A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Recovering the Memory – Exhumations

Like so many community initiatives in the wake of a war, ADIVIMA's campaign began with exhumations.

By 1993, Jesus Tecu was old enough to file a request for the exhumation of the mass grave where his family was killed. One hundred and forty bodies were recovered, but only a few could be positively identified. In June 1994, the remains were given a Mayan burial, and the survivors erected a small monument at the site that carried the names of the perpetrators.

Monument to the
March 13 ,1982 massacre.

On June 2, 1994, the monument was torn down. The survivors assumed that those responsible were from the military, and they protested vigorously through the press-a small sign of the changing times in Guatemala.

They erected a second, larger monument, with support from EPICA, the Washington-based Ecumenical Program on Central America and the Caribbean organization.

The monument is about 10 feet tall, and has colorful naïve paintings of the March 13, 1982 massacre. It depicts paramilitaries and soldiers wielding machetes and guns leading the women and children up a hill. It also depicts dead people lying on top of the hill, and mothers and babies hanging from a cross. A few words tell the story of the massacre.

Two victims of the 1982 massacre: the smaller photo shows the skeleton of a fetus which was found in the pelvic region of its dead mother. The woman was approximately seven months pregnant when she was killed.
Photo credit: Stefan Schmitt

According to Carlos Chen, 65 graves have been located in the Rabinal area and registered with the public prosecutor. Eight have been exhumed, and ADIVIMA plans to apply for another 15 in mid-2000. Once a community locates a mass grave, it works through a human rights group in the capital Guatemala City to request an exhumation. The actual work is carried out by one of three forensic teams operating in Guatemala.

Exhumations are now a well-established part of the process of peace-building in Rabinal. Still, they never fail to have a shocking impact on those immediately affected. In deference to their mother earth, which has been doubly defiled-first by the crime and now by the exhumation-the Mayan-Achi place simple votive offerings at the lip of the gravesite. This can be a lit candle or even a bottle of soda.

As part of the drive to create a "collective memory," ADIVIMA has created a museum. Four of its members spent a month in Oaxaca, Mexico, learning how to organize a museum, catalogue items, and collect oral histories. The exhibition was displayed in the church for a month and is now awaiting a more permanent location. Pedrina said:

"We have exhibits on the culture and the traditions of our people, the craftwork (artesania), carved and painted bowls, and huipiles. There is also a section about human rights. We have photographs from an exhumation, and books about the Rio Negro massacre in English and Spanish. We are preserving some photographs that survived of Rio Negro and its people from before the war. There are not a lot of items, but we have most of the ones we need."