Respondent Descriptions of the Perpetration of Violence
In providing a basis for understanding the violence and impunity, respondents describe typical manifestations of state-sponsored terror that have served as foundational life experiences.
These are represented by the incidents of extrajudicial execution by state security forces, by enforced disappearance and by torture/mutilation. For example, a Mayan activist in an organization of persons displaced by counterinsurgency campaigns described an Army sweep into his village, whose consequences were the deaths by shooting or torture of his immediate family:At six in the evening when military commissioners and the Army, who totaled more than 9,000 men, encircled the village... they arrived without saying even one word. They arrived at the houses to machine-gun my family. They killed, principally, my father, who was, like, seventy-four years old. Then they killed my brothers, who were twenty-six years old and... the littlest one, who was ten.
Then they began with the women. For example, my mother was not killed with firearms nor knives. They made a sharp, pointed stake from wood. So then, they began to torture her in the stomach. Also, they stuck it into her here in the neck, the eyes and they stuck it into her mouth as well.
So then, what they said to her, or, that’s to say, what they asked of my mother was me. Who knows... my mother knew that I was inside [the house]. But she negated knowing my whereabouts. “I don’t know,” she said. So then, they killed her purely by torture. By kicking her. And they also drew a knife. So then, they cut off her ears, and a piece of her nose... while she was alive. So then, my mother, herself... I could hear her really well. “What do you men want from us? We are poor people!” And... “What is it that you want from us?” And, so, they said to her, “You people are pure guerrillas. You are pure communists.
But what we want from you... we want your son.” That's how they spoke to her. So then, they went to grab her once again, my mother, and... she was sixty-four years old.And then they went to grab my wife. And they did the same thing to her. With the stakes. And she was carrying [across her chest in a blankettype woven cloth called a rebozo] our little girl who was eight months old. So then, they began to torture her. “Tell us where your husband is. Hand him over and you'll go free,” but kicking her repeatedly the whole time. And, because of the stake, lots and lots of blood was flowing from her stomach and from her face as well. When they were giving her those incredible kicks, they did it with our daughter strapped to her as well. And they were pulling on her [wife's] hair, and they would stand them up. So then, they killed her, and when they killed her, because the girl was bellydown on top of my wife, when they stuck the stake into her [wife], they killed the two of them, because they drove the stake into the stomach of the both of them.
And after this assassination, this massacre, they pulled her and they dragged her inside the house and they lit the house on fire. So then, what they wanted to do was... in addition to the bullets, in addition to the tortures, was to burn them. I was present. I was inside the house, but they [army] didn't see me.
But when they killed my parents and everything, what I did was to go outside. And they began to shoot all over the place. That's when I was able to escape from their hands, though, in any event, they hit me with gunfire. This was in April of 1982.
Another respondent described the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of her trade unionist son. He was disappeared in a mass sequester of trade unionists in 1980 attributed to the Judicial Police [National Police detective/intelligence corps]. This ladina [mestiza] woman from the capital city stated that “they [CNT-affiliated unionists] were celebrating a memorial ceremony for one [fellow unionist] that they [authorities] had killed and there were twenty-seven in the CNT [office], and there they grabbed them.”
Look...
they [sequesterers] blocked off everything. All the traffic. And they didn't let anyone pass. That's what a woman neighbor says. Because I went down there the moment that that thing was occurring. There were even pools of blood that... that they'd extracted from them. I went to another place [Judicial Police headquarters] and yes, they looked for him, and... they threatened us! One couldn't arrive there asking questions. We put an attorney on the case. They killed him. I didn't even know what his name was.As a final example of typical violence reported by respondents, a university student torture survivor described to me his experiences with a plainclothes squad on a city street. He began by stating that he was “walking in the street. It wasn't very late, about 6 p.m.”
They came out and blocked my path... some individuals who didn't identify themselves as being from any security force or the authorities, but one knows the entire physiognomy of those types... the form in which they express themselves, right? The form in which they dress when they're in civilian clothes.
They started to call me names and they were looking to offend me. But, as I didn't heed them in terms of what they said to me... [then came] “Hand over the money that you have!” Right? Which wasn't much but it was what I was carrying at that moment. So then, they continued insulting me, right? And the one that was in charge among them told me to give him my jacket, though I'd already given him my wallet. My documents were there in the wallet. They ripped up my documents. I took off the jacket and, when I was giving it to them, that's when he assaulted me. He stabbed me the first time.
Then, when I covered the part he had just stabbed, he cut me in one of my upper extremities, right? So then, I couldn't get away. So I threw myself to the ground. And there they began to kick me. Two individuals, one grabbing me on each side. Then they began stabbing my lower extremities. After, they said various things to me. I believe [they were] things that I understood, no? That perhaps with this, the lesson would make an impression on me... that it was a lesson for me.
They walked away. There I stayed, prone, and soon the firefighters arrived and took me away to a medical assistance center. The police never arrived. Even at the medical center, the police officer on duty didn't ask me for any information or anything. And they weren't grave wounds, like, for killing me, right? But... only for leaving me marked for life.