In a minute memories must be kept alive otherwise theyll be extinguished like the flame of the candle. Remembering needs pictures words what is who is up what has he done to me that is why they made them disappear my father of feet his brother and so many others to wipe out all trace of their struggles as if theyve never existed as if theyd never been here among us you seem communities dont peek into news. From one nine hundred sixty two 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 enter American 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 seeming to emerge in the delivery van arrived to expect them in fifty a thick yes they had planned it all carefully how you want to put it. They blocked off the road and drove a white van into the door to gain access to the apartment. Down for months and found them in a few climbed up this window grate and thats what i am being it had only been there you were. 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 met the others here you have the here 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 evil that is that what then we heard a shot fired that the bullet hit the corner over there. And. Sorry for asking but did you see him being physically abused did you hear him shout will scream. Or you must be hell yes we did because back then there was only a curtain where that door is now you know all 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. Even mentally youll find me. I went outside and saw my father digging a hole. You know youll get stung. By them after they thought thats where the weapons were. But i knew nothing about that so i couldnt tell them anything. Else only went back when i was outside i saw a man standing next to the kitchen upstairs hes the one who had sussed out the layout of the house i mean. You have. Never seen 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 record the apartment and if they discovered anyone there theyd take them away to go thats why we left the house quickly and look into quitters it with your parents there when they took sergio. Yes my mother and father were also there when sergio was abducted. He took the meaning of the did your parents try to find him my. Sister was i mean thats a difficult subject it was really hard on them i think every mother who has gone through it has reacted in a similar way including my mother. Eventually they get up in the morning and say i dreamt overlander or i dreamt to say geo or i dreamt that or someone might say i think i saw him in the streets of mumbai go through. But it wasnt him. It wasnt him but thats the only way he was ever mentioned again when. I went and saw the wires the subject was to. Get in the spirit when youve been a good recipe those were the worst years of the civil war which devastated the country the police and the army were fighting against the guerrillas 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 to me and pointed out to me you needed and it was the most brutal repression of a people ever endured in latin america i mean. What are you doing as you were here a lot back then i already see them yeah i mean 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 i wanted to look at the you saw a lot of people here and look to the lot of bodies. When you see the one most often run into other relatives especially in love of being in a cemetery he. Is where most of the murder victims were taken gavia unless you know. It will be recognised many of the dead we see and then we also know i want this it was soap. 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 finely were probably made with a razor blade of the house or maybe less. Salt in lemon had been rubbed into the world. It was horrifying sent. Also flame consumed and the most harrowing thing of all though im able to get it out of my head was a couple because they were said to be engaged. Most of us. Dont if they were students at San Carlos University and she was pregnant but it is so i. See him babble. I think i would if somebody told us that when they were found the babys head was in its mothers stomach the news will. Then truly be in. The Solidarity Group of why i want to it was founded around then the main 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 see when you think jenkins since the founding of our organization on june the fifth 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. Many of whom were undoubtedly abducted under the regime of gen me if you have victorious and me here. Well 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. Every man guilty somebody feels they claim that the missing have left the country or joined the girl years. Ago how could they know that what proof do they have. Will be only one thing i know beneath the people of guatemala we cannot allow these in seed us crimes to go unpunished. That they build machines via appia 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 is more than. So and by the two hundred twenty five families which constitute a poor move to do so that our sons husbands fathers and brothers might be returned to as a life. 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 day after day more and more people came to help were much well 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 lights in and the individual rooms were shocking. And they were small and had no light or windows. And the doors were just grills. And not industrial grills but homemade want to. Even see how it goes where the grill show 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 life. Not a single person. To be more 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 at us that we know very little about what happened in these places in the news. When this and this when de santis all was held at this Police Station which still exists today you. Know we demand that. The last time i saw her was on march the eighth one thousand nine hundred. Full International Womens day now that im healthy one though. When a group of soldiers burst into our apartment and forced my brother and me to watch as they talked shit. I am just like i dont know. They pulled out her fingernails one by one with pliers. If we not only gals have it and we have to watch. Is a sunless not matter what it was. 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. They had the torture continued we were subjected to electric shocks them being in the lessons in the. Sins happily we had to watch as our mother was also tortured in the same way we mostly house her lack of money madeleine is 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 he have a taught us what amount of military dictator had to receive us back as represented in the barbaric repression unleashed by the army and other organizations no one was sorry for the general began to officially accuse a poor motto. Is all written in english and sent from washington by one of these international totalitarian organizations be it Amnesty International or americas watch they are the ones who live you know the Mutual Support Group what do you do in the very same prayer instructions from washington d. C. Yeah you seem to not know where she is in america i watch way too. Because you know what it is i suppose i wanted to finish it shes been in the middle there really was one april the First One Hundred eighty five something happened which we would all feel would. Lead to the leader of a poor motto character gomas kalis or was murdered. Literally off to the counter his tongue the message was clear. And its a moment of his own that must but the devil we 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 head towards killers in the week in his last yamamotos i was a scene of chaos she was truly courageous a real fighter but we were afraid i still remember how we talked about it sort of oh god now its our turn what are we going to do to get me out i lost a lot of sort of value on a job i sat through the q. B. Can as a mother you must have been worried about me me. Happens ability and i think up on the in one thousand nine hundred five things got steadily worse i wanted 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 precise is when suddenly they point 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 this is 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 to see i was so scared that held you tight got out of the car and hid in the bedroom is that in a part of him if he has been there what up until he. I mean now they are going to kill us i thought and yet i had promised your father that i would look after you just in a moment the place. Seemed not to be a winning we seemed to be losing after all we had already lost. Back then in the week before easter weve still been consoling and encouraging one another then already called me to say that rosario had disappeared but i see. Even. More that their 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 gravel on the this is where the alleged accident happened but there was no accident or what really happened is that they murdered rosario her child and her brother. They tortured the infantry 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 but they really made them suffer all three of them. So rosarios 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 a poor young which 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 me. Lags a little. Bit in this is where his bed was all your life for him not to be tortured when i hear you invoke and i had the feeling that the only way i could endure 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 it would be 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 ounce or i cant enjoy 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 an answer 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 he remembers her own theyre committed. To finish the picking we have to cling to Little Things like photographs. 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 the really 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 to the memories we perhaps still have of them. Who what were they like how do they live before someone tried to obliterate them. And this defeat them so we had a special relationship with our father he was a tall man is he i thought. It was time which as we all i liked his mustache his beard he was big and had a dull 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 on and suddenly its taken away from you at the moment and 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. Youve been stalking me but i believe that my father finds a million ways and moments to be with me he companies me along my path just to come in. And if you can i mean it seemed like there was nothing more we could do 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 tapped the military log book appeared. In the log book league guatemalas military secret service recorded information on people who between one thousand eighty three and one thousand nine hundred five under general asco home battle met here victorious were arrested in abducted by state officials in action nine hundred ninety nine a 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 logbook consists of a record of state activities and 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 must be 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 of talk it contains the names of those relatives of the leaders of our group who disappeared the result is husband my brother my own failures brother powerless father. The little boy the whatever the purpose of this code is to dehumanize them to deprive them of any form of selfdetermination thats why codes were used in the local it was probably the same for every family when the newspaper published the list of names my mother immediately took me somewhere else the old fear had returned your book about his illness and the star known as a video only zero mean look at me differently question the list was published in the sunday edition of a national newspaper. On the i mean yeah. Someone came to our house and said look your husbands name is in the paper. With us here but it does so over me up with 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 all 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 so they go along with the wearing of the laureus the horse and im the one in a service to him alone the good thing in our case was that fathers photograph and his personal details were printed in the news. Paper 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. 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 how i know that they tortured him for a long time to try and extract information from him the man said they only stopped