I was a young San Diego-based reporter in the early 1980s. Like many other Americans, I was only dimly aware that Central America was in the throes of savage violence.
Washington was backing murderous authoritarian regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador. The nations were locked in wars against insurgents. A major part of the government response was the mass slaughter and death squad murders. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in this fashion. In Guatemala, more than 200,000 people lost their lives. Some 83 percent were Maya people.
In the spring of 1980, photographer Ian Dryden and I documented the genocidal campaign in northern Guatemala. We spoke to dozens of Mayan refugees in Chiapas, Mexico, just a few miles from Guatemala.
Here is an excerpt from my book that recounts our experience.
Puerto Rico, Mexico—Felipe Rodríguez squatted in the shade of a ceiba tree, idly poking at an anthill. Only hours before, he told a visitor, he had returned from his native village, Santa María Tzeja, a two-hour walk along jungle trails in Guatemala. “
I had been afraid to go back there,” the tiny, wiry Ro- dríguez said in a monotone voice. “But I needed to bury my family, so I made myself strong.”
Inexorably, the talk focused on his family’s recent murders. It is the same with many of the hundreds of Guatemalan war refugees in this jungle settlement.
Even a casual conversation with the refugees, Mayans from the northern departments of Quiché and Huehuetenango, elicits talk of a horrifying, unexpected death at the hands of Guatemalan troops. Refugees from places near Mexico, such as La Unión, Santo Tomás, Pueblo Nuevo, Ixtauhacan, Los Ángeles, Mayarán, and Kaibil, tell of a military campaign started last year and continuing today aimed at wiping them out.
“I guess the government doesn’t want any more Indian race,” said one refugee.
Rodríguez carefully pulled a color photo from a nylon bag. In the photo, he stands smiling, wearing an orange T-shirt, his arms folded across his chest. Children of all ages—his children—and his wife crowd around him.
When the soldiers came to Santa María two months ago, Rodríguez and most of his children were away working on a farm. But the soldiers found his wife and several of the children.
“My wife here, they shot her in the back twice when she tried to run away,” he said, pointing to a plump, dark woman. Two of his daughters in the photo wear green dresses, one seven and the other five.
“The little one,” he said, pointing to the more petite girl, “they shot her right here,” said Rodríguez, his finger resting just below his left eye. “All of this,” he continued, his right palm cupping the back of his skull, “got blown away. My other little one, they beheaded her.”
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 