Him the money and memories must be kept alive otherwise theyll be extinguished like the flame of the candle and i mean. Remembering needs pictures words what is who isnt but if you dont know what that is why they made them disappear my father ophelia his brother and so many others to wipe out all trace of their struggles as if theyd never existed as if theyd never been here among us in those you know youd understand engineers. From one nine hundred sixty to one thousand nine hundred ninety six what amala was subjected to the worst repression in latin American History thousands of people were murdered or disappeared in two thousand and twelve a group of citizens who had taken their case to the interim Merican Court of human rights obtained a judgment against the state of guatemala as part of their compensation the families requested that a documentary be made and financed by the guatemalan government the state failed to comply with the ruling and the point came when the families were no longer willing to wait this is their documentary and the seemingly american in the delivery van arrived think that meant that he a thick yes they had planned it all carefully how you want to but ive been. Blocked off the road and drove a white van into the door to gain access to the apartment in a little place. For one thing down thumbing through a few climbed up this window great and what i am being is that only woman one. This is the room i showed you when we were by the street a tin roof covered most of the courtyard and this is the door i was talking about. Those people sitting you know they came over the roof jumped down where the pipe is and let the others hear you have to hear and then some rushed into the rooms where we were. The others went straight to my brothers room and kicked in the door. And i think i mean this is the evil that is what then we heard a shot fired the bullet hit the corner over there. Sorry for asking but did you see him being physically abused did you hear him shout or scream. Or you must yes we did because back then there was only a curtain where that door is now or you know one of them therefore i know. Someone outside gave an order to bring me out they thought we had weapons and i was supposed to show them where they were buried our mother. Being is in a mental your family. I went outside and saw my father digging a hole. In oil is still on the up. They thought thats where the weapons were. But i knew nothing about that so i couldnt tell them anything. Else only. When i was outside i saw a man standing next to the kitchen upstairs he was the one whod sussed out the layout of the house i mean that building almost fell we collect and. You have to. Know its some years later your neighbor who lives opposite my mother said that she was on her way to do some shopping that morning and she saw two men grabbed my brother as he was coming out of the house. Theyd been waiting by the door. That usually those people would return later to recreate apartments with hand if they discovered anyone there theyd take them away to go thats why we left the house quickly conducted into quitters it with your parents there when they took sergio. Yes my mother and father were also there when sergio was abducted with. Each other meaning did your parents try to find him. Since there was i mean thats a difficult subject it was really hard on them i think every mother who has gone through it has. Acted in a similar way including my mother. In law actually they get up in the morning and say i dreamt overlander years or i dreamt of said geo or i dreamt that or someone might say i think i saw him in the streets of macbeth a girl can look great but it wasnt him. It wasnt him but thats the only way he was ever mentioned again. Otherwise the subject was to boo. It is beautiful and youre going to get a phoebe those were the worst years of the civil war which devastated the country the police and the army were fighting against the guerillas thousands of people were abducted forty five thousand around the whole country forty five thousand and those are just the ones who disappeared another two hundred thousand died the population of guatemala was eight million at the time been pointed out to me unity and it was the most brutal repression of a people ever endured in latin america and at the moment. I would be doing as you were hear a lot back then i already see the reaction from me yes yes with my family usually with my brother to see whether our brother rubin was amongst the bodies that were brought here marked double x. In other words the nameless book at the top we saw a lot of people here and look to the lot of bodies of some of them walking when you see these almost gone little salt would often run into other relatives especially in lava being in a cemetery. Its where most of the murder victims were taken and i see now. It will be recognised many of the dead we also know i want this it was so painful i came for about six months and then could no longer bear to look at the terrible things they had done to people some of the victims had cuts on their feet cut so finally were probably made with a razor blade the house the media the us the. Salt and lemon had been rubbed into the wound see this it was horrifying send. Any more and also flame to the scene and the most harrowing thing of all though im unable to get it out of my head was a couple. They were said to be engaged. Navios. Guile. They were students at San Carlos University and she was pregnant but it is that im better at seeing him babble. I dont know if somebody told us that when they were found the babys head was in its mothers stomach that they knew more. Then throw him in. With Solidarity Group of who i am not sure was founded around them the name means mutual aid we met at the morgue each of us alone to face the atrocities and fear we needed one another in this group we women tried in our own way to do something to see our missing fathers brothers sons and husbands again but if you. Didnt think all who knew the gentle since the founding of our organization on june the fifth one nine hundred eighty four we have been calling on the transitional military government to provide information on the whereabouts of hundreds and hundreds of guatemalan citizens the. Childrens choir many of whom were undoubtedly abducted under the regime of gen me if you have victoria is me here. In what we have experienced and attempted since then defies description the reaction from government spokespersons to questions regarding all those who have disappeared is disrespectful and deplorable we cannot accept their contemptuous and completely improbable responses. A free man again as the family feels they claim that the missing have left the country or joined the girl years. Gone how could they know that what proof do they have. On the one thing i know beneath the people of guatemala we cannot allow these in situ is crimes to go unpunished. That they believe him via the we. Urgently call upon you to join our fight for the Immediate Release of abducted guatemalan citizens and for an end to the killing and all forms of violence that violate Human Dignity in the land even without whom i am so in by the two hundred twenty five families which constitute up to you moved to so that our sons husbands fathers and brothers might be returned to was alive. The objections continued indiscriminately the army took away and killed anyone they suspected of thinking differently irrespective of whether they were a guerrilla or not the day after day more and more people came to help we owe much to our and asked for help in their search for relatives who had disappeared. One lawyer got most of us and we first came here ten years ago this was a horrible place dirt floor pitch black we put the mites in and the individual rooms were shocking they were small. And had no light or windows. And the doors were just grills. And not industrial grills but homemade want to. Hear anyone say oh no this was where the grill showed that Political Prisoners were kept here and what is also shocking is that over the last ten years we have found no indication whatsoever of someone having survived captivity here in la. Not a Single Person knew the whole. Supreme of this but we learned later that there were a lot of these secret prisons in which the police and army had people disappear but when we questioned them they denied it. They look about how we know very little about what happened in these places and. When this and this when these sometimes all was held at this Police Station which still exists today i mean. That would be my last. The last time i saw her was on march the eighth one thousand nine hundred full International Womens day now that im here one dollar to put this whole dowels on agr. Of soldiers burst into our apartment and forced my brother and me to watch as they talked shit. Out of put out i am less like i dont know. They pulled out her fingernails one by one with pliers. Holy gals have it and we had to watch. Is a sunless not matter what else. Those are my last memories of when they seized my mother they also arrested my brother and me and took us to the National Police department on the avenue del boulevard and then the torture continued we was subjected to electric shocks and being on to new lessons in the sinners haply we had to watch as our mother was also tortured in the same way we mostly house her lack. Of money madeleine as the enemy the last words she was able to say to was were be strong be strong where the sampling. Of your mature became increasingly important journalists abroad began to take an interest in us and our struggle in the cause of those who had disappeared but if you can in the end even general may have it taught us what amount of military dictator had to receive us back it represented in the barbaric repression unleashed by the army and other organizations no one would say from a piece of international totalitarian organizations be it Amnesty International or americas watch they are the ones that you know the Mutual Support Group what do you do when they sell their instructions from washington d. C. Yeah im used to it in a way except as an american i watch which you can see a little bit of an interest in it gets used and i really didnt know when i called the first nine hundred eighty five something happened which we would all feel good. To be the leader of a poor moto character gomas calisto was murdered. When you have to become part of his tongue the message is clear and pure. And its a moment of his own that most of the family knew then that we were not safe something could happen to us at any time i think it was at the cemetery that rosario took the megaphone and said that she wasnt afraid that she would defy him towards killers be it weaken his lips yamamotos i will say see most games. She was truly courageous a real fighter but we were afraid i still remember how we talked about it short of god now its our turn what are we going to do to you i dont know still that is what i value what a job i sat for him to think youd be complies a mother you must have been worried about me or me. I have visibility into a single quandary and one thousand nine hundred five things got steadily worse i want to take you to your grandfathers. It was a route i drove every day that particular day on our way there i saw three cars and ten or eleven armed men on the hill leading to less but he says he is and suddenly they pointed to me got into their cars and came after me i drove faster and faster i turned left and right and wherever possible i went down narrow streets when i arrived fortunately your grandfather was standing by the gate and this is the only i shouted at him to open up which the poor chap did immediately that i drove in and right to the back where he kept his seat i was so scared that held you tight got out of the car and hid in the bedroom with and in it got up to him if you ask what the deal here to me now they are going to kill us i thought and yet i had promised your father that i would look after you you see him as a moment the place. Where they got that is that he seemed not to be in. Winning we seem to be losing after all we had already lost and back then in the week before easter wed still been consoling and encouraging one another then already called me to say that rosario had disappeared. Even. The little boy had diarrhea and so she had gone to buy some nappies the child and her brother were in the car with her. Is in the wet on the this is where the alleged accident happened but there was no accident what really happened is that they murdered rosario her child and her brother. They tortured the infant horribly they burnt him and ripped out his fingernails and he was just a two year old little boy absolutely barbaric. And they tortured rosarios brother not to mention rosario herself they really made them suffer all three of them. So rosario his death was a clear direct message to them it was a serious blow to the entire Solidarity Group many of us went into hiding i hid in order to protect you but each one of us only wanted to get somewhere safe after rosarios death of who you know much will was no longer the same we fought on or at least we tried to but not like we had done before but still despite everything we did try. Last year i actually live in this is where his bed was all your. After it happened i spent a lot of time here i knelt and said the rosary but well. All i wanted was for my son to be alive for him not to be tortured when they walk and i had the feeling that the only way i could enjoy it all was by opening my heart to the lord and the virgin mary and never stopped believing not even when they told me my son would not be coming back but until his body is found i said there is still hope surely with the new technology thats available they must be able to find something something that will help me like a sign perhaps or a word of it hardly a day passes without me asking mr gauntlet when i can i go out into the yard or two or three in the morning and pray to the lord please give me an answer i cant endure your silence any longer please look at me i feel im going to cry again but the tears never come give me an answer lord you give others amounts so why not me all i want is for my son to have a home to live in a roof over his head a bed where he can rest and a table he can sit and eat in a minute own the. New finish a peking we have to cling to Little Things micrograms you. Because their disappearance is an attempt to obliterate them as though they had never existed as though there had never been people who wanted to change this country our own community we so that it seems like its impossible to change it we really and its an attempt at obliteration which extends into their private lives and into ours and to those of the survivors and to those of their relatives even into the memories we perhaps still have of them. Who what were they like how do they live before someone tried to obliterate them. And thats the thing we had a special relationship with our father he was a tall man is he i thought. It was time which was real i liked his mustache his beard he was big and had a dark complection i got my complexion from him and. When they abducted my father murdered him i was in a state of shock for a whole year. Its like its hard to describe the has always been this hand that youve been able to hold and suddenly its taken away from you that it was an incredible shock when that hand was taken away jenna and even today i am in need of my fathers advice and i need orientation and i still need things that no one else can give me and if you remember that. Youve been who can be but i believe that my father finds a million ways and moments to be with me he companies me along my path in this becoming that. But if you can i see it like there was nothing more we could do it was as if our every attempt to learn something about those who disappeared hit a wall of silence until nine hundred ninety nine that is when the deity only topped the military log book appeared. In the log book league guatemalas military secret service recorded information on people who are between nine hundred eighty three and nine hundred eighty five under general asco home battle makiya victorious were arrested in abducted by state officials. Back in one thousand nine hundred nine member of the army stole this list from the Army Archives and handed it over to a civilian he didnt give the most important part of the military log book consists of a record of state activity which it contains the names of one hundred eighty three persons along with the date and location of their abduction another date indicates the day on which the detainee was moved to. Another secret Service Facility or was released in most cases the follows the code three hundred or say a lowly able poncho poncho took him away that meant death or execution most likely apart from our notices the diorio militant is the only document which proves that the abductions were the work of the army in the police force here. To give them a part of the record is also devoted to the aquarium were told it contains the names of those relatives of the leaders of our group who disappeared the result is husband my brother you my own failures brother youre powerless father. And in the purpose of this code is to dehumanize them to deprive them of any form of selfdetermination thats why codes were used in the log books it was probably the same for every family in the newspaper published the list of names my mother immediately took me somewhere else the old fear i had returned your book about his illness in the star known as a video link will only ellaline will need to fully question the list was published in the sunday edition of a national newspaper. Only and. Someone came to our house and said look your husbands name is in the paper. With a c m it does all the media newspapers were all tucked away in our house my family just didnt want to know my father was the only one who looked at the list but then it was get rid of it were not going to discuss the matter at all it was the act on the one hand there was pain anguish and tears on the other hand though we were glad that at long last we were learning something about our family members whether we might discover their mortal remains or we even find out they were still alive. Now about the reading of the race the horse and the one. Good thing in our case it was that fathers photograph and his personal details were printed in the news. Paper that we relatives finally knew for certain something that wed always known but had never wanted to accept at least not until we saw the body in front of us from global. Only someone from the military who told my parents i didnt see him myself that when they began to torture him they not all his teeth out with a hammer that is ho