Photo: PBI-Guatemala at the commemoration ceremony at the Memorial of the Victims of Enforced Disappearance, Landscapes of Memory that is located at the former San Juan Comalapa military base.
On June 22, PBI-Guatemala posted:
“On the National Day Against #Forced Disappearance, #PBI accompanies Famdegua Guatemala [the Association of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared of Guatemala] in the press conference, an event in which they are dignifying the memory of the 27 union leaders of the National Workers’ Central [CNT] disappeared in 1980.
The Working Group against Enforced Disappearance in Guatemala, in which FAMDEGUA, GAM [Mutual Support Group] and the Center for International Human Rights Research (CIIDH) participate, continues to demand the enactment of Law 3590 to consolidate a search mechanism for missing persons, the opening of military archives and files, and the fulfillment of agreements for reparations and redress for victims.”
Later that same day, PBI-Guatemala also posted: “Today, #PBI accompanies the commemoration of the National Day Against #Enforced Disappearance in the Landscape of Memory by the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation – FAFG and Conavigua [the National Coordination of Widows of Guatemala].”
The FAFG and Conavigua were commemorating the 6th anniversary of the return of 172 skeletons recovered in the former military detachment of San Juan Comalapa, now transformed into Memorial of the Victims of Enforced Disappearance, Landscapes of Memory.
200,000 killed, 45,000 forcibly disappeared
NACLA has explained: “Between 1962 and 1996, 200,000 Guatemalans were killed and 45,000 were forcibly disappeared. For the majority of families, the whereabouts of those lost loved ones are still unknown, even decades after security forces abducted them. Most of the victims [83%] of the conflict were Indigenous. Most of the perpetrators [93%] were members of government forces.”
Law 3590
In September 2023, Ruda reported: “The Mutual Support Group (GAM) presented initiative 3590 that provides for the approval of the Law of the Commission for the Search of Persons, Victims of Forced Disappearance and other forms of Disappearance, an initiative shelved without progress in the Congress of the Republic.”
On June 12, 2024, the International Centre for Human Rights Research (CiiDH) posted this update:
“The proposed Law 3590 is a humanitarian initiative that seeks to respond to the thousands of families who are still waiting to find their missing loved ones who disappeared during the Internal Armed Conflict (CAI).
After many years that the Working Group Against Enforced Disappearances in Guatemala proposed before the Congress of the Republic the initiative of Law 3590, its final approval is still pending.
Its approval is of National Urgency because it creates the ‘Commission for the Search of Victims of Forced Disappearance and other Forms of Disappearance’.
This will help the state to add its responsibility in the search for more than 45,000 victims of forced disappearance during the [internal armed conflict] and thus give an answer to thousands of families who live in agony for not knowing the whereabouts of their loved ones.”
Trade unionists killed
Prensa Comunitaria reports: “Every June 21, since 1990, the National Day against Enforced Disappearance has been commemorated in Guatemala, in memory of 27 trade unionists and students who were gathered at the headquarters of the National Workers’ Central (CNT) in the historic center of Guatemala City, and were kidnapped by agents of the Guatemalan State security.”
Mapeo de la Memoria adds: “The National Workers’ Central [CNT] brought together union leaders from different companies such as Coca Cola, the Kerns food factory, Prensa Libre, among others. The employment situation of all workers was generally not favourable, so demonstrations or occupations of company plants to demand better wages and better working conditions were common.”
That article further notes: “It was in the last raid [on June 21, 1980] that the government of then-President General Romeo Lucas García took drastic measures, taking away all the people who were gathered there on that occasion. Among the victims were a pregnant woman and several young people between 19 and 29 years old.”
Ceremony at former military base
In another article, Prensa Comunitaria also reports:
“On the National Day of Forced Disappearance, members of the National Coordinator of Widows of Guatemala (Conavigua), commemorated the memory of 172 victims, who were exhumed between 2003 and 2005, in the former Military Detachment of Chimaltenango, today converted into a memory center called Landscape of Memory.
During the activity, representatives of the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG), shared about the identification processes of the victims, since of the 172, they have managed to identify 86, through DNA samples and scientific investigations.
Relatives of the victims also participated and told stories of how their brothers, parents, and children were taken and disappeared by the Guatemalan Army. Some of the families have been searching for their families for more than 36 years in the hope of finding them.
Photo by PBI-Guatemala.
Currently, several families continue with the search processes for their relatives who disappeared during the 80s, in the hope of finding them and giving them a dignified burial. Some families have managed to identify their relatives and decide that their remains remain in the Landscape of Memory. Because it was in that place where they were found and it is part of their history that they continue in this memorial that seeks to dignify the disappeared.
Between 2003 and 2005, the National Coordinator of Widows of Guatemala [Conavigua], together with the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala [FAFG], promoted the exhumation of 220 bones of victims in the former military detachment of Comalapa, Chimaltenango, which was under the direction of General Víctor Augusto Vásquez Echeverría, accused of the disappearance of more than 180 people opposed to the military regime of Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores in the case of the Military Diary.
It was in 2018, in that old military detachment, that the women of Conavigua built the Passage of Memory, to remember their disappeared relatives. The memorial that seeks to make new generations know about these atrocities committed by the Guatemalan Army in the 80s.”
The full article can be read at Familias de Comalapa conmemoran el Día Nacional contra la Desaparición Forzada (Prensa Comunitaria, June 23, 2024).
Published by Brent Patterson on