ABSTRACT
San Pedro La Esperanza, west of San Pablo and Chimel along the same forested ridge, seems to have been a less conflictive place before the war. One woman has the nightmarish memory of hearing the victims scream “Open the door!” over the radio. Just as Petrocinio Menchu was the first person from Chimel kidnapped, his mother was the second. Rigoberta Menchu places Juana Tum Cotoja in the capital just before the fire at the Spanish embassy; then has her both return home to Chimel and travel across the highlands, organizing women with the story of watching her son burn to death at Chajul. Rigoberta’s description of the death of her mother was, like that of her brother, nightmarishly precise. Rigoberta’s account of her mother’s death also summons up the ghastly body dumps that became an institution in Guatemala and El Salvador. The kidnapping of Petrocinio had not severed Chimel’s relations with town.
