Guatemala
suffered through a 36-year civil war in which at least 250,000 people
were killed, and 50,000 "disappeared", almost all civilians,
mostly Mayan Indians, and almost all killed by the Guatemalan Military.
Comalapa is a small village an hour and a half from Guatemala City. During
the war an army base was situated there, on a small rise overlooking the
winding road that climbs the pine covered hills to the town. Begun in
August of 2003, the former base at Comalapa is the site of one of the
largest exhumations of mass graves yet undertaken in Guatemala.
Rural bases like this were the headquarters for the Army's genocidal rural
counter-insurgency campaign that terrorized Guatemala during the war.
From these bases hundreds of villages were burned to the ground, thousands
of people massacred. Hundreds more were dragged from their homes in the
night, or sometimes in the day, and disappeared into bases like this one,
never to be heard from again. There they were tortured, killed, and dumped
in shallow graves like the ones on the hillside behind the camp.
Now, twenty years after the height of the killings, the graves are finally
being exhumed. Pushed by organizations of families of the disappeared
like CONAVIGUA (Coordinating Committee of Guatemalan Widows), which organized
the exhumation at Comalapa, the government has granted permission for
the graves to be opened. The work is carried out by the FAFG, the Guatemalan
Foundation of Forensic Anthropologists, internationally recognized as
some of the best trained and most meticulous in their field.It is a community, the site. Everyone has their roles —
some dig with pickaxes, some comb through soil that used to be flesh and
blood, some sort and catalogue boxes of bones, some string up tarps for
when the rain comes. Most crouch, on the muddy edge of the hole, and point
and whisper and wonder — Is that him? Is that her?
And in the middle of it all, are the disappeared. Now found. Nothing left
but their bones and boots and muddy clothes. Twisted and broken, their
bodies almost intimate, wrapped together as they fell. Exposed now, after
20 years of being hidden, and now the stories of their deaths exposed
too. Feet cut off. Heads lie three feet from shoulders. Two women with
their hands still bound, a bullet in one. Five bodies in one grave, all
tied around their necks by one cord.
They will be helped out. Delicately, their bones will be lifted, sorted,
cleaned and catalogued. Someone will finally listen to the story they
will tell. In a way, help has finally come. In a way, they are rescued.
Pulled from the beautiful, dark cold ground, taken out and identified
and reunited with their expectant and loving families one last time, who
have had to keep quiet, had to mourn in silence for so many years.
Now they can cry, and remember, and try not to fear, and not allow it
to ever happen again. In the words of Magdaleno Simone, "We want
to see our loved ones again, and say, here, we have them."
— Victor Blue
FeatureExhumation at Comalapa A photo-essay from Guatemala by photojournalist Victor Blue.View Images
Feature
Exhumation at Comalapa
A photo-essay from Guatemala by photojournalist Victor Blue.
Exhumation at Comalapa
A photo-essay from Guatemala by photojournalist Victor Blue.
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