad when one friend from San Juan Comalapa told me that they had found a giant oven and that one soldier had given testimony that in this giant oven, they burned the people and that all that was left were their ashes.Then I didn’t want to know anymore, because I associated everything with the death of my mother. *

This is what has me so sad.  Why, for some stupid reason, did they kill my mother? For some stupidity they disintegrated my family. For some stupidity I lost my language, I lost my culture, we lost our property, because never again did we return to our village. In the end, we lost everything. In reality, it’s for my mother that I cry. She didn’t have to suffer this. I don’t know in what way she died.These people did not have the right to take away the life of my saint mother. She didn’t deserve it.

Sweet, darling mother, wherever you are, I want to tell you that I love you very much and I will never forget you.You know very well that someone will do you justice, I love you so much!

But, thank God, that with all our limitations, all our suffering, and thanks to all the people very far from our family that helped us come out ahead.Thanks to the Maya Educational Foundation that granted me a scholarship, that when I graduate, I have to reimburse, but I think that all is possible.

I hope to graduate as a lawyer and notary in December of 2005, and work for the people with few resources. Because I have been thinking that when we, in some moment in our lives needed help, we didn’t get it because we have scarce resources.

I would like for peace, tranquility, justice and love to reign in Guatemala. I would like all Guatemalans to be equal, and for there to be no discrimination on grounds of race, culture, religion, ethnicity, and ways of thinking. All of this influenced me to study the career of law, because now that I’m in the situation I’m in, I couldn’t study the career that I truly wanted to study, which was architecture. I couldn’t because of the time that the career requires and for the expenses associated with it. I worked on the weekends, from Friday nights, Saturday, and Sunday all day and, if necessary, I work sometimes during the week, but I am happy in my career, because I can help many people.

I’m very content, because I’m forming a relationship with my girlfriend, Ana, she’s waiting for a precious baby.And I will be a responsible father, I don’t want my child to miss the affection of a father, I want my child to be a good person, and when my child grows up, I will tell him of my past so that he can reflect and appreciate life and learn how to respect the rights of everyone in the world. I’m very happy with Ana, because she understands me. She is with me through the good and the bad, she’s hardworking, and I know that she will be a good mother. I love her very much.

I hope that you understand what I have written. I tried to write as coherently as possible, I think that I wrote some things that maybe for some (people) aren’t important, and also some things I have left out. Maybe it is because I forget in the moment, or because maybe someone in that moment would think I was exaggerating. Of course this isn’t my whole story, but if there are any questions over some part that isn’t quite clear, you can ask me about it however you want. I don’t want you to feel embarrassed to ask.This will help me remember things that I’ve forgotten.

Finally, I want to thank you for your humanity and solidarity that you have shown towards the Maya people. I want to thank you for being interested in my life and those of my friends, and like I mentioned in the beginning, no one has ever been interested in my past, in my story.  This is the first time that I write my story. Sometimes, someone that hasn’t lived this will think that I’m exaggerating.

I hope you understand me, really understand, since in one moment, I felt that I was in control of what I felt. I felt that I would tell my story with ease and calm, but it’s not like that. (At the group meeting on) the 11th of March, 2005, at 3:00 in the afternoon, I noticed that I hadn’t overcome my feelings. On listening to each story of my companions, I felt very affected and when it was my turn, I felt that I had a knot in my throat and I couldn’t speak. Since then I have been very sad, remembering many things, there are moments when I am alone that I start crying.When I walk to the library, people have seen me crying, and at night I cry regularly. It gives me sorrow to tell this, but someone will think that I exaggerate.The truth is that only the one that has lived these injustices feels it and understands it.

I want to tell you that I cry for the death of my mother, the way that she died, the reason for her death (it’s a stupid, senseless reason). I cry because I can’t give her a Christian burial and that there isn’t a place where I can leave her a bouquet of roses. In conclusion, I cry for the death of my mother.

Thanks for being my friends, for listening to me and understanding my past.This is what happened to me and I don’t wish it on anyone else.

by

B’alam

I can tell if someone is Maya or Ladino, because I can just sense it. Sometimes Maya people try to act more like Ladinos. Some professional Maya women do not dress the traditional way. It’s cheaper to wear ‘normal’ clothes than to wear Mayan, because we have to make them, and if we cannot, we have to buy, but it costs thousands of quetzales. It’s very expensive, and we don’t have enough money to buy even food.That’s why some people try to use cheap clothes for their children. But the children grow up with these clothes, and then their mentality is not Maya anymore. Because if they wear pants or jeans, then they see in the shops and they want to buy that, they are more automatically, they are…being like Ladinos.They are Ladinos. But sometimes they don’t think about it, they just do it. They don’t think it’s good, or not good, they just do it.

At the university 99% of the students are Ladino. I can tell who the Maya students are, but not everyone can tell. But the thing is, we don’t talk about our culture.We know, we feel Maya, but we are, in Spanish we say, bloqueado (shut down).

But we act like Ladinos, because we are afraid, and we grow up with this mentality from our parents.They are thinking to teach us Spanish when we are small, because they don’t want us to suffer.They want us to survive, to be happy.

But if I have children I will teach them my language. But I am one in a thousand Maya, because I think like this, because I recognize the value of culture and I have investigated our origins, what we did in the past.We are totally different than what we would have been, without the Spanish, the army and being forced to become slaves. We didn’t have time in 500 years, to growourscience,ourknowledge,ourspirituality,becauseitwas cut, cut, cut!

We invented the zero, and the Europeans didn’t have the zero at that time. So we have an exact calendar.We have mathematics and science. Even now I don’t know a lot about my culture. I live here, and I still don’t understand many things.

Ever since I was a little kid I didn’t play games or anything. I started working when I was five years old. I was a little farmer. And after that I was with my grandmother in the little shop she had in the market.We were traveling, buying things from one place to another one, and we were surviving like this. Later I had a stepfather, and he didn’t like us, and he put me and my sister on the farm. She was a farmer, working like a man when she was little. He would separate us, I was about a kilometer from my sister at another place in the mountain.And I have trauma because I saw snakes or something, and I was scared, because I was only five years old.

We could plant our food, but we had to work for these Ladinos who give us a piece of land to live, but we had to work from 6:00 in the morning to 6:00 in the evening, without lunch. I only have my breakfast and my dinner.That is why I am so small! This is still happening in Guatemala, with millions of Maya people.

I first went to school when I was nine. I didn’t speak Spanish.The teachers were Ladino, they prohibited us from speaking our language in school.We started laughing with each other, but we were not permitted to speak Poqomchi’.We had to speak Spanish without knowing any words.We have classes in Spanish, and we didn’t understand, and if we don’t understand they hit you on the head with a ruler.

I went to school only because my grandmother did everything she possibly could to send me to school. But my sister and brother didn’t go because they didn’t have any money to send them.When I was little my grandmother said that she could not pay any more for my studies. She asked me to find a job. So I went to ask in different private schools and public schools if I can continue going to school and how much money it cost every month. But at the end of the last year of grammar school, the principal of my school, he asked me—it was like an accident or a miracle—and he asked me, ‘Where do you live? What is your name?’ Because he didn’t know me because we were 1,500 students in that school. So in that moment he asked me where I live, who were my parents.And I say,‘I don’t have parents’ and then he offered me a job working with a dentist.

I needed to eat, I needed to study, I needed to pay for school.The principal was also looking for a scholarship for me, because my grades were high. I got a half-scholarship, but they only gave me the school fees, I had to pay my uniform, my books, everything else.

Later I got a job in a laboratory, and also in a photography studio, and I ask them not to pay me, just to give me food, and I will see where I can find some money, just ‘give me food and I will work for free’. And they accepted. But they did not want me to become a professional. So they fire me. After one month, they say, ‘Now we cannot give you food, so you have to leave. You don’t have a job anymore.’ So then I cannot pay for my studies, I did not have any food, and then I had to live on the streets again.

I have lived by myself since I was eleven years old. I had a teacher who asked me to go to live with his family, that they could help me and give me food,‘Because you are a good student, you should finish your career.’ But I felt so—how do you say?—without dignity, like they were insulting me too much. They weren’t! But I took it like that. I didn’t accept, I said, ‘Thank you, thank you very much, but I have hands, I am smart, and I can work to find a job. I love to learn and to be a student, and thank you for offering to help me. But I think I’m going to change my life, right now.’

So I took my stuff and I left school. I left Cobán and came to Antigua. I cried for four hours from Cobán to Antigua.Then I got work here. I thought maybe I could find a job with some organization because I speak two Mayan languages, and Spanish and also at that time I learned a little bit of French and English. I finished high school by correspondence. I started at the university in 2002; I’m studying International Relations. I like it because it’s very complete, because you know a little bit of everything of the world, economics, countries, everything.

I have had a lot of friends from Europe, but I didn’t have Maya friends. I used to when I was small in Cobán, but when I came here everything changed. I wanted to know Europeans, the white people, how they think, how they see the world, what they think about the Maya, and you discover that they see things totally different than we do. Maybe it’s normal. I cannot tell the white person about their own culture, and it’s the same thing with me.They just can think something about us, but they don’t know us. Tourists come here for vacation, not to learn. They take pictures and that’s all, like it’s an exotic thing. How do the tourists think they can understand it in a few months?

Some white people grew up with this anger, this racism. They hate the Maya.They think we are ugly, they think we are nothing and they want to live in a country without us.They were taught to be angry, taught to hate. And then they were shown,‘You can do this.They are nothing, they are Indians, they are the enemy to hate.’This is how they were brainwashed.Then they get crazy.This to me is not normal.

These attitudes still exist.When we go to the modern part of the City, they say,‘Ewww, this city, this part is not good anymore. Because there are Indians here.’ And that tells you they hate us. One time I went to a modern discotheque with one of my friends, and they didn’t let us in.They say,‘No, you cannot come in, you have to come with formal dresses.’ But my friend, she had on formal and expensive Mayan clothes. Because we have different clothes from what you use every day and from what you wear to a party, they are higher quality and expensive. She was dressed very elegant, and they didn’t let her in, just because she was Maya. A woman can be a doctor, lawyer, anything, and she can be treated like that, just because she is Maya.

During the violence the army tortured the women, they cut their breasts, and if a woman was pregnant they just took the baby, and then they killed them. They did things you don’t imagine that anyone could do.The Maya soldiers who were in thearmywereforcedtodothesethings.Youknow,someyoung people, they committed suicide after they did this. Afterwards they just couldn’t keep living.

Finally we are starting to write the history now.The people who did these things are still there, the army is still there, the government is still there, and the victims are here, but they are afraid to talk. The real truth is here, but there are only a few books where they talk about what really happened.

by

Kaqla

I was born on June 30, 1980. I was four months old when my father was killed by the soldiers…and, bueno (okay), my mother told me the truth about what happened.That we were persecuted by the army, we had to flee, and that we must not tell the truth to anybody, because our lives were in danger.We always had to invent a different history to tell people, because my mother told us that it was very dangerous to tell the truth to other people here in Guatemala City…My father Reyes and my older brother Daniel were murdered by the soldiers in 1980 in our village, Macalajau, Uspantán, which is in the Quiché Department in the north of Guatemala. Another of my brothers, Demetrio, was kidnapped [at that time]. My older sister, Bernadina, was kidnapped in 1983 here in Guatemala City.We have still not found her; she is still disappeared.

I want to say to you that for me, the war has affected me more than anything else in my life…we have problems, psychological problems. Oh, and the hardest part about the war is that we lost the process of our lives, we lost our childhood, many things that will never be able to be repeated.

My family, yes, had a direct participation in the war. My father supported the guerrillas, he was a person who was convinced that in our country things needed to be changed because the indigenous people are very poor and it’s very difficult to improve their situation. Life in the communities was very hard and my father thought it was necessary to fight, and so he was killed by the soldiers.

But my mother always told us the truth, we always knew the truth about what had happened. I think the most difficult was that we always had to lie, and we had to change our names, all of my family had different names. My brother, my sister, my father, my uncles, had been assassinated in my community, then in 1983 my sister was kidnapped, so we were still being pursued by the military.We had to change houses many times here in Guatemala City, and afterwards all of my siblings were put into schools in different places. I have family that escaped to Mexico, and family that fled to Spain, where they still live even after the war.

But, those of us who are students, we can still have a happy ending.We have the opportunity to study in the university. So, I think that this is what we have to value, we have to be thankful that we have this opportunity.We’re lucky to have this different story. But it’s not the common story, because other families are still living in poverty. Sometimes, when I look at the shoe-shiners, when I look at the people that are prostitutes, or all those people who are working as domestic servants, they have a situation different from ours.

That is, we are lucky in this sense, but I think that we haven’t been able to overcome everything that has happened.We are still suffering from racism, discrimination, exclusion, and we still live in a very divided society.Well, what I believe is that, well…for me, anyway, what most affects me… well….

Kaqla cried. His friends sat, staring away into their own distance, then, one by one they got up to touch his shoulder, bring him a paper cup of water, or walk out of the room. No one said a word.

What I believe is that we’ve lost a lot in the war. I mean, my father had an ideology, my mother, all my family, they actively participated in the changes of the country. I’ve already lost a lot of family, and we lost so much, and I don’t want the war to keep affecting me anymore, I want to overcome all these things, because I believe that until we are stronger ourselves, it will be difficult to support others.

There are a lot of people who are still affected, and they have to heal their wounds.We have to strengthen ourselves, as victims of the war, as survivors, because in the end, this is what we are. We are survivors. And although we are survivors, this doesn’t mean that they haven’t destroyed our lives.We lost the most important thing we had, our family relationships, right? We lost a way of life, of our existence, that we will never be able to get back. Never.

The feeling of surviving came from my mother who protected us.Along the way, we met many good people who helped us. Even though our future was already marked…my mother couldn’t speak Spanish, we were in such a big city, a racist city, and with eight kids, well, surely we would have had a different future than the one that we have now. However, we managed to defy destiny, and we’re alive.

If they ask me if I am resentful, no, I don’t think I’m resentful, but I think that these things hurt, and with much difficulty we will forget them, too.Yes, the pain and suffering lasted a long time, but I think that we can transfer all of this, or at least, what I have done with all the pain that I have, I have converted it into energy, that day-by-day allows me to continue. But during all of these problems I had many crises, emotional, psychological—very strong—and I have had to go into treatment to be able to go on. Because, yes, sometimes, you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

In the work that I have done, especially the cases of exhumations, I can see that some people are still very affected, when they are searching for their disappeared family members. I am aware that I’m not prepared to support other people, because I am also still very affected. I haven’t overcome this, and I don’t want to forget. Now more than ever, I want to have with me all that happened in the war, and I want to tell about it, because the war affected my mother a lot, and my brothers and sisters, and everyone who had to hide their history, and who had to invent histories, who had to change the truth so that nothing more would happen to them.

When I first went to school I wanted to study journalism, but instead I studied law, because I became aware that many human rights abuses were committed against us, simply because we were indigenous. I believe that our profession can help us a lot, and that as a lawyer I can contribute to the changes in my country, and work to avoid the abuse against the Maya, that still persists to this day.

Right up until this present moment, we have had to fight a lot and suffer through all of this, to be able to get back our rights. I think all children should know the truth of what happened, they have to know the history of their country. If not, the memory is lost. In the case of my nieces and nephews—yes, at least I have nieces and nephews—I think they should know where they come from, who their grandfather was, who their aunts and uncles were.

They may live in a different situation now, but they should know the truth, because this is the only way they are going to truly understand, and be able to take a coherent point of view in discussions, and be people who really give a damn. And, moreover, they should fight against all the horrible acts committed in the war, so that they don’t ever happen again. For a long time we were afraid, we were afraid because of what had happened to us, and of what was going to happen to us. We thought of forgetting what had happened to us, but more than ever I think that we should not forget.All of the people of the world must know what has occurred here in Guatemala.