'Finding Oscar' documents 1982 Guatemala massacre, fallout
'Finding Oscar' documents 1982 Guatemala massacre, fallout
By SONIA PEREZ D.
Associated Press
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) -- Ramiro Osorio still has vivid memories of the day that death came to his village of Las Dos Erres over 30 years ago at the height of Guatemala's decades-long civil war.
Soldiers massacred more than 200 people at the town in the remote northern region of Peten. The 5-year-old Osorio's life was spared, but he was abducted by a soldier who he says kept him as a slave for years, tortured him and even tried to kill him.
"He always told me that if I thought of running away from the house there was no way, that he could find me even five meters below ground," Osorio said. "I was very afraid."
. . .
During the 1980s, the Reagan administration had direct contact with Guatemala's then-dictator Efrain Rios Montt. A month after the massacre - when the army's atrocities were already known, according to declassified U.S. diplomatic cables - the Reagan administration asked Congress for more economic support for the Guatemalan military.
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