In Guatemala, indigenous people bury 59 “indirect” victims of the civil war

In northern Guatemala, residents of an isolated village are preparing to bury the ossuaries of 59 victims of the massacres perpetrated during the civil war (1960-1996), exhumed in a nearby clandestine cemetery.

The ossuaries were piled up in a school classroom in a hamlet of the municipality of Nebaj (north), before being buried in a mausoleum, built as "a historical monument", in the cemetery of

locality .

These human remains were exhumed in a clandestine cemetery, located in the neighboring municipality of Chajul, another community of the Maya Ixil ethnic group also victim of the massacre of the natives perpetrated in the 1980s, for which General Rios Montt, former dictator, was convicted in 2013.

However, his 80-year prison sentence for genocide and crimes against humanity was overturned for "

" in the procedure.

A new trial had been ordered by the Guatemalan justice, but the former general died before, in 2018, at the age of 91.

“A new meeting with his relatives”

"

," summarizes Diego Rivera, 68, survivor of the massacres perpetrated during the civil war.

Also a survivor of the Guatemalan genocide, Andres Birto was 3 years old when soldiers took his father away.

"

," he said.

At the time, the hunts and persecutions orchestrated by the Guatemalan army forced the indigenous populations to take refuge in the mountains, explains Ricardo Pinto, a member of the Guatemalan Foundation of Forensic Anthropology.

"

" he says.

But in the mountains people are dying of starvation, exhaustion or disease.

They were then buried in places that families could easily find.

Thus the inhabitants of Nebaj were able to find 73 bodies in this clandestine cemetery, 12 of which have already been identified.

The civil war, which lasted 36 years, left 200,000 dead or missing, 93% of which are attributed to state forces, according to the United Nations.