"THE LONG ROAD: Plan de Sanchez burial"

- By Grahame Russell
April 1995

A caravan of vehicles left Guatemala City on Saturday morning, April 29, 1995, heading to Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, to bury 84 Mayan-Achi members of the Plan de Sanchez community who were massacred on July 18, 1982, by soldiers and civil defense patrollers.

The long road the caravan must drive to isolated Rabinal mirrors the efforts of Guatemalans throughout the country to overcome their fear, to break the imposed silence, and to denounce political crimes and human rights violations of the past and present. The caravan is comprised of people who will now properly put their dead to rest and, in this way, begin to deal with their own suffering and trauma.

Saturday afternoon, Salama

After a rally in the Central Park of Salama to publicly announce where the caravan was going, and why, the buses and trucks pulled up to the morgue, behind the city hospital. There, the surviving family members of the massacre emptied the bones of their loved ones from brown paper bags into simple pine wooden boxes that they themselves had built.

After the Plan de Sanchez exhumation was completed in the fall of 1994, the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Team -- EAFG -- spent 6 months analyzing the bones and remains. Then they carefully put each set of remains in a separate bag, each bag having two numbers: one indicating which pit the bones had been removed from (at the massacre site there were 12 different pits where the bodies had been buried); the other identifying, to the best of the EAFG's scientific ability, the identity of the person killed and cause of death. Few positive identifications were made.

Once the community members had nailed shut the boxes and loaded them onto the trucks, the caravan left Salama and drove on dirt roads over two high mountain passes, into the isolated valley of Rabinal, the center of the Maya-Achi people. In the early 1980s, massacres were committed in half of the Rabinal municipality's 38 rural villages. An uncountable number of disappearances and political assassinations were also committed. No justice has been done.

Saturday evening, Rabinal

The caravan stopped in the main square of Rabinal to explain to the gathered townspeople that they had come to honor and commemorate the names and lives of the massacre victims, and to be in solidarity with people (widows and orphans) throughout Rabinal who are only recently breaking the silence of repression and impunity and beginning to tell the truth about the past. The caravan then drove to the Calvaria church, on the edge of town. Townspeople walked behind.

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Saturday night, Rabinal

The trucks backed up to the steps of the church. In the encroaching darkness a light rain begins; children on the church roof clang the bells. The Plan de Sanchez survivors begin to unload the pine coffins, some one meter long, some smaller carrying bones of massacred babies. Children, men, women and elders line up, hoist the boxes on their shoulders and heads, and walk quietly into the church.

In the drizzle and darkness, survivors from other massacres, and national and international accompaniers, stand quietly by. Over church speakers a scratchy record plays traditional Guatemalan funeral music. Hundreds of candles light the inside of the church. 84 coffins are laid out in the center; pine needles strewn everywhere. Each box has the numbers: the pit from which the body was exhumed and the possible identity of the remains. One reads: Daniel Tecu Chajaj and Elisa Alvarez Perez. Most boxes don't have names.

Surviving community members and others lay flowers on the small wooden boxes; candles are lit and placed on the coffins and floor; they kneel and pray. Mayan priests walk amidst the people, boxes, candles and needles, swinging the incense burning "sansuario" (copal) that enshrouds every one and thing. The copal is swung in the four directions over each and every box; chanting and praying, the priests move on. Two elderly Mayan men play soft, mournful music on an old and very used three string violin and on a battered old leather drum -- convoking the spirits.

Seated along the side, men and women look on, whisper quietly to themselves, pray -- here and there small bottles of "cusha" (locally brewed spirit) are passed around. Visitors and family members spread out "petates" (thin straw mats) on the stone floor of the church and lie down -- to spend the night with the dead; the ceremony continues all might.

In each box, there lies the remains of "una vida interrumpida," an interrupted life, as one Mayan woman said. "La violencia" (the violence, as Guatemalans refer to the worst years of repression and terror) tore apart individuals and communities. This burial process is, for the Plan de Sanchez survivors, a time to start to put their lives back together. The Daniels and Elisas are now, albeit dead, being reintegrated back into their torn, but surviving community.

Sunday morning, Rabinal

The Catholic service starts early and continues for three hours; there is much to say, so many people come forward to talk, in Achi and Spanish, about so many massacred people. Father Melchor slowly, haltingly reads aloud the name of every single massacred person. He begins with the men and the women; then the children; then the babies.

At the name of an infant baby, he stops and tells the huge, attentive crowd that on the morning of Sunday July 18, 1982, he had baptized that tiny baby, before the parents hiked the four hours back up to Plan de Sanchez, as they did every Sunday market day, only to be slaughtered. At this point Father Melchor, like so many others, allows his tears to freely flow.

Sunday midday, Plan de Sanchez

Only the cattle and four wheel drive trucks make it up the rocky, mud road to Plan de Sanchez, carrying some of the people and 84 pine boxes; many hike the fours hours.

All meet in the community of Plan de Sanchez, high on a pine tree covered mountain ridge, looking down, either side, into valleys, and over other mountains beyond; the wind blows open and clear. At the highest point of the community, one comes to the site of the massacre. A more beautiful spot could not have been chosen to carry out a more hideous crime.

From the trucks parked on the dirt road down the way, the surviving family members once again hoist the coffins --the men on their shoulders, the women on their heads-- and carry them up the hill to the massacre site where the dead will be reburied, but this time properly, at home.

A Mayan dance ceremony begins by the burial site; costumed and masked boys dancing an old step to marimba music. The violin and leather drum once again contribute their old, everlasting song of mourning, history and ritual.

The boxes are slowly laid out in trenches dug at the very site of the massacre. Candles and flowers are placed at one end of the grave site by a marble plaque that explains the history of the crime. Men, women, and boys slowly fill in the trenches with their hoes, covering their dead for the last time. Mayan priests walk about, burning incense, swinging their copals to the four directions, blessing the dead.

For 13 years surviving community members have been coming here, to the site of slaughter, to pay their respects to their fallen loved ones. Now, with international support, they will build a small chapel on top of the slaughter site, on top of where they are reburying their dead. The names of every murdered person will be engraved onto the side of the church, forever to be remembered.

Piled off to one side is a stack of blackened old red roof tiles. Juan Manuel says that these tiles covered the house of his "fine" sister that used to be at this spot. It is in the sister's house that the soldiers detained the people, shot them, threw grenades in, and finally burned the community members.

Over the past 13 years the surviving tiles have covered a bamboo, makeshift chapel that the community members had built, and where, from time to time, they carried out services to remember their dead. Soon, the same burned and chipped tiles will be put on top of the new chapel, carrying the scars of July 18, 1982, representing an end and a beginning.

The community has taken the place of their worst horror story, re-appropriated it, and turned it into their most revered and special site. Juan Manuel, tears streaming down his cheeks, stands over the new grave where his wife and children lie, finally properly buried. He says "que descansen en paz," rest in peace.

This process, for the first time since the crime was perpetrated, brings closure to the surviving family members who might finally find a bit of peace because their dead have been properly returned to the earth, in a dignified place, where they will be remembered, and consulted with in the Mayan tradition.

The community members have achieved a type of freedom -- freedom from the trauma of a horrible crime that they were not even allowed to mourn and cry about, let alone talk publicly. The weight of never having been able to properly bury and say good bye to their dead has now been lifted. Some community members will now turn their attention to the related matter of justice -- who will be held responsible for these crimes? Even with talk of bringing legal charges against the guilty parties, caution and fear are palpable. Joaquin, a community member whose first wife now lies buried, talks on his porch after the ceremony, as the rain streams down.

"Before they cut our people down as if they were dogs, and left them lying on the road, or anywhere. We thought originally that it was only the men that they wanted to kill, but then they started massacring women and children. So now, today, things are a little better for a while. The Army doesn't come around any more to put the screws to us. For now, the screws are loose, but no one knows for how long."