ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the willingness to identify responsible parties, even before the human rights movement was institutionalized locally in the mid-1990s, is a redeeming note to the terrible experiences. A relative of the Aarones provided a more detailed story. “The guerrillas got ahold of their father, Belisario Lopez. The peril posed by the guerrillas cast a pall of suspicion over the indigenous population. It gave the vigilantes a reason to personalize the conspiracy theories on offer in Guatemalan society, translating fear of Indian uprisings into fear of communist subversion. The following account, though secondhand, captures typical procedures of the Guatemalan army: trapping a crowd on market day, then introducing an encapuchado, informer wearing a hood like a judge in the Spanish Inquisition, who picked out suspects to be taken away for torture and execution. Even in the villages, active patrolling stopped in 1992, after the Uspantan patrol commander died in a confrontation with the guerrillas.
