In Secret Graves, Guatemala Unearths Its Brutal Past

Twisted bodies lay one on top of the other in a pit at the bottom of a Guatemalan ravine, one with a hand to his head as if he had been alive when he was thrown in.

As anthropologists spooned and brushed away the earth, a peasant woman began to wail as she recognized the clothes her husband was wearing the day he and 11 others were taken away 10 years ago.

Human rights groups say at least 40,000 Guatemalans “disappeared” in political violence over the past 30 years. Most, like those unearthed last week in this village in the country’s western highlands, were poor Indians whose bodies were bundled into unmarked graves.

The women of San Jose Pacho, clad in multicolored Indian costumes, turned out to watch as the team of U.S., Chilean and Guatemalan forensic anthropologists went to work on two graves here.

The team was led by Clyde Snow, a cigar-smoking Texan and veteran of Latin America’s “dirty war” investigations.

“Sometimes the way to deal with a wound is to open it up, drain it and then let it heal,” he said of the gruesome work.

Maria Lopez had a husband and a son in one of the graves. They were killed, she said, on Valentine’s Day in 1982 by members of an anti-guerrilla militia who herded the villagers into a school.

“Almost the whole family was there. We saw them beat my husband. When they grabbed him we started to cry, so they kicked us and put us in another room. Later, they let us go home, but my husband wasn’t there. He was down here,” she said.

The victims had refused to join the militias and were killed because they were suspected of sympathizing with leftist rebels, according to the relatives. There are 40 or 45 widows in San Jose Pacho and the surrounding community, one for nearly every household.

There are six known clandestine graves in the area, one with the body of an 85-year-old man, another with the bodies of a family of five. All date from the early 1980s.

International human rights groups blame most of the disappearances in Guatemala on the army-run militias, and their fate is one of the major points of discussion at peace talks being held in Mexico City between the government and the guerrillas.

Guatemalan forensic doctors have opened up a small number of graves over the last decade. But only after six years of democracy is the prospect of a real, nationwide investigation becoming possible.

Snow is training Guatemalan forensic anthropologists in the art of reading, preserving and documenting the secrets of the soil.

“One of the things you have to avoid is that people try to rewrite the history books,” Snow said. “They try to say the disappeared left the country and are having a good time in Paris or Mexico.

“Well, every skull out of the ground is one less person living it up in Paris.”