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“I beg of you, take my words with you so that the world will know what we have experienced, what we have suffered...” In 1998 and 1999, two Truth Commissions clearly denounced the governments in power in Guatemala from 1961 to 1996 as being responsible for genocide. More than 200,000 dead, 45,000 disappeared, 667 massacres, 430 villages wiped off the map, 150,000 refugees, a million and a half displaced people, and 83% of the victims were Mayas. Behind these appalling figures there are faces, first names, which can never be erased from the memories of the survivors.
This largely unknown story is now being revealed thanks to the work of forensic anthropologists who carried out exhumations throughout the country, looking for the “disappeared”. Skeletons of massacred men, women and children, buried in communal graves, whose remains are now being found, tell us the truth about the atrocities experienced during these years. These exhumations will allow the Mayas, who have been invisible in the eyes of the country’s elite for five centuries, to say to the world “what I told you was not a lie”. And most of them will allow the murderers to be identified along with their victims. This is just one first step towards the dream of improbable judgements against both the people who are intellectually responsible and the actual perpetrators, even though right now I simply cannot see any hope for the future because, when I look towards this country, I still see nothing but death, exploitation, discrimination, impunity and poverty.
Miquel Dewever Plana