Guatemala Reveres a New Kind of Scripture

Beneath the words “Never again,” Indian villagers solemnly ascend the altar steps to receive copies of the Roman Catholic Church’s report on wartime atrocities.

Women in traditional bright-hued dress and men in T-shirts and rubber work boots leave the Mass carefully cradling the report’s four volumes.

Here in the western highland province of Quiche, where the most human rights abuses were committed during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, the report receives the same reverence given holy scripture.

Its pages tell, in terrible detail, of atrocities in this predominantly Indian region during the war that ended in late 1996. It names all the people and villages targeted in the battle between the army and leftist guerrillas.

Because of the report, relatives and neighbors who died will not be forgotten. Villages burned to the ground during the government’s scorched-earth campaigns of the early 1980s will be remembered.

And perhaps, the church hopes, people on both sides of the conflict will learn to understand and forgive each other.

“We don’t want it to be just something sad,” says Father Julio Sabagh, a priest in Santa Cruz del Quiche. “We want to remember the bravery of the people who sought life, who did not leave their work.”

More than three-fifths of the 55,021 dead listed in the church’s “Restoration of Historical Memory Report” lived in Quiche province. The report says 253 of the 424 documented massacres occurred in that region, and blames most of them on the military or its civilian patrols.

International attention was focused on the report in April after Bishop Juan Gerardi was murdered just two days after presenting it publicly.

Long accustomed to government violence, many Guatemalans immediately assumed that Gerardi was slain by current or former military operatives angered by the report’s findings.

Prosecutors now say the bishop was killed by a fellow priest in a dispute that had nothing to do with the report. But some activists still believe that current or former military agents killed Gerardi over his accounting of wartime abuses.

Considered the most comprehensive record of Guatemalan rights abuses to date, the report compiles more than 6,000 interviews conducted in Spanish and 15 Indian languages over three years.

But fear of reprisals kept some communities silent.

“The army tried to keep people from talking,” says Father Axel Mencos, the only Catholic priest in Quiche province who did not flee during the worst of the army’s anti-rebel campaigns from 1980-82.

“They told the people if they talked the terrible time could happen again,” Mencos says.

The first step toward breaking the silence began three years ago, before government and guerrilla leaders signed a peace accord in December 1996. In war-affected areas, the church trained community members from 175 parishes in interview techniques and history writing.

Now the most difficult and important task is distributing the report to the communities where the information was collected, says Edgar Gutierrez, the report coordinator. The hope is that the information will spark communication between former antagonists and, eventually, reconciliation.

Many villages have begun community discussions. “For the first time people are explaining why they acted the way they did during the conflict,” Gutierrez says.

Manuel Mejia, who lost an uncle, brother and cousin during the war, says the report is the only project in Guatemala that is encouraging reconciliation at the local level.

“They talk about a firm and lasting peace, but that is very global,” Mejia says. “Here, within the communities, the rancor continues.”