Guatemalan woman wants country to remember past, look to future

Published: 2003-11-18

COMALAPA, Guatemala (CNS) -- Rosalina Tuyuc knelt under a banner proclaiming "Yes, it was genocide" and tidied the flowers and candles on the improvised altar on the ground. "This land will be eternally sacred for us," she said in the sing-song tones of her native Kaqchikel language, remembering the hundreds believed buried nearby, among them her father. "We will take their bodies away, but their spirits will stay here." Tuyuc was at an abandoned military base outside her hometown of Comalapa, 50 miles west of Guatemala City. Forensic anthropologists have dug up 108 skeletons, many tied by their hands and feet, other missing limbs or even heads. Anthropologists believe they will unearth even more. Comalapa is the latest of many exhumations to lay bare the atrocities carried out, primarily by the military, during 36 years of civil war in Guatemala that claimed 200,000 lives, mostly indigenous Maya. It is also the latest of many painful stages on Tuyuc's mission in search of justice. It is unlikely to be the last.

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