Abstract
In Plan de Sánchez, we were excavating eighteen mass graves. This meant we were unearthing a tremendous number of artifacts and clothing associated with each skeleton. On one occasion, local villagers sorted through artifacts found in a grave of burned skeletons. The bones were so badly burned and contorted from the fire that though we could count that there had been at least sixteen victims, we had no complete skeletons and were unable to associate any of the artifacts with individual skeletons. Survivors asked us if they could examine the artifacts. We laid them out above the grave in an orderly and respectful manner on top of flattened paper bags. Then the survivors surrounded the artifacts spread out before them. With great tenderness, they began to look through burned bits of clothing, necklace beads, and half-melted plastic shoes, trying to recognize some-thing of their relatives who had been killed in the massacre. A few of the men recognized their wives’ wedding necklaces and asked us if it might be possible for them to have the necklaces after the investigation was completed. There was no dissension in the community about which necklaces had belonged to which wives. Those who couldn’t find the necklaces of their wives, sisters, and daughters asked if they might be able to have some of the stray beads because “surely some of those beads must have fallen from our relatives’ necklaces.”
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. They walk in lands of shadows but a light has shone forth.
—Isaiah 9:1–2
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Notes
1994 was the year of the Roboniños national panic in Guatemala. Several North American women were attacked and severely beaten in rural communities. They were accused of stealing babies to sell their organs. Like other international women, Kathleen and I were frequently viewed with suspicion, and parents would spirit their children out of our paths, sometimes saying, “Vienen las lobas” (Here come the wolves). For more on roboniños, see Abigail Adams, “Word, Work and Worship: Engendering Evangelical Culture Between Highland Guatemala and the United States” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1999), and Diane Nelson, A Finger in the Wound (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). On worldwide organ-stealing rumors, see
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “Theft of Life: The Globalization of Organ Stealing Rumors,” Anthropology Today 12, no. 3 (June 1996): 3–11.
For more on the therapeutic testimonial model, see Yael Fischman and Jaime Ross, “Group Treatment of Exiled Survivors of Torture,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 60, no. 1 (January 1990): 135–141;
Patrick Morris, Derrick Silove, Vijaya Manicavasagar, Robin Bowles, Margaret Cunningham, and Ruth Tarn, “Variations in Therapeutic Interventions for Cambodian and Chilean Refugee Survivors of Torture and Trauma: A Pilot Study,” Australian and New Zealand journal of Psychiatry 3 (September 1993): 429–435;
Patrick McGorry, “Working with Survivors of Torture and Trauma: The Victorian Foundation for Survivors Perspective,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 29, no. 3 (September 1995): 463–472;
Ronan McIvor and Stuart Turner, “Assessment and Treatment Approaches for Survivors of Torture,” British Journal of Psychiatry 166 (1995): 705–711;
Maritza Thompson and Patrick McGorry, “Psychological Sequelae of Torture and Trauma in Chilean and Salvadoran Migrants: A Pilot Study,” Australian and New Zealand journal of Psychiatry 29, no. 1 (March 1995): 84–95;
Stevan Weine and Dori Laub, “Narrative Constructions of Historical Realities in Testimony with Bosnian Survivors of ‘Ethnic Cleansing,’” Psychiatry 58 (August 1995): 246–261;
Howard Waitzkin and Holly Magaña, “The Black Box in Somatization: Unexplained Physical Symptoms, Culture, and Narratives of Trauma,” Social Science and Medicine 45, no. 6 (September 1997): 811–825.
See Thomas Gavagan and Antonio Martinez, “Presentation of Recent Torture Survivors to Family Practice,” The Journal of Family Medicine 44, no.2 (February 1997): 209.
Patrick McGorry, “The Clinical Boundaries of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 29, no. 3 (September 1995): 385.
See, for example, Jerzy Krupinski, “Psychiatric Disorders of East European Refugees Now in Australia,” Social Science and Medicine 7 (1973): 31–49;
Elizabeth Lira, “Sobrevivir: Los Limites de la psicoterapia,” in E. Lira and E. Weistein, eds., Psicoterapía y represión política (Mexico City: Sigo Veintiuno Editores, 1984);
A. J. Cienfuegos and C. Monelli, “The Testimony of Political Repression as a Therapeutic Instrument,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 53 (1983): 43–51.
See, for example, Fischman and Ross, “Group Treatment of Exiled Survivors of Torture”; Morris, et al., “Variations in Therapeutic Interventions”; McGorry, “Working with Survivors of Torture and Trauma”; Thompson and McGorry, “Psychological Sequelae of Torture and Trauma”; Weine and Laub, “Narrative Constructions”; Harvey Weinstein, Laura Dansky, and Vincent Iacopino, “Torture and War Trauma Survivors in Primary Care Practice,” Western journal of Medicine 165, no. 3 (September 1996): 533–538.
Nancy Caro Hollander, Love in a Time of Hate—Liberation Psychology in Latin America (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1997), 85.
FAFG, Las Masacres de Rabinal (Guatemala City: FAFG, 1995). Other contributing authors included Fernando Moscoso and Ronaldo Sánchez. At the time of the publication of Las Masacres en Rabinal in 1995, it was still considered safer for the security of the authors that the publication carry no names other than the institutional name of the FAFG.
See ECAP, Técnicas de Escucha Responsable. Cuadernos de Salud Mental No. 1 (Guatemala City: ECAP, September 1998);
ECAP, Nuestras Molestias—Técnicas Participativas de Apoyo Psicosocial. Cuadernos de Salud Mental No. 2 (Guatemala City: ECAP, October 1998);
ECAP, El Sistema de Vigilancia de la Salud Mental Comunitaria. Cuadernos de Salud Mental No. 3 (Guatemala City: ECAP, November 1998);
ECAP, Psicologia Social y Violencia Politica (Guatemala City: ECAP, 1999). An interesting and unexpected outcome of this process has been that parties in conflict often request arbitration by ECAP staff when they are unable to independently reach agreement. In such cases, the parties in conflict further develop their skills by resolving the real-life dispute and laying a framework for peaceful resolution of future village conflicts.
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© 2003 Victoria Sanford
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Sanford, V. (2003). Excavations of the Heart. In: Buried Secrets. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403973375_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403973375_11
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