We demand justice! was the phrase most heard across the country this Saturday from civil organizations, survivors and families of those killed or disappeared during the CAI.
Activities in this capital began at the Kaji Tulan House of Memory with the opening of an altar to honor and recognize those who are no longer among them.
Photos, candles and incense sticks as a souvenir made up the homage in the permanent exhibition of this institution, which aims to remind new generations of a recent past so that it will not be forgotten.
In sober figures, 36 years of repression, about 250,000 dead or disappeared, a million exiles and refugees, 200,000 orphans, 40,000 widows and nine out of ten victims unarmed civilians, mostly indigenous, according to statistics from the Historical Enlightenment Commission with support from the UN.
Also in the afternoon, the We Are Here Collective’s documentary The Mystery of Adoptions, on child trafficking between Guatemala, Canada and Belgium during the war, will be presented at the Mosaico cultural center in Zone 1 of the capital.
The day before, a walk convened by the National Platform of Victims’ Organizations of the CAI left the Plaza de los Derechos Humanos in front of the Supreme Court and passed through several streets of the historic center with stops at the Congress, Pasaje Rubio (Sexta Avenida) and the Metropolitan Cathedral .
In these last two places, the career of the student leader Oliverio Castañeda and Monsignor Juan Gerardi was commemorated.
Castañeda was assassinated on October 20, 1978, and Gerardi on April 26, 1998, two days after the release of the Historical Memory Recovery Project’s report “Guatemala: Never Again,” a Bishop’s compendium that exposed thousands of witnesses and victims of state repression and blamed the army for most crimes.
Finally, in an act held in the Plaza de la Constitución, next to the religious headquarters, the participants called on the government to recognize the dates honoring the victims of the war and on the Ministry of Education to include the report on historical memory in the curriculum studies.
Also between yesterday and this Saturday, groups in San Juan Comalapa (Chimaltenango), San Cristóbal and Chisec (Alta Verapaz), Nebaj (Quiché) and Zepur Sarco (Estor, Izabal) held days to honor their dead and disappeared.
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