These are recent crimes. You can still see fear in these faces. It’s hard to believe that the genocide in Guatemala happened just over 20 years ago. There are almost no photos of it. Guatemala’s tragedy doesn’t have the place it merits in the history of infamy perhaps for this reason: there are no photos. Or there aren’t many, if we take into account the images James Natchwey, Jean-Marie Simon, Alon Reininger or Marcelo Montecino along with a few others, made of Guatemala in the 1970s and 1980s. In any case, what was happening in Guatemala at that time faded into the background of the story of the triumph and eventual electoral defeat of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, or the war in El Salvador.
The signing of peace treaties on December 29, 1996 opened a space in Guatemalan society for slowly discovering the sad legacy of 36 years of armed conflict. Less than two years later, on April 26, 1998, Bishop Juan Gerardi was murdered two days after presenting a report on the human rights violations that had taken place during the war. These dates opened and shut a particular moment of history in Guatemala, cutting short the debate on the origins of and responsibilities for a conflict that left more than 200,000 victims, most of them Mayan.
Today, when the dead come from a place that we didn’t know existed until a few months ago, it’s prudent to remember that the Cold War in Latin America was red hot.
These photos are dedicated to Guatemalan journalist Ricardo Miranda, who always stood up to the history of his country with intelligence and talent.
Toronto, 2005
