Happy New Year! It has been a long time since I’ve last written. Life took a crazy turn in September, and I have not been able to find the time to sit down and write an update until now. As many of you already know, I finished my contract as an accompanier with NISGUA in November and returned to the United States to spend Christmas with my family and think about what comes next.

It has been an interesting transition – one that I am only just now beginning to confront in a meaningful way. I spent the better part of the last two years in Guatemala, living and working alongside human rights activists and genocide survivors. Leaving the way of life, living so close to violence in its varying forms while working with some of the most deeply committed and inspiring individuals I have ever met, is bittersweet in so many ways. In part to make up for the lack of letters in the last four months, but also as a way to stay connected to my time in Guate, I will continue writing “Friends and Family Letters” in the upcoming months about my experiences in the past year. This will not be the last. Instead, consider it a back-order from November, and be sure to look for future installments.

A path toward home, El Jute

___________________
For now, allow me to introduce you to El Jute, a very, very dear place:

One of my first trips this year took me to the community of El Jute where a group of victims accused five ex-members of the military of having forcibly disappeared eight men from El Jute in 1981. It had been a long day. We had left the capital the day before, traveling the four hours east to Chiquimula as the temperature climbed steadily and arrived in time to hike to the house where we would sleep that night. The second day, my partner and I had walked more than three hours under a relentless sun and visited only few of the families. My clothes were crusty with dried sweat. We had barely slept the night before; we shared a slippery hammock-like bed with an aggressive flea population alongside the two other beds where the rest of the family slept. I knew that despite my exhaustion and near sunstroke, I would likely sleep little better the second night. My face burned and my head throbbed. Yet, as we sat down to dinner, I felt my mind clear. It was the kind of clarity of purpose and calm contentment that descends so rarely and so unpredictably, it becomes impossible to separate from the time and place it occurs.

Front Yard

I don’t know how exactly to describe the feeling – except that in that moment, it felt right. Like there was nowhere else I should be. Like this was exactly what I needed to be doing. Like despite the countless insurmountable challenges and moments of self-doubt involved in this work, this was it; this made everything worthwhile. In the nine months that followed, El Jute was the place I most visited. As the children in the family giggled around us, the sun transformed the opposing mountain into warm orange. The tranquility of the landscape made it nearly impossible to imagine the events it witnessed when eight men from El Jute were forcibly disappeared by the army in 1981.

View looking toward Chiquimula from El Jute

______________
El Jute in historical context:

Forced disappearance, internationally recognized as a crime against humanity, claimed the lives of more than 45,000 people during the internal armed conflict. The victims’ group in El Jute is the second in the country’s history to bring a charge of forced disappearance and this accusation defies a 99% impunity rate for crimes committed during the war. The case of Choatalúm (that I wrote about last letter) was the first and only other condemnation for this crime in Guatemala. What sets El Jute apart is that it charged a ranking officer, a colonel, with responsibility for the crimes, among four other military commissioners (one had already died). In 2005, the police placed all four in preventative custody. The colonel, Marco Antonio Sanchéz Samayoa, became the highest-ranking military officer to be imprisoned for a crime during the internal armed conflict in Guatemala. His rank made the case of El Jute exemplary.

When I began visiting El Jute, I assumed the case would linger without progress indefinitely like the genocide cases. It came as a surprise when, in June, the judge called all parties together to finalize the list of permissible witnesses and evidence for the trial. Meanwhile, the colonel, Sanchéz Samayoa, had checked into the military hospital in the capital. Many believed this was a strategy to hold up the process. But the judge was not deterred. Instead, he ordered that the pre-hearing be held in the hospital. So it was that my partner and I found ourselves entering the military hospital. (This moment deserves fuller explanation. As accompaniers, we do no accompany anyone who is armed. We do not accompany anyone who is part of a State apparatus that provides protection. It is agreed among social movements in Guatemala that the police and military are corrupt, responsible for massive human rights abuses and well, generally the enemy of social justice. Yet, there we were, entering the heart of the monster, a fortified bastion of the Guatemalan military, armed with only our nametags and our notebooks. To make matters worse, this was at the height of the H1N1 scare, so everyone wore a mask. If you can, try to imagine our discomfort entering this huge building (with a saluting soldier topiary outside) and seeing a mass of men in fatigues, carrying massive automatic weapons, wearing flu masks. All we could see was camouflage, guns and eyes glaring out from the masks.)

Outside the military hospital entrance, the topiary is carved into the shape of a little man saluting. (creepy)

Wearing H1N1 masks into the heart of the military hospital

After three pre-hearings in the military hospital, the judge confirmed the final lists of evidence and set a date for the trial to begin: September 2nd in the courthouse in Chiquimula. Over the next few months we continued visiting the community and the legal teams began to work with the witnesses to prepare them for trial. As the trial date neared, tensions heightened in El Jute. Because the conflict began (and continues) in the community of El Jute, victim and victimizer continue to live as neighbors. Witnesses live in constant proximity to the families of the accused. Since 2005, the victims’ group has been under threat.

"Everything we do for this case, we do for our children - so that they may walk ahead of us without fear" -Don Alejandro

But this case is so much more than a news story: in the next section I will focus on a few people involved in the case as a way to show what this process has meant to, and asked of, its protagonists…

Some of the group

________________
A Few Personalities from the Victims’ Group

A psycho-social team from the Mutual Support Group (GAM – Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo) had been working with the victims. At the time their work began, people did not talk about the specifics from the day of the events in 1981. Through workshops and individual visits, GAM undertook the difficult work of encouraging people to remember the details of what happened and to begin to articulate the truth publicly. This public remembering – itself a dangerous political assertion of truth to power – is difficult work. In Guatemala, silence has been a survival tool for decades. Those fighting for accountability in Guatemala challenge those in power – and the systems that support them – and this audacity comes with risks: In just the first eight months of 2009, more than 257 aggressions against human rights defenders were registered—an almost 17% increase over the total attacks the previous year.

ComunicArte, a Guatemalan documentary organization, created a film about the Victims' Group

Almost a year into GAM’s psychosocial work, I had the privilege of being present for one of the workshops. I listened as Doña Fidelia mentioned in passing that soldiers had “taken her into a separate room” before kidnapping her brother. Her brother, speaking next, then reiterated this tiny detail about her separation in his chronology. This was the first time either of them had made any reference to soldiers raping her. It took 27 years and a full year of therapy for Doña Fidelia to include that detail in her testimony. Her brother kept her secret until she talked about it first. They had never verbally agreed to this; it is the unspoken code in so many communities in Guatemala. Rape continues to be the most vastly underreported statistic – from the war to the present day.

Accompaniers are not supposed to have favorites among people we visit, but it’s impossible to avoid. For me, and just about everyone who has ever accompanied in El Jute, Doña Fidelia is a favorite. She’s extremely petite, as well as kind, warm, curious and extraordinarily generous. Every time we visit her house, she quiets her pack of enormous dogs and clears off a space for us to sit. We chat about everything. She loves to chat. And inevitably, as we pack up to leave, she offers us a multitude of fruits – some she picks off the tree as we insist she is giving us too much. Doña Fidelia is personally responsible for about 50% of my entire vocabulary relating to fruit.

Accompanier partner shows off Doña Fidelia's fruit

Because we know Doña Fidelia relatively well, it came as a shock one day when we stopped by her house and she was not already waiting for us. In fact, she barely made it out of the bedroom to tell us she had a bad headache and didn’t want to talk. We apologized for interrupting and promised to return the next day. The next morning, we arrived on a neatly swept porch, and Doña Fidelia appeared. She told us she’d been having bad headaches recently. She said they sometimes happen, and they are usually accompanied by nightmares. Though she didn’t articulate the connection, it was obvious that the prep sessions with the lawyers had revived traumas that caused physical suffering afterward. This manifested itself in other victims in different ways – but none as striking as Doña Fidelia, one day her eyes bright and chatting with us for hours, the next on bed rest. She described feeling like there was something in her throat that caused her terrible pain. She told us she wanted to testify, but that she wasn’t sure she would feel well enough when the time came. The physical manifestations of her trauma were now affecting her as she anticipated talking about it.

Basket-making is a source of meager income for many women in El Jute

Another man that we visit, Don Felix, one of the most level-headed and stable men I have even known, was called as the first witness to testify. The day before this would happen, heavily armed men wearing army boots threatened the legal team from the human rights ombudsman’s office as they traveled to Chiquimula for the trial. Days before, a rumor circulated in the community of El Jute that an assassin had been hired to kill the leaders of the victims’ group. Shots were heard during the night in the community and were interpreted as intimidations towards the witnesses. Meanwhile, in previous hearings, family members of the accused were seen taking photographs of people who attended the trial, of their cars and of their license plates.

In this tense context, Don Felix raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth. Sitting in the audience behind him (witnesses face the judge and away from the audience), I could see him shifting in his seat – visibly nervous. During the time for questioning, Don Felix answered quickly, so quickly that there was no pause for objections. Both the prosecution and the defense grew frustrated and asked him to take a breath before answering. Finally, the judge intervened. “Don Felix,” he began, “We ask that you wait a moment before answering. Take a deep breath. Try to have a little patience.” Next to me, a woman from the psychosocial team from GAM went rigid. I looked at her, and she hissed, “Patience! Patience!?! He’s waited 28 years to speak…” Her whole body shook with incredulity. She was livid and is no stranger to forced disappearance herself.

A view of the courtroom

When Don Felix finished his cross-examination, he was led outside. I left the courtroom to find him. As he emerged from the vestibule, tears coursed down his cheeks. His hands shook. We led him to a private room where the woman from GAM led him in calming and meditative exercises. But Don Felix could barely keep his eyes closed and finally decided to just sit on the floor and drink water. He told us he felt like he couldn’t breathe. He said he felt like there was no water left in his body.

In the long run, Don Felix’s testimony was probably the most damaging to the accused. He had been a soldier in the army at the time – forcibly recruited three years before. He witnessed the army enter the town on October 19, 1981 and testified that the number of soldiers he saw (800) would have required not just approval of, but orders from, a commanding officer (directly implicating the colonel). He also accompanied three women to the military base in Zacapa (military headquarters for Chiquimula where he had received his training) to ask after three of the men taken that day. He spoke with the colonel personally. The colonel laughed at him, “You are asking about three people, but there are eight. They don’t exist anymore, so there is nothing you can do for them.” Everything about this is textbook forced disappearance: unarmed individuals accused of subversive activities taken by soldiers, never heard from again and all information denied.

Near where the disappearances occurred

Despite the clear evidence of forced disappearance, the judges did not allow it as part of the accusation. Human rights groups worried that the accused would be found guilty of only kidnapping and illegal detention – crimes that entirely overlook State responsibility. During the course of the trial, it became apparent that the military entered the community a second time on December 17, 1981 when it tortured and kidnapped two men and four women. The soldiers also raped girls in the houses they entered – including Doña Fidelia. Of the six people kidnapped, those still living testified to their experience in the military base. They were taken to a building – referred to as the “House of Silence” – where the walls were splattered in blood. Ripped clothing and bloody shoes were strewn across the floor. This building is believed to be the site of the executions and supposedly still exists.

The last day I attended the trial, six people testified. As we waited for the van to take people back to the community, Don Mauricio approached me. He had just given his testimony. It had been short; he was only four when his father was disappeared. Though he couldn’t remember specifics from the day of the crime, he testified to the experience of growing up without a father, having quit school after second grade to help his family. “I want to show you something,” he told me. He reached into his back pocket and removed three pieces of paper from his wallet. He carefully unfolded the pages and handed them to me. There was a small photocopy of an identification card and two pages of official forms. I glanced at Don Mauricio, and he met my gaze expectantly. “That’s my father,” he said, pointing to the tiny photograph on the ID photocopy. “I didn’t remember him at all. I couldn’t even see his face. So I went to Town Hall and asked to have a copy of his record.” He pointed at the solitary identification card. “That’s my father. I never knew him. It was hard to get these papers; it cost me a lot. But I wanted a memory of my father,” he told me. I gazed at the papers and tried to imagine the tiny black and white photo as a three-dimensional man – a father. Like so many other times that during this trial, I fought back tears.

Pedrito

A week later, the judges delivered their verdict to a packed courtroom. News agencies, human rights workers, community members, family members, ambassadors (even the one from the US!), and a group of high-ranking military veterans (extremely intimidating) stayed until 10pm to hear the judges’ conclusions.  The judges confirmed that according to experts in counter-insurgency strategies and the internal armed conflict in Guatemala, there was no guerrilla movement in the community of El Jute. Yet, in 1978, a personal argument between two families broke out in a cantina in El Jute. The ensuing fight, exacerbated by alcohol, left both sides with injuries and lingering resentments. In a move repeated too many times throughout the country, one of the families decided to seek revenge by denouncing members of the opposing family to the military as being guerrillas.  The denounced names appeared on a subversive list – lists widely acknowledged as equivalent to death orders.

Armed with these lists, the military entered El Jute on October 19, 1981 and forcibly removed eight men from the community. The military denied any knowledge of their whereabouts and the men were never seen or heard from again.

The judge condemned each of the four accused to 53 years and 4 months in prison for the forced disappearance of Jacobo Crisóstomo Chegüen, Miguel Ángel Chegüen Crisóstomo, Raúl Chegüen, Inocente Gallardo, Antolín Gallardo Rivera, Valentín Gallardo Rivera and Santiago Gallardo Rivera and Tránsito Rivera. What’s more, the case was left open to prosecute the crimes of torture and rape by the army in the community of El Jute, since evidence of this emerged during the course of the trial. Additionally, the judge ordered investigation into the higher levels of the G2 (intelligence) military command at the time of the disappearances – up to then-Minister of Defense Ángel Aníbal Guevara and Minister of the Interior Benedicto Lucas García (ex-dictator Romeo Lucas García’s brother). This is completely unprecedented.

When I heard the news of the verdict, I was completely overwhelmed. The judge had gone above and beyond my expectations. I wondered how people in El Jute felt. Verdicts are always complicated and cause a full spectrum of emotions. The victims’ goal in this process was always to find out what happened to their loved ones and where they were buried. Yet legal cases do not seek this end. Instead, the legal system passes judgment and decides punishment. The search for truth serves only to establish guilt – not reconciliation for those who have been wronged. Would people feel satisfied? Relieved? Upset? Frustrated? Vindicated? Scared?

Despite increasingly serious threats against him and his family, Don Alejandro stayed the course. He always knew he was doing the right thing. He had glowed with pride after he testified. “I feel good,” he had told us as he left the witness stand. I was surprised then, to watch news coverage of the verdict and see Don Alejandro doubled over in tears. It wasn’t his manner to be overcome. His tears baffled me.

When I congratulated Don Alejandro over the phone, I was surprised by the vehemence of his response. “Don’t congratulate me. This is not my victory. This is a victory for everyone. This shows you can’t just do this to people. This isn’t our victory. This is a victory for everyone. For the community, for the country, for the world. This is a sign that this cant happen again. For every country that has come to visit us through their accompaniers – this is your victory too. You are a part of this. You made this possible. This is a victory for all of us. Don’t congratulate me.” This spirit of community in rural Guatemala – of fighting for something that is so much bigger than a specific group of people – constantly humbles me.

On my final visit to the community I asked Don Alejandro how he felt on the day of the verdict. He told us it was a long day; everyone was exhausted. He was happy with the outcome. But, when he was walking out of the courtroom, one of the high-ranking military veterans had confronted him. The veteran demanded Alejandro tell him who paid him off to lie. Who had paid him to fabricate this story? Was it a human rights group? “I am not a violent man,” Don Alejandro told us, “But… that is the only time I have felt like punching a man. I wanted to hit him. I had to walk away.” I realized this was the moment I had seen captured on film – the moment after Don Alejandro had walked away from the veteran. It struck me – it wasn’t the direct threats to his own life, the threats to the lives of his children, the bribe to drop the charges, the termination of his employment because of his involvement in the case, the accusation of lying in court, not even the long-awaited verdict recognizing the crimes perpetrated against his father and brothers – it was the suggestion that the inspiration for this fight had been payment that broke him. “I’ve never felt that uncontrolled desire to inflict violence like that before. How could anyone think that?” His voice trembled.  What he didn’t say – and what he didn’t need to – was the real reason he began this case.

Drying adobe bricks for future house construction

_______________
A Few Final Reflections

The sacrifices made for this trial were significant. Witnesses risked their lives, and the lives of their family members. Some lost their jobs. They have had to publicly face their inner traumas. Lawyers and legal aides worked on this case for years and found themselves targets of intimidation. Supporters present at the hearings experienced not just physical but a profound emotional exhaustion as the trial dragged on over four months. And at the end of it all: a conviction. A colonel sentenced to 53 years in prison for ordering disappearances. A huge human rights victory in prosecuting war crimes.

Yet at a local level, when I ask people in El Jute what they think about the condemnation for forced disappearance I hear, “Así se dice” That’s what they say. There remains a clear contrast between national headlines and local realities. The witnesses we visit have always known it was forced disappearance. The verdict is enormous, but locally has exacerbated existing conflicts. During the trial, some of the accused laughed when witnesses described being tortured. One of the accused actually grinned as one witness narrated how soldiers raped her. It is difficult to feel vindicated when the perpetrators appear to show no remorse. It is difficult to imagine reconciliation when pursuing justice stirs up old conflicts.

Sunset seen from El Jute

It is not an exaggeration to say that I have personally invested blood (yes, I fell and have a scar to prove it), sweat and tears in El Jute. This community, filled with warm, kind and open individuals, is a place I will never forget. Their history is just a tiny microcosm of the complicated work being done to fight for human rights in Guatemala. Their victory – our victory – should be celebrated. It should be remembered. And it should inspire and embolden all of us to continue working toward truth and peace in whatever community we might find ourselves.

_______________

Interested in becoming an international human rights accompanier? Let me know! I’d be happy to answer any questions or steer you in the right direction!

_______________
Urgent actions:

***Print and sign letters to demand accountability for the violent eviction of unionists manifesting in peaceful protest by the police in December.

***Print and sign letters to support indigenous communities’ right to self-determination.

***Consider adding your name to support 4 courageous students walking from Florida to DC to raise awareness on our failed immigration system.