Status Updates From Testimony: Death of a Guate...

“One of the army’s tactics was to spring kidnappings after dark, usually between eleven and three in the morning. During those hours I remained on the alert, always ready to run.”

“Most of these men who kill come from the same remote villages and wretchedly poor families as do the condemned ones with whose blood they have stained their hands. A friend who is an ex-soldier had told me, not long before: "They brainwash and indoctrinate us in such a way that we could torture our own parents, if we were ordered to. I spent three years in the barracks, and what did I learn? Fucking zero.“

“Fernando, poor neighbor of ours and father of six, was cruelly tortured and then decapitated. They removed his teeth one by one and forced him to swallow them, like hard pellets.”

“It is far better to be shot attempting to escape than to be killed slowly, staring up at your executioner’s faces as they cut you open.”

“Oh Lord, pity those who commit these crimes, who pretend death does not await them as well: it every hog has his Saturday, and who knows what price they will pay for causing this suffering and injustice. They pretend to be gods who pass judgement on the lives of the poor.”

“The soldier who held the end of the rope tied around my neck collided with a jutting rock and sat down with a groan, letting go of the rope. Knowing the pitch darkness would work in my favor, I formulated a plan to escape.”

"You should know that we have our own wives and children to feed, and so we were deceived into joining the army. It was against our wills that they armed us and sent us to the mountains to combat the guerrillas. The fifty dollars they pay us a month is not enough to support our families with. That's why they allow us to loot and steal, so we can supplement our meager wages. We were tricked into coming here.”

“A poor peasant woman named Malcal approached me, saying, "Oh, schoolmaster, my child is dead. They have killed little Sebastián!"
Sebastian was a boy of fourteen who was enrolled in the sixth grade but had stopped attending classes because he had to accompany his parents to the fields. Since he stopped attending school, he had been forced to take part in the civil patrol.”

“I recognized at once that the rifles they bore were Galils, of Israeli manufacture. I knew these rifles by name because the military detachment had used them in my hometown to cut down innocent people who were accused of being guerrillas.”

“I realized the song was discriminatory because the questioner uses the familiar "vos" (in a vulgar sense) and the little Indian replies in a respectful USTED. For the rural child all songs taught in school are equally discriminatory, or at least alienating, because their true intention is to condition them to the requirements of the patrón or boss, and thereby to perpetuate the Indian's inferior status.”

“Under the constant pressure from the army, all the neighbors had to carry their clubs or garrotes in place of rifles and were under orders to attack any foreign elements that entered the community.
That is the background of the terrible events of September 9, 1982, when the civil patrol of Tzalalá mistook an army detachment dressed in olive fatigues for guerrillas.”

“The women remain behind to weave their meager dreams of subsistence on their looms, and after nightfall they lie on their mats to ruminate in Mayan about their poverty and plan their yearly journeys to work as migrants on the coastal plantations.“