ABSTRACT
La Verbena is a public cemetery. In most Guatemalan necropoleis the dead are entombed aboveground— often in stacked rows of crypts. Perennially underfunded, they worked for months under tarps until they could put up a roof. The forenses are working with bodies that disaggregated in every way: the person from name, kin, identity, history; and often each piece or shard from the rest. The science of forensics, what makes it suitable to courts of judicature, is about transforming those estimating words for “a lot” into matters of fact. Lots of things happened to the bodies of those massacred or disappeared. In some cases the army forced people to dig graves before they began the killing. Most people are used to thinking of themselves as kin, as “having relations” as people say in English.
