Driving up onto the land of a region that was arguably the single-most devastated area during the armed conflict was the start of a few days of seeing a very different side of the project I began months ago.
Nebaj and the other two towns (Cotzal and Chajul) make up what is known as the Ixil [Ee-sheel] Triangle, an area billed as the hotbed of Guatemala's armed conflict. The three sit up in the northern region of the department of Quiché where, according to the UN-sponsored truth commission, over 300 separate massacres took place during the war. This was in addition to the typical laundry list of horrors that plagued primarily indigenous villages throughout the country: disappearances, extrajudicial executions, rape, forced displacement, and coerced conscription into the national army among others. Always better than a list of these repeatedly rattled-off abuses, though, are the words of surviving witnesses. Here is testimony from a young man who survived an attack in the small village of Acul, Nebaj:
Last week I drove north with a friend of a colleague who came down from Canada to do a few days of research in the Ixil for a novel he's writing involving humanitarian aid work in Quiché. He assured me the trip should be spent on whatever interviews I wanted to do, as he followed me with a tape recorder and generally got a feel for the land and people of Nebaj. The drive is a 6-hour trip on primarily windy uphill two-lane highways with breathtaking views of arid landscape. Every so often we drove through tiny villages decorated with cinderblock houses, peeling paint, stray dogs, and the glaring campaign material of various political parties...At daybreak, soldiers and patrollers had surrounded Acul. Twenty-six dead; twenty were thrown into a hole and six were left thrown in the street. They were struck, shot at, knifed, and tortured. Eighty of them did it. The PAC commander knew me, and told me I was lucky.
FRG party, supported by Rios Montt
Encuentro party, candidate: Rigoberta Menchu (female indigenous Nobel Peace Prize winner)Monday proved to be everything we'd banked on it being--interview after spontaneous interview with as many people involved in human rights regarding the armed conflict as possible. Interviews at the attorney general's office were highlights--so far, there have been no cases put through the courts regarding the conflict, yet in the past year over 100 exhumations of mass graves have been undergone in the Nebaj region alone. "Family members don't want to deal with the courts, they don't want this type of justice," we were assured. "They just want to recover what's left of the bodies." We spoke with a number of activists at NGOs that support the victims who, in fact, do want justice. Turns out there's a veritable cottage industry for this type of legal support, so perhaps the municipality's got it wrong.
The good news is, there is a fair amount of support (legal, psychological and forensic alike) for exhumations in this particular region, having much to do with A) the sheer numbers of high-quantity massacres that took place there, and B) a healthy community of activism on the part of surviving family members. For the families, exhumations shed light on the whereabouts of victims that have been missing for decades, and give them what they need to bring some measure of spiritual closure to an excruciating situation.
Overall it was great to breathe some mountain air and even better to practice some whirlwind fact finding. A few photos of the town to give you an idea...
The best part was feeling the history in the land, and getting exposure to the energy and convictions of the people who lived through the war. In spite of serious discouragement, so many are pushing on, still, in efforts to treat the trauma and mistrust left by the genocide.
