Exhumed bones may offer clues to Guatemala's `disappeared'

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Monday, 06.07.10
Exhumed bones may offer clues to Guatemala's `disappeared'
Authorities have begun exhumations in Guatemala, hoping to provide answers to family members of those killed in the nation's civil war.

BY EZRA FIESER
Special to The Miami Herald

GUATEMALA CITY -- Working in a shabby public cemetery, anthropologists are pulling skeletons from an enormous well, hoping the bones will provide clues to what happened to thousands of ``disappeared'' people during the longest and bloodiest Central American civil war.

In what looks like a giant crime scene, the anthropologists -- from the Foundation of Forensic Anthropology of Guatemala, a private group founded in 1994 -- are sifting skulls, femurs and ribs to find signs of violence. The bones are nearly three decades old, dumped here during the height of the civil war, but they still carry signs of trauma: a gunshot or machete hack to the skull.

An estimated 200,000 people were killed in the 36-year-old civil war, a truth commission later found. Among the dead were 45,000 people said to be ``disappeared'' -- abducted, then killed, their bodies never again seen. Many were urban residents, including public university students, activists, writers and poets who opposed the military dictatorships.

While anthropologists have dug up hundreds of graves around the country, this is the first exhumation in the city. ``These people would be picked up, questioned and tortured. And their families couldn't go claim the bodies because they feared for their own lives,'' said Fredy Peccerelli, head of the forensic anthropologists. ``It's not just here. There are cemeteries around the country'' with the bodies of the disappeared.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, roughly 3,000 unidentified bodies ended up at this site -- Las Verbena -- a dusty cemetery marked by crumbling gravestones that sits next to a slum. They were buried with the name ``XX,'' a version of John or Jane Doe.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/07/1667163/exhumed-bones-may-offer-clues.html#ixzz0qr89nDVB

[Peace Patriot]

1. The Miami Hairball doesn't mind covering 30 year old massacres from the Reagan "reign of terror"

in Central America, but they ignore the CURRENT massacres of leftists, human rights workers, teachers, union leaders, anti-coup activists and others in Honduras and a recent massacre of up to 2,000 local community activists in La Macarena, Colombia. And they NEVER cover U.S. government collusion in these horrors in U.S. client states.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Thanks for pointing it out. There were more than a couple of Miami Cuban "exiles"

deeply involved in Central America during Reagan's pathetic Presidency, and many involved in many activities in Iran/Contra, too, at many different levels. Even Luis Posada Carriles was up to his snout in it, too, by his own admission to the New York Times.

All 3 Cuban "exile" Congress people, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Lincoln, and brother Mario Diaz-Balart have ALWAYS been mucking around in all aspects of US/Latin America affairs, as if they believe ALL Latin American diplomacy from Washington has to clear with them first. Don't forget their vicious ally, Cuban "exile" super-freak, Otto Reich. He was the former State Department Office of Public Diplomacy propagandist, who dabbled in ILLEGAL levels of national propaganda and was called on it by the U.S. Congress, who cranked out monstrous lies about Nicaragua during Iran/Contra to lead the entire country completely off course for the emotional support Reagan wanted for that hellish murder spree, and other evil triumphs, who also served for a period of time as the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, and was instrumental for his machinations in getting Luis Posada Carriles out of Venezuelan prison. He also arranged (along with George H. W. Bush) Posada's co-author of the Cubana airliner mid-air bombing and mass murder, Orlando Bosch, to slip back into the country, even over a U.S. Acting Attorney General, Joe D. Whitley's Order of Exclusion which was supposed to refuse Bosch's re-entry here.

Here's a copy of his Order of Exclusion:
http://cuban-exile.com/doc_051-075/doc0054.html

Absolutely tyrannical, greedy, selfish, idiotic people from Miami have been hell-bent on dominating our Latin American affairs. It's been noted in various sources for decades their creepy little Klavern has exuded a disproportionate influence on U.S. foreign affairs from the early 1960's.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said when she and her family came here, they assumed they'd just be here a few months, and the U.S. would wipe out the revolution, and they would all go back to Cuba, pick up where they were and carry on as if nothing had happened.

Apparently they will never get it that they and their noxious cohorts were absolutely hated, despised, and loathed so intensely the people put their lives on the line to get rid of their racist, classist, obnoxious, iron-fisted domination of their country and would do it all over again any minute, any hour, any day, week, month, year, decade.