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Grave Secrets

I phoned Mateo. He had no problem with the delay. I asked him about E. Sandoval. He explained that Eugenia Sandoval worked for CEIHS, the Centro de Investigaciones de Historia Social. After hanging up, I told Ryan.

“Guess that makes sense,” he said.

I gathered the books and journals and settled opposite Ryan. Some publications were in Spanish, most in English. I began a list.

The Massacre at El Mazote: A Parable of the Cold War; Massacres in the Jungle, Ixcán, Guatemala, 1975 – 1982; Persecution by Proxy: The Civil Patrols in Guatemala, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights. Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemala Crisis; an Americas Watch Report dated August 1986: Civil Patrols in Guatemala.

“Looks like Nordstern was doing his homework.”

“Till he got extra credit.”

“Has anyone talked to the Chicago Tribune?”

“Seems Nordstern was a freelancer, didn’t actually work for the paper. But the Tribune had commissioned him to do a piece on Clyde Snow and the FAFG.”

“Why the interest in stem cells?”

“Future story?”

“Maybe.”

Two hours later we caught a break.

I was leafing through a photojournal of La Lucha Maya, a collection of full-page color portraits. Thatched-roof houses in Santa Clara. A young boy fishing on Lake Atitlán. A baptismal ceremony in Xeputúl. Men bearing caskets from Chontalá to the cemetery in Chichicastenango.

In the early eighties, under instructions from the local army base, the Civil Patrol executed twenty-seven villagers in Chontalá. A decade later, Clyde Snow exhumed the remains.

Opposite the funeral procession, a photo of young men with automatic weapons. Civil Patrollers in Huehuetenango.

The Civil Patrol system was imposed throughout rural Guatemala. Participation was obligatory. Men lost workdays. Families lost money. The patrols imposed a new set of rules and values in which weapons and force dominated. The system shattered traditional authority patterns and disrupted community life among Mayan peasants.

Ryan popped out a cassette, popped in another. I heard Nordstern’s voice, then my own.

I moved through the pictures. An old man forced to leave his home in Chunimá due to death threats by the Civil Patrol. A Mayan woman with a baby on her back, tears on her cheeks.

I turned the page. Civil Patrollers at Chunimá, guns raised, misty mountains floating behind them. The caption explained that the group’s former leader had assassinated two local men for refusing to serve in the “voluntary” patrol.

I stared at the young men in the photo. They could have been a soccer team. A Scout troop. A high school glee club.

I heard a mechanical version of my voice begin to explain the massacre at Chupan Ya.

“In August 1982, soldiers and civil patrollers entered the village —”

A Civil Patrol had aided the army at Chupan Ya. Together, the soldiers and patrollers had raped women and girls, then shot and macheted them, and torched their homes.

I turned the page.

Xaxaxak, a community in Sololá. Civil Patrollers marched parade style, automatic weapons held diagonally across their chests. Soldiers looked on, some in jungle fatigues, others in uniforms indicating much higher pay grades.

Nordstern had circled the name. My eyes fell on it at the precise moment Nordstern spoke it.

“Under the command of Alejandro Bastos.”

“I don’t know that.”

“Go on.”

“You seem to know more about this than I do.” Rustling. “It’s getting late, Mr. Nordstern. I have work to do.”

“Chupan Ya or the septic tank?”

“Stop! Play that back!”

Ryan hit rewind and replayed the end of the interview.

“Look at this.”

I rotated the book.

Ryan studied the photo, read the caption.

“Alejandro Bastos was in command of the local army post.”