Alta Verapaz

I just got back from a trip to Alta Verapaz, a beautiful region of Guatemala with everything from coffee-growing highlands to hot flatlands covered in banana, rubber tree and African palm plantations owned by Guatemala´s elite. As I mentioned in my last post, my co-worker and I were on a mission to carry out follow-up investigations of cases that were made public by survivors and family members of massacre victims in the U.N.-sponsored truth commission.

The first massacres that we were interested in were from villages located in the eastern part of Alta Verapaz. This was my first trip as the official driver of the group, and it was complete with steep, winding, one-lane dirt roads (I will avoid numerating the near head-on accidents that I was almost in for my mother´s sake!). We even had to pass through a few rivers, which I have to admit was thrilling! (see photo to right). What we discovered upon reaching these rural villages was that of the cases we took on, none is left to be exhumed. This was for a variety of reasons, some of which were a reality check for me on the effects of war on civilian populations.

In the first village at which we arrived, we were able to meet with the leaders of the village, all of whom were men, as is the tradition in Mayan towns. We met with them in village school, a simple wood structure with a dirt floor, no walls and a palm thatch roof, where they told us that that exhumations of the massacre there had taken place nearly a decade beforehand, likely by another of the Guatemalan forensic anthropology organizations (there are three of us in total). We asked them about the victims who were named on our list, but were only able to collect limited information. Of all of the massacre survivors from the town, only one elderly man still lives there. Everyone else, fearing for their lives, fled to other nearby towns and never came back.

This is exactly what we found a few days later in the villages near Coban, in the western part of Alta Verapaz. All of the survivors and family members of victims of the killings were impossible to locate, because everyone fled to other places. Furthermore, the oppression by the military was so strong and long-lasting in the area that many people were displaced multiple times. So it´s not as easy as finding out that the survivors from on town now live in the next one over; they could be in any nearby town, or in the larger Cobán, or even in Guatemala City. Or as was the case with one family in the Panzós area, they may have even gone into exile in Canada, the United States, or Southern Mexico. An estimated 30,000 Guatemalans migrated to the United States between 1980 and 1990, for example, largely because of the war.


So after meeting with people in numerous villages throughout Alta Verapaz, my co-worker and I came away with next to nothing in terms of future exhumations. However, we did spend a long while speaking with a charming and sweet tailor in a small town, Don Policarpo. He is a leader of his community, who is interested in spreading the word about the availability of exhumations. He told us that he wishes that he could exhume his three uncles who were kidnapped and killed by the army, but he has no idea where to look; they were disappeared and never heard from again.

All in all, the trip reminded me of how much I enjoy traveling throughout the rural areas of Guatemala and getting to know the people there, albeit due to harsh and sad circumstances.

After an embarassingly long hiatus from the blog world, I have finally decided to come back! I realize that I do have a lot to tell even when I feel like it´s just another day, another Quetzal (Guatemalan currency). And now is perfect timing for picking up again, because in an hour I´m heading out to the field and will have plenty of interesting stories to tell come this weekend.

I will be going to Cobán, Alta Verapaz, one of the most well-known coffee growing regions in Guatemala. While I´m sure that I´ll have some time to pick up some delicious blends, most of the trip will be spent carrying out the initial phases for forensic investigations in the region. In this case, we will actually be looking for massacre survivors who gave testimony in the truth comission sponsored by the United Nations. The Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH, for its Spanish acronym) just celebrated its 10th anniversary of publication. My job will be to go out to a few communities whose stories were published in the CEH, and talk with the surviving family members of the victims to see if they are interested in exhuming, identifying and then giving a proper burial to their loved ones.

This approach is somewhat opposite of how the process for exhumations normally works. Traditionally, local legal organizations make the initial contacts with communities and family members affected by the armed conflict. In these remote areas, news of exhumations travels by word of mouth (not by internet or written publication), and the legal organizations help family members file the necessary paperwork. Usually, it is not until then that we, the FAFG, become involved. In a sense, this is how it should be, because after all, this work is by and large a service to the families of the victims of the war. But due to the fact that this system relies largely on both word of mouth and the availability of the local legal organizations, it doesn´t always flow smoothly. Additionally, a colleague of mine just finished the comparison of exhumations that the FAFG has carried out with massacre testimonies described in the CEH truth commission; the idea now is to seek out the survivors from these cases to offer them the possibility of exhuming their victims.

So now I´m off; more to come over the weekend!

The Murder of the Carpenter

After a long sabbatical from the blogosphere, I am back, writing from Nebaj, a town in the northern, mountainous region of Guatemala´s highland province, the Quiché. I have been here for two weeks now completing a series of exhumations with a team of two archaeologists and a cultural anthropologists from the Guatemala Forensic Anthropology Foundation (FAFG), where I am now a full-time employee. We´ll be here for another week, so I´ll be updating again soon with more stories from the field.

The single case that has struck me the most thus far was one of the first. It involved a seventeen year old young man who was massacred by the Guatemalan army in his own town. His father, Don Santiago, led us on a nearly 5 hour climb up a steep mountain in the Cuchumatanes mountain range, the highest in Central America. About an hour into the hike I was panting and gasping for oxygen in the thin air (we were at almost 2 miles of altitude), and convinced I wasn´t going to make it... but it turns out that I am far too proud let that happen! At the top, the view of the mountains was breath-taking. My FAFG friends described it as practically a scene from Heidi; sheep and goats grazed in fields of bright green grass and patches of pine forest. I took pictures of the adorable sheep, and was quite put off when dinner was served to us that night: lamb stew.

When we finally arrived in this extremely remote town of no more than about 20 families, Don Santiago led us quickly down to the site where he had buried his son after the murder. My friend and coworker, Jaime, conducted the antemortem interview, in which he asked Don Santiago a series of questions about his son, including his age, what he was like physically, what clothing he was wearing at the time of burial and any details he knew about the murder. This let us know what we should expect to find when we dug up the grave. Don Santiago told us that the military apprehended his son, and took him to nearby woods where they tied him to a tree and hacked off his limbs with a machete. This was probably a form of torture; perhaps they believed that he had information regarding the whereabouts of the leftist guerrillas in the mountains. But ultimately they killed this young man, and left him limbless to die.

The first time I visited the FAFG lab in 2004 with a group of Haverford students, it was a practically identical case that made me break down emotionally. And here I was now, four and half years later, hours from the nearest dirt road at the top of a mountain in Guatemala, about to dig up the body of an identical victim. For some reason - perhaps the thick skin that forensic anthropologists develop from dealing with this type of violent reality on a daily basis - I wasn´t overwhelmed. I was anxious to find the body in order to have physical proof of Don Santiago´s version of the story. And that is precisely what happened...

As we dug down into the earth, with a growing number of towns people crowded around watching us work, we discovered a young, male skeleton with obvious signs of serious injury. His entire right arm was located directly under his spine, an important indication that his limbs were dismembered before the burial. (This is the type of scenario that highlights the importance of the archaeologist context in forensic investigations; this information is lost as soon as the bones are removed). His wrist (the distal end of his ulna) had been completely severed with a sharp object, compatible with a machete wound. His left shin and both of his feet were completely missing. And while this is gory, it wasn´t these details that affected me as much as the discovery of a wooden tape measurer, a hammer and a blue and red carpenter´s pencil that we found with the body. Don Santiago had told us that he was a carpenter, and these were his tools. These details, and the signs from the bones that he was in his late teenage years, were what made this young man come alive for me - he was no longer a pile of bones but a person from this small town who was brutally murdered, with a father who missed him terribly.

Nevertheless, our stay in the town that night was lovely. Don Santiago´s relatives gave us their two-room, dirt-floor house to sleep in and chatted with us by candle light. There is no electricity in the town, and the darkness as the clouds covered the night sky was impressive. I slept soundly, and in the morning, Don Santiago led us back down the mountain. His spirits were high, despite the devastated reaction of his wife at the bottom of the mountain upon seeing the bones of her son. We left them alone with the remains for a few minutes, and then packed them up to be transported to the lab in Guatemala City, where I will clean and analyze them, and afterwards return them to Don Santiago and his family for a proper reburial.

P.S. I don´t have the cable for my camera with me so I can´t put photos up now! But they will be up as soon as I´m back at home in the city.