GUATEMALA

In 1996, Guatemala formally ended 4 decades of state-sponsored repression against the predominantly Mayan population. In its final report concerning the repression in Guatemala, the United Nations "Truth Commission" confirmed that, in the name of "fighting communism", 200,000 people were murdered and disappeared, close to 1,000,000 were displaced from their homes and communities and that there are hundreds of thousands of orphans and widows. The report Memoria del Silencio concluded that genocide had been carried out in certain Mayan regions of the country.

Ever since the US-orchestrated a military coup in 1954, overthrowing a democratic government, the United States has provided extensive military and economic support to the military regimes. Even during the worst years of repression and genocide --1978-1983-- the World Bank and International Monetary Fund continued to provide financial assistance. Guatemala is barely emerging from the loss of life, home and community, from the fear and silence. Trauma is widespread at the individual and community levels.

Migrants of the Americas

From Shelter Belen, a taxi takes us 40 minutes to the Ciudad Hidalgo border town, where we cross the Suchiate River into the permanently dusty and hot Guatemalan town of Tecun Uman. Here, we will visit the Tecu Uman Shelter (Casa del Migrante *). From the bridge one sees makeshift rafts along the river, taking people into Mexico. Most will return before nightfall; some will try their luck and head north.

Central American migrants often wait for the trains to cross into Mexico. When one passes, they scramble on top and begin their risky journeys. First, they are threatened by train-top mafias that extort money. Some are thrown to their deaths or serious injury. In Shelter Belen, we had met a Salvadoran man who had lost a leg, severed as he fell under a train.

In the Tecun Uman Shelter, we are again amazed by the support, trust and security for the migrants, so vulnerable to mafias, police and la migra, to the vagaries of chance and luck all along the roads to wherever it is they were going, to wherever it is they end up by mistake.

Some 30 people -- mainly Honduran men and boys -- sit under trees … waiting. We know not to ask how they got here, or where they are going. A girl, perhaps 16, stands to one side, holding her baby. Padre Melder, a Scalabriano Brother in charge of the Casa, has yet to speak with her. "Except to find out their basic information, which is kept in a protected computer data base, in many cases I don't speak with them at all about what has happened to them, unless they initiate the conversation. . . . Here, we provide shelter and a space for them to rest, open up, let down their guard a little, and talk with us." "Where will she go from here?" "I don't know - if the road of the migrant is dangerous for all, it is even more so for a young woman."

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The Gravel Makers

From the Shelter, it is five hours to Guatemala City by bus. Through a pouring rain, we drive along the rich coastal lowlands. Vast private holdings, well-irrigated and verdant green, are used for cattle, sugarcane and coffee production for export. Lands occupied by the Spanish invaders long ago. Lands the majority cannot touch, except as seasonal laborers, for $2.50 \ day.

We pass the gravel makers. By the side of the highway, under a lean-to shelter, the gravel makers (I remember a man and wife I interviewed for a documentary film, years ago) spend 14 hours a day, 6 days a week.

They own a big sledgehammer and a small one. Slowly, but surely, they break open the boulders -one to two feet in diameter- taking turns with the big hammer, then the small one, until piles of gravel are ready for sale. In a good week, this couple will earn 85 Quetzales = $12 US.

News item: In the bus, I read a newspaper report that, according to FORBES, the three wealthiest persons in the world have combined assets of $156,000,000,000, which is more that the GDP (gross domestic product) of the world's 43 poorest countries.

Death registries & clandestine graves

In a Guatemala City bus station, Ester walks up and says hello. I have not seen her since I lived here from 1993-1995. During the four-hour trip to Quetzaltenango, we talk of the work she is doing with FAMDEGUA (Family Members of the Disappeared \ Familiares de los Desaparecidos de Guatemala *). They do everything they can to locate the disappeared, dig up mass graves and bring legal proceedings against the police and military that committed the crimes.

Recently, a secret military document was leaked to the public. This registro de la muerte (death registry) from a particular military base, listed 183 people who were illegally captured and disappeared in 1983; only 6 were heard from again. Across the country, people are pouring over the 52 pages of photos, names and information, hoping to learn for certain what they have long suspected -- that their loved one (a husband, wife or lover, parent or child) was indeed detained and held in clandestine prison, probably tortured, killed and dumped in a clandestine grave somewhere.

With this final proof, these 'lucky' family members can at last enter into the final stages of mourning and grieving. With this new evidence, efforts are being renewed to have justice done.

News Item: Hired to construct police dormitories at the site of the former National Police Headquarters, workers uncover bones while digging the foundations. The Public Ministry, under strong pressure from human rights groups like FAMDEGUA, sealed off the site, and will initiate exhumations to find out how many bodies there might be and what were the causes of death.

From under the floors of police and military buildings, buried out back of military bases, or dumped in anonymous pits across the country, the bones of the disappeared and murdered are crying out, demanding to be found and dug up, needing to be reunited in death with their long suffering family members and loved ones.

Limpieza social/ Social cleansing

News item: Another street child was shot dead, in cold blood, in broad daylight, 4 blocks from where I used to live in Guatemala City. In the photo, policemen gather around the body. Casa Alianza, a non-government organization, has numerous cases before the courts against policemen who shoot or otherwise kill street children.

In many countries of the Americas, there are populations of niños de la calle, abused girls and boys from impoverished neighborhoods and villages. From the ages of 6 and 7, they live on the streets. Instead of providing shelter and other services for these children, instead of addressing the underlying causes, elements of the police and private sectors take it upon themselves to kill street children. Limpieza social it is called.

The future generations

With joy I enter the bustling primary school (Colegio Miguel Angel Asturias /Miguel Angel Asturias School *) and watch kids running from their classrooms to play or meet waiting parents. Here, 40 children -- mainly Mayan, poor -- have scholarships that enable them to come to the school from outlying rural villages or the impoverished barrios in and around Quetzaltenango. These are 40 children who will not end up as niños de la calle.

Women's rights

It is a short ride to the offices of the New Horizons Association (Asociacion Nuevos Horizontes *), the first organization in Quetzaltenango to open a shelter for victims of domestic violence and fully address the issues of gender discrimination and violence. The offices are a two story bustling enterprise including: a salon for public meetings and workshops, a short-term shelter (the long-term shelter is in a secret location), legal aid and medical clinics.

Wheelchairs & dignity

From Quetzaltenango, it is a four-hour ride to Antigua, the former capital city of Guatemala - a beautiful colonial town at the foot of a volcano. Every day, more disabled people contact or show up at the doors of Transitions (Transiciones *), an "Independent Living Centre" providing medical, educational, emotional and recreational support to disabled Guatemalans, victims of polio, gunshots, the war, accidents, etc.

Transitions is the only centre of its kind. It is deeply saddening to know that tens of thousands of disabled Guatemalans would be 'lucky' to live here, or even receive attention. What should be a right to appropriate health care, is -in Guatemala and elsewhere- something of luck, if it exists at all.

In a county of such inequalities and discrimination, the situation of disabled people is even harder to comprehend. Most families do not have even close to the resources necessary to properly care for disabled loved ones. Health insurance is nonexistent for most. In the streets, crippled people push themselves on makeshift carts, scavenging and begging.

On Wednesday evening, I arrive from Quetzaltenango and go to the park where some of the Transitions people are in a fast game of wheelchair basketball. Whether at the court, hanging out in front of their home, or over dinner and breakfast, it is clear that Transitions is much more than a place where they receive medical treatment, education and training; where they build and maintain wheelchairs adequate for the rough streets and roads of Guatemala; where they operate a small, successful graphics arts business. Transitions is their home.

Crimes of the past

As the crow flies, the municipality of Rabinal (home to the Maya Achi people) is 100 miles from Guatemala City. After a 6-hour drive, packed in a "Blue Rider" bus, ending along narrow dirt roads cut high on steep mountainsides, Annie and I step into the main square of the town of Rabinal. Five years ago I first came here. In the mountaintop village of Plan de Sanchez, I spent 2 days at the exhumation (unearthing) of a mass grave wherein lay the remains of some of the 250 victims of a massacre that took place on July 18, 1982. The interviews I did with members of the Rabinal Coordinator of Orphans and Widows, Maya-Achi (Rabinal Coordinadora de Viudas y Huerfanos, Maya-Achi *) and the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Team (Equipo de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala *), formed the basis of "Unearthing the Truth", a report about the exhumation process in Guatemala.

Across the country, exhumations (and the ensuing reburials) are catalytic events in the lives of surviving community members who finally begin to deal in a healthy way with their trauma from the past; who finally undertake community development projects to build a better future.

Since that time, we have supported many different facets of work in Rabinal: exhumations; construction of monuments to commemorate the victims; legal cases against civil defense patrollers who committed the massacres. The Coordinator has also purchased some property and built their own carpentry workshop that now produces and sells beds, bunk-beds, chest of drawers, cabinets, shelves, tables, chairs, etc. The profits from the workshop are invested back in to the business, and into the work of the Coordinator.

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A pesar de todo — Despite everything

The beneficiaries of every project we visited are victims of overlapping injustices that find many of their roots in the structures of racism and exploitation that the "conquest" installed in the Americas, perpetuated by ongoing national and international economic, political and military factors. Despite all this, the beneficiaries of every project we support are proof that if people and their organizations are invested in, they will come up with their own solutions to provide families and communities with healthy and dignified lives.

Honduras
Chiapas, Mexico
Guatemala